The Measure of a Man
When Dan Rather reassured his viewers in 1991 that there was nothing too fear from a “black” President in Zimbabwe he was looking at things primarily through the prism of race. But in the four and a half minute video after the read more none of Mugabe’s critics interviewed made reference to his ethnicity at all. It was his Marxist and Maoist roots they were all worried about. The suggestion passed Rather like water on a duck’s back. He could see the situation in Zimbabwe through the racial prism but not the ideological one.
More recently the Weekly Standard noticed how Democratic strategist and MSNBC analyst Karen Finney thought of Herman Cain, who is arguably the most free-market Republican candidate in the running.
“One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place. I know that’s harsh, but that’s how it sure seems to me.”
To Finney, the essence of Herman Cain isn’t his ideas, nor his platform. It is not even his track record. Like Rather the proper measure is his race, or rather his failure to correspond to her conception of his race. “I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place.”
Events since 1991 have probably demonstrated to any reasonable man that Dan Rather’s selected prism was entirely the wrong one to use in judging Robert Mugabe. It was the ideological criteria of Mugabe’s opponents which proved to be the most valid after all. Is it possible that Finney is looking at Cain through the wrong lens? That maybe Cain’s ideas do count for something? Maybe that is too radical a suggestion. Maybe another Cain can try again in a hundred years when a man can be evaluated by the content of his mind rather than the color of skin.
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I can understand how hacks like Finney can propogate this junk, because her livelihood depends on keeping crook Democrats in power in order to enrich themselves and their cronies for another few years. I don’t understand why supposedly intelligent public fools like Dan Ratbag would mouth it. Most people posess the common sense to understand that a rat is a rat no matter what color the fur. Why can’t the “intelligentsia” see it? Is it just peer pressure, the effects of the echo chamber in which they live, or are they really just stupid? It’s baffling.
Leftists do not notice Leftist ideology any more than fish are constantly thinking about the buoyancy of the water around them or mammals are constantly thinking the air that they breath. To Rather, Mugabe’s desire to be a collectivist dictator was as normal as breathing. It is the idea that people can guide any aspect of their own lives without the constant oversight of the appropriate Leftist self appointed betters is foreign to them, outside their own experience. Thus Finney falls back on what she does know and believe in, racism.
Different nations trapped inside one set of borders. That formula has been tried before.
Subotai Bahadur
If Herman Cain is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, the exquisite irony will be when Democrats like Karen Finney find that they have placed themselves in the position of shooting racist comments at a black American who will fight back. My hope is that they will feel the universe they have constructed for themselves distorting in very uncomfortable ways.
and why exactly did any liberal, black or white, vote for Obambus over Hildabeast? Karen Finney and her ilk will be a generation living that down.
(not that Hildabeast was very attractive, half of Obambus’ virtue was in simply not being her, but there wasn’t much to the other half other than that he was black, clean, and articulate – and that NOBODY would look at his negatives)
Subotai: you got that right. Weak people cling bitterly to comforting “truths” which flatter them or allow them to ignore what fools they make of themselves. Wait –I said “bitter clinger.” I will go to my room.
In the fall of 2008 I made the mistake of talking politics with people whom I’d seen as friends, and mighty smart ones at that. I expressed the view that Obama was a questionable choice: no resume, radical views, shady friends, shifty promises. I was told flat out that not voting for him (I mean, “Him”) was racist. End of story.
“To ride well, shoot straight, and always speak the truth.”………
I’m trying to think of a Liberal in the public eye that could do two out of three?
THE UNCORRUPTED RACISM OF THE LEFT
There is a reason the Left treats guys like Herman Cain and Justice Thomas as they do, and the reason is the Left cannot abide a darkie leaving the plantation. To the Left this is not racism, this is generosity, and idealism, for where could life be better than on the plantation?
Oh what a tangle web they weave
When they say that they don’t believe
The color of men’s skin should be in play
Their words and attitudes both show
That racism is all they know
And tell us all about it every day
It’s all part of the liberal mind
Though some will think me most unkind
For saying that the Left thinks guys like Cain
Are traitors who don’t know the facts
Or must be dumb because he lacks
The brains to understand that he’s in pain
Of course they like the Blacks who vote
For Lefty masters who can quote
The reasons why the Negro should be pleased
That all their lives have been enhanced
By left wing programs that just chanced
To lock them all in bondage till deceased
They see the world through prism’d eyes
Where all not them they do despise
And men like Cain they hate since time began
They cannot see because of hate
That neither color, breadth nor weight
Is ever the true measure of a man
“he’s a black man who knows his place.”
Yeah, Mr. Cain knows his place. He knows he belongs to a party that judges individuals by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. He knows he belongs to a party that values human life and personal freedom. He knows he has found a place at “the table” because of who he is, not what he is.
Btw, Ms. Finney, the Herman Cain campaign wishes to thank you for your ‘endorsement’. Already there is an uptick in campaign donations because of your comments. Please keep it up so the whole nation can truly see how bankrupct the Left is. Seriously, if a Republican or conservative had said this. Well, you get my point.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” – MLK
How can anyone look at the mindset of a Rather or a Finney, and conclude that the political Left is closer to King’s dream than the Right?
Mr. Cain knows is place… is in the oval office.
7 Walt…
I can’t put it any better.
Cain is off the plantation … and is getting uppity…
Writing his own script… how dare he!
Cain is both analytical and a sales charmer. He’s the heir to Ronald the Great.
I can’t imagine how Romney could come after Obamacare — it’s based upon Romneycare.
But that’s the biggest issue of the campaign.
Walt/7: awesome as usual. Dare I suggest one word change to improve both sense and scansion?
Currently reads:
They see the world through prism’d eyes
Where all not them they do despise
Could read:
They see the world through prism’d eyes
Where all not like them they despise
Or maybe:
They see the world through prism’d eyes
Where those not like them they despise
Since South Africa is right next to Zimbabwe, and likely to head down the same path, this might be relevant:
http://diversityischaos.blogspot.com/2011/10/blacks-are-raping-lesbians-in-south.html
It is particularly poignant that Human Rights Watch seems to think that it’s not fair. The so-called oppressed should not be oppressors now. Perhaps it’s all because of pernicious white racism.
