Truth or Dare

Blog Post

Bullet Points:

** Everyone is afraid of something. The enemy must be, too. The more powerful they are, the more they have to lose.”

** Many excellent and capable scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one group of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians. Stage magicians exposed many pseudoscientific hoaxes. Of course, like Cassandra, they’re doomed to be disbelieved because they’re only unlettered magicians.

** President Trump has survived more assassination attempts than Kamala Harris has had campaign interviews.

** Classic pick-up problems for nerds.

** The Great Pyramid of Cheops contains an enigma that no historian or archaeologist likes to discuss. All archaeologists agree that the pyramid structure comprises some 2,400,000 rock blocks weighing between 2 and 70 tonnes. Each rock block was positioned with absolute precision, as the pyramid has a margin of error of only 1 centimeter at the base and only 1 degree of alignment to the north. A similar result can only be achieved today with laser-guided construction systems. However, it is not the precision with which the Great Pyramid was built that is impressive. Nor do we want to go into how the blocks were transported. Instead, the question is another: how long did it take them?

Assuming that Egyptian workers managed to cut, transport, and place one block a day, it would have taken exactly (2,400,000: 365) years to build the Great Pyramid, i.e. 6,575 years to finish it. This means that the pyramid, given for completion in about 2,500 B.C., would have been started in at least 9,000 B.C. But according to archaeologists, the Great Pyramid was built in only 10 years around 2,500 B.C. What does this statement imply?

To be built in about ten years, as official archaeology teaches, calculating that work was only done in daylight. Thus, 10 hours a day, each block of the pyramid must have been cut, transported, and placed at minus one every minute, i.e., one every 60 seconds. (1 block x 60 minutes x 10 hours x 365 days x 10 years) = 2,190,000. Can you imagine a group of workers with tools as soft as copper, who did not even know the wheel at that time, cutting blocks from 2 to 70 tonnes, transporting them on logs via ramps, and placing one every minute without interruption, every day, every week, every month, every year, for ten years? I honestly have some difficulty.

The Great Pyramid was certainly built by people who lived in the area where it was found. But it is quite evident that the time it was built and perhaps also the people who built it are probably not what many people think.

** Leadville, CO, which sits at an elevation of 10,152 feet, was initially named “Cloud City.” Placer gold mining began in the area in 1859, but the discovery of gold in California Gulch in 1860 brought thousands of gold prospectors to Leadville. In 1877, a large silver deposit was found on Iron Hill near the city, leading to a rush of wealth for people like Horace Tabor, Augusta Tabor, JJ Brown, and Molly Brown, who profited from silver and gold. By 1880, silver production in Leadville had reached $11 million annually, and the city was officially incorporated in January 1878. The population of Leadville grew to around 60,000 by 1893. But the Silver Crash of that year led to a decline in the town’s fortunes. Despite this setback, Leadville remains the highest incorporated city in the United States.

** Imagine being so “bad with money” that you can take 40% of the nation’s wealth and still end up with $35 trillion in debt. That’s what the democrats want: the rich and the poor and no deplorables in their world. It’s too expensive for the poor to do what they used to enjoy. Pretty soon, only the rich will be able to. We are the carbon they want to erase.

** Dr. John Stith Pemberton invented Coca-Cola on May 8, 1886, forever transforming the world’s eating patterns. The drink’s name comes from two of its original ingredients: coca leaves (a source of legal cocaine) and kola nuts (a source of caffeine). As a pharmacist from Atlanta, he had access to various chemicals and natural components. One day, he made a dark liquid and took it to his shop, Jacobs’ Pharmacy, to be mixed with soda water. At this time, a test was necessary. So he had the pharmacy’s customers try it, and they raved about how wonderful and refreshing it was. Pemberton then began selling the precursor to today’s Coca-Cola for five cents per glass as a takeout drink.

 

 

Identify the Aircraft

1

 

2

 

3

 

4

 

Identify the Armor

5

Try to be specific

 

Identify the Feature Films/Series

A

 

B

Big Hint

 

C

Two photos from an episode

The Hiway Cafe is great for meeting new people, enjoying your meal, and waiting for the next bus…

 

 

Parting Shot

 

 

End

52 thoughts on “Truth or Dare

  1. IDA:
    1. Schiebel S-100 Peregrine
    2. Douglas TBD-1 Devastator
    3. AP-10 XP-47H Thunderbolt
    4. U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-94B Starfire
    5. Late production Brummbar from Sturmpanzer-Abteilung 217. Which included a machine gun housing fitted to the superstructure.
    IFFS:
    A. Platoon
    B. The Fifth Element
    C. The Twilight Zone (1959)

  2. Pyramid – certain personalities love to look down on the “ignorant primitives” that lived before us. It lets them strut around full of pride in how wonderful they are. Would they really want to look closely at anything that disturbs their fantasy?
    Florida investigation – the Texas Rangers did their own investigation of the Waco compound and discovered things that didn’t fit the official narrative. Wonder what will come out of this one.

