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29 October 2016

Obituary: David Hahn a.k.a. The Radioactive Boy Scout, the King of Großer Unfug




Click images, I dunno what happens.

From its inception -- maybe its very first post -- Vleeptron (the old V without the Z) pledged not to junk up this amazing blog with Obituaries.

Writing obits was my first job on newspapers, I wrote so many obits I acquired the ability to know in advance who was soon going to croak. My late mom read the obits every morning to verify that hers was not on the obit page.

Now that I have reached superannuation, I feel the best way to deal with Death is to ignore it, to deny it. I know for a fact (Freud backs me up on this) that I will never die. Death is something that exclusively happens to Other People.

But Agence-Vleeptron Presse cannot always ignore the passing, from This World to The Next, of remarkable human beings from Planet Earth.

We are certain Aliens from Outer Space have been visiting Earth as galactic tourists because of human activities like those of David Hahn, best known as The Radioactive Boy Scout. (For you Scouts out there, he indeed eventually attained the highest Boy Scout rank, he was an Eagle Scout.)

If you think I'm making fun of this celebrated world-class goofball, I am not. Since learning about his recent passing via my e-list (the Yahoogroup Ionizing Radiation Aficionadi), I've been not only merely sad, but really, most sincerely sad!


None of us Basement & Garage amateur radiation scientists ever thought the Radioactive Boy Scout would live to Old Age -- that ship had sailed by David's 17th birthday -- but he died at age 39, and that's as harsh a blow to our weary grey world as the young death of Glenn Gould.

One of Kant's great contributions to philosophy was the Categorical Imperative. The test of any contemplated act, he said, was
 


What if everybody did what you're thinking of doing?
 

(Kant died of syphilis, I think, but maybe he caught it from a toilet seat.)

(CORRECTION: Kant didn't die of syphilis. 
Wikipedia: Nietzsche's mental illness was originally diagnosed as tertiary syphilis. )
 
If all humans learned and obeyed lifelong the Categorical Imperative, this world would be so grey and dull and boring and well-behaved a planet.

A world with no Großer Unfug, never, nowhere. All human beings have at last become Thoughtful. Nobody gets RUNS WITH SCISSORS or POOR IMPULSE CONTROL on his elementary school report card.

You want to live in Categorical Imperative World? On Categorical Imperative World, Philippe Petit would NEVER have strung a tightrope between the roofs of the World Trade Center in the dark of night, and when morning came, walked back and forth and back again between the 110-story buildings.

(Without a net.)

Down below on a business weekday morn, thousands of ordinary human New Yorkers gawked up in astonishment. It was Lower Manhattan Gridlock for hours down there. At the time, the World Trade Towers were the tallest buildings on Planet Earth.

Earth MUST encourage galactic Alien tourism by recognizing and rewarding and honoring goofballs like this.
 

Above, David Hahn's police mugshot. The consensus among us Ionizing Radiation Aficionadi is those ghastly pustules all over his face ain't teen boy bad acne.

Also above, Bill (or Ted, I get them mixed up) play Twister with Death (because these teenage losers can't play chess). They beat Death at Twister over and over, and thus escape the Grim Reaper's scythe.

Oh, there is a tiny bit of unconfirmed gossip that David died of drug abuse.

That's total bullshit. Eagle Scouts don't do drugs. One of my closest longtime friends is an Eagle Scout. A glass of fine wine de temps en temps, a hearty craft beer now and then. (Starting at Lawful Drinking Age, which in our Happy College Youth was 18.)

But No Drugs. He took the Eagle Scout Oath. David Hahn died of unnatural causes.


==============
   
David Hahn 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Charles Hahn
Born     October 30, 1976
Commerce Township, MI
Died     September 27, 2016 (aged 39)[1]
Shelby Township, MI
Nationality     American
Education     Macomb Community College
Known for     Attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard at the age of 17

David Charles Hahn (born October 30, 1976, died September 27, 2016), also called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout", was an American who attempted to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor in 1994, at age 17. A Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan. While his reactor never reached critical mass, Hahn attracted the attention of local police when he was stopped on another matter and they found material in his vehicle that troubled them and he warned that it was radioactive.

His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was dismantled.[2]

While the incident was not widely publicized initially, it became better known following a 1998 Harper's [magazine] article by journalist Ken Silverstein. Hahn was also the subject of Silverstein's 2004 book, The Radioactive Boy Scout.[2]

Creation of the reactor

Hahn was a Boy Scout who was fascinated by chemistry and spent years conducting amateur chemistry experiments, which sometimes resulted in small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. He later received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and became fascinated with the idea of creating a breeder reactor in his home. Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (a neutron moderator) from gunsights. His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.[3][4]

Hahn posed as an adult scientist or high school teacher to gain the trust of many professionals in letters, despite the presence of misspellings and obvious errors in his letters to them. Hahn ultimately hoped to create a breeder reactor, using low-level isotopes to transform samples of thorium and uranium into fissionable isotopes.[5]

Although his homemade reactor never came anywhere near reaching critical mass, it ended up emitting dangerous levels of radiation, likely well over 1,000 times normal background radiation. Alarmed, Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but a chance encounter with police led to the discovery of his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency Response involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On June 26, 1995 the United States Environmental Protection Agency, having designated Hahn's mother's property a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. However, his mother, fearful that she would lose her house if the full extent of the radiation were known, collected the majority of the radioactive material and threw it away in the conventional garbage, which officials did not know.

Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.[3]
 

Career 

Hahn became depressed after the scandal, a problem exacerbated by the breakup with his girlfriend and the death by suicide of his mother in early 1996.[2]:189 While he did graduate from high school, he lacked any direction or plans thereafter. His father and stepmother first encouraged him to attend Macomb Community College. He enrolled in a metallurgy program there but frequently skipped classes.

[2]:190 He was then encouraged to join the military, so he enlisted in the Navy, assigned to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise as an undesignated seaman.[3] After a four-year tour, he achieved interior communications specialist with a rank of petty officer, third class.[2]:196

[VLEEPTRON NOTE: In the Navy, such a rank and enlisted advancement is Not Chopped Liver. Hahn was apparently an exemplary sailor, a credit to America.]

Hahn had hoped to pursue a nuclear specialist career.[citation needed] EPA scientists believe that Hahn's life expectancy may have been greatly shortened by his exposure to radioactivity, particularly since he spent large amounts of time in the small, enclosed shed with large amounts of radioactive material and only minimal safety precautions, but he refused their recommendation that he be examined at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station.[3]

After his time on the USS Enterprise, Hahn enlisted in the Marines and was stationed in Japan. After a few years, he was honorably discharged on medical grounds and returned to Michigan. He was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with bipolar disorder, and took medication for both conditions. [6]

In culture

The incident received scant media attention at the time, but was widely disseminated after writer Ken Silverstein published an article about the incident in Harper's Magazine in 1998.[3] In 2004 he expanded it into a book, The Radioactive Boy Scout, which was optioned for a feature film in 2016.[7]

In 1999 University of Chicago physics majors Justin Kasper and Fred Niell, as part of a scavenger hunt that had as one of its items, "a breeder reactor built in a shed", successfully built a similar nuclear reactor which produced trace amounts of plutonium and uranium.[8]

In the CSI: NY episode "Page Turner" the character Lawrence Wagner is based on David Hahn.[9]

A television documentary, The Nuclear Boyscout, aired on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 2003. In it, Hahn reenacted some of his methods for the camera. Though planned to air on the Discovery Channel, the program has not yet been broadcast in the United States.[citation needed]

Simon Le Bon of the English rock band Duran Duran noted in a 2000 performance on VH1 Storytellers that the lyrics to the band's song "Playing With Uranium" are in reference to a "schoolboy" who "built a nuclear reactor in his garden shed" years earlier. Though Le Bon described the subject as "15 years old", the song is most likely a reference to David Hahn's endeavor.[10]

Hahn's experiments inspired others to attempt similar feats, particularly Taylor Wilson, who at age 14 became the youngest person to produce nuclear fusion.[11]
 

Later life

On August 1, 2007, Hahn was arrested in Clinton Township, Michigan, for larceny, in relation to a matter involving a number of smoke detectors, allegedly removed from the halls of his apartment building.[12][13][14] His intention was to obtain americium from them. In his mug shot, his face is covered with sores which investigators believe are from exposure to radioactive materials.[15] During a Circuit Court hearing, Hahn pleaded guilty to attempted larceny of a building. The court’s online docket said prosecutors recommended that he be sentenced to time served and enter an inpatient treatment facility. Under terms of the plea, the original charge of larceny of a building would be dismissed at sentencing, scheduled for October 4.[16] He was sentenced to 90 days in jail for attempted larceny. Court records stated that his sentence would be delayed by six months while Hahn underwent medical treatment in the psychiatric unit of Macomb County Jail.[17][18]

Hahn died on September 27, 2016, at the age of 39. At the time, he was a resident of Shelby Township, Michigan.[1]
 

Further reading

    Ghiorso, Albert. Book review of The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor.[19] August 9, 2004, issue of Chemical and Engineering News (pp. 36–37). An analysis is given of some of Hahn's work by Ghiorso, who has been involved in the discovery of about a dozen transuranium elements.