Snow White and the Alter Dwarf:
Luckily, we’ve been blessed by a President pure as the wind-driven snow:
Obama Miracle is White House Free of Scandal:
Jonathan Alter
A Media Problem
Unfortunately, we might not know of scandals in stimulus spending or elsewhere because of changes in the news business. For today’s media, talk is cheap and reporting is expensive. That means we get more chatter and less scrounging for official wrongdoing.
In the past, many of those scandal stories originally came from congressional investigators and others with subpoena power. But with the demise of the Office of Independent Counsel, a fount of information for reporters from the Reagan to the Clinton eras, the machinery of scandal-hunting began crumbling.
It doesn’t help that so much “news” coverage — as opposed to commentary that is explicitly opinionated — nowadays takes place in a partisan context. Fox News has tried to flog stories on manufactured controversies like “policy czars”
Every time Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who leads a House investigative committee, calls the Obama administration “corrupt” without offering any evidence, he hurts his cause. It’s much harder to make a story register as a bona fide scandal when the political motivation is so obvious.
—
Sheriff Joe:
The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse…
he goes on.
Since Zimbabwe is right next to South Africa and South Africa seems headed in the same direction, this might be relevant:
http://diversityischaos.blogspot.com/2011/10/blacks-are-raping-lesbians-in-south.html
It is particularly poignant that Human Rights Watch seems to think that the so-called oppressed should be more enlightened than that.
Cain maybe our last hope. I fear if Romney wins the nomination, Obama will win the general election. To insure Obama’s election, the MSM will do everything in its’ power to undermine Cain and support Romney.
Do you suppose that Rather and the rest of the Left is even capable of realizing how wrong he was?
Of course, they do not have news crews in Zimbabwe reporting nightly on the latest outrage and failures, so it does not even exist.
Oman/11
It all works, but “all not them” implies they don’t even like “those like them.” You have to BE them,not just BE LIKE them.
A distinction worth setting out.
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation” HERBERT SPENCER
This is often seen by those treating addiction to alcohol or drugs describing those that are completely hostile to any suggestion that spirituality could play or has played any role in their recovery.
This statement has profound implications. It determines absolutely how we live: do we live in truth or do we block out information we don’t like to create a self-serving paradigm of the world?
Blocking out information that might change your opinion of something is essentially child-like. You think one thing. You are comfortable thinking it. Something comes up that disturbs your world view. You don’t like how that feels – that’s called cognitive dissonance. Some people feel pretty comfortable with cognitive dissonance. They get that it’s part of life and sometimes you have to re-examine your world view. Some people are utterly and totally uncomfortable with these feelings. They shut down. They block out the “extraneous” information.
One characteristic common among people who have contempt prior to investigation is seething anger-hostility toward anyone different from them – especially people who think differently than them – because it’s like a thorn in their side.
1/ Justice Clarence Thomas got the same or even worse treatment by the left–still does.
Racial politics is a death spiral and South Africa will the next economy destroyed by it.
Cain is great in introducing the fundamental issues of tax reform and American fundamental interests first in US foreign policy.
However
-his chief of staff personal history and his recent smoking u tube– together with his poor performance in TV interviews have reduced the chances of Cain being nominated.
As a result–The Cain Brand– does not seem serious enough for POTUS these days.
2/ Zimbabwe/Rhodesia was once the bread basket for Africa and much of Europe
Now Zimbabwe has to import food and is a social and economic disaster
–China is moving in to take hegemony of both Zimbabwe and the Congos
-there are 100s of thousands of native Chinese in Zimbabwe at this time, quietly and cruelly extracting natural resources
–as in the days of the Belgian Congo and ” The Heart of Darkness” era.
@Victor, Actually Mr. Cain is having his best quarter ever and may even beat out Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry for this quarter. He has increased his staff from 60 to over 100 people and has pumped up his presence in Iowa and New Hampshire. So let the truth sink in and send Mr. Cain some more money. As you have stated that you are part of the 1% it surely should not be a burden on you.
The C.C. Republicans all said that Mr. Reagan wasn’t a serious candidate and yet he took the White House in overwhelming fashion. And though it is true that Mr. Cain is no Ronald Reagan, I believe him to be a better fit for the presidency due to his having been a CEO and having experience in dealing with large organizations. His willingness to self correct is a MAJOR plus with us middle class working tax payers.
The man gets my money this go round. I have already gotten my Crackers for Cain bumper sticker on my F-150 and even put one on my Deere.
Eggplant #15:
I fear most that Romney – who I voted for in the primary last time – will win and that not much will change. Not because he is just another liberal, but because he will diddle with the margins insteed of making the wholesale changes that aare required – the equivalent of Reagan calling for the Iron Curtain to be painted a a different color rather than demanding that it be torn down.
Romney would have been a far better choice than McCain to run and a far, far, better President than Obama – but today he is not radical enough.
Cain is radical enough. And if he is elected we will Raise Cain!
On the other hand, if Obama is reelected you can be sure the fertilizer will hit the blower. I understand that Newt Gingrich, at the suggestion of Neal Boortz, will edit a book entitled “The Day After” about what will happen if Obama is re-elected. And if the worst comes to pass we can fix it.
This next election is very important my concerns about Cain are
1/ He had stage 1V colon cancers–which means it had metastasized–probably to his liver –as we know from the Steve Jobs case–cancer of that nature does not just go away.
Realistically his 2-4 year survival prospects are very grim–being on chemotherapy and radiation as POTUS will not work for American interests.
2/ Cains humor is great-but his choice of chief of staff is a disaster
I hope that Cain stays in the race raising the tax issue and that of fundamental American interests in our foreign policy
3/ Re the 1 % issue–Cain was a member of the Federal Reserve–he is responsible–in part–for the current disaster–and he is a member of the 1%–get real.
4/ Humor is great–Reagan had humor–but Cain risks been attacked as a clown-if all he has is humor and a clown for chief of staff.
I miss Doc Sanity. Pat Santy did a great job of explaining the mental processes such as projection that insecure people use to order the universe and control the turbulent flow of information we all have to deal with. There is a cost to doing so. You limit the amount of external information you react to and begin to rely increasingly on internally generated signals or inputs from a few trusted sources that increase in importance. That is why what happens to people in Authoritarian and then Totalitarian societies is that their world becomes smaller. They process less and change less and become less adaptable. We do need some filters to screen out bad data and arrange the useful in workable categories.
