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Right Angle: Backstage (05-18-2021)

The ever-changing styles of the men of Right Angle kickoff this week’s pre-production meeting.

Right Angle: Backstage (05-18-2021)

The ever-changing styles of the men of Right Angle kickoff this week’s pre-production meeting.

We appreciate each of our Members who make this possible.

60 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (05-18-2021)”

I just did a 5.5-hour flight in a mask. I cheated and used a single-layer mask rather than the double that airlines require. In my defense, the single-layer mask was covered with photos of dogs, and thus worth the risk.

If you look at the characteristics of Von Neumann Machines, technically People are self-replicating Von Neumann machines capable of self-replicating ad infinitum. Look how quickly the population has jumped just in the last few decades. It’s the exponential thing. It would be worse if we weren’t also self-destroying machines as well.

Scott, you and I must be contemporaries (though you look a tad more youthful than I): Like you, I majored in Journalism, thinking that it was the “next big thing”, only to find that Bachelor’s degrees in Journalism were a dime a dozen. Which caused me to do like Bill, pursuing an aviation career that didn’t exactly turn out as I expected, either.

The Reformer John Wesley was walking along a path when a man met him along the way. The stranger stood before John resolutely and said “I never move out of the way for fools.”
Wesley, being a timid but wise man retorted, “I always do.”
He promptly walked around the shamed man and into great quote history.

Was glad that Bill mentioned Willis Eschenbach. His posts on “Watts Up With That” are always informative. He deserves much more attention.

I’m a ASE master tech and I drive (wait for it..) an electric Ford Focus. The guys are correct, I average 312w/h per mile. At local rate of about $0.12 Kwh that is $0.04/mile. No oil changes, no tune-ups, no emission codes no nuttin. In over 70K miles I’ve replaced…tires….It kills me to hear people bashing electric cars. However, a BEV still produces 33% of the CO2 emissions with the current grid due to coal, oil and natural gas employed to produce the charging current. Like most people, I cannot use an electric as my only transportation. I kind of own a fleet….Any emissions savings from the Ford are moot when I fire up my old diesel Land Rover.(cough) There is a place for electric cars and I really wish people would think and maybe even try one before pooh pooh-ing the whole concept. The only thing wrong with a Tesla is the price tag. ALL electric US fleet though? Not happening…..

As an engineer who has worked in the power industry previously, I do not bash electric vehicles. I do point out to people, as you do, that they are not emission free. Additionally, when one includes the mining for battery material an disposal of same, they environmental cost is not a net reduction currently.
And if we magically converted all internal combustion vehicles to electric, we do not currently produce sufficient electricity. Pointing out these items is not bashing the industry. We should be constructing nuclear plants, the US Navy has proven this can be done safely, so that the next generation can run EV.
I think the real goal is to get rid of the automobile. Since the elites only want EV and we don’t have enough E, they will have to get rid of the V for all but the elites to have.

If anyone actually cared about environmental concerns and energy use by cars then cars would get lighter every year. Instead the mass goes in the other direction. And with switch to E even more so.

Re: those free Tesla chargers.
Near my house, they just installed a bank of Supercharger stations. I once asked a tesla owner, as he charged his car, (which takes 25-35 minutes) how much it cost him to get a full charge, and how much range that gave him.
He, full of pride in his ‘clean technology’ car, told me. I walked away and did the math. He’s paying the equivalent of $8.80/ gal of gas (based on 23mpg). In CA right now, gas prices are between $3.90-$5.50/ gal. and that’s the highest in the nation.

Just saw this on Youtube. Steve, you have a lot of fans. She’s one of the most disturbing. She thinks Scott and Bill won’t let Vodkapundit talk, and when he tries, they ignore him. Gotta love Green Girl. I note 2 thumbs down, wonder who those two were?

Fluffy G, You are the only person I know that has ever heard of this book. I have it around here somewhere. I need to track it down, hopefully it wasn’t lost during the moves over the last, what, 40 years. Does anybody know if the movie is still available?

I saw that movie when it came out in 1970 and, while interesting, it did scare me.
IMDB says it’s available on Amazon. And wasn’t there a sequel?

I only saw the movie. Me and a couple computer-geek friends of mine watched it and laughed hysterically.

Lucky you, Scott. I work for an educational establishment and I doubt they’ll let me stop wearing a mask till next spring. Maybe. That said, about half the people at work are really slacking off on masking. And that said, we still don’t have classes going on yet. Still remote learned. SO our brand new multimillion dollar campus is damn near empty. Except for all the construction guys.

My local shooting range has been mask free for a couple weeks. And last night I had to go to my bank branch office and they are also mask free. It’s awesome. I’m hoping to see more businesses doing this. People should be making their own health decisions and allowing others to do the same.

here in fenton,mi we’re mostly mask free. well../lets say we’re trending. i see it moving fast.