References

"David Charles Hahn". Tributes.com. Tributes, Inc. 26 September 2016. Retrieved 4 Oct 2016.
Silverstein, Ken (2004). The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor. Villard. ISBN 0812966600.
Silverstein, Ken (November 1998). "The Radioactive Boy Scout". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved September 10, 2014.
Rauschenberger, Tim (2004-03-16). "The Nuclear Merit Badge". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
Kean, Sam (2010). The Disappearing Spoon. Little, Brown and Co.
Collins, Laura (13 November 2013). "Radioactive Boy Scout' who nearly blew up Detroit is still at it".
Daily Mail News. Associated Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
Pressburg, Matt (2016-09-28). "'Radioactive Boy Scout' Movie About Real Teen Nuke Builder in the Works". The Wrap. Retrieved 2016-10-06.
Olkon, Sara (2011-05-01). "Ready, set ... Scav Hunt!". Uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
Gail, Nancy. "TV Review: CSI: NY, 'Page Turner'". Blog Critics. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"Duran Duran". VH1 Storytellers. VH1.
"The Boy Who Played With Fusion". Popular Science. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
Collins, Laura (2013-11-13). "Uh-oh! 'Radioactive Boy Scout' who built a nuclear reactor in his Detroit shed sparking evacuation of 40,000 now wants to invent a lightbulb that lasts 100 years". The Daily Mail. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
Taylor, Adam (2011-08-02). "The Weird Story Of The Swedish Man Who Tried To Build A Nuclear Reactor In His Kitchen". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
"Man dubbed 'Radioactive Boy Scout' pleads guilty". Detroit Free Press. Web.archive.org. 2007-08-27. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
"'Radioactive Boy Scout' Charged in Smoke Detector Theft". Fox News. August 4, 2007. Retrieved November 28, 2007.
"Man dubbed 'Radioactive Boy Scout' pleads guilty". Detroit Free Press. Associated Press. August 27, 2007. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
Collins, Laura (November 14, 2013). "Radioactive Boy Lives!". Daily Mail. London. Retrieved October 27, 2014.
"'Radioactive Boy Scout' Sentenced to 90 Days for Stealing Smoke Detectors". Fox News. October 4, 2007. Retrieved November 28, 2007.

"Book Review of 'The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor'". Chemical and Engineering News. Retrieved June 21, 2011.

VOLCANOS!!! and PIRATES!!! in one jumpin hot place at the Same Time!

VleeptronZ's masthead promises, among other things, VOLCANOS!!! and PIRATES!!!

VleeptronZ always keeps its promises.

Have you been to Iceland? I have several times. Most of the time spent in Reykjavik, but a metric shitload of active, sometimes erupting volcanos are just a taxi-ride south of Reykjavik.

Or hire a car and drive to see the old, original Althing -- the world's oldest continuously running democratic parliament, which is located on a great rift where the North American tectonic plate smashes into the European tectonic plate (a verrrry slow smash, but superamazing to see and walk down).

I've ALMOST driven to where Njal's enemies burned down his house with his whole family in it, I guess around 1000 A.D., not long after Christian priests and Pagan priests held a public demonstration of the power of each team's god or gods. The Christian priests won fair and square, the island converted to Christianity.

I love this place. I got to see it again after this election.

Reykjavik itself is no tiny North Atlantic backwater, it's a jumpin heavy-drinking party-all-night Fun City. Great loud music clubs.

At restaurants, tourists are not forced to eat the whale steak, or the puffin appetizer.

In the story below, it appears the citizens of Iceland are about to overwhelmingly elect ... uhhh ... mostly Viking nihilists and poets. Watch Vleeptron for further developments.

 =============================================

The Daily Beast

Friday 28 October 2016

Wikipedia:

In a 2015 interview, Editor-in-Chief John Avlon described The Beast's editorial approach: "We seek out scoops, scandals and stories about secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots and hypocrites".[1] 

Iceland’s Pirate Party Loves Hackers, Drugs & Revolution

Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party -- led by a “poetician” who worships Julian Assange -- looks set to win the country’s national election.
The currency would be Bitcoin. Edward Snowden would have a passport. Drugs would be legal, synth-pop plentiful, and the national leadership would have Julian Assange’s number on speed-dial, assuming his line hasn’t been disconnected by Ecuador. They’ve even got their free own island. (Eat your heart out, Peter Thiel.)

Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party, which is about as close to a collective of futurist Fourierists as now exists in contemporary politics, is expected to come in first in tomorrow’s national election, winning between 18 and 20 seats in parliament. While that is not an outright majority, it does give the Pirates a good chance to form a coalition government, which it maintains it will not do with either of Iceland’s two ruling parties, the mildly conservative Independence Party, and the more centrist Progressive Party, whose last chairman and prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned last April after the Panama Papers disclosed that he and his rich wife kept secret assets in the British Virgin Islands. A mass protest movement against him ensued, and he was gone. Rather, the Pirates vow to align with smaller, more radical outcroppings, such as the Left-Greens, which hew closer to their marauding agenda.

And what is that, exactly?

