Yet Another Death in the Hundred Acre Wood

Well, blast. The IMDB is reporting, confirmed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, that the voice actor for Tigger has died.

Mr. Paul Winchell was 82.

Last month, the voice of Eeyore, Mr. Thurl Ravenscroft, died at the age of 81.

As Winnie-the-Pooh himself would put it, "Bother!"

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The Morning Report

The delivery of the morning report for the Pennsylvania Railroad, at its headquarters in Philadelphia, was always an Important Thing. Well, I'm not the PRR, this ain't Philadelphia, and what I'm about to say ain't important, but here goes:

-Sheila O'Malley provides advance notice that Bewitched is not a good film.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. Accentuate the positive---Nicole Kidman---and eliminate the negative, i.e. Will Ferrell. It can't be as bad as The Stepford Wives.

Sheila's also got a nice article on Harriet the Spy, another one of those "books from your youth" that probably would stand up to reading as an adult. Careful when you read Ms. O'Malley's description of Rosie O'Donnell; I nearly choked on Corn Pops when I read it.

-Does anyone play Star Wars Galaxies? I've been debating upon whether to take the plunge into that, and had a few questions that I can't seem to get answered.

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Friday's Omnibus Post

So this is Friday, and what have I done? Er, not a whole bloody lot. A couple of things:

-On the basis of known information, I wholeheartedly support the notion of an amendment to the Federal Constitution prohibiting the burning of the American flag. I am not convinced that the right to "free speech" as articulated in the First Amendment encompasses, or should encompass, the desecration of the Star-Spangled Banner.

A while back, I wrote the following at Blogs for Bush:

In response to flag burning, I've tried to make a deal with myself: If I ever see some yokel trying it, I'll do my darnedest to rescue that flag and give it to the local VFW in order to have it properly retired, or at least treated with honor. I'll allow it as a matter of theoretical and abstract Constitutional law, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over a burner being pounded into the ground as a result of the legitimate and justifiable anger of a patriotic citizen. Burning flags is for unreasonable extremists who don't need to be in the national political conversation anyways. It's juvenile behavior, if you ask me.

I still wouldn't lose any sleep if Peter Patchouli got pounded into the ground as a result of his burning an American flag. Actions, after all, have consequences. Some consequences are more immediate and physical than others. However, Mr. Patchouli would probably sue for assault & battery, along with a criminal prosecution for the patriotic citizen. This is unacceptable from my standpoint.

The solution, then, is to impose some cost on Mr. Patchouli, and the concept of establishing flag burning as proscribed conduct seems a valid means to do so.

-If all goes well, I'll get to go and see Bewitched this weekend. If someone's going to follow in the footsteps of Elizabeth Montgomery, then it might as well be Nicole Kidman. Having Samantha around would be worth putting up with Agnes Moorehead or Shirley MacLaine.

Overthrow the Emperor and rule my new empire, indeed.

-The Dark Side Sourcebook for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game is nifty. It would be cool to have an RPG campaign of nothing but Dark Jedi. Heh heh heh. "You killed younglings!" "Yes. Yes we did. And it was fun!"

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Messerschmitts, Bears, and Tornados

In doing the work on the Me 262 post, the following occurred to me:

Given that the 262's engines were so finicky, I daresay that a P-51D or similar aircraft would be better at handling a rapid throttling up. To corrupt a quote from Episode IV, "Nobody worries about destroying a piston engine by rapid throttling up." "That's because piston engines don't overheat, weaken the turbine blades through that heat, throw a blade and promptly garbage the engine when they're throttled up. Jumo 004Bs are known to do that."

I snickered at the irony of a jet fighter being at the mercy of a piston-engined fighter in terms of performance in that particular circumstance. I then remembered another snicker story from the Cold War, one that was embarrassing to the RAF. It had to do with the Panavia Tornado F.3 ADV, the premier RAF interceptor during the 1980s.

One of the ADV's jobs was to intercept and escort various Soviet long-range reconnaisance platforms that would fly down from (ostensibly) the Kola Peninsula for a variety of missions. One of the more frequent types of aircraft that the RAF would see was the Tu-95 'Bear', in varying configurations. The Bear is a bomber with swept wings and turboprop engines, much like one of the design concepts for the B-52 Stratofortress.