Saw an article two days ago where Kroger said they were still going to mandate masks. The next day saw one where Wal-Mart wasn’t. Told Mrs Ron watch how fast Kroger changes. Went to Kroger yesterday afternoon, they had posted onto their “Mask Mandate” sign and smaller post-it style sign – “Masks not required if you are vaccinated”. Saw maybe 10% in the store wearing masks and almost no employees still wearing them.
Side note – some people benefited from having their faces covered. Or maybe we benefited from having their faces covered.

Whaddya talking about Bill? Electricity comes from the wall. I even saw some Green Czar for some VA city say just that while touting the city’s new, all electric, auto fleet.

It’s not that A.I. is “smarter than we are;” it’s that A.I. can think faster than we can. I know … I know … Poh-tay-to, poh-tah-to.

Mrs Ron and I have a little breakfast place we like to visit on weekends. We went Sat and the sign was still up. I picked up take out on Sunday morning, no sign. I am looking forward to the staff taking theirs off because I am sure they don’t actually look like what I think they look.

Having gone through engineering school for 5 1/2 years and two degrees and then working for more than three decades with some exceptionally bright engineers, I can aver that Bill’s description of engineering types is pretty accurate. Those of us who had our emotion chips activated do not make the best engineers. We get to be senior management.

Steve, it’s a shame your academy days were long before The Chapelle Show. You could have deadpanned, “Game. Blouses” and been the hero among the cadets

True story confession:
Freshman year in high school, I was having a bad hair day morning. I used some of my dad’s Vitalis to try and tame and hold in place. It gave me a wet look, At baseball practice that afternoon, one guy says, what’s up with your hair? I told him what I had used. By the end of practice I had a new nickname, Vitalis. Fortunately it didn’t stick past the school year.

My dad was a Vitalis user. When I was a kid I remember my mom getting a kick out of me touching what I called “my dad’s plastic hair”

S***. I was just in the bathroom & checked out what I’m using for days I have to style my hair – Vitalis. I honor my dad’s memory…

Except for the possibility of catching fire due to the alcohol content, it works just fine.
My current hair style has Ronette saying that I am trying to look like the Most Interesting Man in the World (AKA – Dos Equus guy)

My dad used something called Lilac Vegetal. I don’t remember the smell, but I know I would if I caught a whiff of it.

i agree with bill on ai. if i can buy a machine that will hit, retrieve and then hit again a golf ball better than me….why go golfing anymore.

i think my son would enjoy back stage but i know i can’t email this to him for free and i also know he wouldn’t pay for backstage although he does occasionally watch the three of you.

Good reason to invite him over and watch together…on Zoom if necessary.

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great point and i have already done that. not the zoom thing though. i am 73 and don’t know zoom from zip. he does however as he is 46 and up to speed on that stuff.
respects.

$3 shirts at Goodwill are the way to go.

I think I’ve read a couple stories (fictional) where during some training exercise for a military some group on one side dressed up as the other, or as medical personnel and snuck in someplace or another. (though I think that trick was actually used a few times in WWII)

“You are stronger than them so you should take a few hits” … so these completely innocent Jews are guilty of white privilege and that is now a capital offense? I suppose since Trevor is black he gets a Go Free card, but John O gets to visit execution line.

“Sidewalks are too white” and he doesn’t mean they’re covered in seagull poo I suppose.

We need some old black dude to say “I knew Jim Crow. I lived with Jim Crow. This is not Jim Crow” to paraphrase that old movie(?) quote.

For Scott: Kenny is the one in the orange parka that dies at the end of every episode, Cartman is the big fat kid. I heard someone make a comment during the last week regarding the 16 year old kid that got silently cancelled off American Idol for having a kid that wore a costume that had a white hood. The comment was Cartman wore a ghost costume (I think it was) and the (black character) Chef ran off scared.

Any time I am at a self check out in a store and something happens with the machine (last time was it ran out of paper for the receipt) and a cashier has to some over, or anytime I am at a cashier and there is a problem with the register, I always close saying “One more day the machines did not take over the world.”

Bill: I resent your statement of calling engineers a BIT odd!
Please replace BIT with the following:
very
extremely
massively
mega-
giga-
tera-
Thank you

“Ass-burgers” had me laughing in my office. Fortunately, no one thought that unusual. 🙂

I don’t think that I am odd at all. I am rational. It is all those other people who can’t think logically. They are the oddballs. Me, just normal and fully human. Not my fault we only make up 20% of what calls itself humanity.

Loved it on time and complete. Scott no one cares about the shirt.
When the singularity happens it won’t be noticed or understood as machines have zero interest in communicating with us they will only be communicating with others of their kind. The machines are already intelligent but we are kidding ourselves if we think we will be even to understand it when they become self-aware.

You could really be a Beau Brumell baby if you just gave it half a chance

Now there’s a cultural reference I never expected to hear here!

He is a vastly underappreciated example of the Great Man theory of history. He was an unimportant man who changed not just fashion but history itself. We are still following his maxims and judging the world as he recreated it, two centuries later.

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