Apart from the shows incipient “death”, as the show went along there were some grossly bizarre character and plot developments. Firstly, the seemingly strange relationship between Dr Weir- the head honcho of Atlantis and the Mr GI Joe man – John Sheppard. According to the character’s story; Dr Weir is already in a committed relationship and she was just assigned with John Shepard on Jack O’Neil’s recommendation. However, strangely she exhibits some kind of bizarre affection for the man almost instantaneously and continuously treats him like a romantic interest instead of a person under her command- utterly unprofessional and nepotistic to say the least. She almost instantly favors him over other military commanders more experienced and committed and John Sheppard in turn sees her as his “sugar mommy” as he callously defies her authority and does basically what ever he feels like when ever he feels like it while falling back on her power and her position to save him from the consequences of his tomfoolery. This relationship between two colleges, superior and inferior is most bizarre for people who hardly know each other, unless the show is not letting on some significant portion of the characters lives- which is strange yet again and alludes to some sort of hostile sexual harassment in a galaxy far far away no less! As far as Dr Weir’s ability to command and be decisive, she is an utterly ponderous and petty character who’s constantly trying to salvage her ego and her “command” while possessing not even a glint of command wisdom or authority! Dull, bureaucratic, weak, indecisive and most of all extremely nepotistic in her command- all trademarks of a low level bean counting pencil pusher rather than a stateswoman and international diplomat. She is utterly incapable of taking a leadership position, much less a position of such great importance as Atlantis. In SG-1 the main head of the entire operation for the most part was Gen. George Hammond. Despite him being an outstanding leader having all the qualities of leadership in abundance, there was continuous reference to oversight and supervision. Dr Weir has hardly any critical voices against her and in Season 3 when there is an attempt at oversight she is let off scott-free based on personal feelings.

The main problem with the leadership role was tried to be remedied by adding Samantha Carter to Atlantis as the producers found out how hopeless and inept Dr Weir was, she was replaced. The problem isn’t in having a female leader. The problem is in having leaders who are weak and swayed by personal feelings to people under them in influencing their decisions and risking the lives of others who they care “less” about. That kind of partial and nepotistic leadership is the worst kind of leadership, especially for those in a military situation where they deal with life and death every day. Apparently, the show’s creators were too stupid to understand that nobody likes to work for a commander who is willing to save those people he likes at all costs will write-off others he or she doesn’t care enough about. Apparently, there is some impression in Hollywood that in a military atmosphere there is a clique of “cool guys” who all stick together and use others to serve their interests. This sophomoric sensibilities and the totally bizarre command structure are the reason this show is repugnant and so weak.

The story in Stargate Atlantis is pretty much the same as in SG-1 but only more pedestrian and senile. There is no over-arching story and character development and instead they are focused on generating sporadic plot developments that are quickly resolved and never fully explored. Be it saving an entire planet from destruction or blowing up a wraith hive ship. Apparently, they dont seem to be acquainted with the consequences of their actions and how they pan out in the long term. Instead they just wander along day in and day out doing what they please without much responsibility or care as their actions beyond the immediate gain. Another, point of contention I have with the show is the recycling of “bad guys” that they have from SG-1. Couldn’t the writers have come up with at least one decent nefarious enemy other than their main villians ?? The Asurans are a pathetic joke compared to the Replicator threat in SG-1. The Genii are again miserably pathetic hostiles who due to the inept handling of the Atlantis expedition have cost more lives than necessary.Their cheap schemes and their petty ploys are so 2 dimensional. They conveniently switch between allies and friends just to further the plot in almost clinically predictable fashion. The later development of the Wraith threat again was anemic plot development at best. The only marginally interesting “villain”, if you will was the “Micheal” wraith that offered some true challenge and some real character depth to the bad guys.  The whole Weir ascension saga was again the same hackneyed twist to the Asuran/Ancient plots.

All in all, StarGate Atlantis was a mere shadow of the wit, the action, the purpose, the scope and the story that was SG-1. This is the inevitable end result of corporate greed that tries to milk a franchise as far as they can while the “fever” is on. It’s fascinating that in the predictable spiral to its doom, nobody with any foresight or any intellectual rectitude amongst the writers tried to  even alter the direction that the show was taking. I do honestly believe the writers simply switched off their minds and tried to churn out as much mindless and implausible gibberish as they could since they already had a captive audience. I believe this very tactic is what is going to DOOM Stargate Universe as all the true marketability with the mainstream viewer has evaporated as people have come to realize that there is no real end to the endless stream of baloney that Stargate Studios is throwing at them. I hope that any and all further attempts to “mass-produce” gibberish for money should meet with utter and complete failure and ruination.

