Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto

I know I should probably talk about what I'm thankful for, but I just finished reading Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto, and I just had to say what I'm NOT thankful for. Judging by the title of this post, I think you know what I mean.

I know I don't need to tell you that Communism (on a mass scale that is) is a bad thing and that it doesn't work, but part of my school work is to write about what I read, and I decided I'd put my writing in a post.

First off I'd like to explain my comment in parentheses above. Communism on a national, state, county, or any group of more than say... 20 people, for that matter, will not survive. There must be a common bond between every individual in a Communist society. If there isn't, someone will get lazy. In a family setting Communism is used every day (not in the strictest sense of the term, but bear with me). A family has a common bond: that of love and care for one another. 

For example, a father goes to work every day and supplies his family with income. His young children are not able to go to work every day so they are dependents. In a nation ruled by Communism, this would not last long. However, this father is bound to care for and feed his children. He is giving according his ability (out of love and commitment), his children are taking according to their need. Eventually, this father will retire, or will become too sick to provide. At that point, hopefully his children will be able to provide for him in his old age. Now the children are giving according to their ability ( out of love and commitment) and the father is taking according to his need.

The common bond is Love, Care, and Commitment.

Naturally, this isn't exactly the same as the purest form of Communism as suggested by Marx, but you get the point.

Also, there are other common bonds. There are some hippie communes in the backwoods of Missouri where everybody gardens, has long hair and plays drums around the campfire. The common bond here is a particular belief. that belief may be a religion, a view of the environment, it my even be belief in Communism itself! But as I said before, these groups are rarely over 20 people and if they are, they usually don't last long.

If you disagree, please comment, I'd love to hear from you.

And now onto the atrocious statements made by Marx in his book.

when talking about how the current (The Manifesto was written in several editions over the mid 1800s, so keep in mind what "current" means here) general system of economics and government in Europe, Marx states:

"there are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality..."

He then goes on to say that in order to establish Communism as a form of government, you must first use Socialism.

"Of course, in the beginning, this [That is, Communism] cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and o the conditions of bourgeois [that is, the land-owners and upper class] production; by means of measures therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. 
These measures will of course be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:

1.  Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public 
purposes.
2.  A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3.  Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4.  Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5.  Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a nationally 
bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6.  Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands 
of the State.
7.  Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; 
the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the 
soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8.  Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, 
especially for agriculture.
9.  Combination of agriculture with the manufacturing industries; gradual 
abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more 
equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's 
factory labor in it's present form. Combination of education with 
industrial production &c., &c."

Heavy graduated income tax? Free education in public schools? Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels? Equal liability of all to labour? I don't know about you, but it seems like we're living in a very socialistic society! Now keep in mind it took 150 years for these few of the ten points to become part of American society, and it may take some time to have all ten of these points to become reality, but still! 

A 150 year old recommendation coming true is FRIGHTENING!!

And just to prove that Marx never read a bible ( and was a nut):

"Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church?"

Oh, and one last thing; the last 6 words in the infamous "The Communist Manifesto":

"WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES,

UNITE!"

-Graydon L

MRM - Inherit the Wind

Last Sunday, Y'all asked for a negative review to put my other ones in perspective. Well, lets just say that I could have called this "Movie Warning Monday"

Inherit the Wind (1960)
Written by: Jerome Laurence, Robert E. Lee.

Directed by: Stanley Kramer

Starring Cast: Spencer Tracy (Henry Drummond), Dick York (Bertram T. Cates), Fredrick March (Matthew Harrison Brady)

Supporting Cast: Gene Kelly (E. K. Hornbeck), Donna Anderson (Rachel Brown), Harry Morgan (Judge Mel Coffey), Claude Atkins (Rev. Jeremiah Brown)

What's it Rated?: PG for thematic elements and some language

Genre: Courtroom Drama

Synopsis: A small-town school teacher is arrested and put on trial for teaching evolution in his school. Two big-time attorneys come to help their respective sides of the argument. One for Darwin, one for the Bible.

