Just Odd

 An American streaming-video service (not Netflix) has signed a contract with the German folks who produce the series 'Tatort'.....to air roughly 250 of the 1,000-plus episodes they've made of the series (since the 1980s).  

I would imagine English sub-titles will be used.

What of the series?  Well....in the first three minutes of each episode....there's a murder, and it's left dangling over who did it.  

So there are various detectives from each major city who get the call, and investigate.

Some of these (I will admit) are crap.  Some are actually five-star.

The Munester-team (Professor-Doctor Boerne and Detective Thiel) are a duo who have a comic prospective and I'd rate their shows at the five-star level.  There's currently 43 of their films in the 'bucket'.

The Kiel-crew (Detective Borowski and Detective Brandt) make some pretty interesting films (total of 39).

The Wiesbaden-shows?  Detective Murot.  If you were looking for weird twists and turns....it's five star.

I've probably watched in the neighborhood of 150 of the 90-minute murder series and will agree there are serious losers in the bunch, but 20-percent will shock you on quality of the script.  

So if you see the streaming-service chatty about having added 'Tatort'.....yeah, it's probably worth signing up.  

The most shocking show?  They did an episode where blood was at a scene, but no body, and were convinced for 85 minutes that a murder had occurred. In the final five minutes, they discover the supposed dead guy was still alive, and the whole effort to find the murderer and body....was totally wasted.  Then the chief suspect is all angry/upset about faked-up murder.....that he actually does murder the fake-dead guy. 

Safety Bulletin

 

This went out this week in DC...to Senate and staff members.

Basically warning them of crime and threats in their environment.

Yeah, the stuff that regular Americans experienced....has finally come to threaten the elected folks.

How The Whig Party Dissolved

 From the 1760s to 1854....there were two political parties in America....the Democratic Party and the Whig Party.

So in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act came into play (passing).  

After this, the northern group of Whigs kinda left the party and went to a newly forming group....the Republican Party. 

Southern Whigs?  There weren't that many, but they mostly went to a quickly formed 'American' Party, and later transformed their small unit to the Constitutional Union Party. 

To note: John Bell ran for the Presidency in 1860 under the Constitutional Union Party....getting around 12-percent of the national vote (mostly southern politically-minded former Whigs).

I would suggest presently, we are in a 1850s mentality and the Republican Party, as it stands today....probably will only exist after 2030 in a marginal form (like the southern Whig folks).  

 

The 1910 People

 Matt Walsh quote:

"Someone born in 1910 would have lived through WW1, WW2, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and the Kennedy assassination all before they turned 60. We live in comparatively uneventful times."

I would probably add seven additional lines.

The same people (born in 1910) would have marveled at the inventions of penicillin, band-aides (came in the 1920s), the hamburger (1924), traffic signals, the electric guitar, walkie-talkies, the TV, silly putty, barcodes, solar cells, the passenger jet, LED, digital maps, rockets, and the automatic transmission.

The same people would be shocked at the complexity of life evolving.

The same people would be shocked at railway stations dissolving away, and interstate roads getting you from coast to coast in three days.  

This Travis King Episode

 If you remember....Private Travis King was this guy who got all stressed out....while in South Korea, and ended up crossing the border into North Korea....thinking his life would improve.  

The North Koreans after a while....came to realize that the guy had no value whatsoever, and was a 'problem'....so they gave him back to South Korea.

Yesterday, the US Army announced that they have eight charges up against him...desertion is one of them (pretty serious), and oddly enough....some kind of child-porn charge comes into play.  Looking at the mess, if convicted on all eight....he'd probably be doing 15 to 20 years in prison.

King being mentally incompetent?  At some point, his Army lawyer is going to ask for a mental eval, and I suspect that the Army clinic will admit on maturity level....King is probably a 12-year old kid, and not capable of adult actions.

Army's fault for accepting him into service?  Well....you have a limited amount of time to look over test results and just assign a number to each recruit.  King, I suspect, just fell through.  

But here's the thing.....the Army has wasted tons of man-hours on King so far, and they need to show something for all this worthless effort.  

King walking free?  It wouldn't shock me if the charges were dropped and a discharge given to the guy....because of his mental issues. 

The Best Have Better Things To Do

 I watched some interview of Senator Fetterman (D-Penn) in the past two weeks, and he hyped on.....'the best and brightest are not going to DC to represent people'.

I paused over it and it's been on my mind for a while.

Yeah, to be honest....if I were a successful farmer, trucker, tire-sales guy, bartender, real estate salesman, or mechanic....there's better things to do in life than go be a Senator in DC.

But my negativity goes beyond that.

You'd have to dress up and look fake-successful...meaning a full-up suit (figure $300 minimum) and $300 shoes (the nice fitting type).  

You'd have to practice over and over....to make as few comments as possible....to avoid looking stupid.

You'd have to avoid whiskey and booze, or getting into drunken commentary.

You'd have to show common sense and wisdom....around the clock.

You'd have to avoid farting in elevators.

You'd have to treat half-witted reporters at least in respectful way.

You'd have to at least keep your trophy-half-witted wife in a happy situation, so she doesn't run off with the tennis-trainer.

There's just a lot of hassle involved.

So the better, smarter, and more thoughtful folks have better things in life to do....than wasting six to twelve years in DC.  

Wasn't The Whole Purpose Of College To Inoculate You From Propaganda/BS?

 Well....in some ways, the original purpose was to give you unique skills and perceptions....to ask questions and gain insight into subjects.  

Through the 1990s....I think to some degree....the majority of colleges were attempting to do that.

In the past twenty years?  They've basically gone in a number of cases to present propaganda, as the one-and-only 'truth' and without insight/analysis or skepticism....you fall into a pit of believing just about anything.

The engineering and science fields are probably the least affected so far, although medicine has gone to the deep end and been able to convince of various hoax-like fake-truths.  

Where this is leading?  Well....if you go and spend $100k of borrowed money....to get a fake degree....mostly feeding you BS/propaganda, what's the value of the degree a decade later?  At some point, society is going to react and lay you off from your position, with minimum opportunities to repay the $100k of debt.

There's some bad times coming for some folks.