As I remembered it, there was some situation where a Tu-95 was capable of escaping a Tornado ADV, and it involved acceleration. A quick bit of Google research confirmed my memories, and here's what was said:

It was stated in this newsgroup sometime back that a favourite way (for a large turbo prop) to get rid of a tailing interceptor is slow down a hundred knots or so, (by changing the prop angle @full engine RPM), forcing the 'ceptor to spool down a bit and/or pop some flaps, then change the prop angle back so as to accelerate away from the jet. Which has to use buckets of fuel spooling its motor back up (or afterburning). Repeat a few times & the jet gets bingo fuel.

and

It has been reported that the ADV needs a partial light on one afterburner to keep up with a Tu-95 Bear, for Chrissake! Apparently, a favourite trick of Bear pilots was/is to fly relatively slowly at fine pitch, let the ADV hold station, the coarsen the pitch and wait 2 minutes for the ADV to catch up.

That's probably a useless tactic in war because the ADV would have already fired on the Bear using medium range AAMs like the Sparrow or Sky Flash. Nevertheless, you've got to laugh at what is a very amusing parlor trick. Heh heh heh.

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Curse You, Glen A. Larson!

It now appears that perhaps I watched too much Battlestar Galactica when I was in my more impressionable years. All blame, of course, is to be heaped upon the local UHF broadcaster that made such a bespoiling event possible. Y'all do remember UHF, don't you?

The Llamabutchers and John of TexasBestGrok have been taking a bunch of religious selectors and posting their results.

Anyways, here's what I've gotten from the two noted tests:

From SelectSmart:

1: Congregational/United Church of Christ (100%)
2: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (100%)
3: Presbyterian/Reformed (96%)
4: Lutheran (90%)
5: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (85%)
6: Eastern Orthodox (85%)
7: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (77%)
8: Church of Christ/Campbellite (74%)
9: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (73%)
10: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (66%)
11: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (66%)
12: Roman Catholic (63%)
13: Seventh-Day Adventist (49%)

I don't know a blessed thing about Congregationalists or the UCC (be it religious or legal, as my grades in contracts, sales, and secured transactions would suggest) but I am a United Methodist, so that's nifty that I scored 100% there. I suppose Theodore Roosevelt's quote about Woodrow Wilson---"[D]amned Presbyterian hypocrite!"---must be applicable. After all, Wilson was a Virginian, born in Staunton. I keep meaning to stop there when I'm traveling Interstate 81, but I never do.

Up next is BeliefNet:
1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (97%)
3. Jehovah's Witness (88%)
4. Eastern Orthodox (84%)
5. Roman Catholic (84%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (74%)
7. Seventh Day Adventist (73%)
8. Orthodox Judaism (73%)
9. Orthodox Quaker (71%)
10. Baha'i Faith (69%)
11. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (63%)
12. Sikhism (61%)
13. Islam (60%)
14. Hinduism (48%)
15. Liberal Quakers (48%)
16. Reform Judaism (44%)
17. New Thought (37%)
18. Mahayana Buddhism (35%)
19. Unitarian Universalism (35%)
20. Jainism (33%)
21. Scientology (33%)
22. Theravada Buddhism (33%)
23. Neo-Pagan (29%)
24. New Age (19%)
25. Nontheist (17%)
26. Secular Humanism (15%)
27. Taoism (10%)

I've never even heard of some of these (Jainism? Is that the worship of English TV actress par excellence Jane Seymour?) and it's nice to know that I'd be like Khan Noonien Singh---Sikhism---before I'd be akin to Osama bin Laden.

Similarly, I take great pride in finding that I'd be a Roman Catholic or an Orthodox before I'd subscribe to limp-wristed liberal Protestantism. I am, however, dumbfounded at the appearance of both the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. I knew a Mormon or so in high school, but the last time I was in close proximity to one of Joseph Smith's disciples, the experience did not go well. To put it delicately, there was no ecumenical accord reached, and it wasn't due to lack of pleasant effort on my part.¹

I do suppose that an entire lifetime within the confines of the UMC has paid off, because I manage to score rather highly with their doctrines on these quizzes. As for the rest of it, I blame Glen A. Larson. Thank God for small miracles; it's a good thing that I waited until the last couple of years to read Battlefield Earth or else I might've wound up in Uncle Elron's Money-Making Machine.²

Yee haw.

----

¹ If I'm not a Mormon, then in the current Galactica reality, I must be one of the Cylons. Well, if that means I get my very own copy of Number Six for fun and profit, I could learn the whole "By...your...command" shtick. Gaius Baltar, you've got nothing on me. Except more hair, an insatiable blond in your mind, Lieutenant Kara Thrace in the sack, and a hot reporter in a bathroom stall. You greasy-looking Eurotrash loser. Blast it, Biggs!