  3. Identify the Aircraft:
    1. Schiebel Camcopter S-100
    2. Douglas TBD Devastator
    3. Need coffee.
    4. Lockheed F-94 Starfire
    Identify the Armor
    5. Brummbär, last series as indicated by machine ball mount
    Identify the Feature Films/Series:
    A. Platoon
    B. The Fifth Element
    C. The Twilight Zone episode: Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

  4. There’s a raccoon in The Fifth Element?

    Bruce Willis doesn’t (didn’t) look much like the guy at the wheel, but it wasn’t bad casting. The Platonic ideal of bad casting (IMNSHO) in adaptations of French comics was for “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”. I’m told Dane DeHaan is a fine actor, and Cara Delevingne is, well, very skinny, but they came across as prepubescent siblings with some creepy incest thing in VATCOATP.

    1. It was one of the original storyboards – so maybe they had a talking raccoon? French movies are always interesting. Either it’s two people sitting in a bar surrounded by stale cigar smoke and watered down drinks saying “life is shit” in 83 different ways or it’s just weird. Cara Delevigne is doable unless you have a thing against a 5 BMI. More pushing for the cushion, there’s always Rosie O’Donnell.

        1. Only a little rakounophobic (they have some nasty parasites). I mostly just don’t want to be around them.
          They’re cute and all, but not when living in my attic.

          1. They often go rabid…sort of like in Guardians of the Galaxy only in your trash. I’m not a big fan of trash pandas.

      1. There are some ‘things’ that us fat-copulators won’t touch. Rosie being one of them.

        And I liked VATCOATP. It’s weird, typical Luc Besson fair, but it has it’s good points. It’s just a friggin cartoon for all intents and purposes. Not done as well as “Fifth Element” but still an enjoyable romp.

        1. Oh, VATCOATP had its high points. The visuals were something else in a weird but not bad way. And the “history” part with all the different races was fun.

  5. “I’m a Gemini” – Translation: I’m bipolar.” Dude…forget how cute and vacuous she is…RUN!
    ***
    DeSantis- Go man go!…the FBI & DOJ are trying to cover up yet another assassination attempt on PDJT. All of it stinks to high heaven (an SS agent saw a rifle sticking out of the fence? Yeah, right). Ron, good on you for telling them to go pound sand….your turf, your case.

    1. How fun can it be if she’s not as crazy as a shit house rat and you don’t know for sure which woman you’re going to wake up to – Sybil syndrome? I was just discussing this with TrentC off-channel. He may read this comment. I’m referring to his ex.

  6. The Egyptian pyramids turned into tourist traps. Today, our engineers and others marvel at how difficult it would be to build something of that size and accuracy. They forgot the basics of engineering: The measuring line, the square and the blumb bob. Lasers are nice as is heavy equipment, but the basics work extremely well. Do construction workers or engineers even know what a plumb bob is?

    One of the builders in north Idaho was delayed while both the county and design engineers attempted to calculate the snow load on roof trusses for a house. Even with their computers, they could only compute spot loads instead of the total load and agree that the trusses were strong enough. At the Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport, the new concourse and interior walkway was delayed and bucks added to the cost of the project because the design wasn’t built to earthquake standards. The Anchorage and the design engineers had their stamps on the paperwork and a toad noticed that the structure didn’t meet the basic earthquake requirements.

    My point is that we have forgotten how to accomplish large tasks such as the pyramids or the Panama Canal in addition to the basics of civilization.

