Hmm, which victims are you referring to? The victims of the Inquisition? The victims of long-time sexual abuse the Catholic Church and many other churches aren’t willing to address? The victims of bombings and shootings all over the world in the name of “the power of prayer” that have died in the last 20 years?

I sympathize as I’m in a similar boat as well. Fortunately, none of my kids (so far) aspire to Ivy Leagues despite mass hordes of their friends doing so. My first kid to go to college was thinking about it and we applied to a couple. But I had to caution him on the propaganda of college. Basically, I told him if the…

Umm, the power of prayer. Let’s see, what do the purveyors of the power of prayer lead their flock to?

The real problem is that the US lacks a comprehensive strategy regarding long-term military/diplomatic operations overseas. The attrition of the last 15 years of operations in all services has been very tough on personnel.

This assumes that the police department collecting kits even bothers to log them correctly or at all. The ‘endthebacklog’ for California shows the San Jose PD to be essentially ignoring rape kits all the way up to 2012. ONly after 2016 do they even bother to actually submit the kits for testing. WTH?

What concerns me is a soft part of HF which not directly part of the flight deck. In one particular case, it’s the complaint from at least one pilot about the Flight Manual. Now, I’d expect most people to complain about TFM; it’s to be expected. Manuals can be annoying to read and occasionally confusing. But if some…

It is, and the others are quite nice as well. The El Capitan in Hollywood itself is a useful comparison; if you do go there, try to shoot for a premiere of a big movie. They have a nice organist who’ll play between shows and there can be short stage shows also and stuff downstairs. They did something like that for…

California has something similar except it’s the top 9% of schools in-state and/or top 9% of participating high schools.
The problem in California is that the conservative interests and liberal interests combined and damaged the funding for education across the board for schools. So for a long time, education here…

Ya know, part of the problem for some people in LA (like me) is that we get jaded with the whole “glamor” aspect of it. When you have to live with it, it can be pretty annoying sometimes. What to do in LA really depends on what you like to do.

Yeah, much modern construction in LA is a letdown. Some of downtown LA is nice, like around Disney Hall and such. It’s too bad that the LA movie and entertainment business doesn’t really do a great job at keeping the really cool stuff for movies/theaters well-maintained. Old Broadway used to have some really…

World of Coke is awesome with all the tasting stuff. Just have to sip though.

Oooh, you like treading on thin ice. Those Texans are on the Alamo like Jerry Falwell is on the Old Testament.....

Yup, my recs for places to go are :

How would you compare it to Johns? Last time we visited there, it was pretty damn good....

National Museum of the American Indian is pretty quiet. Excellent cafe, probably the best out of all of them. The museum setup, when last visited, had some organizational issues IMHO. IIRC, not enough explanation about US tribal territories over the years. Seems to be in concert with coverage about Indian in Central…

Or more like a snap roll, especially considering the, umm, ahem, dubious control circumstances...

A couple of years ago, I went to visit a high school buddy in Phoenix at ASU. Right near where he lived there’s a big mall. It’s mid-summer, around late July, and the mall has this huge outdoor natural gas fireplace. And it’s on full blast. Like 8 feet away and you can feel it going like a flamethrower. Who the heck…

Ya know what is annoying about when people who happen to have gone to actual medical schools and then become politicians? What’s actually incredibly annoying is that people refer to them as ‘actual medical doctors’.

I’d consider this a logical conclusion, but one for the mid-future, since this presupposes that one will be able to operate drones without serious suppression and that objectively successful drone AI with combat skills is available.

A couple of days ago, a pedestrian was killed across from my office. The pedestrian was hit by someone making a left turn and somehow either coming in and then out too fast or hitting the gas instead of the brakes. Consequently, the SUV drove onto the sidewalk and slammed the pedestrian up against a 3.5 foot wall…