As for the Mormon guys, there may have been a cultural clash there. I was dressed in my usual faded polo shirt, unshaven with a baseball hat---looking something like this---covering an unruly mop of hair, whereas these guys looked like they'd just stepped out of Cape Canaveral, circa 1960. Short hair, white short-sleeve shirts, black ties, black pants, black shoes, and embossed tags detailing their name and rank, or something. They not only knew a lot about my home, they knew who I'd gone to high school with, and spoke in eerie turn. It took conscious mental effort for me not to ask if Agent Smith had finished with Morpheus yet.

² On the other hand, if it meant I could pinch Kelly Preston off from John Travolta, then perhaps a bit of auditing wouldn't be such a bad thing. "If you don't give me your wife, then Xenu will win. Ain't it cool?"

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This is a Test

This post is solely designed to test internal operational considerations. Disregard this one.

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TBG Aircraft Cheesecake - The Messerschmitt 262

JohnL over at TexasBestGrok has his latest installment of Aircraft Cheesecake. This week's installment concerns the strangely attractive Messerschmitt 262.

The Me 262 was the world's first combat-deployed jet fighter, developed during World War II as a strike fighter at the orders of Adolf Hitler. Luckily for the Eighth Air Force's daylight formations of bombers, the Me 262 wasn't developed immediately for interception operations, and thus took longer to get into service for that purpose.

Indeed, it was lucky for us that the entire German air war was on its knees by the time of the Me 262's introduction. Between a chronic lack of spare parts, fuel, trained pilots, and support infrastructure, the Me 262 could not be used to its full capability. The thing needed cover on its takeoff and landing cycles because it wasn't that maneuverable and took a while to perform either cycle. USAAF/RAF fighters got good at bouncing the 262 on its landing cycles, where it was largely defenseless.

I doubt that the course of the war in Europe would have been changed had the 262 been available earlier as an interceptor, but it certainly could have made our final victory much more expensive. A contrary view exists; apparently, the Eighth Air Force (and other heavy bombardment units) in the ETO were on the verge of cancelling operations at various points due to losses inflicted by the Luftwaffe's anti-aircraft artillery and fighters; with the 262 running around, the threshold for cancellation of the daylight effort might've been met, with unknown results for the war in Europe.

UPDATE, 23 JUNE 2005: The Superintendent of The Cold Spring Shops has a pleasant mention of this article, as does John over in the original TBG entry.

I'd like to revise and extend my remarks on the 262's shortcomings.

The primary problem with the Me 262 weapons system was its powerplant. This is not uncommon; the General Dynamics/Grumman F-111B died in part due to problems with the powerplant, and the Grumman F-14A Tomcat's TF30 powerplant was a piece of junk.

The 262 used the Junkers Jumo 004B turbojet engine as its powerplant; this was both good and bad. Good in that it was the first mass-produced jet engine, and bad for the same reasons. It personified Dr. Eldon Tyrell's (of Blade Runner fame) notion that "[t]he light that burns twice as bright burns half as long".

The 004B was a persnickety engine; software engineers might've called it a beta. For starters, it only had an operational life of 10-25 hours before the thing was ready for scrap or serious maintenance. I'm not sure what modern jet engines get, but you might burn up a pair of these things a week. That's not good.

Another problem with the 004B stemmed from the state of German metallurgy at the time; they couldn't mass-produce the kinds of metals necessary to make it a tough engine, and so they had to substitute lesser-quality materials for the manufacture of the turbine blades.

So it's got engines made by the lowest bidder. So what? So, you have to handle them accordingly.

Mishandling of the 004B---defined by rapid increases of the throttle---meant that the cheap turbine blades could break and be ingested by the rest of the engine. If you've seen The Phantom Menace, you know what happens when a pit droid (or a wrench tossed by Sebulba) goes into a pod racer's engine. This holds true on Earth as well; your engine becomes an expensive paperweight and you've got a potential fire on your hands. Additionally, the 004B did not spool up---provide additional power---easily. There was a fair amount of lag time between the pilot's advance of the throttle and the engine's response.

Keep these two facts in mind: It doesn't like to accelerate quickly and it takes its sweet time when you try.