There are three groups interacting in PC/Socialist societies.
1. The “Inner Party” believers and racial/sexual exploiters who benefit.
2. The “Outer Party” believers who have internalized the narrative to their cost.
3. The “Prols” or productive mass who suffer from the taxes, mismanagement and wasted resources.
In America group #1 includes some Blacks like Holder and many wealthy Whites.
Group #2 includes the bulk of Black Americans who have been poisoned by generations of victimology and policies crafted to destroy the family. The Democrats are working to sign up Hispanics into the ranks of shock troops also but the success of that project is still uncertain. The parallels between the Socialist methodology and its consequences and that of an Islamified society are clear. Both result in a narrowing of information processed and a progressive debasement of society.
Leftists scream that Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin are not real women. Leftists also scream that Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell and Herman Cain are blacks who don’t behave the way real blacks should.
Anyone with XX chromosomes who is not a leftist is not a woman. Conservative blacks are not real blacks. It’s pathetic but it’s part of the leftist gospel. Conservative women and conservative blacks counter outraged, open-gobbed lefties by contrasting their own conservative ideas with their attackers’ leftist ideas. These two groups of conservatives maintain grace under extreme pressure. That is one of the reasons they deserve success.
However it turns out for Herman Cain at the end of the GOP nomination process, he is doing a great service for American politics. He is forcing the question – why should race be part of the Presidential race? President Obama won’t like that. Racial politics is half of his schtick. The other half is Obama’s attempt to inflame class warfare.
What does it mean when the disinformationists double down at the Belmont Club?
Like all monkeys, we see things from our own tree.
It is currently trendy among the Left to see the Right as divided by a host of what liberals consider poor candidates. That is because Liberals do not understand the difference between choices and decisions.
From my tree, it looks like a candy store. Lots of yummy choices. Like the boy I once was, I cannot decide if I want the Red Liquorice or the Black. The rasberry blow pop or the sour apple sucker. or maybe the creme filled bon bon. Perry Cain Newt Santorum or Michelle? Those are choices. When Nov, 2012 gets here it will be time for decisions.
Do you want 4 more years of high unrmployment, Runaway spending, Corrupt watermelons pocketing million? Do you want 4 more years of surrendering our allies to our enemies? 4 more years of grovelling to our enemies. 4 more years of the destruction of America and all it stands for?
Make your decision.
I grew up in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles called Palos Verdes. My dad used to do pretty well back then and housing prices in the 60’s were pretty reasonable. It is fair to say that I grew up in “white” suburbia. There were no black people in our neighborhoods and I mean I can’t think of one. During the Watts riots the locals barricaded the main roads going into our communities to make sure that the unrest did not spread, is was like that. My father worked in advertising and sales and worked downtown with a lot of minorities. In fact, he saw minorities as being unfairly excluded from a lot of business and had a number of friends that were Jewish, Black, American Indian, et al. It is fair to say that my dad was rabidly anti-racist and on at least one occasion, while entertaining a good friend, a black man and his white wife, the neighbor came by to tell my parents that us kids were in the back yard playing with “black” children and what was he going to do about it. Well, what he did about it is chased and the neighbor out of our front yard and told him if he ever came back he was going to kill them. Yeah, that’s how dad was. A number of years later the family of a black construction company owner moved to our community and they went to our high school. The boys were on the football team and the girl was on the cheer leading squad. They were very popular with all of the kids and everyone wanted to be their friends. Everyone wanted to have a “black” friend. While I went to high school my parents got divorced, moved out of the district and I hitch hiked to school every morning. I got a job as a dishwasher and was befriended by a short order cook, a black man with an afro named Sammy. He and I used to hang out together at times and one of these, his roommate nearly beat the crap out of me because he didn’t like white people.
At any rate, I have been around black people all my life and am generally positively disposed to have them as friends and neighbors. What I found however though is there is a class of white people who never rub shoulders with black people, do not socialize with them and do not spend time in their company other than work or some other kind of brief social occasion. These “white folks” are the most vociferous in enforcing politically correct speech codes. It is the “none holier than the reformed whore” crowd that is constantly agitating for sensitivity. I think they harbor deep seated guilt and make amends by Mau Mauing everyone else like they were defending the honor of the whore or in this case, defending the noble savage.
“You have a black presidential candidate?” “Well we already elected our back man so it is too late for you to make up for it”.
I think that Democrats suffer from a debilitating racist sickness that causes them to color everything black and white and accuse everyone else of harboring the racist thoughts that they cannot expunge from their minds. Like a reaction to Turrets Syndrome they accuse. Why they know black people from work! Maybe Herb Cain is the best antidote to Democrat illness. If you think not voting for a Marxist because he is black will be decried as racist, wait until whitey tries to change any of the policies of the great African Marxist. Cain can do it. The Mau Mau’ers will have to suffer it. It would sure make things interesting.
Actually, Cain had stage IV (that is, stage 4) cancer, not stage 1-V. There is no stage 1-V. He was diagnosed in 2006 with liver metastases. However, it is clear that he already has reached the 5 year survival milestone. At this point, without knowing details about his scans and blood work, it is not possible to offer an accurate expectation for life span.
Regarding the belief that Clarence Thomas really isn’t “black” or that Margaret Thatcher really isn’t a “woman,” the capacity of certain people to live within contradiction and not suffer from cognitive dissonance is truly awesome. #OWS folks can rail against “Capitalism” when the problem was that capitalism was not practiced as TBTF banks were rescued instead of being allowed to go under. BHO can win the Noble Peace Prize and start two new wars and escalate another. GW Bush can be viewed as corrupt while BHO is viewed as pure.
I always enjoy tweaking my liberal friends with stuff like this. For example, when they said Bush was stupid because he was inarticulate, I countered, “Well, then the most articulate President — Reagan — must be one of your favorites whom you consider the smartest.” When they said, “No, it is education and IQ that we value in a President,” I would say, “Then Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon must rank high in your esteem, and Harry Truman, who never went to college, must rank as one of the worst.” Such talk drives them crazy.
Identity politics is a bastardized form of Marxism where the oppressed races and genders make up the proletariat fighting the bourgeoisie of straight white European males. Like Marxism, it is religious in nature, swallowed whole as a matter of faith, and is not falsifiable. It gives everyone a role, but most of all, it gives the oppressed minorities a role.
