Random Story – Interesting driving instruction

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Way back when I was learning to drive, there was some deal that if you took lessons from the school’s driving instructor, your parents would get a discount when you got your insurance.  I don’t know what the policy is these days.  So I was signed up to drive for four or five days during the summer.  The instructor drove out to our house out in the boonies, and then I’d drive back to town to show I knew what I was doing.  Every now and then he’d point to a parking spot and have me parallel park into it.  We’d find a quiet side street and he’d have me do a 3 Point Turn.  After about an hour, he’d direct me to the house of the next kid, who would then drive me back home as the first part of his driving lesson.

The last day I had to drive, at the end I had to go to a new house to pick up a new kid.  So the instructor sent me out some road I’d never been on before, and we soon came to some construction.  The traffic was backed up pretty far, and it looked like we’d be there for some time slowly inching forward.  Well, we were stopped right at a restaurant, or something, so he had me pull in to the parking lot.  Fortunately, there were three or four random businesses that shared this parking lot, so I drove from before the restaurant’s area of the lot, through the dry cleaner’s section, to the gun store section.  But that was where the lot ended.  If I had gotten back on the road, we would have passed twenty or so cars.  But we would still have been backed up.

The next business was a liquor store, or whatever, and their parking lot was separated from the one we were in by three-foot-wide patch of grass.  I don’t remember if there was a curb, but if there was it was only an inch or so.  The instructor told me to drive over the grass into the liquor store parking lot.  I don’t know what exactly I was thinking, but I think I was just too scared to say anything, so I drove into the liquor store parking lot.

But then, on the other side of the liquor store parking lot, there was a hedge row, or a stone wall that almost reached the road.  I think the reason it didn’t go all the way to the road was because there was a telephone pole there, and there’s probably some statute about how much space needs to be around a telephone pole.  The distance from the pole to the hedge was probably about six inches wider than the car, so the instructor told me to drive through it.  Fortunately, the gas station or whatever parking lot we were in now, was either beyond the construction area, or was at an intersection where we could continue on to the new kid’s house. 

Once my nerves settled, I had to admit the whole thing was pretty funny.  I can only imagine what the other drivers, or the construction workers thought as they saw a Student Driver Car off-roading to get around them.  But I do wonder if I had shown myself to be an okay enough driver that he wasn’t worried, or did the instructor just hate being stuck in traffic that much.

An idea for flag burners

 

Twenty-some years ago, I wrote a couple of stories about how stupid it was to try to ban flag burning.  At the time, there were people trying to make an Amendment to ban it, but after some time the issue kind of died away because anyone with half-a-braincell knows there are 8,000 other, more important problems facing America.  That’s how things stood until Dipshit signed an Executive Order. 

I figured I should dig those stories out and post them, and that’s what I did with “Star-Spangled Ploy.” But the other story, I read through it for the first time in over a decade, and realized it had some problems.  Basically, it was written with only the most basic legal knowledge gleaned from TV and movies.  Reading through it now, I was like, “The judge wouldn’t allow that,” and, “Oh, all of that would be revealed in discovery.” So instead of trying to rewrite the story to be more realistic, I figured I’d just post the idea.  If you do try this, just know, THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

The story was about a guy who burns a “flag” on the steps of the Supreme Court and is arrested.  But at his trial, he produces two pieces of evidence.  The first is a receipt from a custom flags company for two, not real American flags with fourteen stripes and fifty-one stars.  The second piece of evidence is one of these “flags.” The point being that the state could not prove that the item he burned was an actual American flag and not one of these fake “flags.”

I’m sure a real lawyer could find holes in this approach, so again, THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

***

Image from Pixabay.

Short story – “Star-Spangled Ploy”

 

This story was published in September 2012 as part of my collection Political Pies, after an earlier version was posted on a friend’s website in August 2006.  In my collections, I include a little blurb after each story to give its history or to give some comment on it.  I’m posting it here, along with the blurb, because I – unfortunately – turned out to be prophetic.

“Star-Spangled Ploy”

Slamming his fist on his podium, Senator Conant exclaimed, “And that is why I voted for a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning.”

This was met with uneven applause from the packed auditorium.

“Thank you, Senator Conant.” The Moderator then turned her head slightly towards the Senator’s opponent.  “Mister Drake, same question.”

Drake smiled.  “I agree with the Senator that it is a shame,” his hand slapped his podium, “that we can’t send our kids outside without a burning flag being crammed down their throats.  I believe ….” He pointed at the audience, then brought his finger to his lips and tapped it a few times.  “I believe I’ve never actually seen a flag being burnt, other than on TV when foreigners – outside US jurisdiction – were protesting America.  Have you, Senator?” Without waiting for an answer, he looked to the audience.  “Has anyone here?” After a slight pause he asked, “Yet how many of you are struggling with obscenely high energy bills?” Drake raised his hand, which was joined by scores more.