My Take: Inherit the Wind is actually a dramatization of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 when a biology teacher was arrested and challenged a law passed by the Tennessee State legislature making it a crime to teach anything other than the account of creation as set down in the Book of Genesis. Dick York is the biology teacher here, renamed Bertram Cates for the play and the film version of that play.

We when we watched Inherit the Wind we knew that it was from an evolutionary perspective, but I never thought it would be this bad. Not only does it assume that evolution is true, but it blatantly mocks God, the bible, and any who believe in either. Further, it labels Christians as legalistic, superstitious bigots who don't think about anything and just believe what ideas are fed them by their "religious leaders".

If you know what's good for you, put a good ten miles between you and this awful film.

Story: 6 out of 10

Humor: 6 out of 10

Drama/Suspense: 7 out of 10

Overall: 2 out of 10

-Graydon L

Elected Officials Flunk US History Test

Here's another short article I just found on Yahoo. I thought it was pretty funny.

Check it out.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

"It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI.

"How can political leaders make informed decisions if they don't understand the American experience?" he added.

The exam questions covered American history, the workings of the US government and economics.

Among the questions asked of some 2,500 people who were randomly selected to take the test, including "self-identified elected officials," was one question which asked respondents to "name two countries that were our enemies during World War II."

Sixty-nine percent of respondents correctly identified Germany and Japan. Among the incorrect answers were Britain, China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Spain.

Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.

Asked about the electoral college, 20 percent of elected officials incorrectly said it was established to "supervise the first televised presidential debates."

In fact, the system of choosing the US president via an indirect electoral college vote dates back some 220 years, to the US Constitution.

The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?"

Activities that dull Americans' civic knowledge include talking on the phone and watching movies or television -- even news shows and documentaries, ISI said.

Meanwhile, civic knowledge is enhanced by discussing public affairs, taking part in civic activities and reading about current events and history, the group said.

***     ***     ***

This Article found on the Yahoo News site.

-Graydon L

Einstein's Formula Proven!

PARIS (AFP) – It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.

The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?

The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.

The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass.

By showing how much energy would be released if a certain amount of mass were to be converted into energy, the equation has been used many times, most famously as the inspirational basis for building atomic weapons.

But resolving e=mc2 at the scale of sub-atomic particles -- in equations called quantum chromodynamics -- has been fiendishly difficult.

"Until now, this has been a hypothesis," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release.

"It has now been corroborated for the first time."

For those keen to know more: the computations involve "envisioning space and time as part of a four-dimensional crystal lattice, with discrete points spaced along columns and rows."

***      ***      ***

This article was found on the Yahoo News website.

-Graydon L

Beautiful Mess - Diamond Rio

Alright Melissa, I'm finally doing the taggy thingy. Happy?

Instructions:
1.Put your iPod/Playlist/CD Player on random shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag/Link 5 (or so) friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from.

Here's my answers:
IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
In Color - Jamey Johnson

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Stealing Cinderella - Chuck Wicks (Gee, I never thought I had it in me! ;-))

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Moments -  Emerson Drive (LOL!!!!)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Don't Blink - Kenny Chesney(OK, my eyes are hurting now, can I blink? ROTFLOL!!!)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Boondocks - Little Big Town

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Two Hornpipes - Hanz Zimmer (wha?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
I'm From the Country - Tracy Byrd (If only...)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Redneck Yacht Club - Craig Morgan

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Waitin' On a Woman - Brad Paisley

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Holler Back - The Lost Trailers (Wha?... again)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
The Kraken - Hanz Zimmer

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
If You're Gonna Play in Texas - Alabama

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Beer For My Horses - Toby Keith(Oooooooh kaaaaaaay. Weird)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
You Can Let Go Now - Crystal Shawanda (ROTFLOL!!!!)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Our Song - Taylor Swift (CREEEEPY!!!!!!!)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Johny and June - Heidi Newfield (MORE CREEEPYNESS!!!!!)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Amarillo Sky - Jason Aldean