When a Dan Rather or Karen Finney looks at the world, a black (or a member of another favored group) who refuses to follow the role laid out in identity politics generates intolerable cognitive dissonance. Herman Cain is someone who cannot possibly exist per the tenets of identity politics. So they are forced to insist that Herman Cain’s opinions are less than real lest they admit identity politics is bogus. At the same time, they show a racist inability to look beyond Herman Cain’s skin color, or indeed, the skin color of any “victim” group per the dictates of identity politics.
As I have often observed, the one great advantage of being a straight white European male in this society is that I can believe any damn thing I want without betraying my race, gender, sexual orientation or anything else. No one automatically assumes I’m beholden to their ideology because of my identity. I think that’s a great privilege, unearned though it may be.
Seems to me that someone who has or is facing death may be exactly what we need.
rodomontade – “Identity politics is a bastardized form of Marxism where the oppressed races and genders make up the proletariat fighting the bourgeoisie of straight white European males”.
Well put. Identity politics are group politics and Marxism is about creating a dynamic based on pitting these groups against one another. What they are effective at is that they denigrate the individual and the merit of the character. It is corrupt to the core.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” MLK
The Democrats piss on MLK’s grave out of perfidy and hubris.
The only group that we should associate with is being American and it is precisely this group identity that gets short shrift by the Left.
“Being American is for everybody, even welfare recipients from the foreign lands.” That is what they would lead you to believe.
And Americans are conflicted when it comes to illegal immigration because when you get to know illegal immigrants through casual contact you come to like them. The same can be said for felons as well but the law is the law. America cannot stay great by letting its laws be subverted and its wealth drained nor by allowing Marxists to rule.
Good point, maineman.
“What does it mean when the disinformationists double down at the Belmont Club?”
Happy hour is over?
W: “When Dan Rather reassured his viewers in 1991 that there was nothing too fear from a ‘black’ President in Zimbabwe he was looking at things primarily through the prism of race… To Finney, the essence of Herman Cain isn’t his ideas, nor his platform… Like Rather the proper measure is his race… ‘I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place.’”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
@ 25. Langley and @ 33. stoicheion.
It means somebody is “wewwy, wewwy afwaid”.
For good reason, I believe.
1994 not 1991
What can you expect from a guy who lied about schoolchildren cheering upon hearing of the death of President Kennedy.
“Except that it wasn’t true, and Rather knew it, Barker says.
Approached earlier by the same minister with what was a second-hand account, Barker himself had run the story by the school’s principal and some teachers, all of whom denied it outright. Because of the shooting, which took place at 12:30 p.m., the principal had decided to close the school early, though without telling the students why. The children at the school–including three of Barker’s own–were merely happy to be going home early, he was told. There couldn’t have been any spontaneous cheering at the news of Kennedy’s murder, because no such news had been announced.
Undaunted, the dogged minister–”a very, very strong liberal and a very, very strong Kennedy supporter,” Barker says–moved on to Rather.
“Rather came to me, and I said, ‘My kids are in school there, and I checked it out, and there’s not a darn thing to it,’” says Barker. “He said, ‘Well, great–I’ll just forget it.’ But instead of forgetting it, he went out and did this gut job on Dallas and its conservatism,” with the preacher’s story at the center of his report.
With the discredited account likely to be challenged by the local affiliate’s editors before being fed to New York, Rather sidestepped a customary film-editing session with Barker and arranged to file the report live instead, Barker says. “And so here’s Dan with the preacher, telling this story about kids at UP cheering when told the president was dead.”
Livid at being lied to, Barker laid into Rather as soon as he returned to the newsroom, expelling the reporter and all his national-news colleagues from the building on the spot. “I said ‘Get the hell out of here–you and this whole damn bunch!’” he says.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/324nfvwe.asp
As someone who has spent a fair amour of time in Zimbabwe, Rather’s statement is absurd because Mugabe had been in power since 1980. He did better than most African leaders for the first 20 years, but really did change for the worse and began, like Mao to systematically destroy the economy and even his own previous work. He worked for racial reconciliation in the early years but said later that this was a mistake. He blamed all his destructive policy outcomes on white people. Rather in 91 or perhaps it was 94 was doing the usual US media projection of American context onto Zimbabwe. That country has a majority black indigenous population which is utterly unlike the US situation with it’s up from slavery black minority. while Rather’s statement is absurd in the context of Zimbabwe, it is an excellent example of Liberal racism in the US context. And Cain’s candidacy just creates endless cognitive dissonance……and irony.
I hear it takes a Trillion Zimbabweans to change a light bulb. No. Wait. That’s to buy a light bulb.
Rather forgot to mention the various Tribal/Political conflicts that had to be sorted out first in Zimbabwe before the program (if it be a pogrom) could be launched. But after 14 years even I thought Mugabe would not turn out as bad as first feared — though I was willing to give it another ten years before making a pronouncement. The crown needs to fit more snugly on the head before you can judge.
“A black man who knows his place”? In the White House? Terminally stupid, these people are.
W: this is another excellent thread in (may I say it?) a very long string. With which you are snaring and hanging up for our inspection one idiocy after another. Have you considered writing another book: “Introduction to Real Human Psychology, As Told Through Stories of Liberal Folly”?
Regarding Mugabe, what explains his disease? Is he suffering from some objective ailment like tertiary syphilis, or is it just the usual career for a psychopath with unchecked power? And will some African Sophocles emerge, using him as part of a lasting, terrible lesson?
Lgude@38: He [Mugabe] did better than most African leaders for the first 20 years, but really did change for the worse and began, like Mao to systematically destroy the economy and even his own previous work.
Lech Walesa of Poland is another one who followed a complicated trajectory.
Victor@19: -there are 100s of thousands of native Chinese in Zimbabwe at this time, quietly and cruelly extracting natural resources
Every time the subject of Africa is raised on this site, someone says forget it, they’re not ready yet for the modern world. I’m no expert on the world’s hellholes, but the African continent is a tough one and the Chinese are right in the middle of the (so-called) Robber Baron pre-labor union phase of USA history.
