Dissing our friends and sucking up to our enemies

Obama's people decided to close our embassy to the Vatican.  Smooth move.  Although the Vatican wisely refrained from complaining, I'm sure this act of disrespect disheartened them.  Too bad.  The Catholic Church has been a powerful force for good, since Christ was a corporal.  The United States is a powerful force for good.  That makes us natural allies, and  dissing each other is counter productive. 
   On the suck up side, Obama's people promised to lift economic sanctions against Iran in return for little or nothing.  Iran has been a force for evil ever since the mullahs took it over in Jimmy Carter's time.  The economic sanctions have finally begun to bite hard enough to bring the Iranians to the bargaining table.  The proper action is tighten them up some more, bite them harder, until they give up their nuclear program, turn all their fissionables and centrifuges over to us, dismantle their reactors, and allow no knock inspections every where in the country.  Iranian goodwill isn't going to get us the time of day, we need to squeeze them til they crack.

Self Driving Cars

The subject came up over Thanksgiving.  Some of the older generation thought there was a place for self driving cars when they got too old to drive themselves. 
   As for me, it will be a cold day in Hell before I left a microprocessor drive me to the store.

Movies on TV for Thanksgiving

Mostly old favorites, Bond movies from years ago, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones.  Nothing that I don't have on DVD.  Seems like Hollywood hasn't made much that people like to watch in recent years. 

Single Payer Health Care == Death Panels

All the democrats like a single payer health plan.  By which they mean the government pays for free health care for all.  Like they have in Britain and Canada. 
  But, what this really means is all health care come from the government, and if the government doesn't like you, you don't get treated.  If you are too old, or a member of the political opposition, or an unpopular group,  or just the wrong astrological sign,  they don't treat you, they just send  you home to die. If they think your pills are too expensive, you do without.   
  No choices, no options, the government controls all.   
 

FDA gets squeamish.

From it's shiny tiled laboratories and ivory towers, the FDA wants to ban the spreading of manure on farmer's fields.  FDA claims manure contains germs that will contaminate the crops grown in manure fertilized fields.  Wow! What a discovery.  Must be a Nobel prize waiting for this one.
  Farmers have been spreading manure on fields since 1000 years before Moses.  We have cuneiform tablets from Akkad in Mesopotamia describing the use of manure. That was 5,000 years ago.  In all that time, the practice hasn't killed us.  I doubt that manure turned deadly just last week.  It's the same stuff today as it was in Sargon of Akkad's time. 
   Plus, spreading the stuff out where the sun and rain and wind get at it, will kill just about anything. 
   Anyhow FDA is out there trying to ban the use of manure in agriculture.  Your tax dollars at work. 

So what's a nomad?

When I learned the word, nomads were hunters or herdsmen with no fixed abode.  They followed the game or the graising, striking their tents and moving on as the food sources moved them.  Like Abraham. 
   So I am reading "Stonehenge, the Indo European heritage", by Leon Stover and Bruce Kraig, some European archeaology, discussing the earliest European site.  And this amazing phrase pops up.  "a nomadic people who farmed,clearing forest land for dispersed settlements as they passed." 
   Oh really.  Once they put in the hard work to clear the land and plant, they aren't going to strike their tents and move on, not until the harvest is in anyhow.  And probably not after harvest either.  Harvest ought to produce enough food to get thru the winter, which is entirely too heavy to take with them.  It's generally accepted that farming makes the settled life possible.  The transition from hunter and herder to farmer is the end of the nomadic life.  So, "a nomad people who farmed" makes one wonder about the author's common sense.
   He is describing the "Danubian" or "Linear Pottery" folk, who settled western Europe before the coming of the Indo Europeans.  But he doesn't offer any evidence (potsherds, flints, gravegoods, etc) that the Danubians were nomadic.  So he throws out a hard to swallow concept with no backup.
    
  

Three Musketeers, a Steampunk Spoof

Another remake.  They do most of the famous scenes from way back when, D'Artagnan saying farewell to his father, D'Artagnan getting whipped by Rochfort at the inn, going to England to recover the diamond studs.  But the sword fights all degenerate into 20th century kung foo.  Both the musketeers and the Cardinal's guard have airships, the baddies like milady DeWinter turn into goodies.  The cast is pretty much unknown except for pretty boy Logan Lerman who plays D'Artagnan, and Orlando Bloom who plays an undistinguished Buckingham.  They manage to crash an airship onto Notre Dame cathedral.  The steeple punctures the gasbag so they cannot lift off.  Which leads to a sword fight along the roof of  the cathedral. 
   Trouble is, the spoof is so heavy that I could not take anything seriously.  It just goes on, sword fight to kung foo to air ship collision, to sword fight, and on and on.  Nothing seems very real, nobody is ever in jeopardy. 
   It can't hold a candle to the 1970's version with Michael York and Raquel Welsh.