    1. When I see someone say “Ancient man could never…” I understand what they’re really saying is “I could never figure it out, so nobody I consider lesser than me could, either!”
      .
      It’s amazing what a system, somebody calling the beat to keep the time, and enough warm bodies can do. Just because they didn’t have the wheel doesn’t mean they didn’t have canals to float the blocks, levers and pulleys, wedges, sledges, and rollers to move them. They didn’t need to GPS the site: they had people who could actually identify the north star and use it for a very reliable sight line. Just because they drew the constellations differently doesn’t mean they were idiots.
      .
      An old friend of mine was the set of eyes that spotted a new building going up on Elmendorf AFB lacked earthquake joints. Mind you, she was “just” the interior designer, ground-truthing the framing they’d put up and going over the blueprints to make sure there were enough electrical outlets, and the doors and walkways were to ADA code given the cubicle setup the client wanted. Which any overly-smart and sufficiently unwise engineer and architect will tell you is automatically calculated by the software package, so clearly she’s redundant and needs to stick picking out colours while they’re the big men on campus.
      (I got called and ranted at, because she’d heard my rants about using and maintaining architectural disasters designed by Mies Van Der Rohe, and figured I’d understand architects had gotten no wiser, nor less arrogant.)

      1. When you look at ancient non-fortification construction, you have one or two generations before some shot caller comes along and doesn’t like what you did with the monument and tears it down. The Egyptians were famous for this. They repurposed stone. Human nature demands that it take place quickly because of the force of will involved. Things are somewhat different today, but even so.

        eg – Pedo Joe Biden canceled Pres. Trump’s wall.

      2. > Mies Van Der Rohe
        Mies “van der Rohe” was bad enough, but at least his buildings had some sort of integrity in terms of design philosophy, even if the practical fell short. Now we have the likes of Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind being given license (and lots of money) to clown up our views, and most horribly in the case of Libeskind, to disfigure existing structures that had beauty and integrity. The cold geometric excrescences that Libeskind has grafted onto classic buildings looks like the bad fake “cyborg” crap glued onto the faces of actors playing “Borg” on Star Trek. But critics and self-appointed arbiters of “high culture” seem to love them some Gehry and some Libeskind.

        You know the phenomenon of “regulatory capture” where the government (yes, this is YOUR moment — you know who you are) organization set up to police an enterprise ends up being controlled by what they are supposed to be regulating? I think we have “critical capture” where the critics are from exactly the same pool of people as the “artists” and it’s a gigantic circle jerk of deviant weirdos. I wonder sometimes if these critics genuinely think this crap is Art, or whether they are eaten up by jealousy, envy, and resentment that THEY cannot create Art, so they elevate crap attempting to destroy the very notion of Art. (In the same vein, how many actually beautiful Body Positivity, i.e. obesity acceptance, activists are there? About zero. Which I am sure is merely a curious coincidence.)

        I know a woman who is a Professor of Art at a local college. Nice woman, bright, personable (not to mention athletic and very pretty). Can talk to you intelligently about art and culture and art history. I learn interesting things whenever we talk. But her own art is … okay. It’s nice, decorative, and technically well done. But it’s not Art. Something is missing. That sounds like a shitty thing to say, and I don’t say it to be mean, but there it is. (And it’s not a “diss” because 99% of us at best produce crafts, and not Art. Which is fine. We need good, honest crafts. There are things about, say, the Roycroft movement, that I like very very much.) Anyway, I don’t know if she is envious of persons who are inspired and blessed to create Art (I mean, how could I ask?), but I do think that many of our modern critics come from a place of envy and desire to destroy … no, not to destroy, to rape, to vandalize and above all to humiliate Art.

        This speech by MAJ Winchester to his patient, a concert pianist who has suffered permanent nerve damage to his right arm, really brings it home. Maybe because Winchester knows he is good, very very good, at something (surgery), that keeps him from falling into the pit of resentment. But our modern culture is largely created and “curated” by persons from a background of resentment and self pity.

        https://youtu.be/ijEiwBLCXeo?si=jAdPqJ7BTlCafvdY&t=63

  7. The problem with that narrative on the Great Pyramid is that it only gives two alternatives. Either it took 6575 years or 10 years; anything else blows the narrative. Turn that 10 years into 100, and the pace goes goes down from one block per minute to one every hour and 40 minutes. Either number is arbitrary if we don’t have detailed dates in some ancient document, so why choose absurd ones? Every year added to the job reduces the time to do every step. Every slave added to the workforce does the same.

    Like Dave (5:53AM) talks about, these aren’t people who knew nothing about anything. Stretching out a long measuring line for angular accuracy is something modern academics won’t think of, but experienced workers back then might well have thought of immediately.

    1. I’d give it 50 years for the reasons stated above. 75 tops. So, working with that, could you give an unlimited amount of slaves working in the off-season when they weren’t managing agriculture? I’m not a flying saucer guy, so I doubt that they had a PaulM skyhook.