Pirate leader and prospective premier or parliamentary speaker Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a self-described “poetician,” given her mutual fondness for versification and vote-gathering. Currently a 49 year-old MP in Icelandic parliament, she became famous in 2010 when she helped WikiLeaks -- an organization committed to total transparency now trying to elect a millionaire who won’t publish his tax returns -- release scandalous video footage from inside a U.S. Apache helicopter as it fired on and killed a Reuters journalist, his driver and assistant, and other civilians in Baghdad in 2007. The pilot mistook his quarry for armed insurgents, and the camera equipment for an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] launcher, according to the U.S. military. The video was titled “Collateral Murder.”
Jónsdóttir’s core philosophy is not difficult to discern. Her favorite word is “revolution.” She believes primarily in the Internet and secondarily in corporeal reality. She has cited, for instance, as her inspirational manifesto a 1996 essay, which states, as she is wont to quote from it: 

“Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

But that was in the past. In the future, and on behalf of it, Jónsdóttir may well have sovereignty to lead not avatars but real people in what she has called “fundamental system change”. Systems such as capitalism, neoliberalism and Unix are evidently integral to the Pirate ideology. “We do not define ourselves as left or right but rather as a party that focuses on the systems,” Jónsdóttir has said. “In other words, we consider ourselves hackers -- so to speak -- of our current outdated systems of government.”

The preferred system is really no system at all, for the Pirates would have hacker-citizens lead themselves. Everyone will be able to introduce his own legislation, under the new non-system, and to determine whether or not it qualifies as worthy of being non-systemic law by way of national referenda. Such crowd-sourced “direct democracy” is meant to apply to everything from arcane rules pertaining to Iceland’s fishing and tourism industries (the main drivers of its economy) as well as to weightier geopolitical considerations such as climate change and the country’s full accession to the European Union, which other Western democracies appear more eager to exit, also by way of referenda, than to enter.

Does the Pirate Party have any major legislation of its own on offer at the moment? No, not really, because, according to Fortune magazine, “the official party stance on some of Iceland’s biggest political questions is unclear, in part, because its members believe in deferring to the wishes of voters.”

Under normal political circumstances, parties tend to decipher that in advance of coming to power. No one can fairly claim, however, that the Pirates do not have a handle on the vagaries of the outmoded systems they are decidedly ranged again. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session -- surely the Pirate’s answer to Britain’s Prime Minister’s Questions -- a Pirate MP, Ásta Guðrún Helgadóttir, was asked about intellectual property laws, the current terms of which are considered too restrictive. Helgadóttir admitted that the situation was “complicated” and further explained: “But the problem is that we are bound by treaties and respecting those treaties is actually necessary to be part of stuff like, the UN and stuff. No country is an island in a globalized world, not even Iceland which is really an Island.”

- 30 -

25 October 2016

this is going out to Pat from Confederatio Helvetica




TURN AUDIO TO 11
 FULL SCREEN MODE
SMOKE THIS
it's from des biquers Quebecoises 

Trump opened a campaign rally with a Neil Young song ("Keep on Rockin in the Free World"), and Neil immediately told Yankee Pervert Loser Psycho Klown to stop using his songs for his sick violent fascist rallies.

Neil and Crazy Horse will take the Zeta Beam to Akira Kurasawa Zeta Beam Drome in Ciudad Vleeptron to play at Club Drek Saturday night. Don't miss it. Most of the band are alive, but Vleeptron and Club Drek do not discriminate against the dead. 

In fact Club Drek's favorite act is The Dead! Jerry et al are playing CD next Bangerday.

23 October 2016

translation needed from YouTube song comment

最高です
 
Tell me what the guy said, I'll tell you what song he said it about.
 
 

20 October 2016

Crummy Old Wine Dept.: Trump's Slum of Gold in Vegas / I do not like you in my shirt / I do not like you up my skirt / i do not like you near my rump

30 April 2011

Trump's Slum of Gold in Vegas

Click image to enlarge.

The Los Angeles Times
California USA daily broadsheet
Saturday 30 April 2011

 

Trump's tower 
a sore spot 
on Vegas Strip

The much-ballyhooed project opened in 2008 during the economic meltdown, and today sits amid a collection of vacant lots and silent cranes. Some might call it a metaphor.

by Michael J. Mishak, Los Angeles Times
 

Reporting from Las Vegas -- Speaking to Republican activists here, Donald Trump touted something other than his potential presidential bid and hit reality television show: Trump International Hotel and Tower, a gleaming luxury high-rise and his sole Las Vegas venture.

"It's one of the greatest signs of all time," Trump said Thursday of the building's marquee, rising 64 stories above Las Vegas Boulevard. "You drive down that Strip, what do you see?"

"Trump!" the crowd shouted in unison.

"We got it built, it's doing great and we're very proud of it," the real estate mogul said, in remarks that were otherwise laced with profanity and attacks on President Obama.

But the reality of Las Vegas' tallest residential building — which Trump described as "very, very successful" — is different from the hype.

Conceived as a high-end hotel-condominium development in Las Vegas' go-go years, the project opened in 2008 amid the economic meltdown. Most investors pulled out and demanded their deposits, leaving Trump and his partners holding the bag.

The casino-free building, wrapped in 24-karat-gold-infused glass, now rests in the boneyard of the Las Vegas Strip, a collection of vacant lots, barren scaffolding and silent cranes left over from abandoned resort projects.

