Baffled European

Category: Vanity project

  • Out of this world

    Dr Collier recently made a video on her Youtube channel in which she read through James Dyson’s paper proposing the “Dyson sphere”. Rather than a serious proposition, she demonstrated it was a joke, a satire of the SETI project.

    The SETI logic ran so: if there are alien civilisations like us, they will be using radio transmissions. We should monitor radio in the sky to see if we find somebody.

    Dyson’s version was slightly different: if the aliens were space nazis, they would be megalomaniacal techno-fetishists who would develop something really ridiculous like this sphere collecting all the energy from the sun. We should look for an infra-red shift on stars to see if there are space nazis.

    He was doubtless thinking of the many and varied attempts the nazis made to create magical weapons that would win the war. Rockets, jets, death rays, there were so many of them.

    The US Navy has just announced a new class of battleships. It’s going to be fitted with rail guns and lasers. Military watchers are unanimous in their opinion. Such ships are inappropriate and useless. It’s not merely the operational, design and conceptual flaws in these ships: the USA simply does not have the capacity to build a fleet of such ships. It’s all wishful thinking, vanity projects and a complete disregard for reality.

    Well that’s 2025. See what they get up to next year.

  • I always fill my ballroom

    The success of stopping ICE from hassling agricultural and hotel workers only lasted a couple of days before being reversed. Also by presidential decree. The strong and decisive leader just keeps being pushed around by everybody around him. Maybe he doesn’t even remember what he ordered yesterday anymore.

    It’s total chaos. There’s not even any pretence at order or consistency. These orders are backed up with threats of violence for anybody who doesn’t comply with whatever the regime is demanding at this precise second.

    But there are happier matters to report. When he’s not off playing golf, the president is tweeting deranged nonsense about the lovely new flagpoles he’s had installed in the White House garden.

    That’s just the first step in his improvements. He’s getting rid of Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden and having it paved over to form a patio. Apparently, the grass causes a problem for women wearing high heels. It’s almost as if he’s a feminist, aside from that rape he did.

    Next up is a magnificent, beautiful new ballroom to be built in the grounds of the White House. Somehow this is going to cost a staggering $100million. I’m guessing that for once in his life, he’s not using cheap non-unionised labour, sub-standard building materials and flouting safety regulations at every step.

    Luckily, he can get away with this in a period of peace and stability, like what we have now.

  • Fortunate son

    I didn’t think I’d enjoy watching coverage of the military parade in Washington, but it was quite entertaining.

    Mainly, there was the satisfaction of watching the Commander-in-Chief looking bored and uncomfortable. It was 29°C with humidity of over 80%, really unpleasant. He didn’t even look grateful for his birthday present which cost $45million.

    The music came as a surprise. Usually you expect marching bands, but this was a collection of instrumental versions of rock classics thumping out of a PA system. It seems so incongruous, especially with Vietnam-era anti-war songs. It must have taken him back to the good old days of his youth when he would so eagerly have joined up to fight, but for his debilitating bonespurs.

    When there was no music, there was eerie silence. Just the squeaking of tank tracks. The military seemed to be going through the motions. As if nobody there wanted to do it, so they were deliberately putting in a poor performance while following orders to the letter. I imagine Pete Hegseth will be blind upset at how it’s all turned out.

    Not too many people watching. Empty stands. Crowds along the route were sparse. The party afterwards was poorly attended and low energy. Get the gays to organise the next parade, they know how it’s done.

    Looks like everybody was at the NoKings demonstrations. Huge crowds for those all over the country. Give the people what they want.

  • A kick up the arts

    Until recently, the Kennedy Center was a venue for performing arts. Opera, classical music, jazz, folk, theatre, poetry, stuff like that. These things don’t have huge popular appeal, but they all have an audience. The Center attempts to present a snapshot of the wide spectrum of culture in the USA.

    At least they used to. The president fancies himself as a connoisseur of the arts, a man with a finely-tuned sense for cultural taste. In order to enforce this, he removed the leadership of the Center and replaced them with maga fanatics to make appropriate adjustments to the programme.

    The first major alteration was to add a faith group, in order to reflect the artistic input that religion offers. So far, only Christianity is being promoted. Maybe other religions will get some attention in the future. At any rate, the new leadership is asking staff to pray before business meetings.

    Their first production will be Les Misérables, their patron’s favourite musical. No problem with that, but the new ticketing system is causing a stir. It’s all being arranged in the style of an election fundraiser, allocating corporate hospitality with “donors” buying blocks of seats. Corrupt hucksterism is the watchword.

    Ticket sales and attendances have collapsed. All this has alienated the existing audience, without appealing to a new audience that exists largely in maga’s imagination. They are asking for a five-fold increase in federal subsidies to cover the shortfall.

    These people are useless at everything.