      1. Pictures or it didn’t happen.

        Maybe a funny way to couch it but the collective scientific/archeological society/field has absolutely no idea how the ancients built them; logistics, day-to-day site work, square and plumb, etc…there are no pictures, etchings of the infrastructure. Modern take is all supposition. Echoing Dorothy’s comment above, because of inherent hubris (aka “we know best because we have PhD behind our names), the archeological community has subsequently determined the approach/timeline etc., as “this” or “that”, when in fact as SIG says, the assumed timelines are arbitrary at best. It’s like something is right there in front of us to show us the “how”, but we can’t see it (besides the area has dramatically changed since the pyramid time). No matter, I’m not ruling out a skyhook from alien craft…add to that laser guided cutters.

    1. In times past, the Israelis false-flagged sales operations of secure coms to the terrorists (Hezbollah in particular). “The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was also reportedly injured in the apparent strike. It is unclear if the envoy had been using communication devices issued to the Hezbollah terrorist group. “Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was reportedly among those who were injured on Tuesday by the explosions,” The Guardian newspaper reported. This time, they put a small piece of C-4 (or PETN) in a secure secret SEALED pager with a #10 blasting cap to initiate it. Once the network is using them, BOOM, I love it when a plan comes together!

      1. PS, the Israelis have used a similar tradecraft to implant GPS transponders with the ragheads. Then, the Israelis created a need for a secret meeting where they all had to go to one geographic place (swept room) and speak in person because they didn’t trust the tech. And the Jews drop a JDAM on the building and pulp the meat.

        1. The level of paranoia this will engender is delicious. Afraid to use cell phones, afraid to use pagers. Landlines are out. Exploding pigeons can’t be far away.

  8. Excellent point about scientists being fooled. The Amazing Randi (stage magician) and the late Martin Gardner (professional scientist and amateur magician) and others have pointed out phenomena that are “not explained by science” but easily explained by card sharps, con men, and stage magicians. I don’t think anyone ever collected on Randi’s bet that he could duplicate any clairvoyant or telekinetic trick.

  9. Leadville. In Colorado, at incorporation the population size determines whether you have a town or city (2,000+/-). Alma, CO is the highest incorporated town, Leadville the highest incorporated city. About thirty miles apart as a bird flies and about 60 miles apart if you insist on driving on paved roads, there is a bit of animosity between the inhabitants as Alma is higher than Leadville. I’ve enjoyed exploring around Alma and Mt Bross. There are ancient bristlecone pines in the area. Few tourists and friendly townsfolks make for a pleasant experience.

    1. Don’t allow Banner to “mark” the ancient bristlecone pines next time – the whole gamma-ray thing wipes out the 10000000-year-old trees.

      1. I will keep that in mind. There is an old mining road that goes almost to the top of Mt Bross (closed to the public; open to scofflaws). Make sure your turbo diesel truck is pointed down hill if you shut the motor off.

        1. Let’s hear it for the old mining roads and two tracks.

          Leadville was always fun to visit and could be reached with a car via paved roads or with a 4×4 over the passes. Mosquito Pass offered beautiful views and lots of mosquitos; yet no matter what season it was a really great drive.

          Leadville also has the highest paved runway in the US and if you are an aviator visiting the FBO there for gas, coffee or snacks gathers a certificate for landing at the highest runway. If you are not experienced in flying the high country, take a few flights with a qualified instructor before going there. I was teaching high altitude mountain flying to a student on the north western portion of Mosquito Pass when a gust hit us and blew us over the pass in a shorter amount of time than it took to read this paragraph.

          1. Rollins Pass, eastbound in a C-180, 70 mph indicated, idle power, we were climbing 1,500′ per minute. The mountain wave spit us out at just under 18,000′. I never flew into Leadville. Denver to Steamboat, where I learned to fly, we always went over Cameron. My instructors taught us to cross any pass at a 45° angle.

  10. Everyone is afraid of something. The enemy must be…..

    I’m afraid of Hilary. Her latest pronouncement should explain why. Of course she’s afraid of Trump and all the ‘irredeemable’ deplorables. As she should be. Lock her up.

    1. Hillary has juice but it’s been significantly watered down, and not only by her significant alcohol dependence. She lacks gravitas. She’s not Kissinger, who amazingly kept the ball rolling.