These days, the 645 foot (197 meters) Trump tower might be a metaphor for his nascent campaign: lots of splash, little in the way of substance.
 

As Trump touts his own business acumen, his Las Vegas hotel makes it clear that he fell prey to the speculative fever that gripped the nation — and particularly wounded Nevada, a state that will play a key role in determining the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Trump's partners here can only grin through the pain of their investment in the U$500,000,000 project. To date, the group has sold about a quarter of the building's 1,282 units. 


They're also fighting a lawsuit brought by investors who allege they were defrauded by Trump's sales team. Sales representatives, the suit says, promised high-yield returns on units that they argued could fetch as much as $600 per night as part of the property's rental pool.

This week, Orbitz.com listed midweek nightly rates at $111.75.


Phil Ruffin, Trump's key partner, said the project was operating as a hotel, at a profit, as partners waited for the real estate market to rebound.

The condo failure, said Ruffin, who is also the owner of the Treasure Island resort, "was never Donald's fault ... It was the fault of the economy itself."

Jack Wishna, a minority partner in the Trump tower, still feels the sting. His office boasts both a painting of the project and a view of the building itself. There's a picture of him with Trump at the opening; both men are wearing gold ties. His best spin was that the building, at the very least, had changed the city's skyline.

"If things had went along and we did everything a year earlier, we would have made U$1,100,000,000 ," he said. "Now, it's an annuity for me, Donald and Phil. We'll see profits in the next decade."

Housing and economic analysts aren't so sure.

During the boom years, developers saturated the Las Vegas landscape with luxury condos. According to SalesTraq, a local real estate research firm, more than 4,100 units in 10 high-rise projects are empty, waiting for buyers. That doesn't include thousands of more traditional condos.

"We have practically an infinite supply," said Larry Murphy, the firm's president.

Bruce Hiatt, a broker with Luxury Realty Group, said prices in the luxury condo market were 60% to 70% down from their peak. Trump's units were initially priced to start at $600,000 — and ascend to $6,000,000 . This week, a studio could be had for about $250,000, Hiatt said.

In 2005, it was a much different story. Trump promised his tower would be "the crown jewel of the Las Vegas Strip." He promoted the project on "The Apprentice," prompting would-be investors to crash the sales center's phone lines the next morning. Wishna said 863 apartments were reserved in one day.

While breaking ground, Trump promised a second tower to meet demand — at a 35% price increase. Later, Trump devoted an entire episode of his TV show to the building. His biggest obstacle seemed to be getting approval from aviation regulators concerned that the building's gold reflective glass could distract pilots.

Trump celebrated the opening of the first, and ultimately only, tower in April 2008, just weeks after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns, a prelude to the Wall Street meltdown.

This week, Ruffin surveyed the damage, saying the abandoned projects surrounding the Trump tower resembled a war zone. "It looks like Baghdad," he said. "It looks horrible."

Still, he praised Trump and said he'd support him for president. "He's not just a showman," Ruffin said. "He's very, very brilliant."

michael.mishak@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

- 30 -

9 Comments:

Blogger Ryszard Wasilewski said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Saturday, 30 April, 2011  
Blogger Ryszard Wasilewski said...
Too bad he only built one.
Perhaps, when he's president, he can relocate from DC to the Tower. There's a lot of vast empty hallways in there, no doubt. He should untangle his golden hair and let it streak behind him as he runs screaming through all that space.
Saturday, 30 April, 2011  
Blogger Vleeptron Dude said...
For reasons I can't begin to fathom, Trump was in the audience at Saturday night's White House Correspondence Association Dinner in Washington DC, broadcast (and almost certainly archived) by C-SPAN. This annual event is notoriously funny and raucous.

Obama cut him 2 or 3 new assholes with some very funny, acidic jokes about the birther crap.

And Trump seemed to be getting more and more uncomfortable and more and more pissed off.

Birthers -- or, as some now call them, AfterBirthers -- have been wondering why Obama waited so long to produce his "long form" birth certificate.

There's a good answer. He waited till about 3 days before the White House Correspondents Dinner, so he could really stick it to Trump, Fox News, and all the birthers.
Sunday, 01 May, 2011  
Anonymous Olivia said...
Such a great article it was the project opened in 2008 amid the economic meltdown. Most investors pulled out and demanded their deposits, leaving Trump and his partners holding the bag.Indeed marvelous structure made. Thanks a lot for sharing
Tuesday, 27 December, 2011  
Blogger Vleeptron Dude said...
Hiya Olivia, glad you liked the story.

There is a small horde of American voters who still think Donald Trump is America's Great Political Hope, and think he would do us all a wonderful favor by making a 3rd-party independent run for the White House.