What's this got to do with the takeoff and landing cycles, you say? Everything. Takeoff and landing will both require additional time, something the combat pilot doesn't always have.

The 262 required a decent takeoff roll and you had to be nice to the thing during the entire period, climbing away from the runway in a smooth manner while throttling back if possible, to keep the engines happy. Not necessarily fatal under ideal circumstances, but with the USAAF & RAF running around, you might not get to do this.

Worse yet was the landing sequence: The 262 pilot would get into position for landing, and essentially be stuck low, slow, and unable to accelerate off his approach if Mustangs or Thunderbolts showed up. You see the essential dilemma for the 262 pilot: He can't really run away from the battle in a hurry , and has to focus on getting to ground. That's not a very healthy strategy for survival, and it apparently accounted for a fair piece of the Me 262 losses.

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Interview with John Milius

In the course of hunting through some articles on the death of Lane Smith, I came across this 2003 interview with John Milius.

I recommend reading it, even though it's a little strange and certainly long for IGN's style. I recommend taking a fair dose of 'tongue-in-cheek' with you when/if you read it, or else you'll close the browser tab and swear off of Milius forever.

A brief recap of Mr. Milius' work that's caught my attention:

The Wind and the Lion
Apocalypse Now
1941
Red Dawn
Flight of the Intruder

Mr. Milius' current project has as its subject the Son Tay raid of 1970. Put briefly, the United States decided to go and rescue some of our POWs from those bestial savages, the North Vietnamese. If Milius can get this made, then it'll be an excellent film, because the story is compelling. Jen Martinez has an anniversary post on the raid; check that out for further details. An additional site that liked was here.

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RIP Lane Smith

Blast it.

One of my more favorite Hollywood character actors, Lane Smith, is dead. People in my demographic generally remember him as Perry White on the ABC program Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. As for my own part, Mr. Smith won permanent recognition as President Richard M. Nixon in the television version of The Final Days. I think it was the scene where Leonid Brezhnev was barrelling around in a Lincoln at Camp David that sealed the deal.¹ Sublime humor, if you will.

Additional roles by Mr. Smith that scored points with the judge from the Western District of Virginia:
-"Nathan Bates" in V: The Series

-"Mayor Bates" of Calumet in Red Dawn

Red Dawn is a fundamentally disturbing movie overall, but Mr. Smith's character manages to be more memorable than not. It isn't every day that you get to see an actor have to react to the simulated slaughter of the residents of his town, and he does a pretty unforgettable job in one of the most wrenching sequences from Mr. Milius' picture. At the same time, Mr. Smith manages to provide some comic relief as he stammers around about the nature of the Boy Scouts in order to protect his son from arrest.

Mr. Smith's gravelly voice and expressive face often served him well, in my opinion. He will be missed. He was sixty-nine years old.

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¹ Mea culpa, Mr. President; I understand from the IMDB that you didn't like this movie.

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Irritating NRO News

Curse you, K-Lo!

The Corner has moved to a much-easier-to-remember home. It's now at http://corner.nationalreview.com. You'll want to update your bookmarks.

I thought you guys were the home of conservatism on the web! I have been betrayed!

Bookmarks? Piffle. Bookmarks are so passé. I've got www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp hardwired into muscular memory. It's automatically typed by now, after years of doing it, and now they go and change things? Calumny!

Obligatory modified quote from The Empire Strikes Back:
"You're trying to build market share and now you go and pull this!"

Bah, I don't approve. I'd bet Edmund Burke, were he alive, would not either. Can we at least get some sort of redirect so that I don't have to go and learn anything else? Call it conservation of er, neurons. What would Russell Kirk say?

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14 June 2005 - TBG Sci-Fi Babe Voter Guide

You've got to love TexasBestGrok. Here I was sitting next to an empty bowl of stroganoff, watching Greg the Bunny on DVD, with a fan puttering overhead whilst trying to beat that famous Virginia heat. I'd just dropped to 1-3 on the election recommendations, and life looked miserable.

That is, until I checked TexasBestGrok. Y'see, JohnL had been posting his infamous sci-fi babe quizzes throughout the earlier part of the year, and despite his patent refusal to support women in uniform---neener, neener, Wilma still won---I enjoyed taking part in 'em. But, as is the way of such things, the polls went on hiatus for perfectly understandable reasons.