      1. A few incurable STD’s from old Billy over the years will slow down even the most evil of Demoncrats.

  11. Ah, the Pyramids. Just exactly where does it say that the builders didn’t start assembling supplies years and decades before the actual construction started? That and site prep as in “We’re gonna build something here, don’t have the exact specs but it’s gonna be roughly this big.” Start doing the canal digging and rock cutting and fixing the base area years and years before the actual first stone is laid and you can cut down on the time immensely.

    And also nowhere does it say they only laid one block at a time. If you have your corner stones in, you can lay the sides rather rapidly only having to fix that one final stone in place per side that takes cutting it perfectly. And the interior stones have been noted as being much roughly shaped than the exterior stones, so that cuts down on time too. You can also lay the interior stones in job lots.

    They didn’t build the Empire State building one stone at a time. Nor the Pentagon. Nor Starbase in Boca Chica. All were built by multiple gangs of workers from a basic plan. Yes, there’s always the first stone or block or slab or pour or beam, but past that, if you build in multiple teams, that cuts down construction time. One guy can build a house all by himself. But it goes quicker with teams. Like an Amish barn-raising or building-moving. Strength in numbers.

    As to ‘it’s too mathematically precise to make just with hand tools, bah and BAH! Just look at all the domes made in Roman times and in the Renaissance that are mathematically perfect because if they weren’t, well, they’d collapse. Same with the huge cathedrals of Europe. Built so well that issues only showed up in many of them after wars and multiple centuries. And it took modern ‘architects’ and scientists decades of serious study to figure out how to properly build a flying buttress or an arched nave in the Gothic cathedral style.

    Look at any pre-industrial revolution building. And thing about how it was built. Really. Without modern tools and vehicles. Yet these places still stand, like the Capital, or the Louvre, or the Taj Mahal, or Angor Wat, or the Great Wall or the temple complexes in Central and South America (that we are really just getting to understand due to LIDAR showing us stuff we’ve never seen before.) Yeah, I can’t build Monticello, can’t design it even with modern tools and computers and such. Doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that some ‘farmer’ didn’t draw up the plans and oversee its construction.

    “It can’t be built because we can’t do it without modern tools” is the laziest and stupidest line ever spouted by stupid people. Like medieval squirrel-cage manpowered cranes. Scientists and engineers have poo-pooed their existence for hundreds of years. Yet they work. There’s even a French castle being built using several of them. “Stones can’t be cut precisely by hand” is another stupid line by lazy people. Obviously they’ve never seen a real stone mason cut straight lines by sight only. Or carve a round cannon ball by hand.

    And recent research suggests that most of the pyramid and temple construction in Egypt was done by farmers during slack-times with slaves employed not as much as people believe. Though the slaves were used year round.

    1. >recent research suggests that most of the pyramid and temple construction in Egypt was done by farmers during slack-times with slaves employed not as much as people believe
      I have heard this nonsensical rumor as well. Hate speech! It was all slaves, all the time. Lazy Egyptians didn’t do squat. Why? Because it is essential for some people to be allowed to write themselves into the very center of other peoples’ history. (But if YOU eat a taco, it’s cultural appropriation.) Did you know that enslaved Swahili speakers built the Great Wall of China? It’s all true. And the Acropolis was built by Chinese who defected from Cheng Ho’s expedition. Which is why the damn thing should be torn down. It was built by transphobes (Cheng Ho bravely transitioned in his early teens). The ancient world is much more complicated than people generally think.

  12. Pyramid… logistics. The organizational effort at multiple locations. Quarries, transport, food, medical, housing, transport of workers to the work sites from their homes, tool making, transport of minerals, smelting, transport finished tools to work sites, beasts if burden, rollers, levers, wedges, shovels, technical staff, scribes, artisans, and on it goes. Then, what was the available population? What percent of them worked on the project support their in.
    *
    Then sustain all of it for the project duration. Floods, earthquakes, wars, plague so on. Heck even just too hot, or rain. It’s easy to say “off season”. Ok fine, go gather up the workers, haul them to quarries, mines, tool factories, work site and get at it. Then not have any riots, strikes what not. It had to be a monumental effort. Then we forget, they build “three” pyramids. So, what, 150 years of effort. Then it all fell apart and back to stone temple building.
    *
    And this was four to six thousand years ago. Heck, good old Cleapotra was standing on her porch looking at 3,000 year old pyramids. We’re closer to her time wise than she was to the pyramids. It’s just plain amazing. Those folks were major motivated.
    *
    I knew the starfire and the tank!

  13. The other ‘question’ on the pyramids is how many people worked on it, where did they live, and how were they fed? No one, to my knowledge, has identified any of those points with anything approaching proof.

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