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Nightly Ramble:We’re At the Hermann

hermannramble [1]Welcome, children of all ages, to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “We’re at the Hermann” Edition

  •  A Wide Latina:  Joyner notes [2]a typo at  the house of Matt Yglesias [3]. I’ll not comment except to say that all humor has a some grain of truth at the center of it, else it’s simply not funny. Do the math.
  • Growth of government:  We’re regulating clotheslines [4], now?  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
  • Waxman-Markey “in Park”: Mostly based on voter reax. [5] Could it be the miracle has happened, and they’re getting the message?
  • Same on Government Healthcare. Apparently, the Blue Dogs are starting to understand [6] they’re losing voter support in a directly inverse relation to their support of government healthcare plans. They’re taking action based on that.
  • No Habla:  Well, whoever in Congress is getting the message, the White House still hasn’t [7].  Is it any wonder why the federal government is trying to herd people into the cities with impossible fuel costs and other measzures? Easier to tax and control.  Always about control. Always. Always. Always.
  •  The Peasants are revolting:  At Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball says there’s a tax revolt coming [8]. I think he’s right. Indeed, given the above, we’d better hope he is.
  •  Nature continues to disprove global warming claims:  Coldest July day in Wisconsin [9]in 100 years.  North Dakota, too [10].
  • Note To Obama: Want to save the auto industry? Retore the dealers [11]. Kill the Unions.
  • Equal Time and all that:  Given my Pajamas Media piece [12]on the Death of Jackson this morning, I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass on a chuckle from Iowahawk. [13]
  • It was 40 years ago today:  Apollo 11 lifted off 40 years ago this very day [14].  I remember as I do most events in my life, with remarkable clarity, huddling around the family’s black and white RCA-Victor console to watch the broadcasts of the flight.   Had it been a school day, we’d have likely watched the thing go up in ‘Assembly’. Space shots were rare enough back then, and new enough, that educators made use of the thing as a teaching moment. Being July, though, not so much.   As it was, I watched from home.  Billy Beck observes the day in his own way.  [15]  There’s a whole line of discussion that descends from Rand that Billy shows us on the point, that goes well outside the hit and run nature of the Ramble.  That said, I’ve always wondered what a private space agency would have brought us. I suspect it might have been more productive in terms of making use of our understanding of space… something beyond Spandex. Thing is, there’s no way for the test to be made…. then or now. I plan to listen, tonight to an album that was recorded in the shawdow of that event… The Moody Blues’ “To our Childrens’Childrens” Children” , which is pictured, here. It’s my all time favorite Moody Blues LP, and likely the single best concept album ever done. In my memory, nothing else comes close. Yes, even Pink Floyd’s “DarkSide of the Moon” produced that same year.s-children-front.jpg

    I know… half of you weren’t around 40 years ago. To understand how earth shaking this was, you need to more fully understand how space travel and the prospect of it, had invaded our national culture. There’s a “MoonLanding Road” not five miles from my house. NASA photos still grace the walls of most government builidngs around the world. StarTrek, the Original Battlestar Galactica, and yes, even Star Wars, all sprang from that romance, if not that era. With that in mind, you’ll understand better some of the romance involved with that LP. I’ll pass along the lyrics of the first cut, which is mostly spoken, to give you a feel for not only the album but feelings of the day:

    Blasting, billowing, bursting forth
    With the power of ten billion butterfly sneezes
    Man with his flaming pyre
    Has conquered the wayward breezes
    Climbing to tranquility
    Far above the cloud
    Conceiving the heavens
    Clear of misty shroud

    Higher and higher
    Now we’ve learned to play with fire
    Go higher and higher and higher

    Vast vision must improve our sight
    Perhaps at last we’ll see and end
    To our homes endless blight
    And the beginning of the free
    Climb to tranquility
    Finding its real worth
    Conceiving the heavens
    Florishing on earth

    Higher and higher
    Now we’ve learned to play with fire
    Go higher and higher and higher

    (Shrug) As with most grand visions, the reality never quite matched the hype… the romance. Which perhaps left us a bit jaded, as a people. Yet, if we take the current administration as any indication, we’ve not stopped falling for grand romatic schemes involving the use of government power, and taxpayer money.

  • Happy Birthday to me:  Well, tommrow, anyway.   And yes, the Ramble will still be here, though I likely won’t be in my usual twitter and Yahoo chat haunts for the next couple evenings.