The Arab Intellectuals Who Didn’t Roar:
Instead, Adonis — who lives in exile in France — bitterly disappointed many Syrians. His letter offered some criticisms, but also denigrated the protest movement that had roiled the country since March, and failed even to acknowledge the brutal crackdown that had left hundreds of Syrians dead. In retrospect, the incident has come to illustrate the remarkable gulf between the Arab world’s established intellectuals — many of them, like Adonis, former radicals — and the largely anonymous young people who have led the protests of the Arab Spring.
So much for reform in the ME.
Could we stop with the MLK worship? He did not then and would not today want an actual race-neutral USA. He would scream just as loud as Obama or any nasty white liberal about the horrors of dis-separate impact of arresting and convicting black criminals, total support of anti-white affirmative action, and the continued funding of welfare for the ‘Great Society’. He would be just as much a race-baiting race-hustler as Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton.
44. bell curve—
” He would be just as much a race-baiting race-hustler as Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton.”
You need to justify that statement because I don’t agree. Where did King ever say anything like that?
Batman/28—
”For example, when they said Bush was stupid because he was inarticulate, …”
For once in my life I said just the right thing when my wife’s distant relative from D.C. said, ”George Bush is so stupid.”
I replied: “Meaning he’s not as smart as you are, right? But then, all he can do is fly a jet fighter, speak fair Spanish, and obtained degrees from Yale and Harvard. What is it you do up there in Washington?”
I will never reach that pinnacle again.
Gordon@45:
In MLK’s final speech, he basically called for the end of the capitalist system, and the imposition of a socialist economy.
From “WAR ON POVERTY/GREAT SOCIETY”:
Martin Luther King by 1968 recognized the limits to the racial liberalism of the Great Society. He began to see poverty as systemic part of capitalist system. In his last major address to the SCLC, King rejected the liberalism of the Great Society, with its commitment to minor remedies rather than systemic remedies:
“We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. . . Now when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.”
While most of the US has moved beyond race, the progressives remain as race-obsessed at the Yanceys et al of 1860 South Carolina. They think they are big-hearted anti-racists, but, as a Marxist would say, objectively they are obesessed with keeping minorites dependent on and subservient to themselves.
I am so sick of conservatives saying these progressives have good intentions; they don’t, they are not stupid and therefore they must and do understand that they are running a 21st Century plantation, with minorities doing their bidding to produce votes and, when desired, mobs, with the Jacksons and Sharptons and Fr. Pflegers as the overseers.
Annoy #27:
So you grew up in PV? I lived in Torrance for over 4 years, bought a house there, got my pilot’s license at Torrance Airport.
A couple of years after I moved away, I came back to the area on a business trip. I stopped at a fast food place on Hawthorne Blvd near the intersection with PCH, and when I came out there were 3 or 4 white kids riding bicycles. They must have noticed my SC license plate, because one of them came up and said “We are taking a survey to see how many people from South Carolina love ni**ers.”
I angrily replied that I was taking a survey to see how many bicycles I could run over. They exited the area at high speed.
I have no doubt that the people of Torrance and PV and that area almost all think themselves as enlightened, tolerant, modern and educated – and consider us rednecks from SC to be a bunch of stupid backward bigots. But I never had anything like that said to me while I was in SC, GA, FL, etc.
And that is one of the features of the Left – they consider themselves to be too good to be bigoted.
Dictators like to say that the law is defined two inches above their signatures; the Left uses the same approach when it comes to attitudes about other people.
Watched Perry on Fox this morning.
He’s not very intelligent, is he. One must conclude we do not always (frequently, ever, …) elect people for intelligence. Gore and Kerry are a couple of dunces, though they speak well. Obambus … Dubya was much smarter than any of these, but speaks poorly, the moreso in formal situations.
I’m not impressed with the intelligence of any of the Republican candidates except possibly for Newt, who perhaps illustrates just why we don’t put intelligence at the top of the list, or at least not so much that it can’t easily be overridden by several other factors, individually or together.
What would the average IQ of posters here on BC be, something well north of 120 I think. Ain’t none of us running the circus, and maybe that’s just as well, though it takes some understanding.
–
Speaking of which, more cold fusion reports!?!
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success
Against all the odds, Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat cold fusion power plant passed its biggest test yesterday, producing an average of 470 kilowatts for more than five hours. (A technical glitch prevented it from achieving a megawatt as originally planned). The demonstration was monitored closely by engineers from Rossi’s mysterious US customer, which was evidently satisfied and paid up.
The energy was output in the form of heat, measured by the quantity of water boiled off.
…
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Now, seriously folks, what are the odds?
My back of the envelope calculations are that the claimed output here is on the order of a 400hp automobile engine.
Follow the links down:
http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/
Power for start-up (resistive coils that provided heat to the reaction chambers) ….
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Yeah right. Have to warm up the cold fusion, OMG.
Probably the biggest opening for skeptics will be the continually running genset that is probably rated for 500 kW (my guess), and appears to have been connected by cables to the E-Cat. “Where’s the mystery?” So knock yourselves out, skeptics. It’s the customer who has to be happy, and apparently this one was satisfied that those cables were not contributing to the 470 kW output during self-sustaining mode.
(cough)
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I’d say the odds are about 9:1 that the widgets produce no power whatsoever.
There is a chance that he is actually producing some power by simply burning hydrogen, I see no description of how much hydrogen is used, just a comment that NO FUEL was used. Say what?
I’d say the odds that this is producing power by cold fusion are zero point zero to about eleven decimal places.
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In conclusion, lack of intelligence is not something confined to politics.
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Oh yeah, nice I got the edit widget here, I wanted to add that this is how real physics looks:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/solvay-congress/
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AM, RWE – I too have spent some time around PV and Torrance over several decades, and sadly I associate it with some of the most bigoted attitudes I’ve seen in Los Angeles so I entirely believe your respective stories and could add my own. But it’s a lovely place to ride a bicycle, if you like hills, which I do.
Cold fusion? Why?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100128-nuclear-fusion-power-lasers-science/
The Livermore ignition project has proven that fusion can be initiated. The magnetic containment has already been worked out. Now all that is needed is some good engineering to get the steam to the turbine and presto, huge amounts of power. Without hydrocarbons being burned. The above URL is from a pretty rabid environmentalist publication so it looks like the watermelons will be on board with this. Enough people getting worried about things like radioactive rabbit turds can really foul the punch bowl.