This is ALL due to the psychopathic need and obscene obsession with “politically” correct speak.  The  kind of trivial and superficial banality that plagues actual conversation in real life and that is a the devil’s vehicle to obfuscate and detract from one’s true self-expression of ill intentions and negative feelings. The logic of this pathological obsession for ‘decorum’ and polite propriety utterly escapes me! What in high heavens is the blessed point of having “ANONYMITY” when all what you are saying is going to be judged and weighed against you!  The sick obsession with PC and decorum by sites like You tube and the people who champion for the cause of stifling everything unpleasant because it offends somebody are the reason for the warped culture of fake tolerance and condescending civility. Words will always offend somebody, opinions and ideas often do! Be they racist, sexist, homophobic, etc etc. It is only a matter of degree of offense.  Hate is part of human emotions, it is only natural that when people communicate their opinions/ideas/views they will communicate their HATE as well. Trying to prevent it and cover it up is unnatural and in no way can it that be said to be the “true” expression of thoughts and opinions. The champions of propriety and decorum fail to realize that in the 6 billion odd humans on this planet nearly all of them have differing opinions of what ideas and opinions are repugnant and reprehensible to them and what is acceptable. You cant force people to stifle their opinions and ideas deemed “repugnant”; even those deemed so by the majority,  by laws made by politicians, bureaucrats, dictators and the like for the sake of maintaining some veneer of “kum-ba-ya” and the facade of civility and culture. The reasons for the base attitudes of people are always neglected and instead condescension and condemnation are the tools of the holier than thou Politically Correct Nazis who set out to deem what is “acceptable” and what isnt. These are the NAZIs who want everybody to think like them and talk like them and have their philosophy because they think it is superior and more worthy according to their moral bias! Just like the thousands of despots and demagogues of the past who try to push their psychopathic agendas by suppressing the opinions of all that contradicts them.  Its obscene that people who claim to be furthering the liberties of one group are too myopic to comprehend that you cant suppress liberties of a few to further the cause of liberty for all!

It is said that “The road to hell is paved in good intentions”, if so they have already laid the first mile to the HELL that is, regulated and monitored expression on the internet- the last bastion of free souls!

My motivation for writing this article is because of all the idiotic and asinine “home made rocket launcher” videos that stupid kids and other dumb rednecks have put up on Youtube and other sites. The nation that put the man on the moon has it idiot youth fooling around with no idea of how to go about doing a proper job. If you consider the worst case prospect of either having to participate in a civil war, insurrection, civil defense initiative etc. Building a workable rocket launcher would a great asset over the other side that invests thousands of dollars on fancy junk.

Now coming to the rocket launcher. First, to build something, people need to understand what they are building. Most people know that a rocket launcher is a rocket with an explosive war head but when they try to replicate it, they forget about either the rocket or the explosive. People spend more time on the launcher than on the projectile where as it should be the other way around. Another critically important thing is that a shoulder fired rocket is significantly different from a vertically launched rocket even thought they generally have all the same parts, they are set up differently.

There are three basic components of the rocket launcher. The explosive munition, the rocket and the launcher. Their order of importance is also as stated from greatest to least important and should be built in that order. The most important component is of course the explosive munition or warhead. There are many basic ways to go about building this. The most obvious method would be to combine existing small explosives together to build a more powerful explosive like putting together a lot of fireworks bombs or such ( There is a caveat here, if you are say an individual, who possesses plastic explosives based off RDX or have live grenades or breaching charges or any small explosive with a diameter of about 2 inches, you are in luck and skip the next sentence ! ). This however is a foolish approach because: a) the ultimate device would be heavier than an explosive made for the specific purpose and b) it would less effective (ie. have a smaller blast force ) than a custom explosive. The most obvious course is to prepare explosives custom made for the warhead. But there is one very important thing to consider while thinking of doing so. You have to consider that your warhead has to explode on impact, so your warhead has to be easy to detonate with a minimum (and SAFE) shock wave. This doesnt NOT mean you can use nitroglycerin or some thing equally unstable and dangerous nor should you choose something ridiculously stable like ammonium nitrate. The most easiest way to do this is to first choose an easy detonation method and then find the most easy and powerful explosive for that detonator. Here, the easiest method would be either a small charge of black powder charge or an electrical charge. Typically, it would be best to use something already prefabricated like a blasting cap or some sort of electronic sensor as a detonator. Remember, weight is a constraint that we are trying to circumvent and having a small detonator is something we are striving for. Coming to the explosive material, there are tonnes of options depending on your ability to make them and procure the ingredients. The  choice is left to you and I wont be  saying what to use expect that do not use Black powder as an explosive.