Here's my big campaign poster for Trump For President:

http://vleeptronz.blogspot.com/2011/04/donald-trump-america-needs-this-clown.html

Trump got rich by inheriting his father's real estate wealth. He's bankrupted 2 casinos -- something my probability professor said was a mathematical impossibility. In popular culture, he's famous for his TV show where he tells people: You're fired!

Pardon my French, but he's really a worthless piece of shit, and Americans should be ashamed that we've ever taken him in the least seriously as a political leader.
Tuesday, 27 December, 2011  
Anonymous Stacey said...
Well discussed. I really appreciate the info because I never know what happened by that time. It's good to know when reading an article and gain a lot of info. about the topic. :D
Monday, 02 January, 2012  
Anonymous Michelle said...
I think it is one of the place I would love to visit. I've never been there in Vegas before and it would be really my great pleasure if given a chance to visit there. :D
Thursday, 16 February, 2012  
Blogger Vleeptron Dude said...
Hiya Michelle --

Uhhhh, I think you and I have different Zodiac signs. I've never been to Las Vegas and I absolutely do not want to go there, ever. The place gives me the creeps.

When I'd drive across the USA, I used to like to break up my trip in Winemucca, Nevada, and play a little blackjack. And I sort of got good hits from Reno.

But Las Vegas? I guess it's the Puritan in my personality, but I can't get with a city whose economy is based on gambling and prostitution.
Thursday, 16 February, 2012  
Anonymous Sharron said...
Hey, there is a lot of useful info above!
Saturday, 01 September, 2012  

for Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) / a child who was born on the Sabbath day

Not long ago, Alan Mathison Turing received a posthumous Royal Pardon for his conviction under The Blackmailers' Charter -- the UK's former laws criminalizing homosexual acts. He was sentenced to chemical castration, grew breasts, and died from a bite of an apple dipped in cyanide.

================================





Press release

Minister unveils plans to pardon thousands under ‘Turing’s Law’


Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now abolished sexual offences will be posthumously pardoned, Justice Minister Sam Gyimah announced.

The change will see those convicted for consensual same-sex relationships before the change in the law formally pardoned.

Minister Gyimah said the government would seek to implement the change through an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill.

Anyone living who has been convicted of these now abolished offences can already apply through the Home Office to have their names cleared through the disregard process. This removes any mention of an offence from criminal record checks.

In an important step, the government also announced today (20 October 2016) it will introduce a new statutory pardon for the living in cases where offences have been successfully deleted through the disregard process.

Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said:
It is hugely important that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offences who would be innocent of any crime today.

Through pardons and the existing disregard process we will meet our manifesto commitment to put right these wrongs.
Today’s announcement will meet a government commitment to build on the case of Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing, who committed suicide following his conviction for gross indecency and was posthumously pardoned by Her Majesty the Queen in 2013.

Supporting Lord Sharkey’s amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 through the Policing and Crime Bill would be the quickest way to deliver this commitment.

The government will not support a separate Private Members’ Bill on the subject, brought forward by John Nicolson MP and set to be debated in Parliament on Friday 21 October 2016. Mr Nicolson’s Bill proposes a blanket pardon for the living without the need to go through the disregard process. 

However this could lead, in some cases, to people claiming to be cleared of offences that are still crimes – including sex with a minor and non-consensual sexual activity.

For example, under the disregard process, the Home Office has rejected several applications where the activity was non-consensual and others where the other party was under 16-years-old. These offences were captured under offences such as ‘gross indecency’ at the time but are still crimes today.

Mr Gyimah said:
I understand and support the intentions behind Mr Nicolson’s Bill, however I worry that he has not fully thought through the consequences. A blanket pardon, without the detailed investigations carried out by the Home Office under the disregard process, could see people guilty of an offence which is still a crime today claiming to be pardoned.
This would cause an extraordinary and unnecessary amount of distress to victims and for this reason the government cannot support the Private Member’s Bill. Our way forward will be both faster and fairer.

Notes

An applicant is only eligible for a ‘disregard’ if the Secretary of State decides that it appears that the other person involved in the conduct which constituted the offence consented to it and was aged 16 or over at the time, and that the conduct would not now constitute the offence of sexual activity in a public lavatory. In other words, the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the conduct is no longer criminal.

19 October 2016

bad touch!

Click Cat in Hat, maybe gets bigger.

Only one thing can save the United States of America now. 

On Tuesday, November 8

as is the tradition of Chicago, tens of thousands of dead people must rise from the grave and vote Democratic.

Vote Early! Vote Often!

EXTRA CREDIT: Suddenly you need a babysitter for your daughters and nieces. Only Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are available. Which would you call? Explain your answer.

