Watching the World go Past

1. Likely that face shield is just as effective as anything and there’s added benefit of donuts.

   • That’s how I see it.

2. Would it be possible to wear an ear loop mask dangling from one ear, while saying you self identify as Vincent van Gogh?

   • You can self-identify as wearing a mask, even though you’re not, and remain politically correct. Or you can just wander around, muttering to yourself about the joys of being a serial killer and likely they won’t say anything about you needing a mask.

3. Any pictures of Quaker guns?

   • There are some Matthew Brady shots from the Civil War that are pretty good.

4. I had mentioned earlier that during our 10-day stay in Wuhan in 2002, I had seen 30-story apartment buildings all around us for as far as the eye could see, and yet they all seemed empty. Complete, but no residents. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

   You said that the cement they used all had too much sand, and these buildings were unstable. Was this the same concrete they used in the Three Gorges Dam? That was under construction at the time as well.

   Just trying to connect the dots.

   • One thing communists can’t seem to manage is a good formula for concrete or cement. The Soviets created ugly buildings with the tendency for slabs of concrete to peel off. The Chicoms have not been able to make concrete stick together since, well, they started back in the 30’s.

     • Yes, their modern building techniques need development: when we stayed in Hong Kong and later Guangzhou (Canton), all of the scaffolding was made of bamboo, sometimes used on 40 story buildings and taller. Seems unstable to me, but what do I as a western-type know?

       • Fredd, I was somewhere in Central China, I think it was Changsha, and a large building about 20 stories near the police station (6 stories) pancaked down, killing a thousand people or so. The news feeds didn’t pick it up because it really wasn’t news.

       • The bamboo scaffolding is actually very strong, because it’s tied to the building at every point possible rather than serving as a self-supported cage around the building like modern steel scaffolding.

         • Yes, it looks rinky-dink but it works and its cheap. I wouldn’t want to be thirty stories up standing on it, but the Chinese do it all day.

5. I feel sorry for many of the people in Communist China. But feel sorry for Communist China? Nope. My Schadenboner is getting rather magnificent.

   As to 29 Palms, my Marine brother has had nothing nice to say about that special section of Heck. He enlisted to see the world, spent 3 years in and around the Palms.

   • “The Stumps” is a fun place to drive over rocks and then go home.

     • A cousin joined the Navy, “To see the world!”. Was on Adak for his whole hitch.

       • Sometimes, that’s how it works out.

         If you’re clever enough, you go to Adak, sit on the rock, go to school (which is available), get a degree or two, courtesy of Uncle Sam, then take your GI bill and go to school when you’re out and obtain more education and transform it into a career. I started out pulling a trigger and parlayed that into Naval Postgraduate School.

         It’s a glass half full/glass half empty situation.

         • Adak was wonderful if you like the outdoors and were there on an accompanied tour. Family made all the difference. For most of the poor bastards in the barracks, it was another matter. It beat the hell out of Shemya, though. Amchitka, too, back when we were using that island.

6. No comet here; it’s been cloudy at night.

7. Beyond the human tragedy should that dam collapse, any guesses as to the political consequences?

   • The communists will blame the US for sabotaging the dam, the People’s Liberation Army will ruthlessly crush any story to the contrary.

     • And any internal questions and uprising will also be crushed ruthlessly by the PLA.

8. Completely off topic, I am still mulling over your wish to have a poleaxe or warhammer.

   Here’s a dude who says he does take commissions. https://davisreproductions.com/contact/

   • I sent him an e-mail. I have a war hammer, which I’m fond of. The poleaxe is basically just a longer version with more blade/spear tip.

9. Love the comet photo.

   And the face mask is the only plus to Krispy Kream as far as I can see. I can’t stand them because they are so greasy.

   Much prefer the local Shipley Donuts. Though I do like some Dunkin’ Donuts when I can find them.

10. Thank you for the videos.

    One thing I learned was that the critical numbers for the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir are 175 meters for the normal maximum water level; and 185 meters is the top of the dam. Bad things happen when dams get over topped by water.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g3foF-WOKmI

    Another thing I learned is that China is getting pounded by rain. I remember the flooding the terrible Midwest had last Spring and Summer from a lot less rain.

    • China is getting more rain this year than they’ve had in any season since the ’40’s or before. 100 year flood on steroids. The dam is sort of a one-trick pony. A smarter move would have been to build a series of dams up stream of Three Gorges but it would have been more expensive. Sometimes cheap (which Three Gorges wasn’t) becomes expensive.

11. Peter Navarro may not be a Doctor or Infectious Disease Expert, but that just means he is willing to listen to all sides, and notice which experts have been right and wrong, and wishy f’ing washy.

    Doctor Fauci has been right, wrong, and most of all, unwilling to commit to a course of action without perfect knowledge and a dozen scientific six month double blind medical studies in the middle of a freaking novel virus Pandemic. Heaven forbid he champions something like generic Hydroxy Chloriquine (or Ivermectin) when his buddies in the Pharmaceutical Business have new patent medicines to hawk. ($3,000 for a course of Remdesivir. There is gold in those Medicare Bureaucracies!!!)

    Peter Navarro doesn’t have any livestock in this arena, so he isn’t busy covering his Pet Ass and keep his Pet Ox from being gored. Navarro just noticed what seemed to make sense like shutting down travel from virus hotspots, and that maybe trying some old, well known and safe generic drugs was better than just doing nothing but supportive care, ventilators, and hoping the old fogeys survived.

    Too bad President Reagan didn’t have and trust a Peter Navarro back when AIDS was known as Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), and shutting down the Gay Bathhouses might have saved millions of people, gay and straight. But saving their lives like that would have been discriminatory against Gays.

    • I don’t dislike Navarro and think that he’s a smart guy – kind of a Swiss Army Knife. I think that your assessment above is fair.

      What we’ve seen unfold is a crisis where the Big Pharma bandits have been milking USGOV because they can and Big USGOV flailing around because they do, searching for top cover. Navarro inserted himself (not necessarily inappropriately) into the mess.

      As a distant observer (and cynic), I see a goat rodeo going on as the Chinese Plague plays out, and nobody comes out of it clean and honest.

12. Regarding the 3 Gorges; the Chinese already did this to themselves in 1938 on the Yellow. Sure, it maybe killed a million of their own people, but it slowed the Japanese down some, and got some of them too, so win?

    I think that whatever concern exists here on this blog for the Chinese people (I feel bad for them too) is about 100 orders of magnitude greater than that held by the entire CCP combined.

    -Kle.

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