I find it amusing that the same sort of person that wants off the grid also wants everybody to ride the bus. Except them of course. Don’t the P-shrinks have a word for that?
s @ 51: well, is vaporizing solid gold bullets really the way to go to generate power economically? soon the whole apparatus is covered in condensed gold, has to be scrapped off, and what American will lower himself to do that kind of work? gold dust leaking into the environment, who wants to live near that?
Josh, you are pullin my leg, right? If the power generated is worth more then the pellet costs, then yes, it’s the way to go. While the fusion was taking place, it produced as much power as was used in the entire USA for those few millionths of a second. Sustaining the reaction and getting the energy created to market are the next steps. Not easy but far from impossible.
Don’t sell America short. Remember, the moon is American be right of first claim. Only Americans have walked on the moon. Only the American flag is planted there. The moon would make one ‘ell of a 51st State.
s @ 53: unfortunately, I am not tugging on any of your appendages, fta:
But “whether or not we’ll have lasers imploding pellets to make fusion energy—it’s way too early to tell,” said Mauel, who was not involved in the study, which will be published in the journal Science tomorrow.
In addition to the considerable engineering challenges involved in ramping up the laser systems for wide-scale use, the cost of the fuel pellets will also have to come down, said Mauel, a Columbia University physicist.
“Each one of these costs between ten [thousand] and a hundred thousand dollars,” Mauel said. To use the pellet method to generate nuclear fusion power, “they’ll have to cost less than ten cents a piece.”
I think you misread the statement fta:
“These lasers are pulsed, and for a very short amount of time”—one ten-billionth of a second—”the power they produce is more than all the power generated by the entire electrical grid of the United States” at any given moment, Glenzer said.
The *lasers* put out more power than the entire grid, that is certain, only *if* the facility all works and reaches “break-even” does it *produce* that much as well, and then you still have to capture it efficiently and without the whole thing melting or transmuting or otherwise causing more problems than it is worth.
From the two statements, we learn, IOW, the entire electrical grid of the United States transmits (generates?) power every ten-billionth of a second – worth about ten cents! IOOW, about a billion dollars per second.
As always, gotta do the math.
(if I haven’t slipped a decimal there myself … ten cents per ten-billionth, dollar per billionth, times a billion, is a billion dollars per second, right?)
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Although it is running on, I am running out of (OT) posts, so I’ll add (repeat what I’ve posted before) – I’ve come to think that ground-based hot fusion is on a par with warp drive and may just be one of those things that nature doesn’t actually give us, or at least will take more years, progress, and money than ever dreamed, maybe another hundred years from here, where it has been only ten years in the future for the last fifty.
I’ve been part of several IT projects where the laws of nature (math) were simply misunderstood from the beginning, but actually prevented success. Science is hard, and sometimes you just want to try in spite of what anyone tells you, and on extremely rare occassions that pays off (Solyndra – not). Buy the ticket, take the ride, but that’s how Vegas builds all those big hotels, pretty much the same way Livermore built those big honkin’ lasers.
If it took us fifty years and billions of dollars to learn that fusion power generation is really hard, well, perhaps it will turn out to be worth the trip in some other ways. OTOH, I would love to be wrong. About the warp drive, too.
44. bell curve; Could we stop with the MLK worship? He did not then and would not today want an actual race-neutral USA. He would scream just as loud as Obama or any nasty white liberal about the horrors of dis-separate impact of arresting and convicting black criminals, total support of anti-white affirmative action, and the continued funding of welfare for the ‘Great Society’. He would be just as much a race-baiting race-hustler as Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton.
It defies reason, dishonors the dead, and is in fact very cowardly, to slander a man by saying what he would have been like if he had lived. On Judgment Day you will not be able to use that defense. God will decide your fate by what you really were like, using objective standards of righteousness, rather than by what you woulda, coulda, shoulda been.
55. Teresita
It defies reason, dishonors the dead, and is in fact very cowardly, to slander a man by saying what he would have been like if he had lived. On Judgment Day you will not be able to use that defense. God will decide your fate by what you really were like, using objective standards of righteousness, rather than by what you woulda, coulda, shoulda been.
……….
such reasoning leaves intact rigidly racist state sponsored organizations like la raza and the naacp.
RWE – “I lived in Torrance for over 4 years, bought a house there, got my pilot’s license at Torrance Airport.”
I was born in Torrance and used to ride my bicycle from the “Hill” down to Torrance airport to watch what was then a spectacular airshow. A crash onto Hawthorne Blvd curtailed that show I believe. Flew into Zamperini Field years later to visit my mom while I was working on my private pilot. Spectacular approach over Vincent Thomas bridge. Nice place to ride bicycles indeed I spent my youth going up or down hills all day long.
Liberals are definitely bigots. They placate their inner demons by convincing themselves that everyone else harbors worse views then they have.
“He would be just as much a race-baiting race-hustler as Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton.”
Though King had some utopian rhetoric to his credit he was very much a man of his time, Viet Nam era 1960′s. I think that his attempts to heal divisions between the races left an enduring legacy to our nation and feel just as strongly that Jackson and Sharpton are the ones who dishonor his memory. Who knows what would’ve happened with King should he been able to live out his dream. He’d of probably made a better politician then Obama. Certainly, more likely to promote reconciliation. But leave it to our government to create a zero sum game where MLK day must diminish presidents day. I don’t blame King for that.
48. marty said:
What does it mean to move beyond race? I’m curious as to the meaning of this oft stated line.
Is it the same as moving beyond intelligence? Is it similar to moving beyond competence?
58. Annoy Mouse said
What does it mean to heal the divisions between the races? What are the divisions you would heal, and are they the same divisions between, say blacks and Caucasians as they are between East Asians and Caucasians?
Unless we specify these things the phrase is simply empty rhetoric, it seems to me.
Josh @ 50 said:
“Against all the odds, Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat cold fusion power plant passed its biggest test yesterday, producing an average of 470 kilowatts for more than five hours.”
Someone is fishing for naive venture capital. My guess is the device in question is an assortment of surplus electronics with lots of flashing lights that is designed to separate the sucker from his money.