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Little Bit of Life - Craig Morgan

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
My Wish - Rascal Flatts (umm, weird)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Jack Sparrow - Hanz Zimmer (LOL!!!! I definetly wouldn't like to meet Jack Sparrow, He'd probably trick me out of my wallet... or my boat/ship :-)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Relentless - Jason Aldean (So, I should be less resilient?)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Backwards - Rascal Flatts

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
My Front Porch Looking In - Lonestar (When you have a brother like Jonny, even being
near my house is hilarious :-)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Something to be Proud Of - Montgomery Gentry

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Life is A Highway - Rascal Flatts

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Me And My Gang - Rascal Flatts (If I had a gang, chances are it would scare me. LOL!)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Love Story - Taylor Swift (CREEEEEEEPY!!!!!)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
He's A Pirate - Klaus Badelt

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Just a Dream - Carrie Underwood (weird)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Beautiful Mess - Diamond Rio

I tag:


-Graydon L

MRM - The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Directed by: Robert Wise

Written by: Edmund H North (screenplay), Harry Bates (story)

Starring Cast: Michael Rennie (Klaatu), Patricia Neal (Helen Benson)

Supporting Cast: Hugh Marlow (Tom Stevens), Sam Jaffe (Prof. Bernhardt), Billy Gray (Bobby Benson)

What's it Rated?: G (I'd call it more PG for thematic suspence and some mild mushiness)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Suspense

Synopsis: A robot and a man-like alien . . . hold the world spellbound with new and startling powers from another planet! From Out Of Space... A Warning And An Ultimatum. Strange Power From Another Planet Menaces The Earth! What is this invader from another planet... Can it destroy the Earth?

My Take: I suppose I could start off talking about what I like about The Day the Earth Stood Still, but I'd like to make a disclamer first. The basic premise is simple, a superior race has the right to police the universe and tell people what to do and not do. Sure it's all in the name of universal peace, since when is it fine for anyone to threaten death to anyone who has the potential to hurt another? I can understand punishing someone for doing something wrong, but I don't understand punishing someone for something they could do.

It's sorta like saying, the punishment for having a gun is death. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Punishment for crime is to stop the crimes from happening in the first place, so is commiting a crime to stop a crime OK?

Here is a quote from the Movie: [speaking to earth's scientists about what happens if earth addopts the aliens universal police system] "this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly."

I don't know about you, but I like the freedom the act irresponsibly! Unless I'm commiting some sort of crime, why should I be punished for this?

The film not only admires this, but also that a one-world order and the tendency of super-powers to use interventionism are good things.

Anyway, Aside from that, it's a cool movie and also an interesting look at cold-war hysteria and how humorous it is to see how a highly inteligent being might react to a comparitively "primitive" people such as humans. (despite the fact that aliens don't exist, and that humans aren't primitive)

The story and filming is good. The acting is fine, and for the time period it was made, the special effects are pretty good to :-)

Story: 7 out of 10

Humor: 6 out of 10

Action Suspense: 7 out of 10

Overall: 6 out of 10

-Graydon L

P.S. After thinking it over, I've decided to raise my overall rating of "Expelled" from 6.5, to 7.5. I wasn't in a very good mood when I wrote the review, and I had almost fell asleep watching it because it was so late. You can read the review here.

My Dad's Latest Splurge

Well, we saw this one coming for a while, but today Dad finally went out and bought a new TV. We don't watch a lot, but the TV we had was definitely dieing on us and we did want a new one.

While a top of the line, Toshiba, 40", flat-screen, LCD, Fully HDTV with a Blu-Ray player wasn't what I would have bought, hey, It's my dad's money!

Here's the pictures I took.


The TV box. It's about 4 1/2 feet long!