It's back. And so is the ever-so-annoying voter guide, wherein your correspondent makes half-baked observations on the candidates, in a feeble attempt to sway the voting. Here goes, on The Women of The Incredibles

A. I recommend a vote for Mirage.
If this were Starship Troopers, the instructor would demand that I prove this in symbolic logic over the course of 150 pages due next morning. Luckily for me, since I don't know what symbolic logic is, this isn't a Robert A. Heinlein novel. This recommendation, much like many of my other ones, is based solely upon what I've been able to gather off a quick search of the World Wide Web.¹

Positive factors:
-She's ambitious. This can be used to one's benefit.
-She's blond. Your correspondent is easily distracted by blonds. Go figure.
-She's got green eyes. Er, right.
-She's evil. Someone's got to er, show her the error of her ways, and steer her back to the Light Side. Ahem.
-She's repetitively described as "Syndrome's girl Friday". Inasmuch as this sort of description is probably guaranteed to drive perenially indignant feminists stark raving mad (as if they weren't already) I wholeheartedly approve. The only problem is that her name's Mirage, not Friday. Never actually figured that out.

Negative factors:
-None known.

B. I do not recommend a vote for Elastigirl.
What little bit of this picture that I caught at K-Mart one day involved Elastigirl's flight to the Evil Island of Doom, and her desperate attempts to talk a SAM emplacement into not firing upon her. Now, far be it from me to correct anyone on proper radio procedure for civil aviation, but her dialogue didn't impress. Moreover, she sounds suspiciously like Holly Hunter. Now, I don't begrudge (most) actors & actresses their political views, so it's not about what Holly Hunter thinks. It's about what her voice sounds like, and I'm still trying to figure out how that whole "I've said my piece and I've counted to three" bit was supposed to be conclusive in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Giving the thumbs down to Holly Hunter's alter ego is somewhat painful because she did star in Always, which had the Douglas A-26 Invader and the Consolidated PBY Catalina in starring roles. Nevertheless, I've said my piece, and I've counted to three.

Sayeth Mirage, "I'm attracted to power."

Aren't we all honey, aren't we all. Thumbs up to the platinum blond with the French name and the luscious green eyes. Who says we can't reach across the Atlantic for some friendship? See here and here for a few more illustrations of this week's recommended candidate.

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¹ I've never actually seen this picture. The one time I had a chance to do so was either "Watch Underworld or The Incredibles". An accurate reproduction of my thought process: "Copious gunplay, Kate Beckinsale, black leather, and vampires or a Pixar movie. Pause. Goth is good."

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Virginia Primary Results

Ouch. I haven't gone 1 for 4 in living memory.

Of course, Jerry Kilgore wins in a rout of Warrenton Mayor George Fitch. After that, basically flip-flop my picks/recommendations, and you'll have the results. Once again, ye olde ability to pick winners gets called into question, and the math goes badly. Turnout was miserable for all Commonwealth-wide races; none of them cleared 4.0%. I suppose that this once again proves the maxim that only the die-hards vote in the primaries.

Two things surprised me:
1. Bill Bolling's crushing of Sean Connaughton. Everywhere I'd been prior to this had virtually been "Connaughton Country", with there always being someone chanting the mantra, "Sean wants to run with Jerry". My response to that always was, "Gee, you think?" but that doesn't mean that everyone else came to the same conclusion. As far as I could tell, Connaughton had lashed himself to the mainmast of the good ship Kilgore and wasn't about to let go.

Obviously it didn't work. I suppose it means that, amongst Republican voters, the anti-tax sentiment still holds considerable sway. This is unfortunate, but you go to the races with the electorate you have, not the electorate that you want.

2. Leslie Byrne's victory(?). My home base is nowhere near Leslie Byrne's, and she barely registered in my perception. Sort of a "I know she exists but beyond that..." kind of thing, if you will. I had expected Viola Baskerville to do what Donald McEachin did in 2001, crushing all comers with a heavily favorable turnout in the City of Richmond. Did this happen? Doesn't look like it, and even if it did, the percentages would only suggest about 4,000 votes up for grabs on Viola's expected base of support, so that does nothing to the 12,000 vote gap.

A quick bit of telephoning around doesn't give me any real sense of who she is, so perhaps this woman from the far away reaches of the Commonwealth will be handily defeated by Bill Bolling. The one thing that I did pick up was that she's apparently tight with pro-Dean sentiment, so perhaps that explains why she has suppport. Bah, I was hoping to keep Howard Dean at arm's length from my beloved Commonwealth.

