Discourses

A page from the past: The Hindenburg Disaster

SURVIVING THE HINDENBURG DISASTER: THE AMAZING ESCAPE OF WERNER FRANZ (h/t to Dean for link)

  

 

"Werner Franz was stocking a kitchen cupboard aboard the airship Hindenburg when he heard an ominous thud.

The airship shuddered violently, pitching all the crockery to the floor. This was followed by a deafening roar as a vast quantity of hydrogen exploded into flames.

Franz looked up and was appalled by what he saw. A massive ball of fire was rushing towards him at high speed. Within seconds, he would be engulfed by the flames.

It was Thursday May 6, 1937, and the giant Zeppelin airship was in the process of docking at its mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The flight from Frankfurt had taken longer than usual due to the strong headwinds in the mid-Atlantic...."

 

 

 

 

Air travel is much safer these days, no matter what some folks may say (just pray HARD when you board, IMO)....

Surprisingly, there's still so much hypothesizing over the disaster along with your usual conspiracy theories.

Just glad we don't need ta ride on these ancient machines that ignite all too easily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster

A most unlikely candidate

"Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.": the stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moses Ezekiel

 

"I hope you will be an artist, as it seems to me you are cut out for one. But, whatever you do, try to prove to the world that if we did not succeed in our struggle, we are worthy of success, and do earn a reputation in whatever profession you undertake," Robert E. Lee speaking to a young Moses Ezekiel.

 

Virginia Mourning Her Dead

 

Eve Hearing the Voice

 

The first Jewish cadet at the Virginia Military Institute who after the War Between the States became a sculptor of much renown, winning him the patronage of many a king.

President Warren Harding had this to say of him: "a great Virginian, a great artist, a great American, and a great citizen of world fame."

 

Related links:

Moses Ezekiel - A Forgotten Man

More on Ezekiel

Memorial Day 2012

On Sino-American relations

Dan Drezner talks 'bout the Middle Kingdom & its afflictions.

 

http://danieldrezner.com/bio/

Focusing on the wrong threat

Magick formula?

Are we focusing on the wrong nuclear threat?

Happiness (re)defined

Yours truly (age 13 - 15): "Happiness is having a girlfriend."

 

Yours truly (aged 16): "Happiness is realizing one's fullest potentials - be it the limits of physique, the realm of intellectual prowess or in the spiritual aspect."

 

Yours truly (@ age 17): "Happiness is having a desirable girl sit on yer face. (Woof!)"

 

Yours truly (age 13 - 17, 18 - 28): "I ain't happy.... (sob)"

 

Yours truly (sometime ago): "Happiness is having that one special lady friend...."

 

Yours truly (lately): "Happiness is realizing one's fullest potentials - attracting & amassing great material wealth in said process an additional bonus."

 

Yours truly (now): "Happiness is having that voluptuous lady friend sit on yer face. (Oink!)"

 

Gawd-vicious cycle of pain. Methinks I better find that special woman ASAP.

So you guys, what is your concept of fulfillment in life?

 

related -- On Happiness

Blast from the past

 

R.I.P. dude. You sure brought tons of joy to lotsa folks.

New company model for the 2nd. decade of the 21st. c.?

 

http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/

http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

 

Is this the ideal model for corporations in the 21st. c.? Read the handbook (pdf indicated above
), decide for yourself. (h/t to Dean for his post on this.)

Wait till the war really comes home

(h/t to fabmaximus for link to graph)

 

"What will have happen, for example, to our demobilized young veterans, after they are downsized by the milcrats in the Pentagon to make budget room for cold-war inspired turkeys like the $500 billion F-35 fighter program?  Many of these soldiers and marines joined the all-volunteer professional military, because they needed a job — this is their profession.  What skills can be transferred to the private sector?  Guarding gated communities or serving in private armies owned by the super rich banksters, speculators, and globalization titans who helped so much to reduce their job prospects to begin with? What does this dilemma tell us about the wisdom of maintaining a large professional all-volunteer military in a democratic republic?

History has seen this peculiar kind of unemployment affliction before — for example, the unemployed hoplites in ancient Greece, selling their killing services to the highest bidder, or the unemployed German soldiers after World War I donning the brownshirts — and the results are never pretty."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_C._Spinney

The enemy within

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Proverbs 29:18

 

 

"By far, the greatest threats to the United States right now are internal ones.... They don't come from terrorists. They come from political obstructionists and know-nothings who are blocking needed economic and political reforms, whether fixing a health-care system that poses a debt threat many times greater than the immense U.S. budget deficit or tackling the growing inequality in American society or overhauling the United States' money-corrupted, dysfunctional political process.

 

If America stopped searching for goblins under the bed, it might actually be able to reset its economic priorities and start investing in the things that would make the country stronger, more prosperous, and safer again, from infrastructure to energy security to better schools. What's more, Americans might find that a foreign policy that identified real risks but kept them in perspective and was more about deepening ties, finding common ground, and avoiding unnecessary conflict would work better than the tired us vs. them formulations of the recent past."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rothkopf

h/t to Adam Elkus