The Blu-Ray player.


Aaaaand two new remotes!!!! WOOOHOOOOO!!!!

-Graydon L

Quick Update on Things

I've made a couple changes to my blog recently, and I thought I would alert y'all to the situation.

First off, the playlist. If you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of the country music genre now (Thank you Melissa and David!!) and I've been adding new music to my playlist like crazy in the last two weeks. I've put up so many songs that I can't remember where I put certain songs. This has prompted me to place them in alphabetical order for your (and mine) listening convenience. However there are some exceptions; the Pirates of the Caribbean music is still at the bottom because I figured that nobody would remember the names of those songs and the alphabetization would be more of a hassle than a help.

There's also a new poll concerning my playlist. Check it out!  ------------->
(You can select multiple answers)

Second, I have added a brand new widget to the sidebar called "The 5 Most Recent Comments". This widget compiles the 5 most recent comments so that you can see where the conversation is going on the most. It lists the person's name (who left the comment), the post they commented on, and a small snippet of what they said.

And finally, I have changed my profile image. While the F-22 Raptor is an absolutely wicked looking airplane, I found a picture of me in my bright construction jacket next to the campfire at the PBC church campout and I had to use it. I know I've had a lot of profile images, but I'll probably stick with this one for a while.

Thanks, and I hope y'all enjoy the changes! (If you don't, just leave a comment.)

-Graydon L

Wood Grows POWERFUL Wings

By now y'all are probably complaining about how many model airplanes I've been posting recently, but I just had to make a model of the fastest air-breathing jet in History. You've heard of it before, it's the SR-71 Blackbird. The record smashing aircraft that has had it's ScramJet technology analized up, down, forward, and backward to figure what makes it tick... or roar I should say.

Well, enough talk. Pictures!




No, that's not blood. Sorry to disapoint you, but for some reason that red paint just went everywhere!


Here's the real thing. I based my model's paint job of of this picture. This particular Blackbird is being used by NASA for reasearch.

-Graydon L

Дерево растет крылья

Well, I finally broke down and created a Russian fighter out of wood. I started my hardest project by far Sunday night and it just finished drying. In case you're wondering, I have modeled the amazing aircraft known as the Su-37 Flanker (dubbed so by NATO).

And as always, here are the pictures.


Gotta little paint on my hand. Oops ;-)




By the way, the title of the post means "Wood Grows Wings" in Russian :-)

-Graydon L

Perks to Living in the White House

I just found this video on Yahoo, it's pretty cool. The White House may be a "fish bowl", but it's one fancy fish bowl :-)



-Graydon L

A Brief History of Income Tax

Here's an article I found in a miscellaneous story/fact/humor book that I have, called the Ultimate Bathroom Reader by the Bathroom Readers Institute. You can visit their website here. The article is also followed by two humorous quotes to do with Taxes.

Enjoy!

The History of Income Tax

Abraham Lincoln isn't remembered as the "Father of the income tax"... but he could be. In 1862, in order to raise money to pay for the Civil War, he signed the country's first income tax into law.

However, under this law, only people with an income over $800 a year had to pay any tax. And only 1% of the American people made that much money in 1862... so the government wound up having to look elsewhere for a source of money to finance the war (they borrowed it)

Tax Controversy
From the start, the income tax was very controversial. No one was sure if was legal. The Constitution had authorized the federal government to collect takes "to pay the debts and provide for the common welfare of the United States"-but it didn't explicitly state that the government had the right to levy taxes on income. And as this was hotly debated, public opposition grew. The first income tax was repealed in 1872.

But is wasn't dead. By the 1890s, an overwhelming majority of Americans supported re-establishing an income tax - as long as it applied only to the super-rich. Farm, labor, and small-business interests promoted it as a means of taking money away from millionaires and robber barons and redistributing it for the "common good".

