After all, this is the character who got the evil apple trees to THROW THEIR CHILDREN at DorothyThis is how my brain works when I'm tired. *sigh*
SO SHE COULD EAT THEM
I just have to wonder what he was doing in that corn field in the first place. Did he know Dorothy was coming? Was it has plan to bend her quest to his own nefarious ends?
Or was there something else he was up to, only he saw this opportunity and seized it?
He helped Dorothy get rid of two of his arch-nemeses: the Wizard and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Clearly they had to go before he could seize power over all of Oz
I can only assume that Glenda the Good Witch is next...at the right time.
What better way for the Puppet Master of Oz to hide his true nature than by disguising himself as a brainless dolt?
* * *
Lesbian mother uses her kids to damage Catholic church. Got to love how these people operate: she sends her kids to a Catholic school knowing the church's stand on homosexuality, specifically so she can sue them for "discrimination".
Do you think I am exaggerating or misrepresenting her intentions?
Ann Michelle Tesluk has started an online petition to pressure the board to action and describes her activities as gearing to make the Catholic Church into an “openly gay friendly church.”Do I need to support my assertions any further than that?
Using your kids as political pawns. What an awesome mother. *rolleyes*
* * *
Speaking of which, what I take from this article is that the liberal establishment is fine with kids being able to access hardcore pornography as long as it's gay porn. Straight porn, no, that's sick and wrong and evil because it degrades women and gives an unrealistic image of what sex is, but viewing gay porn is a civil right.
*sigh*
* * *
There really is no arguing with this post on women by Vox Day.
In high school, we were repeatedly instructed by our mothers and female friends that girls only wanted nice guys, real gentlemen who would treat them well and put them on the pedestals they deserved by virtue of their sex. Then we watched them uniformly ignore those nice young gentlemen in favor of the socially dominant and the athletic. In college, we were told that women were just as interested in sex as men, but that having sex with them while they were drunk was rape, having sex with them when they regretted it the next day was rape and not having sex with them was also rape if they felt sufficiently spurned.Yeah, that's about right.
* * *
Bristol Palin wonders how long it'll be before Obama calls her. Obama called Sandra "I spend $3,000 per year on birth control but I'm not a slut" Fluke after Limbaugh called her a slut; liberals called Sarah and Bristol Palin much worse than that, and nothing.
Fortunately Ms. Palin is smart enough not to hold her breath waiting.
* * *
The new iPad apparently missed sales expectations. It's not good news for Apple, says Karl Denninger, which is why Apple is planning it stock buyback. Gotta keep that price up lest the high-end execs not get their bonuses, right?
* * *
Now, I just simply cannot understand how something like this can happen. I mean, it's illegal for an 18-year-old to buy alcohol! It's illegal for an 18-year-old to drink alcohol! And everyone knows that driving drunk is against the law. So how can something like this happen? How can an 18-year-old girl get arrested for DUI three times in as many weeks, when there are so many laws against it?
Eh? What's that? "Sometimes people break the law"?
Well, shut my mouth. We're told that guns have to be illegal because otherwise people will use them to commit crimes, and that the only way to lower gun crime is to make them as illegal as possible. Surely the people who advocate that position are aware that "sometimes people break the law", aren't they?
* * *
April 30th is the first private-sector launch to the International Space Station. Yes, SpaceX is launching a resupply mission to the ISS Boondoggle on 4/30/12, and it's about time, dude!
Longtime readers of the Fungus will recall that we view this as a highly positive development in Man's Quest For Space. The sooner we get the government out of the "launch services" business, the better.
Business can handle that just fine. NASA's mission should be a pioneering and research one, not industrial; as a government agency NASA is too highly politicized to be cost-effective.
But if NASA is buying launches from commercial carriers, that's a whole 'nother story.
Look: one of the reasons we have an air travel industry now comes from the US Postal Service buying space on airliners in the '30s and '40s to ship mail across the continent. This gave airlines a reliable revenue stream, and it lowered the cost of passenger tickets. If--instead--we'd had a "National Air Travel Association" in the 1930s which was in charge of air travel in the United States, today it would cost $10,000 to take a flight from NYC to LA.
* * *
...I remember once getting into a debate (a little one) on the Fiero forum with a guy who worked for NASA. He was aghast that the Fiero's front wheels were "held on with a cotter pin".
Open wheel bearings are becoming less and less common on cars; manufacturers tend to use sealed bearings now, and they come as a cartridge which is replaced in its entirety should it go bad. They're harder to replace than open bearings; I can replace a set of front wheel bearings on the Fiero with hand tools, but the '95 Escort required a hydraulic press for the same job.
But what they are is cheap and durable and easily serviced for all that they're more maintenance-intensive than sealed bearings are. You have to periodically repack them, and that's a job a competent mechanic can do in perhaps an hour at the outside if he knows what he's doing.
The bearing races are seated in the wheel hub; you can tap them in and out with a hammer and drift but you only need to do that when you're either replacing the races (with the bearings, of course!) or the brake rotor. The roller bearings themselves are held in place with thrust washers, and on the outside of all this the whole thing is held onto the spindle with a nut, which is itself further prevented from turning loose with a cotter pin. Hence the "held on with a cotter pin" nonsense.
The NASA guy went on to say that of course at NASA they would never allow a single point of failure on a critical system!
*rolleyes*
Me: "Yeah, and if NASA were in charge of our cars, a trip to the grocery store would cost $50,000 and the drivetrain would require a complete rebuild after each trip."
I do not have a very good impression of NASA.
But then I furher amplified my point: in spaceflight, when you're sailing along and a "critical system" breaks down, you can't exactly pull over to the side and fix whatever's wrong--and you certainly can't call a tow truck. Not to mention that everything NASA throws into orbit is purpose-built; NASA almost never uses anything off the shelf if it can waste time and money developing something brand-spanking-new instead.
Contrast that with the typical car. It's designed to be easily serviced; and if something breaks generally you end up sitting beside the road waiting for a tow truck. You don't have to worry about life support in any but the most extreme of circumstances (and in a car, on Earth, that generally is confined to temperature control and not breathing exhaust fumes).
And car companies use off-the-shelf components as much as possible to keep their costs down--of course--which is something NASA doesn't seem too concerned with.
* * *
Okay, two comics today, because I can!
First, Pearls Before Swine guest-stars the cat and dog from Mutts:
(Uploaded specifically for Lemonzen, who's off work today and has a week from hell away from her regular office this week. Otherwise I would just have e-mailed it.)
Second, today's home-brewed Garfield Minus Garfield:
It's amazing how good I'm getting with MS Paint....