----

UPDATE, 2252 hrs: It appears that 17% of voters in the Republican primary need to be taken out and shot. I jest, of course, but I'd sure like to figure out what motivated them to the Fitch banner. One of my correspondents suggests that it's all about taxes, but I'm not entirely sure how that explains bucking the party's choice. On the other hand, with victory for the other candidate virtually assured, there's no time like the present to register a protest vote. Bah, protest votes.

As of right now, Baskerville's pulled to within 9,000 of Byrne, with only a quarter of the Richmond City precincts reporting. Baskerville is winning 68-16 over Byrne, so it may be that the McEachin model wins again, defying my application of the Commonwealth-wide turnout number in what should be Baskerville's home turf. Curiouser and curiouser, says Alice.

The numbers don't get any better for my man Baril or for Connaughton, either. Bother.

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In re Michael Jackson

This is the first, last, and only thing I'll have to say about it.

Allow me to quote Michelle Branch's "Are You Happy Now?" by saying the following: "I don't care".

The case does, however, allow me to illustrate a point: A criminal defendant may be as guilty as can be. Whether he is convicted or not does not turn upon that question. Rather, it turns upon the relative skill of the prosecution and defense teams. A poorly-defended man may be convicted of a crime he never committed. A well-defended man may not be convicted of crimes he committed. Orenthal James Simpson, I'm looking at you.

I have no articulable opinion on the case other than to state that by this point in time, parents should be on notice that funny things keep getting alleged in regards to Mr. Jackson, and that any parent who willingly allows their child to spend time at the Neverland Ranch should be on constructive notice of same, and thus be barred from civil recovery. Criminal liability for neglect of the child should be considered as a charge against those same parents.

Bah, enough of this.

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Navy v. Pirates, 06 June 2005

No, I don't mean the US Naval Academy Middies versus the Pirates of Seton Hall or East Carolina, either. Nor was Jack Sparrow involved. Paging Miss Swann. No, I mean the real things.

That's right, the United States Navy engaged pirates on the high seas in 2005. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG 66) was on patrol in the Indian Ocean when it received a distress call from a commercial freighter.

That's pretty nifty, even though our people did not actually kill any pirates. Alas, I was hoping they'd make someone walk the plank. At any rate, I suggest reading the referring article from No Such Blog for further details and a link to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot's coverage of the event. If you go to the Gonzalez website, you'll find an MS-Word document file announcing the thing. What it says, I don't know; I'm a WordPerfect man.

Dip of the Jolly Roger flag to No Such Blog.

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Weekend Sci-Fi

If you're like me and care to delve into the production details of some of your favorite entertainment franchises, you've probably run across various names that may or may not stick out. This weekend's installment of random sci-fi goes to a man who's worked on several of my more favorite memories from the late 1970s forward: Andrew Probert

His first contribution of note to my eyes was the final design for the Cylon centurions in Battlestar Galactica. He's also responsible for the second-best looking vessel ever designed for Star Trek, the overhauled Enterprise first seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.¹

Probert also contributed to the design of the modified Bell 222B helicopter seen as the star component of the CBS television series Airwolf. This of course recommends him as well; suffice to say that a lot of his work meandered across my personal viewing habits from 1979 forward. Hats off to Mr. Probert!

I'll start saving for the book he's promising to release some time in 2006; should be good.

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¹ The most beautiful class ever established for Star Trek was first seen in 1984, namely the Excelsior. It's kind of like Elle McPherson: Long-legged (er, nacelled, but whatever), exotic, and big enough to be a drop-dead knockout whether on the silver screen or the cover of Sports Illustrated. Yee haw.

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Well, Duh

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed read by only a few.

----

Gah, I need a good source of quizzes. Ever since Quizilla turned into "angsty pre-teen cartoon fiction" and a watering hole for the worst illiteracy seen since the Democratic Underground, quiz life has been hard.

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Virginia's Republican Primary Endorsements

It's a little late in the game to be issuing endorsements, but so what?

GOVERNOR: Jerry W. Kilgore
Worth it if for no other reason than to irritate the central/eastern Virginians. The western end of Virginia could use someone in Richmond who saw it as something other than a safe target for jokes. Who knows, perhaps Jerry'll make sure that the maps used by the General Assembly extend west of Charlottesville.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Phillip Puckett Sean Connaughton
Not that I have any love for Mr. Connaughton, but sources close to people who hear things from the Kilgore end of things suggest that the electoral math favors a Kilgore/Connaughton ticket. Simply put, the Northern Virginians (not to be confused with the hallowed Army of Northern Virginia) are more likely to vote for a ticket that contains one of their own. If the GOP can make life difficult for Tim Kaine up North, then the Kilgore victory party could be underway by 2100 hours that night.