After you have chosen an explosive and have made it, make sure you have enough because you dont want to find out that the amount of explosive you’ve made is not enough or not as per your required needs. Your first job would be to test it ‘raw’ i.e without any forcing or focusing mechanism like a pipe etc. Here effort must be made to determine its stability, so you understand how stable the material is fully before you build the main device. The main concept behind this is for the builder to develop a better idea as to how to proceed in actually shaping a warhead for your rocket. Now, comes a critical step that will determine every step that follows it. Choosing the size of your warhead. By size I mean to imply, the space you are planning to use for the explosive munition part of your weapon; this includes impact detonator + explosive + shrapnel + forcing mechanism like metal pipe, a rigid sphere etc. Also take into account the fact that your explosive device should reasonably conform to either a small sphere of diameter 1-2 inches or a pipe of diameter 1-2 inches. I suggest going with a pipe as more explosive can be packed together along with the shrapnel. Also another advantage of the pipe assembly is that a smaller diameter pipe can be used with greater length without severely compromising the overall structure of the rocket vehicle. I mentioned shrapnel earlier and it is important to consider that I was thinking about an anti-personnel explosive. Should you plan on building an armor piecing explosive, you would need to be able to build your charge with a proper focusing mechanism that would increase the blast force on the frontal arc of the rocket. The shrapnel in this case would be unnecessary and would be replaced with a shaped metal projectile ahead of the explosive to penetrate the armor. But I digress.

Initially build at least 4-5 explosive rocket warheads from the explosive of your choice, the shape of your charge along with shrapnel/metal projectile, impact detonator, explosive and everything else that would essentially make up the warhead. Now, you would need to test at least 2 warheads from the lot you have made. You have to test them after you have built all 4-5 devices first. This is done so that you know that your warhead is a) reliable b) you have assembled your warhead properly and c) you understand clearly the effect of your warhead within its blast radius. Testing the warhead with the impact detonator is of critical importance in validating your design as well as the saftey of your device. There are a couple of standard and safe ways to test your warhead. The first and safest way would be to find an open ground and dig a small hole roughly half a foot deep. Bury the warhead pointing towards the sky with the detonator contact exposed. Now to set off the explosive one would need to set off the detonator. This can be done by two ways. Either use a pistol or rifle to set off the detonator or you can arrange a pole parallel to the buried warhead and rig a weight to drop onto the warhead with a pulley mechanism and rope from safety. There is yet another way which is easier yet also very dangerous to test your warhead. That would be dropping it from a height. You can do this from the top of an abandoned building or from the top of a cliff face. It is important to not gather attention towards yourself or do unnecessary damage to life or property during this phase.

Now, after successfully establishing the safety of your explosive device. You are ready to begin construction of your rocket mechanism. This is a very enjoyable phase of the development and much less difficult. The method I describe here would be mostly applicable if you reside inside the USA or Canada and have access to hobby and chemical stores inside the US. If not, you would have to spend more effort in manufacturing the propellants and assembling the rocket motor . Preparing rocket propellent is significantly easier than manufacturing explosives because the rate of combustion is not as high as explosives and he material is more stable, however all precautions during the handling process apply. I am now going to work with the assumption that one has access to rocket motors available in the US to all adults. I would say the best options for a beginner would be to start off with a B grade rocket engine model rocket. This rocket dissected would give all the basic mechanisms of a rocket in great detail and thus would be very helpful guide to basic rocketry should you be uninitiated. 

To be continued……………..

