Fish Fear Me

Obviously Henry Gates Didn't Watch This

Yes, it's actually a serious topic, but I don't think it hurts to once in a while take a not so serious look at such things(Profanity Warning-NSFW):

I think my favorite was the last one.
(via James Joyner, who actually does have some serious thoughts on the topic)

Must. Resist. Posting. About...

...Birther. Issue.

Oh hell, I'm weak.

Look, Birthers, Barack Obama is the President of the United States. The State of Hawaii says he is a natural born citizen and that's all there is to it. The Certification of Live Birth that the State of Hawaii has issued is all of the proof that a reasonable person needs. It certainly satisfies any legal requirements for citizenship and any challenge to that, or the original Certificate of Live Birth, would involve dealing with events that are 48 years past and where most of those involved are now deceased. Good luck with that. Even if, a ginormous if, some sort of technical grounds could be found, I am inclined to support Obama anyway on this issue. There is no doubt that his mother was a native born citizen, is there? Her child was most certainly entitled to that same citizenship as far as I'm concerned.

But. You knew there had to be a but, right?

Why all of the bullshit surrounding the difference between Obama's Certificate of Live Birth(which probably looks something like this one from 1971), and the Certification of Live Birth that the Obama troop are waving around? As much as Obama's defenders on this issue, out of either ignorance or dishonesty, want to conflate the two, they are not the same. The original has more information and it is kind of amazing to me that President Obama refuses to release a copy. I would if I was in his shoes because I know there is nothing but boring info there.

Seriously, why won't Obama release that original certificate? It would eliminate any doubt from all but the batshit crazies, so why not? I don't think it would call into question his citizenship qualifications to be president, and refusing to does make it look like he is hiding something. It is, as I like to say, curiouser and curiouser.

Fine

So Brett Favre has decided not to come out of retirement to play for the Vikings. This being Brett Favre, I suppose I should add a "for now". That's fine with me. When the speculation started earlier this year I was at first intrigued by the possibility. As time went by and Favre continued to dither though, I pretty much soured on the idea.

I think he could have been valuable if he would have been willing to take a transition and mentoring role for the Vikings, tutoring their younger quarterbacks and ceding playing time to them if the Vikes took a decent lead in any particular game. That might have given him a chance to avoid getting beat up and given him a better chance to last the season. It sounds like Favre was unwilling to take on such a role:

Although his arm appeared to be fine, Favre told ESPN he experienced soreness in both ankles and his left knee during his private workouts. That caused him to doubt whether he could make it through the rigors of a 16-game season. Missing games didn't seem to be an option for Favre, who will turn 40 on Oct. 10. He has started 269 consecutive games, putting him 13 behind former Viking Jim Marshall for the longest streak (by a non-punter) in NFL history.

Well, that's fine. It's his decision. I'm not thrilled about the Viking's QB options, but that's what we have and we'll just have to see how it works out. I would be thrilled right now if Favre had made his decision early, had his arm surgery, and attended the mini-camps, even if he couldn't physically perform. As those timelines passed though, I increasingly felt it would be a bad move to bring Favre in. At this point, it feels like the right outcome for the team.

My guess is that Favre will continue to work out though, and be ready to come sailing in as the hero when some team loses their starter. In fact, I'll bet a six-pack on it. Something tells me we haven't heard the last of him.

Something else that is also fine; The Vikes reportedly are not considering Michael Vick. I agree with Rob's take on his reinstatement in the NFL. He has paid his price to society, but I don't think Vick has earned his way back to the NFL yet.

Andrew Sullivan, Lord of the Birthers

Mary Katherine Ham almost gave me a small stroke this morning when I saw that she had put up a post titled "Andrew Sullivan is Right". Sullivan lost me long ago, but his crude obsession with Trig Palin and the circumstance of his birth really put him in a whole new place when it comes to discredited pundits. Hence the shock at Ham's post title.

Oh.

Hahahahaha.

Good Morning to Me

Huh. No water. Looking out my front window, I see they are digging a giant hole in the street in front of my driveway. Thanks for the notice guys. There's still a strip of pavement between the driveway and the hole, so I think I can get out if I turn my truck around on the front lawn. I'm not sure though. Oh well, the important thing is I beat the water turnoff and have coffee. I'll wander out and see what's up after a couple of cups.

Forty Years Ago Today X-Splashdown

Apollo 11 splashed into the Pacific Ocean at 11:51 A.M. CDT on July 24, 1969, ending what I consider the greatest journey in history. The mission had lasted 195 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds and it had fulfilled John F. Kennedy's goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

I remember being a little worried that the capsule had ended up upside down in the water, but a few minutes later it was right side up and the divers and rafts then made it to the scene. What followed was a carefully rehearsed recovery process of isolation and decontamination:

The possibility of the astronauts bringing a dangerous Moon germ back to Earth was considered remote, but not impossible. At this point in the recovery, the UDT decontamination specialist, LT Clancy Hatleberg, jumped into the water from helicopter #66 and swam to one of the rafts. He donned a special Biological Isolation Garment (BIG suit) and then handed 3 other BIG suits into the spacecraft so the Apollo 11 crew could put them on. These suits created an effective biological barrier for the astronauts who had come in contact with lunar dust so any germs wouldn't spread to the recovery team.