I have nothing against Bill Bolling, who's reportedly a good guy. All things being equal, I'd rather have Phil Puckett in the general election. West of Charlottesville represent, yo.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Steve Baril
Mr. Baril, a Richmond attorney, didn't cost me much, if anything, to educate, since he attended private schools---the Hampden-Sydney College and the University of Richmond to be exact---for undergraduate and graduate work. His stated goal of wanting to be the people's lawyer conflicts directly with the actual role of the Office of Attorney General, but it sounds nice on the campaign spots.¹

We'll have to throw a bone to the Richmonders anyways, and Mr. Baril seems like the type who could fill that role nicely. I have nothing against Bob McDonnell, and I hope he will continue to provide his services from the House of Delegates for several more terms. I'd just rather not hear of aggrieved Richmonders sulking down at the 'rivah' because their city got shut out in candidates.

There you have it, my slate of recommendations. I expect to bat about 0.6667 in this particular outing, but nobody's paying me to make the calls. As always, comments, rants, tirades, the questioning of my parentage, and the like are welcome in the comments section.

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¹ The Office of Attorney General is actually the law firm for the Commonwealth of Virginia and represents the Commonwealth on a variety of issues. It doesn't actually do any work directly for "the people". You can't just dial up the Pocahontas Center and get an attorney. They'd more than likely refer to you someone who could, though. They're pretty efficient in that regard.

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The Future Is Flux

First things first: Viacom's MTV has never managed to rise above anything other than a channel that was after CBS and in front of the USA Network on my cable system, a station where this particular train did not and would not stop. This has always been the case, since its inception in the early 1980s.¹ But hey, this is Virginia, and we always have an exception. ("My Lord Your Honor, the rule in Queen Elizabeth's Case is more accurately applied here, rather than the more modern rule adopted in 1700...")

For a brief moment, in the mid-to-late 1990s, MTV managed to catch my attention for a short while. What monumentous occasion produced this? Three things, House of Style, Beavis and Butt-head, and Aeon Flux. The first was, of course, for Cindy Crawford, first introduced to me by way of Denis Leary. The second was simple appeal to the more base, coarse, and downright malevolent humor lurking beneath the surface of all young men. The disruptive effect of screaming, "I am the great Cornholio" in what's supposed to be a serious setting cannot be overstated.

That leaves us with, as it was once put, Frau Flux.² I vaguely remember Liquid Television, on which a variety of Aeon Flux shorts by Peter Chung aired. Thinking back on it, I was probably drawn into the fact that they were animated, involved copious amounts of gunplay and random violence, plus (usually) a skyrocketing body count. It didn't hurt that Frau Flux wasn't so bad looking, but more on that later.

The program was later extended into its own series, with a more or less coherent plot, detailing the adventures of Aeon Flux, a combination assassin/spy. Getting any deeper into would require a lot more space, which I don't intend to do. Keeping track of the plot on any other level than Aeon versus Trevor Goodchild (head of the more-or-less enemy state and Aeon's occasional, er, companion) would require a degree in the inner working of Stanley Kubrick's mind. Like I said, difficult to follow from episode to episode. Strange and off-the-wall themes pervaded every episode, along with some fetishistic behavior that I didn't much care for at the time. Tongues in the ear are not my forte, you see.

Anyways. The program suffered the fate of every program that I like, and was not renewed. A few years intervened, and then I managed to get the more-or-less complete series on VHS from something called 'Amazon.com'.³ I coughed up for a copy of the MTV-produced book tie-in, and then eventually law school intervened, disconnecting me from the world of Aeon Flux forever. Or so I thought.

Fast forward to 2005. I've heard vague rumors of an Aeon Flux movie in production, but I shrug them off. Comes now a copy of that dreadful rag Entertainment Weekly in a trial subscription someone signed me up for.⁴ I'm idly flipping through the thing when something approximately like this shows up. Lo, it was Charlize Theron as Aeon Flux herself.

Charlize Theron is an actress of which I've maintained a slight interest since seeing her in Mighty Joe Young and Men of Honor.⁵ On the other hand, I would never have considered her for the part of Aeon Flux. In fact, about the only actress I'd consider for it is Lara Flynn Boyle.