Drake took a deep breath.  “For those of you pained by the thought of a flag being burned, I understand and respect your sentiment.  But amending the Constitution to ban flag burning is not the solution.  If anything, it will make matters worse.”

Holding his hand out, as if to silence any remarks, Drake said, “Let me explain.  A few flags are burned each year in this country in protest.  I repeat, a few.  Very few.  I don’t have the exact number, but I would bet it is less than a hundred.  Now, if this amendment passed, a date will have to be set for when the law takes effect, say January 1st.  Do you know what would happen on December 31st?  Thousands, tens of thousands of Americans would gather in Washington, D.C. and in cities large and small across the nation.  And just before the stroke of midnight, they would light thousands upon thousands of flags on fire.  Your options are to either know that a hundred flags are burned each year, or watch as thousands are burned before your eyes.  And it would not end once January 1st came.  People will take pieces of cardboard, draw a flag on it, and burn that.  Unless the ban is Draconian in its description of what constitutes an American flag, such an act would be perfectly legal.  And I suspect that people will line up before the White House, and the Supreme Court, and in thousands of other places and burn these cardboard flags day after day after day until the Amendment is repealed.” Drake shrugged.  “The simple truth, a Constitutional Amendment banning flag burning will only result in hundreds of thousands of flags and flag-like objects being burned.  Period.  That’s the only thing that will happen.”

Drake jabbed his podium with his finger.  “Now, of all the problems facing America today, flag burning is number 3,714.  Call me crazy, but I think the first 3,713 problems are far more important.  Problems such as: Social Security, health care, national security, education, immigration, gas prices, crime, incompetent leadership, the deficit, the environment, unemployment, racial tensions, rogue nations, poverty, decaying infrastructure, bigotry, foreign and domestic terrorism, drug abuse, invasions of privacy … I could go on and on.

“You may ask, given all these problems, why is flag burning such a big issue?  Well, I have a theory.  I believe flag burning is a ploy being used by certain elected officials to mask the fact that they,” Drake looked directly at Conant, “have accomplished nothing.” Drake pointed at a random audience member, “Nothing for you.” Pointing at more people he continued, “Or you, or you, or your child who can’t afford to go to college, or your grandfather who has to go to Canada to get his medication, or your wife whose job was outsourced, or all of us when we pay an arm and a leg at the gas pump.”

Pounding his fist on his podium, Drake raised his voice, “We have wasted enough time on this diversion.  Let’s get back to the real problems of America: yours!”

The auditorium shook from the applause.

***

I wrote this back when, once again, a flag burning amendment was being talked about and voted on.  I wanted to slap Congress.  Seriously, with everything that was going on, why was that an issue?  I understand that it can be an emotional issue for some people, but there are thousands of more serious problems out there that don’t get as much attention as flag burning.  I included this story in this collection because – I’m sure – at some point in the future the issue will crop up again when some do-nothing politician needs to scare up some votes.

 

Image from Pixabay.

Short story – “The Fall”

“The Fall”

When Alan opened the door of his apartment, he saw his partner Sam on the couch petting their dog. “Did you hear the news?  The jury just convicted Mayor Becker of rape.”

“That’s not surprising,” Sam replied.

Taking off his coat, Alan said, “I guess that’s the end of his reelection campaign.”

“Not necessarily,” Sam replied.  “There are a lot of voters who support his economic policies.” After a second, they added, “And those people are assholes.”

Alan wiped imaginary sweat from his brow.  “Glad you finished that.  Otherwise, you and Buster would’ve had to find a new place to live.”

Sam put a protective arm around Buster and kissed him on the head.  They then leaned close and whispered, “You have my permission to bite him.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

***

I wrote this because only a society that’s falling would let a sexual predator retain political power.

Random Story – Missed photo

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Back in February, something got into our coop and killed all of our chickens.  After some repairs, we got a bunch of new chicks.  About a month ago, I was putting them in for the night when one of the little roosters stopped at the door, and crowed.  Well, he tried to crow.  It was more like a cough. 

After laughing for a bit, I thought it would have been great if I had recorded it.  Of course, I’m one of those weird people who can put their phone down for hours.  At the time, my phone was back in the house because, why would I need it if I’m just going out for five minutes to put the chickens in?  While thinking on this, I remembered a story of a photo I was about ten seconds too late to capture.

I forget exactly when this happened, but it was like fifteen years ago.  At the time, in addition to chickens we also had some ducks.  We also had a dog, and one of their toys was a mostly deflated innertube.  We’d throw it, and he’d bite it and give it a good shake. 