More details at that link. I don't think anyone but the usual crackpot crowd seriously thought that Apollo 11 would bring back any kind of organism, but even the slightest possibility could not be ignored. The astronauts would spend three weeks in quarantine until being declared 100% fit to take part in the huge number of parades and celebrations that awaited them. They seemed endless to me at the time and I never got tired of seeing them on the news.

I have more to say about Apollo 11, but I'll end this "forty years ago today" stuff with a picture of three astronauts. Not the three Apollo 11 astronauts, not that they aren't deserving, but of the three men who seemed mostly forgotten this past week or so, and who gave their lives while training for the first Apollo mission; Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

The accident that killed them led to major redesign of the command module and a tightening of standards in production. It was a terrible blow to NASA and the nation at the time, but the lessons learned resulted in the successful Apollo 11 mission two and a half years later. RIP, men.

Whoohoo!

Via Instapundit:

Allingham, who was the world's oldest man when he died Saturday at 113, attributed his remarkable longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women."

Well, two out of three ain't bad, is it?

One Thing

If I had a child and could teach him or her only one thing, it might be this(all emphasis mine):

One of the characteristics of a valid decision process is a capability to deal with anti-knowledge — the things we don’t know. Anti-knowledge manifests itself as ignorance, as expressed in mistakes and in the existence of questions that are without answers.  One way a decision maker tests for the fidelity of his information systems is to check for the existence of anti-knowledge. If there was nothing you didn’t know there was something you didn’t know. Queries are data too, even if they returned no records because anti-knowledge is a certain kind of information.  There was implicit knowledge even in the questions, although there were no answers. But they would be apparent only to those with the temerity to say, “I don’t know” and valuable only to those who believed that “reality always won”, even at the cost of their embarassment[sic].  In all fantasy-based systems, the precise opposite is true: all questions can be answered if you spin fast enough because the narrative is known from the beginning. The facts are the stepping stones to the wish.

I think many positive things follow from that type of...perspective? Attitude? Much good can flow from the humble understanding that maybe you don't know what you don't know. 

Forty Years Ago Today IX-One Small Step

I remember that after the successful landing on the moon, all of the tension in me evaporated and nothing was left but pure exhilaration. I could barely contain myself as we all waited to head over to my grandparent's house and watch a man step onto the moon for the first time. Finally, sometime after dinner, my parents loaded all five of us(mom was about 3 months along with the littlest sister, Patty) into the car and we headed over to watch history.

My grandparent's had a big color TV, something that we, and if I remember correctly, most homes, didn't have at the time. Not that it turned out to matter. We gathered together in that living room, the adults sitting on the furniture, the kids sprawled all over the carpet. I remember being alarmed at first because the first images looked like crap. In fact, I think I was about ready to burst into tears. But somebody at NASA fiddled and faddled with the contrast and we could soon make out Neil Armstrong on the ladder.

We all cheered. The time was 9:56 P.M. CDT. I remember Buzz Aldrin joining Armstrong and watching them walk around and plant the US flag, but I don't remember how long we stayed. Most likely, all of us kids one by one fell asleep and I bet dad ended up carrying a couple of us to the station wagon to go home way past our bedtimes.

It was a tremendous moment that I will never forget. They would spend a total of 22 hours on the moon, roughly 2 1/2 of those walking on the surface. They were still a long way from home and there would be risky moments after that, but I don't remember worrying about them. If they had made it that far, I figured everything else was going to work out too. And it did.

Forty Years Ago Today VIII-The Eagle Has Landed

Apollo 11 entered lunar orbit on the afternoon of the 19th and the crew readied for the big day. On the morning of the 20th, they began to fire up the fantastically bug-like lunar module to land two of them on the moon:

At 9:27 a.m. (eastern time), Buzz Aldrin crawls into the Lunar Module and starts to power-up the spacecraft. About an hour later, Neil Armstrong enters the LM and together they continue to check the systems and deploy the landing legs.

I don't actually remember much of what went on during that day. I know that I had the same fears as everyone else at the time. Would they crash? Would they sink into the surface of the moon and be swallowed by it? Would the lunar module really work and get them back to the command module or would they end up stuck on the moon? I knew all of those smart men with their white shirts and pocket protectors were on the case, but could they actually pull off this amazing feat?

At 1:46 P.M. EDT, the LEM separated from the command module and began its descent to the moon. A little later that afternoon, at 4:18 P.M. EDT, millions around the world and I heard those immortal words..."Houston, Tranquility Base here...the Eagle has landed." There would be more immortal words to come.