However, you go into production with the actress that you have, not the actress that you want, to paraphrase Donald H. Rumsfeld. That leaves us with Miss Theron and a movie in post-production. Therefore, I suggest that if you've got an interest in the property, point your browser over to aeonflux.com, where there are a few things to do courtesy of Flash. Me, I got the wallpaper. For better or for worse, I'll probably be ambling into the theaters on this one, if only to perhaps relive part of the pre-war era, where I didn't have a care in the world other than the next race or the next paper that was due. Heck, the movie couldn't possibly be any worse than Stealth.⁶

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Swanky Conservative.

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¹ Cyndi Lauper & Captain Lou Albano fail when measured against the General Lee, Airwolf, and the Knight Industries Two Thousand, you see. In the more modern era, vintage Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, and Lisa Gerrard might manage to win out. However, much like the number of Frenchmen required to defend Paris, who knows? It's never been tried. Ha ha.

² Yes, I own a copy of The Herodotus File. I hope nobody ever finds it; that's arguably one of the things I'd rather not have to explain. Nobody would believe that it wasn't some sort of pseudo-fetish mag. Meanwhile, a continuing injustice in the world is that Jessica Simpson's reality series is on DVD, and nobody's compiled all the Aeon Flux episodes for DVD. Perhaps MTV will pull its collective cranium out of its ventral cavity and do that to coincide with the theatrical release. That is, if they can do something other than drag down the culture, for once.

³ Either Das Boot on VHS or the Aeon Flux set were among the first purchases I ever made from Mr. Bezos' little kiosk. Go figure.

⁴ In the words of Wolverine from an ad for Damage Control, "Somebody dies!"

⁵ Hey, she's blond haired, blue eyed, and is a product of the ruins of the British Empire. What's not to like? She also did well in a turn as Britt Ekland in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, one of the most depressing movies that I think I've ever watched. Geoffrey Rush, however, managed to cement his place as one of my more favorite actors with this production. "Walsinghaaaaam!"

⁶ Since this picture is almost certain to have a political angle, I expect several juvenile and poorly-veiled jabs at either George W. Bush and/or the Republican Party in general, courtesy of those political sophisticates at MTV. I never thought I'd long for the days of that annoying Tabitha Soren or that creepy-looking Kurt Loder. At the same time, it would mean the return of Serena Altschul, who wasn't all that bad looking.

In other news, I want the ninety seconds or so of my life back that the trailer for Stealth attached to Revenge of the Sith has stolen.

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Mr. Morse's Code in the Age of Flash

Here's something that's certainly interesting: A Flash-based Morse code generator/converter, courtesy of glassgiant.com.

This little gadget is really nifty. I er, sheepishly admit to sending "CQD MGY" once I got the site loaded. Then again, I spent something like thirty minutes fiddling around with the Morse code telegraph keys at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., just listening to the things. And yes, I tried to send "CQD MGY" there, too. Until then, I hadn't the foggiest that telegraphy had a sound to it, other than which I picked up from watching old war movies and the like.

Instead, I found out that the system in place aboard Titanic was something called 'the spark drag' or 'drag spark'. The SI's exhibit had three keys, including one specifically designated as the type in use circa 1912. Naturally, I played with that one the most. It didn't sound like that radio-style chirp from the 1920s or the clattering I generally associate with railroad telegraphy; rather, it sounded like someone opening and closing an electrical circuit or a short/long sparking motion.

It was, in short, both creepy and cool.

Tip of the Executor hat to Ghost of a Flea.

UPDATE: Found this discussing the Marconi wireless system deployed aboard Titanic. Interesting, even though I don't understand much of it. Reading the article suggests that the spark drag/drag spark system wasn't what Titanic had, but I could be wrong.

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New P.J. O'Rourke

Found a new P.J. O'Rourke piece at the Weekly Standard. Apparently, P.J. went on vacation to Guadeloupe, an island in the Caribbean. While there, he surveys the EU draft constitution (all 485 pages of it) and finds journalistic advantage in not speaking the native language.

Unfortunately, he's slowed down from the halycon days of Holidays in Hell, so there's no sort of Communist regime to make fun of, or anti-government protests in South Korea to partake of. Worse is the fact that there aren't any drugs, whiskey, or the like involved, either. Tee hee.

Nevertheless, P.J.'s travelogues are always interesting, so go check it out.

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