So I was in my room – maybe working on a story, I don’t remember – and I looked out the window to our backyard.  In the middle of the yard was the innertube, and walking right towards it was one of the ducks.  I expected the duck to go around it, but instead it kept marching straight.  I was further surprised when it stopped for a few seconds inside the innertube.  I scrambled to grab the digital camera I had back then, but before I could turn it on, the duck scrambled out of the innertube and continued on their way. 

That’s the story of how I missed taking a photo of a duck, sitting in an innertube, in the middle of a yard.  If I had managed to get a photo of it, I’m sure I would have posted it with a thought bubble of the duck going, “Something isn’t right.”

Small acts of resistance

A couple months ago, I found an interesting message at work.  Since then, I’ve been trying to think of other, small acts of resistance anyone could do.  We’d like to think that a few big acts will turn everything around, but it doesn’t work that way.  It will take a few big acts, untold thousands of medium acts, and millions of small acts. 

Big acts are things like organizing multistate protests, or running for office to replace a Trump supporter with someone who actually cares for America, or building a secret entrance so you can hide a family in your attic.  Not many people can do those things. 

Medium acts would be organizing local protests, or making YouTube videos documenting the crimes of ICE, or giving money to worthy groups and candidates.  While there are more people who can do such things, it’s still out of reach for many.

So here are some of the simple, small acts of resistance I’ve thought of.  The first is to find some YouTube video showing the crimes of ICE.  Make a QR code for this video, print it out and tape it to the ice machines most convenience stores have. 

I recently discovered that one of the local news stations has polls on their website.  It’s not every day, more of if there’s a big news story they’ll put up a poll about it.  Living in a deep red part of the state, it’s depressing to see like 50% thought Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize, but also 90% want the Epstein Files released.  And while my logical and realistic vote won’t change things, I do think it’s important to show the magats that not everyone agrees with them.

If you have a pen and a dollar bill, you can make a speech bubble of George Washington saying, “No Kings!” Or you can leave a message, such as Leviticus 19:34.  If someone who gets that bill is curious they’ll look it up to find, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

Start a garden, or start buying from a local farmers market, especially if you normally buy from a store that spends millions to bribe politicians.  The added benefit is it’s also better for the environment.  If you don’t have a yard, or even a balcony, maybe just get one of those herb things you can have on the counter. 

And my final idea for a small act of resistance is to just be a good person living as happy a life as you can.  Crank your favorite song, repost that silly cat video, or stop kinda flirting with that person and just ask them out.  The war to turn America around will take many, many years, and the hardest thing to maintain during long wars is morale.  Do what you can to keep yours up.

Other things to launch with a Starship Booster

It might have been thirty years ago, I heard this story, maybe from one of my college professors.  Basically, Edison tried over a thousand materials as filaments for his light bulb before he found one that worked.  And a reporter asked him what it felt like to fail a thousand times, and Edison said he never failed once.  He just found over a thousand things that didn’t work.  I have no idea how true that story is, but it is a perfect example of how science is supposed to work. 

I was thinking about this after the eighth example of how Starship didn’t work.  I do believe it is possible to build a fully reuseable rocket.  If we have the technology and understanding to do it now, remains to be seen.  I’m not dismissing Starship as a total failure, but I do agree that it is not living up to the hype.  And I increasingly feel that it likely needs a redesign. 

As I said, I was thinking about all this after Flight 8, and I realized that the booster seems to work.  It’s not launching and landing perfectly, but how many attempts did it take to land the Falcon 9 first stage?  A couple months ago, I wrote up a post with my Thoughts on Starship, and I had a section on how I would have done things differently if I had been in charge, and one of them was to start with an expendable second stage.  That way you could start putting stuff into orbit, while also running experiments on reentry to get some data before trying to build a reusable upper stage.  And I started wondering what kind of missions could be launched with a Starship Booster and an expendable second stage.  Here are the three ideas I came up with.

A space station

Decades ago, I heard about an idea to make some changes to the Space Shuttle so that the External Tank – normally left to burn up in the atmosphere – would be left in orbit.  Crews could then go to it and turn it into a space station.  I started thinking about doing that with an expendable second stage, but the more I thought about it, the more issues came up.  For example, since rockets are designed to be as light as possible and aren’t meant to spend long periods of time in space, they don’t have shielding for micrometeors.  So to shield a second stage turned space station, you’d either have to have some shielding that would go on the outside once it is in orbit – which I image would be a huge pain – or you’d build it with the added shielding.  But if there’s more shielding, you’d have smaller fuel tanks and part of the idea for this space station stage would be to have it built alongside the reuseable stages to minimize costs, but needing smaller fuel tanks would mean a different assembly line.  And then there’s the issue of hatches.  Fuel tanks have holes in them for the fuel to get in and go out, but they’re not two meters in diameter to allow a human with cargo to get through.  So you’d either have to spend all the time and effort into building tanks with such large hatches that don’t leak during launch, or just use normal tanks and cut the hatches into them once the stage is in orbit.  But how do you cut through a fuel tank in orbit in a manner that doesn’t create problems, such as igniting leftover fuel, or filling the space with metal filings?  And then you get into stuff like power cables.  The ideal thing would be to build this station stage with all the power cables and ventilation ducts outside the fuel tanks.  But then you either need premade access points for these, or there would be additional spots in the tank that need cut.  And what about the space inside the tank?  Do you leave it one big open space, or do you put a bunch of anchor points so that you can attach wall pieces to make rooms?