In 1894 they succeeded in passing a 2% tax on all personal and corporate net income over $4000. Few Americans were in that income bracket... but those who were had the incentive and resources to oppose the tax. They battled it all the way to the Supreme Court, and in 1895 the Court declared that an income tax was unconstitutional.

Theodore Roosevelt
Opinion was divided along party lines - Democrats and Populists supported the income tax; Republicans opposed it. But in 1908, outgoing Republican president Theodore Roosevelt broke with his party and called for both an income tax and an inheritance tax. He wasn't able to enact either before his term ran out, but he momentum had shifted.

In the election of 1908, America sent a pro-tax Congress and an anti-tax president - Republican William Howard Taft -  to Washington. Taft tried to derail the issue by proposing a Constitutional amendment permitting the personal income tax. He figured the hurdles for such an amendment were so great that the amendment would fail and the income tax issue would go away.

But he was wrong. By February 1913, less than four years after it was introduced, 36 states had ratified the 16th amendment to the Constitution. For the first time in U.S. history, income taxes were indisputably constitutional. On October 3, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the first modern income tax into law.

Popular Tax?
The 1913 tax was simple - the entire tax code was only 16 pages long (compared to 9,100 pages today) . The rate was 1% on income over $3000 for a single person and $4000 for a married person, with "super taxes" as high as 6% applied to income over $500,000. In general, the tax was popular with just about everyone... because it applied to almost no one.

The few Americans who were required to pay income taxes in 1913 paid an average of $97.88 apiece.

Weapon of War
But America's entry into World War I in 1917 changed everything. The federal budget shot up from $1 billion in 1916 to $19 billion in 1919. Faced with enormous, unprecedented expenses, the Wilson administration was forced to raise the tax rate... and to broaden the tax base to include millions of Americans who had never before paid taxes.

To ensure that the new taxes were paid promptly and in full, Wilson expanded the IRS. The agency's total number of employees mushroomed from 4,000 workers in 1913 to 21,000 in 1920.

Compared to earlier income taxes Wilson's were pretty severe. The top tax rate, applied to income over $1 million, was 77%. These taxes revolutionized the finances of the federal government; it's total tax revenue went from $334 million to $5.4 billion... and the percentage of government revenues collected from income taxes went from 10% to 73%.

In the 1920s, income taxes were cut five different times, but they never would again be as low as they were before the war.

World War II

The 1930s too were a period of relatively low taxes. The Great Depression had wiped out the earnings of most Americans. In1939 for example, the average blue-collar employee paid no taxes, the average doctor or lawyer paid about $25 a year, and a successful business person earning $16,000 paid about $1,000. But taxes changed once more when America began gearing up for World War II.

Like the previous "Great War", World War II was a budget buster. Government expenses rose from $9.6 billion in 1940 to $95 billion in 1945 - prompting the government to raise the tax rate again (the highest bracket rose to 94%).

The tax base broadened too. In 1939, before the war, there were 6.5 million Americans on the tax rolls; they paid about $1 billion a year. By the end of the war in 1945, 48 million Americans paid $19 billion annually. To handle this, the IRS nearly double in size, governing from 27,000 employees in 1941 to 50,000 in 1945.

For the first time, even people with ordinary incomes had to pay taxes. As the Chicago Times put it, World War II transformed America's income tax "from a class tax to a mass tax"

Withholding Begins
Another development that came about as a result of World War II was income tax withholding, which enabled the government to collect estimated taxes every pay period, not just once a year. The federal government's cash needs were so great during the war that it couldn't wait until the end of the year, and it began withholding estimated taxes from every paycheck. Similar "pay-as-you-go" plans had been used during the Civil War and World War I, but they were abandoned. This time the change was permanent.

There was a second reason for withholding: Taxes were collected from so many new taxpayer that the IRS could no longer handle the flood of tax payment that came in on tax day. It had no choice but to spread the payments out over the entire year.

