Atomic Fungus

The Federal Railroad Administration is ordering Amtrak to turn on the PTC system in their northeast corridor.

...which should already have been turned on, particularly in the curve where the wreck occurred, but wasn't because apparently it costs $15 billion to have a couple electricians throw some circuit breakers, or something.

BUT. PTC is not a panacea, and over at Chicago Boyz David Foster writes about a time when PTC caused a fatal train wreck, rather than prevented one.

The person operating the vehicle should always be authorized and able to take full control of the vehicle, at any time, for any reason, because machines are stupid and do not have judgement.

Automated safety systems are wonderful things, but they cannot and should not replace good judgement based on experience.

* * *

It was 36° outside at 2 AM. This is May! WTF.

...had the AC on Sunday, of course, then turned it off Monday evening...and had to turn the heat on again this morning because it was 64° in here!

In the Fungal Vale, I expect winter-like temperatures as late as mid-April. Not two-thirds of the way through May. This is dicks.

* * *

Anyway, I baked a birthday cake (yellow cake with chocolate frosting) and Mrs. Fungus put 49 candles on it--one extra for the wish--and I blew 'em all out. I had a very nice birthday today.

Dinner was BBQ ribs, and they were fall-off-the-bone tender. 2.3 hours at 300, then 0.7 hours at 250-ish, then apply BBQ sauce and let 'em go for 20 more minutes at 350. Delicious.

The rub recipe is pretty simple:

1 TBSP cayenne pepper
1 TBSP white sugar
1/2 TBSP paprika
1 TSP ground black pepper
1 TSP salt
1 TSP garlic powder

...and that'll do a lot more than a single rack of ribs, too. It's pretty tasty considering that I threw it together one time when I decided to try using a rub. Now it's the standard and I can't make BBQ ribs without it.

After applying the rub I wrapped the rack in foil and let it sit in the fridge while the cake baked; then I threw the ribs in and reduced the oven heat to 300 (from the 350 needed to bake the cake) and let it go.

I have to believe that my Dad would have loved my BBQ ribs. Even though he would have maintained that his were better. Heh.

* * *

Tomorrow is chore day--whee--which means I'd better get myself into bed.

What do you do with this? People in Ferguson were paid to protest:

On May 14, protesters, upset with not being paid their promised checks for protesting, protested outside MORE, Missourians Organizing For Reform and Empowerment, an ACORN organization which had received funding through George Soros to fund the protests.

I think that if an organization is paying people to protest, and things turn into riots and looting, I think that organization ought to be liable for what their employees have done.

Employees, contractors, what-the-hell-ever.

In the same post there's a discussion of the mattress-carrying rape hoax attention whore, who carried the stupid mattress to the stage at her graduation, because LOOK AT ME!

*rolleyes*

This one is a bit of a laugh. Apparently, if you type "nigger house" into Googe Maps while focused on Washington, D.C., it will show you the White House, and Googe doesn't know why, offering vague mumbles about user input and possible hacking and LOOK HALLEY'S COMET!

Meanwhile Oakland is giving up on expecting "young vibrants" to have any manners whatsoever. So in other words, the Oakland school board has just given self-styled "thug niggaz" carte blance to act like complete barbarians in school, without any repercussions whatsoever. This will all but guarantee the complete failure of the Oakland educational system.

And then there's all the feminist whining about Sansa Stark's wedding night. Because apparently it hurts their feels or something when a woman living in a medieval dystopia has a less-than-romantic wedding night and gives reluctant consent to marital sex. Then again, the women who have their panties in a bunch about this are largely the same ones who think that any time a penis enters a vagina, it's rape.

GDP has been revised, again. Our economic numbers are total junk. Just made-up crap, none of it having any connection with reality. It's been that way for years.

Finally the Obama administration continues the Democrat foreign policy legacy of betrayal, abandonment, and the encouragement of genocides. Because the Democrat party never met a dictator they didn't like, and because the last Democrat President who truly understood foreign policy was Grover Cleveland, hundreds of thousands of people are going to die, and there's going to be a big fat hairy war before it's all over. Again.

Every last bit of it, it's all horseshit. 100%. This is one of those days when I find myself becoming bone weary because of all the stupidity in the world; all the idiocy and fecklessness just seems to pile up and all I want to do is hide from it.

It's like--yesterday I was playing WoW, and in "Looking for Group" chat they were having a debate about religion. And it was all the most fatuous crap you could ever think of, all the usual arguments espoused by people who are merely regurgitating nonsense someone else told them was cogent and insightful. So wrong and stupid it's not even offensive; it's just pathetic--and they think they're being intelligent when they say this stuff, because the people that told them this crap did so in the context of explaining that you believe these things if you're smart, and only stupid people believe in those other things. They pride themselves on being so intelligent and scientific, while looking down at the beknighted fools who cling to a "sky wizard", and all the while they don't realize that they haven't even begun to look at anything like evidence or philosphy, but have taken the shortcut past consideration of their beliefs.

One moron was insisting that atheism isn't a belief--how do you explain it to him? The only "proof" he can offer to support his thesis is nothing but conjecture and bald assertion, and he clings to his faith in nothing with exactly the same fervor as the most devout Catholic ever did--but because people in his group say he's smart for doing it, he will never admit that he has a religion: nihilism.

People are idiots.

* * *

There was one guy who kept posting "lyrics" in chat, too. He was writing a song, he claimed, and kept splattering us with the most turgid, purple text you ever saw. I figure he was probably about 14, perhaps 14 going on 23. WTF.

* * *

Today's the last day of my weekend; tomorrow I get to go to work again and deal with even more stupidity. In theory I should be getting my actual badge soon--the official Geek Squad badge, with a serial number, that I can wear "with pride". In fact I'll probably feel like a complete tool while wearing the thing, but it's part of the uniform and if you have it you've got to wear it.

I do look forward to getting it, though; just not to wearing the stupid thing. *sigh*