From Captain America #3, May 1941.
Democracy Against Dictatorship Before Pearl Harbor
Me Tue
The week before last I dropped my ballot into the box in front of town hall. There were no self-appointed “ballot watchers” who have swallowed the con man-in-chief’s lies.
The guy in this video who says, “Go back to same day voting and paper ballots” should be reminded of Florida’s “hanging chads” in the 2000 election. Even where voting is done the way he wants I’m sure he would convince himself there was “something wrong” with the process.
One of the big Republican talking points this year is crime. Yes, let’s talk about crime. In particular the school shootings resulting from the “all guns all the time” mentality that holds the country hostage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/school-shootings-database/
The Final Fall Back?
Here’s to the vote for permanent Daylight Saving Time! That’s quite a mug on Colbert. Or should I say that’s quite a Colbert on mug.
The U-Files
The 90’s! The decade of The X-Files and the infamous alien autopsy.
Lovely Rena, a member of the monster-fighting GUTS team, encounters a grey alien in an episode of Ultraman Tiga.
Like the 2005 return of Doctor Who after fifteen years, Ultraman returned to TV in 1996 after a 15-year absence. As with Who, each new Ultraman occupies a different body.
With a partial exception during Ultraman Ace, women had played secondary roles. They mostly handled communications at the command center, like Lieutenant Uhura.
Rena in Ultraman Tiga was a featured character. Her presence was obviously intended to attract teenage boys to the series.
This next scene leaves no doubt the studio knew the effect that Rena would have on their target demographic.
Rena was played by Takami Yoshimoto, who is now 51. Takami was literally born into the Ultra family, as her father, Susumu Kurobe, was the first Ultraman in the original 1966 series.
Takami’s popularity quickly extended beyond Ultraman. The LaserDisc store I frequented throughout the 90’s had Japanese “girl watching” videos for rent, similar to this one with Takami.
Click here to see the safest “boudoir” photo of Takami I can share. It is nonetheless NSFW unless you’re working from home.
Satellite in Car, Streaming at Home
I’m listening to Drew Carey’s Friday Night Freak-Out on SiriusXM. He played a song that I was thinking of playing during the hot weather. It’s one of my all-time top favorites, featuring the creative use of car horns, a jack hammer, and an autoharp.
Mem Drive and Mass Ave.
I first thought about mentioning my peripheral connections to MIT after reading this item in Technology Review at the end of June.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/29/1053303/how-mit-ended-up-on-memorial-drive/
My conversation this week with an MIT astrophysicist has nudged me into action. Did we discuss cosmic rays? Black holes at the center of galaxies? Or was the topic her particular area of expertise, the search for dark matter?
No, it was something quite Earthbound and mundane. A contractor had sent her to me for a reference.
Unknown to me for many years, when my family moved to Massachusetts, my father’s cousin Jane was at MIT, getting her PhD in Political Science.
In the 70’s my father worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management for a few years. In the 80’s my twinster Jean worked at MIT while I was working at a nearby company named after MIT, founded by a couple of its grads. A friend who’s reading this is an MIT grad.