It seems for every issue you can either solve it on the ground, meaning a lot of work to make sure you don’t make things worse like making the fuel tanks too weak by putting a bunch of hatches in them, or you solve them in orbit, meaning a lot of work because you have to be extra, extra, extra, extra certain things are safe.  In the end, I’d say it would probably be faster and safer to launch a Starship Booster with an expendable second stage that just puts as big as possible modules into orbit.  Link a couple of these up, and you have a space station.

Space junk remover craft

I have … an interest, I guess, about removing space junk.  A few years ago, I even wrote about A Space Junk Prize I would start if I had billions of dollars I didn’t know what else to do with.  So I definitely wondered what space junk remover thing could be launched with a Starship with expendable second stage.

What I came up with, looks a bit like the ship from You Only Live Twice, or Rocket Lab’s Neutron.  Basically, the fairing wouldn’t be jettisoned, but would remain attached to the craft for the whole mission.  Once in orbit, the fairing would open, but other than some cubesats, there probably wouldn’t be a satellite.  With the extra mass of the fairings – as large as they can make – there wouldn’t be much extra mass for a satellite.  With the fairings open, the craft would approach a dead satellite, or maybe some upper stage left in orbit.  The craft would slowly close the distance, and then some robotic hands would grab hold of the space junk.  Then the fairings would close and lock shut.  The craft would then deorbit to burn up in the atmosphere.  The reasons for the fairings, is that there could be paint flecks or other small pieces that could come off during the deorbit, and the fairings would stop them from getting loose.  Also, most satellites and upper stages aren’t designed to be grappled by something, so these robotic hands would have to take hold of thrusters, or an antenna or something that may not be that strong, especially after decades in space.  The deorbit burn would be very gentle, but there’s still the possibility the junk could break loose, and hopefully the fairing would be able to hold everything in.

The real idea of this system, is that after testing it a few times in low Earth orbit, you could send one out to geosynchronous orbit to grab hold of a defunct satellite.  But instead of bringing it all the way back down to burn up in the atmosphere, the craft would just go out to a graveyard orbit.  This would open up a slot for a new satellite. 

Of course, satellites can fit in the fairing of a small rocket to launch because the solar panels and antenna are usually folded up.  But once they unfurl in space, there might not be a way to build a fairing large enough to contain them.  So while there are some situations where this space junk remover craft would be great, to really clean up the orbits around Earth will require other things.

Atmospheric drag test

I did a series of posts about space missions I’d fund if I had the money to burn, and in one I discussed an idea of putting a bunch of cubesats into very low orbits so they can observe how things like paint flecks interact with the tenuous upper atmosphere.  This would be an extension of that.

The idea is to launch, I don’t know, a thousand cubesats on one mission.  The most basic idea, is if you had two cubesats that had the same mass, but one was more aerodynamic than the other, and you released them in the same orbit, would the less aerodynamic one deorbit sooner.  The knee-jerk answer is yes, but how much sooner?  That’s what this mission would test.  The way you test it, is you have six or seven designs for cubesats, and you build a hundred or so of each.  You then release ten of each at an altitude where they’d likely deorbit and burn up in about a month.  And then you release ten more a few kilometers higher, and so on until the last batch will likely stay in orbit for about a year.  And then you monitor when they deorbit.  And I’m sure there would be other cubesats that could hitch a ride to such orbits. 

The point of this mission would be to get some real-world data on how things behave as they’re deorbiting.  One possibility – either a mission launched on a smaller rocket, but it could also be part of this mission – would be to have a bunch of dummy cubesats set to immediately deorbit.  These dummy cubesats wouldn’t have batteries or anything dense or hazardous.  But they might have containers of various substances that burn in distinct colors.  These would be set to deorbit and burn up somewhere over, say, the continental US.  I’m sure people have seen cubesats burning up in the atmosphere, but nobody knew it was happening and so had instruments set up to record it.  Besides the science, I’d love to see ten bright meteors within a few minutes. 

***

So those are my ideas.  Are they the greatest of ideas?  No.  But if they keep blowing up Starships, they may need some backup ideas for the booster.  Just saying.