18 October 2016

Annals of Großer Unfug: early terror outrages by Black Jockey Liberation Army / Fools, when will you learn that nobody is safe from the Black Jockey Liberation Army? / the Young Caucasians strike again, to Zappa theme song / i didn't steal the lawn jockeys but i'll pay the fine




Click, doesn't get bigger, but gets more offensive


"Uncle Remus"
by Frank Zappa

 

Whoa, are we moving too slow
Have you seen us, Uncle Remus
We look pretty sharp in these clothes (yes we do)
Unless we get sprayed with a hose
It ain't bad in the day
If they squirt it
Your way
Except in the winter when it's froze
And it's hard if it hits
On your nose (on your nose)

Just keep your nose to the grindstone they say
Will that redeem us, Uncle Reemus
I can't wait til my fro is full grown
I'll just throw away my du-rag at home
I'll take a drive to Beverly Hills just before dawn
And knock the little jockeys off the rich people's lawn
And before they get up I'll be gone, I'll be gone
Before they get up I'll be knocking the jockeys off the lawn
Down in the dew


 =================

The Hartford (Connecticut USA) Courant
daily broadsheet


A-VP NOTE:
I'm not sure when The Courant was founded, but they recently apologized in an editorial for running SLAVES FOR SALE ads. 

9 July 2000

by MARK SPENCER, Courant Staff Writer
 

The BJLA

During the long, hot summer of 1979, the BJLA terrorized towns from the Farmington Valley to east of the Connecticut River.

Some residents would peek through their drapes at night, fearful of what menace lay hidden in the shadows.

Yes, the Black Jockey Liberation Army was a force to be reckoned with.

The clandestine group's target was those lawn ornaments of an earlier time -- now considered by most as monuments to racism -- that showed a black man dressed as a jockey, holding a lantern with outstretched arm.

The BJLA would nab one of the lawn ornaments under cover of darkness and leave behind a note, some saying,

"For 'tis the goal of our army to wipe clean the face of the earth and remove all forms of bigotry."

Another note, left later in the campaign, read:

"Fools, when will you learn that nobody is safe from the Black Jockey Liberation Army [provisional wing]? The tar and feather gang strikes again."

More than 15 jockey statues were eventually stolen in West Hartford, Avon, Simsbury, Burlington, Windsor Locks and Manchester. [all towns near Hartford.]

"It was an odd one,'' said Anthony Duffy, a West Hartford detective lieutenant who retired eight years ago. "Some people got really uptight about it and painted their statues white.''

Scott O'Mara, who retired as a master sergeant from the state police in 1995, recalled telling state troopers about the incidents during roll call one day.

"The guys were like, 'Yeah, sarge, we'll get right on it. We'll set up a road block and catch these desperadoes,' " O'Mara said.

Some of the statues were found in the Simsbury dump. The police thought they got a break when a worker noticed several of them in a Windsor Locks home where he was doing repairs. The police raided the place and a man eventually was fined $270 after pleading no contest to third-degree larceny.



[NOTE: "no contest" is a criminal court plea which doesn't admit guilt, but accepts punishment -- usually for nickle-and-dime stuff.]
 

But the case was not closed. The BJLA contacted The Courant and said the Windsor Locks man was not associated with the group. The BJLA apparently consisted of young Caucasians, and the statues "kind of rub us the wrong way," the man said.

Two BJLA freedom fighters later visited The Courant. They explained to a reporter that they would cease their activities because "It's really getting heavy with the cops." They insisted they were serious about their cause and knew there were risks, which were beginning to take a toll.

"We flipped when we found out [the Black Jockey lawn statues] were worth $300 to $900," one of them said.
 

- 30 -


15 October 2016

Long Asian Wars Without End, Amen / "So shines a good deed in a weary world." / should you Perceive one face that you loved heretofore, It is a spook. None wears the face you knew. Great death has made all his for evermore.

Click to enlarge chestful of military medals

As regular Vleeptron readers know or suspect,
Vleeptron Dude was once a conscripted Army soldier during a Big War. I served honorably for two years (the draftee's absolute minimum), got some medals (see above), and then rode off on my Triumph Bonneville 650 dual carb motorcycle and did not cut my hair for 2 or 3 years.

My World War I uncle was impressed by the green medal, he said it's a biggie. The Army doesn't hand them out like Halloween candy. (It does not involve throwing oneself on a hand grenade or taking out an enemy machine gun nest.) Anyway, whatever, I got one.

There's no big military holiday accompanying this post. (Last Monday was Indigenous Peoples Day in neighboring Northampton and Amherst, Massachusetts USA.)

Vleeptron is posting this because this is the 15th Year of the two Asian Long Wars first declared by USA President George W. Bush. Vleeptron Dude keeps standing on a chair and trying to see the Light At The End of the Long Asian War Tunnel, and still sees not a distant twinkle.

When, in the dark of night, Portia sees a candle in a distant window, she says:

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
 

But there is no little candle to the Asian Long Wars, or to the Catastrophe of Syria, to the mess in Libya, to the Catastrophe of Yemen. My world is weary, and although there are indeed many good deeds, most of them seem to shine much too dimly.

We are 15 years into the War Without End which George Orwell wrote about in "1984." Alliances change, enemies change, but for as long as anyone can remember, The War Goes On, with giant public war rallies and parades, marching military bands ...