From a Tar Paper Shack (on acreage!) in Torrance…
The Wall Street Journal gives over almost its entire Friday Journal section front today to Laura Hillenbrand’s upcoming biography of Louis Zamperini, the 93-year-old war hero and star Olympic athlete of the 1930s who grew up in the South Bay and lives in Los Angeles. Random House is looking for a repeat of Hillenbrand’s 2001 bestseller, “Seabiscuit,” printing 250,000 copies to begin. “We’re positioning it as the big book for the holidays,” a Barnes and Noble buyer says in Steve Oney’s article in the Journal. It’s quite a piece, about Zamperini’s life story, his emotions on reading the book, and his bond with Hillenbrand, the author who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome so debilitating that she never came to California to meet her subject. “I skipped my shower today in order to have the strength to do this interview,” she told Oney. Except from the WSJ:
With a fringe of white hair poking out from under a University of Southern California baseball cap and blue eyes sharp behind bifocals, 93-year-old Louis Zamperini refuses to concede much to old age. He still works a couple of hours each day in the yard of his Hollywood Hills home, bagging leaves, climbing stairs and, on occasion, trimming trees with a chainsaw. His outlook is upbeat, even rambunctious.
“I have a cheerful countenance at all times,” he says. “When you have a good attitude your immune system is fortified.”
But as he plunged into “Unbroken,” Laura Hillenbrand’s 496-page story of his life, the happy trappings of his current existence fell away….
Unbroken” details a life that was tumultuous from the beginning. As a blue-collar kid in Southern California, Mr. Zamperini fell in and out of scrapes with the law. By age 19, he’d redirected his energies into sports, becoming a record-breaking distance runner. He competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin where he made headlines, not just on the track (Hitler sought him out for a congratulatory handshake), but by stealing a Nazi flag from the well-guarded Reich Chancellery. The heart of the story, however, is about Mr. Zamperini’s experiences while serving in the Pacific during World War II.
For 25 months in such infamous Japanese POW camps as Ofuna, Omori and Naoetsu, Mr. Zamperini was physically tortured and subjected to constant psychological abuse. He was beaten. He was starved….Mr. Zamperini was singled out by a sadistic guard named Mutsuhiro Watanabe, known to prisoners as “the Bird,” a handle picked because it had no negative connotations that might bring down his irrational wrath. The Bird intended to make an example of the famous Olympian. He regularly whipped him across the face with a belt buckle and forced him to perform demeaning acts, among them push-ups atop pits of human excrement. The Bird’s goal was to force Mr. Zamperini to broadcast anti-American propaganda over the radio. Mr. Zamperini refused….
This all came rushing back when Mr. Zamperini first sat down with a copy of “Unbroken” last month. “As I was reading,” he says, gesturing with an arm to a peaceful vista of palm trees outside his house, “I had to look out that picture window from time to time to make sure that I wasn’t still in Japan. When I got to the end I called Laura and told her she’d put me back in prison, and she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ “
Questions for Batman:
Does Cain’s liver cancer consist of Carcinoid Tumors?
Are there any effective agents/treatments other than Octreotide?
In general terms, how effective are Octreotides in extending life?
How does Herman have so much energy?
(Wife’s energy affected severely by disease/treatment)
Zamperini Video
Unbelievable body and mind at age 94!
Genes to (not) die for.
54. Josh
ANY scheme using D+T fusion He3+D, etc produces the most ruinous energetics: meg-Electron-Volt neutrons.
You can’t engineer around these neutral particles… period.
Worst of all neutron generation at such a scale = fissile conversion breakout.
The world would be saturated with atomics even faster than now.
Only polywell fusion has any prospect at all. Naturally, it receives no funding.
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The real solution to our global energy dilemma is Andesian hydro-power. There is enough hydro-potential to make all of these daft atomic schemes irrelevant. The Amazon can power the planet. The scale is that great.
Unfortunately it will not require advanced engineering — just a return to the basics. Not sexy; not sexy at all.
Sorry, Blert:
The thing to do these days in the USA is to TEAR DOWN dams.
Green gone amuck.
From Punch Line to Heavy Hitter, Cain Relishes His Rise in the Polls
HOMEWOOD, Ala. — For Herman Cain, these are the sweet days.
His surge in the polls, supposed to last a week, is a month old and showing no signs of deflating. His tax plan was laid low in debates, but his standing keeps climbing.
In a survey of likely Iowa caucusgoers released on Saturday evening by The Des Moines Register, Mr. Cain was in a statistical tie for first with Mitt Romney, with the rest of the field well behind. The results echoed a New York Times/CBS News poll earlier in the week.
“I’m the unconventional candidate,” Mr. Cain said, grinning, as he dug into a stack of spareribs in a foam takeout container on his campaign bus on Saturday. “I have the unconventional message: Bold, solutions-oriented.”
He asked an aide for a napkin. “And bring me those baked sweet potatoes back,” he said.
“My point is,” he continued, “maybe what we’re doing is working.” He let out a hearty laugh.
Since winning a Florida straw poll on Sept. 24, his crowds have been standing room only, which Mr. Cain attributes to voters, if not pundits, overcoming hesitations about his ability to gain the nomination. “That is no doubt in peoples’ minds now, so they’re unleashing their desire to want to support me,” he said.
Donations have been flowing in, his top aide said recently, at the rate of $1 million a week, refilling the well that Mr. Cain primed with $685,000 of his own money.
Doug @ 66 said
“[Cain's] surge in the polls, supposed to last a week, is a month old and showing no signs of deflating. His tax plan was laid low in debates, but his standing keeps climbing.”
As expected, the slander campaign again Cain has begun, refer to:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/67194.html
This is actually a good thing. The MSM’s operatives would not begin this process if they did not take Cain seriously. Now the $64,000 question: Does Cain’s campaign staff have the sophistication to deal with hardball politics and a corrupt MSM?
“The report said the women signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them five-figure financial payouts to leave the association and barred them from discussing their departures.”
…and barred them from discussing their departures…
Just kidding, of course.
Allow me to tell you a foly hable
The story of brothers, Ain and Cable
Now Cable lived life serene and mellow
But Ain was an angry and fealous jello
Ain wanted everything Even Steven
Just like their parents Ad and Even
But Cable had things a bittle letter
While Ain stitched up fig leaves, he swit a netter
Soon Cable’s slood ran in the boil
Ain shuffled him off this cortal moil
Now just as the next day had begun
God cried out for his savorite fon
In the sinning of man, God was well versed
He sought out Ain, but he weared the forst
“God, why do you think that Cable’s dead?