Let me first start from a first person perspective.
The idea that one should/would want to share little 150 character snippets about your daily activities for strangers and friends to follow is quite frankly disturbing and borderline psychotic. To do this one would actually have to assume that the trivia of their lives is actually of some value to others and to have cultivated an unhealthy sense of self;  the first step towards egomania and the cult personality. And as if the world doesnt have enough “personalities” to contend with in the normal media, these services only seek to create new esoteric and trivial personalities with no real contributions or real accomplishments. One example I can think of is this guy called “Robert Scoble” a blogger who dabbles in technology and peddles services and software for anybody willing to write him a check. His only real contribution has been to manufacture his own celebrity as some kind of geek commentator.

Secondly, the idea that 150 charecters is sufficient to actually convey to your “audience” your little snippet of activities/thoughts/ideas/interests/discoveries etc is truly ridiculous. It is like hearkening back to the days of the telegraph where disjointed sentences strung together in a desperate bid to convey your message. It simply provides too little information at a time to be of any productive use to anybody. It would be understandable however if the service provided a condensed summary of blogs/news articles/analysis etc where a “user” could get a crux of the information and read more if it interested or concerned him or her, however n its present form of 150 charecters it is utterly useless beyond a doubt.

Let us take for argument sake that God in fact does not exsist, that he/she/it is a product of our creation, our imagination and in our imagination, this God imagined the cosmos into existence. If that were the case, then wouldn’t logic lend itself to the conclusion that since God is our delusion and the cosmos God’s delusion, we ourselves are a delusion created by ourselves ? That is to say, our existence is defined merely by our imagination and in reality, we are greater than our God/s ??? Now, if I were to take the converse position of there being a God, we being he/she/its creation bred to have faith and at the same time doubt our faith in this God and as it were created to be as “best as we can be”, then I propose does it not imply that our sole reason to exsist is to surpass the God/s that made us ? If not why propose to make us “in his image” and design us to doubt our allegiance ? Does that not suggest a flaw in creation ? If God can create flawed creations then how can we lend credence to the fact that God is perfect in all his/her/its works ?? Also, to further convolute my obtuse ravings, let me further propose, if God did intend for mankind to be imperfect, then as his “imperfect” creations do we still regard him/her/ it with reverence for our intentionally “flawed” existence ?? Isnt that akin to amputating your child or your pet for your control over it ? Such acts are considered immoral and vile by reasonable men, yet why do we accept our creation to be just in the first place ? The contradictions pile atop each other like the allegedly accursed tower of babel itself!

Now let me direct this raving from another angle. Say, we as mankind were to create a new species of sentient life. Do we, as “creators” build them “deficient” to protect ourselves ? And by doing so can we be take upon the mantle of “God” to our collective progeny ? Would it be ethical or even credible to claim such a title ? Would our conscious allow us to do so ? I am willing to bet, it wouldnt and neither would we choose to do so in the first place. We would be without our rights to protect our interests but we would be crossing a line of morality were we to burden our creation with the delusion of our sanctity.

Now can’t we reasonably conclude that what we consider God/s had the same dilemma and upon introspection decided to grant us the choice to question and analyize our faith or the lack thereof merely to assuage his conscience (for we assume God to be a being of good conscience!) in creating us as he/she/it did! But alas, this reasoning is a product of our small sphere of intellect.

At the end of your days, your life, your sanity, when you are prepared to face the end of existence as you know it, will you move forward into the unknown with these doubts ???

Tags: metaphysics, God, logic, Man

I have been in various political discussions on various American online forums and boards and from all that time I have still yet to find an attitude that is both enlightened and populist. Apparently, those two never quite become friends in the psyche of the masses. I also find that the current obsession with messianic figures, be they political, social or philosophical is something that Americans crave deeply. They are all waiting for a hero to save them. I doubt if anybody find the idea of emancipation as distasteful as I. There is never a time when pure rational thought is applied to a particular decision. It is always predominantly an emotional response based on primitive concepts of social groups and cultural mores all bound together by some primitive concepts of gods and territorial affinity. One section goes so far as to actually worship their ancestors as some God-men who bestowed on them all their miracles. Such utter lack of rational thought and reasoned understanding of the world around them gives them scarcely the ability to decide one of the most powerful and influential person’s on the planet.

Let me add here the purpose of these lucubrations:

“Through these writings I hope to explore and open my mind to its own identity. Its strengths, its failings, its fantasies. This may also be a place to put to print that which I cannot or will not share with others in the physical world. Thoughts, ambitions, insecurities, fantasies, dreams, etc make up these writings. Feel free to disregard these as merely the ramblings of a trivial mind.  ”