Military Justice is to Justice 
as Military Music is to Music. 

-- Vietnam War-era soldiers' saying

And of course the Handmaidens of War Without End, Amen: Dead people, dead babies, dead women, dead soldiers. The maimed, the crippled. The fucked up, whether they live for many years after their combat, or not very long after coming home.

Vleeptron has a suspicion that Somebody is getting very rich by supplying the instruments of War Without End. That's just our suspicion. Don't cite Vleeptron until somebody Fact Checks it.

Perhaps like the wonderful architect Maya Lin and her Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, someone could start sketching a design for a National Memorial of War Without End. Artists and sculptors and architects have Plenty Of Time to work up their designs.

Leave A Comment. Share Your Thoughts. Submit a Memorial design, Vleeptron will be proud to be the first to display them. 


How do you feel about the Wars That Never End?

The bemedalled War-Era (never went near actual combat, a fellow can get hurt that way) Army Veteran recommends for day-to-day wartime getting by: cannabis and your favorite diazapene, maybe a good SSRI would work. The traditional wartime self-medication is Strong Alcoholic Beverages. Because Dutch gin was the first mass-produced High-Octane Cheap Alcohol, soldiers called it "Dutch Courage" as they prepared for today's battle.

DO NOT KILL YOURSELF. 22 USA military veterans commit suicide EVERY DAY. (Donald Trump, who dodged the Vietnam War Draft -- bone spurs in a foot, but he forgets which foot -- recently suggested that soldiers who return from the Long Asian Wars with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome are weak, weaker than good soldiers should be. Leave A Comment.)

The poem that follows was written in what historians now just call The Century of War.


=================



Charles Hamilton Sorley, a Scot from Aberdeen, was shot in the head and died instantly at the Battle of Loos, in France, on Wednesday 13 October 1915.  His body was never found, but  his kit bag was found and sent home to his family. Inside it they found this poem.

Sorely was the first World War One soldier poet to use the word "millions" -- accurately -- to count the carnage.

Bring our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq immediately, bring them back alive, safe, whole. As commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama can do this with the stroke of a pen -- the same power George W. Bush used to start these disasters and doom my neighbors' children.
~ ~ ~

When You See Millions
of the Mouthless Dead

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)



When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Original text: Charles Hamilton Sorley. Marlborough and other Poems. 4th edition. Cambridge: University Press, 1919: 78 (no. XXXIV). First publication date: 1916. Composition date: 1915. Form: sonnet. Rhyme: ababbabacdcdcd

10 October 2016

help moveon.org make USA voters vomit at Trump / or not

Dear MoveOn member,

If you thought the tape of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault to NBC's Billy Bush was bad, buckle up. Multiple TV producers are now saying that there's even worse footage -- much worse -- of Trump saying sexually predatory and extremely racist things. But NBC and MGM are refusing to release the footage.[1]

Will you sign the petition to NBC and MGM now and demand the release of the Trump tapes to ensure voters know exactly who Donald Trump is before voting on November 8?

NBC and MGM: Stop protecting Donald Trump and release the tapes.
Sign Nita's petition

For a year now, NBC has been protecting Trump—from Matt Lauer's biased presidential forum to Jimmy Fallon's softball interview with him. With 29 days left until the election, voters deserve to know just how much of a racist, hate-filled serial sexual predator Trump is.

Since the leak of Trump's comments on Friday, NBC has been under such intense pressure that it suspended Bush for encouraging Trump's behavior in that tape from 2005. If we speak up now -- while the media is reeling from the leak -- we can force NBC and MGM, the studio that now owns the unaired footage from Trump's reality TV show, to stop protecting Trump and release the rest of the tapes.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thanks!

—Nita Chaudhary, UltraViolet

Source:

1. "What to Know About Donald Trump’s Unaired Apprentice Tapes," TIME, October 10, 2016
http://act.moveon.org/go/6225?t=5&akid=171277.6950515.78Hn3A

Want to support MoveOn's work? Senator Elizabeth Warren says, "I'm so enthusiastic about MoveOn's smart and targeted plan to hire a network of organizers in key battleground states to mobilize and train volunteers to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors. It's bold and ambitious—and exactly what is needed to help swing Senate races, resoundingly defeat Donald Trump, and give Democrats a fighting chance to take back the House." Will you chip in to help make it all possible?

Click here to chip in $2.70, or whatever you can afford.

--------------------------------------------

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

This email was sent to Robert Merkin on October 11th, 2016. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.


====================================

FEEDBACK to moveon.org
FROM: Bob Merkin
==========

SUBJECT: Nita Chaudhary's petition to urge NBC & MGM to release Trump "The Apprentice" tapes

==========

Please do not join the sleazy Race to the Bottom. I'm not signing nor donating to this ill-thought shameful petition. moveon.org usually is classier than this. Like Trump, moveon.org will leave a legacy about the presidential race. Please be thoughtful and civil about your legacy.