Income Taxes Today
By the end of World War II the pattern for taxation had been set: wars and other crises pushed the taxes up, peace and prosperity sen the back down, although rarely to where they had been before. Today's taxes seem higher than ever, but believe it or not, when you correct for inflation they're about the same as they were in the 1960s.

On the other hand; the IRS's job is bigger than ever - it is now the worlds largest law-enforcement agency, with more than 115,000 employees. In fiscal year 1993 it processed more than 207 million, collecting more than $586 billion in personal income taxes and 1.2 trillion in other taxes. It also paid out more that $84 billion in personal refunds, and cost taxpayer more than $7.1 billion to operate. That comes to about $0.60 for every $100 collected.


"The hardest thing to understand is income taxes."
                                                       -Albert Einstein, 1952

"In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
                                                                                     -Benjamin Franklin, 1789


This article published in "Uncle John's Ultimate Bathroom Reader" by the Bathroom Readers' Institute. www.bathroomreader.com

Wood Grows Wings

I don't know what it is about me that just loves airplanes, but I made another wood model of one. I selected the F-22 Raptor this time because it presented a different aray of challenges that I've never tried before, mostly to do with crafting odd geometric shapes.

Anyway, I just finished painting it in the color scheme of the prototype Raptor, the YF-22, and I must say, I had a lot of fun making this one. 

Here's some pictures.


From the side. Those letters on the vertical tail fin are much harder to do than it looks.



The Raptor lies ready to strike...






Just so you can see it in scale with my hand. It measures about 3 1/2 inches long.

-Graydon L

LEGO Grows Wings

I built this jet (modeled loosely after the F-22) just the other day in a couple of hours, and I thought y'all would like to see it.

Check it out!


Here she is from the front. The vertical fins are flared outward to deflect radar.




It features retractible landing gear!





aaaaand thrust vectoring! (the ability to direct which direction the exhaust goes. Helpful for maneouverability) as well as rear wing flaps that actually move and rear-facing radar!




The wings are shaped like trapezoids to deflect and absorb radar waves, shrinking it's radar signiature significantly.






I had to get at least one really cool picture of it. :-)

-Graydon L

MRM - Expelled

My Grandma bought this at Tom Hoyle's speech last week and we watched it before she left to go home to the Yukon. And even though I don't really like Ben Stein, I must say I was impressed.

Expelled (No intelligence allowed)

Directed by: Nathan Frankowski

Written by: Kevin Miller, Ben Stein

Starring Cast: Ben Stein

What's it Rated?: PG for some thematic elements and graphic images to do with Nazi concentration camps.

Genre: Documentary

Synopsis: Ben Stein goes on a mission first to find out why some teachers and professors are being fired from their work, but later to find out why Intelligent Design is being left out of schools and Universities.

My Take: Although Ben stein isn't a Christian, Expelled gives an interesting glimpse at Creationism, and the holes in the theory of evolution, and even if don't agree with some of his points or arguments, you'll enjoy watching it just to laugh at "top scientists" who support evolution even though they know it doesn't explain how the first microorganism got on earth, or even began!

It features leading scientists from the evolutionary side and some scientists who support the idea of Intelligent Design. I say "Intelligent Design" because that's what the movie terms it, obviously they can't just say outright "God created earth in six days and rules over it now" (OK, they could, but they won't anyway)

Another tactic that Expelled uses to get it's point across is the clear path that exists from evolution to Nazism, Nazism to eugenics, eugenics to murder, and finally murder to genocide. However because of this, there are some graphic images to do with Nazi death camps and also the eugenics movement in the US.

Overall, I don't think I'd watch it again, because it's a bit confusing and hard to follow as well as the fact that it's pretty long for a film on this subject.

Story: 5 out of 10

Action Suspense: N/A

Humor: not much, but what there is I'd give a 7.5 out of 10

Overall: 7.5 out of 10

-Graydon L

Graydon's Fav Music Playlist


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Graydon's Fav Classical and Movie Soundtrack Music


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