For all you know, he’s Bill in sted
“You know that Cable’s a heavy sleeper
And what am I anyway, my kother’s beeper?”
God put Ain out of the Arden of Geden
Despite the brother’s cries and pleadin’
Now here is the moral and hear it plain
Do nothing to merit the Cark of Main
Remember your lessons from Sunday School
And always live life by the Rolled in Ghoul
Spoonerism Poem
Not sure about Cain. Yes, the travesties should not have happened, such as TARP, but they did. Who is going to pay for it? I don’t see how to come to a fair conclusion on this. Nor do I think Cain has a great sense of how to distribute tax burden well. The wealthy ought to be taxed more. There are fewer of them, they are more powerful, and so they can more easily congregate to suppress the expenses of the government.
65. blert
Agreed about tokamak fusion. Little discussed among fusion devotees is the gigantic flux of highly energetic neutrons produced, which makes the radioactive waste problem of fusion power worse than that of dirty old fission. The tritium is a potential problem, too. And also, it certainly looks as if it will never work in anything less than gigantic facilities.
I suggest you have a look at focus fusion. My physics is rusty, but it looks to me as if it’s another approach – one that might work, in a building smaller than the White House – to pulsed fusion power. As a bonus, the approach being studied by this group involves proton/B11 fusion, which is aneutronic. This means two things – very little radioactivity and high conversion efficiency, as all the energetic products are charged and so can be captured directly. Apart from the gamma-ray photon, but virtually all nuclear reactions produce those.
Naturally, this project is being starved of funding too. One might almost think that tokamak fusion is basically a pork project. Oh wait…
PS: For the pedants among us, p/B11 is technically fission.
MBM@60: “Heal divisions between the races” can be translated as “Make water flow uphill”.
Hope that helps.
Yes, we do think Herman Cain “knows his place”.
And his place is.. umm.. CEO of a corporation… the presidency…
MBM – What do I mean by“heal divisions between the races”?
I guess that would be having a black body politic and a president who does not blame their lot in life on white oppression. Scoff all you want, in the end your point of view politically will be shouted down by bigoted and fascist politicians and their race baiting constituents. When I say “race relations” I mean mostly the attitudes of black people. “Relations” have gotten worse over time because minorities derive political power from being an “oppressed” class and even Latinos have jumped on the band wagon. Not long ago someone here said essentially that I had no individual rights as a white man and should be punished for eternity because whitey European males slighted the Irish and the Italians. This I get from some white guilt trippin’ “victim” right here on BC. I don’t blame people for getting in on the scam, I do blame government and Democrats in particular for creating an atmosphere of hatred and mistrust that can only be amended by taking money and power from white, straight, conservative males. We live in a government sponsored state of hatred and bigotry. “Hispanics” also have a brown supremacist attitude and the government has a national Latino month for the love of god. What do Mexican’s, Puerto Rican’s, and Argentineans’ all have in common? That they speak Spanish and the state forces me by taxation and threat of violence to “celebrate” these racist self serving pricks? Every day I have their supremacist views stuffed in my face and I have to love it or be forced out of the workforce or out of society as a whole. So this is what 40 years of invention has led us to? I guess that is what I mean by “heal divisions between the races”. Racism is a government sponsored scam and I can hate them for what they do without giving a flip about the color of their skin.
Although I’m not that great a fan of the Hermanator, this latest sexual harassment episode is just another disgusting “high tech lynching” ( Clarence Thomas’s words) of a Black Republican. The Nanny State Slavemasters are showing what they will do when a black man wanders off the Nanny State Plantation.
All Republican Candidates for President should say to the Media “if you want to talk about this sexual harassment issue, first explain to us how did Buraq get a social security number of a deceased woman from Connecticut and exactly how did Buraq travel to Pakistan when travel to Pakistan was banned for American citizens?”
fc @ 71: Agreed about tokamak fusion.
Is polywell the same as tokamak? I think not.
I had not read on p/B11 before. Interesting, yes, promising, not so much.
Maybe some form of MHD would work where you blow a fusion flame into a small lake of water, containing and capturing most radiation, but that still doesn’t explain how to light and maintain the flame needed to enable continuous fusion.
Maybe you need a sacrificial engine that only lasts a few hours, you lock the whole thing in the middle of the boiling lake and burn it out, then light another.
Or forget the whole thing and work on a Dyson sphere, aka space-based solar.
A precondition to white guilt, which drives much of the race issue, is a strong sense of superiority, which of course must never be admitted or acknowledged. It is ok to exalt o as a symbol of social justice even though obviously unqualified. Cain is unacceptable because he is obviously qualified.
If Cain gets the nomination the Left will pillory him for his race.
I can not wait until Cain stares into the camera after such racist slurs, and asks blacks if that is the party they really want to identify with.
Fletcher Christian @ 71 said:
“Little discussed among fusion devotees is the gigantic flux of highly energetic neutrons produced, which makes the radioactive waste problem of fusion power worse than that of dirty old fission. The tritium is a potential problem, too. And also, it certainly looks as if it will never work in anything less than gigantic facilities.”
The fast neutron problem is well known. In fact, fast neutrons are a central issue in terms of a practical power plant design. Not only are the fast neutrons activating the surrounding structure but also causes material problems like embrittlement. Supposedly neutron induced material degradation is a big problem with storing nuclear weapons. Also if you talk to guys who work with nuclear weapons, their big issue is exposure to tritium which can cause thyroid cancer. Guys who disassemble old nuclear weapons tend to die from thyroid cancer. After tritium, nuclear weapon technicians are really focused on the high explosive (HE) lenses used for compression of the plutonium pits. If someone accidentally drops some HE on the floor, that will cause much discussion and pointed comments for many weeks afterwards. It so happens that nuclear weapon’s HE is very stable but it’s still bad form to drop it on the floor.
Also said:
“For the pedants among us, p/B11 is technically fission.”
The ignition temperature for p/B11 is really high. Controlled nuclear fusion with deuterium-tritium is trivial by comparison (practical power generation with deuterium-tritium might be technically infeasible). I’d like to see someone do a weapon’s test based upon p/B11 just to demonstrate feasibility of the fuel cycle and get solid numbers on cross section, etc. IHMO, p/B11 might(?) be the best fuel cycle for interstellar propulsion, assuming nuclear ignition is technically feasible (huge assumption).