She calculated the trajectory of man’s first trip to the moon, and was such an accurate mathematician that John Glenn asked her to double-check NASA’s computers. To top it off, she did it all as a black woman in the 1950s and ’60s, when women at NASA were not even invited to meetings.
And you’ve probably never heard of her.
Meet Katherine Johnson, the African-American woman who earned the nickname “the human computer” at NASA during its space race golden age.
An upcoming movie called Hidden Figures will celebrate her life and those of her black female colleagues, all of whom did important work against unbelievable odds but whose stories have gone largely unknown. The movie, set to come out in January 2017, will feature Taraji P. Henson as Johnson and music by Pharrell Williams.
In interviews, Johnson, now 97, remembers how her brilliant calculations—which she did largely by hand—forced NASA to accept her.
“I just happened to be working with guys,” she said, “and when they had briefings I asked permission to go. They said, ‘The girls don’t usually go.’ I said, ‘Is there a law?’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then my boss said, ‘Let her go.’”
So she went. And, with her help, NASA went to the moon.
The news that Paul Ryan is retiring from Congress was received by grim-faced members of the GOP caucus finally realizing what they’ve done, and what’s coming. Ryan pulled the ripcord Wednesday after a 19-year career in Congress, declaring he would leave Washington at the end of his current term to spend more time with his existential angst over what he let Donald Trump do to our country.
The happy talk about holding the House is over. The spin for the press, the rubes, and the donor class just came to a shrieking halt. Nancy Pelosi is in her crone cavern, cackling with glee, knowing that the Democrats are now in play in almost 80 congressional seats. The general of the House Republican army just announced he’s leaving the field just as the tide of political war looks most grim.
Ryan and his caucus hoped to run on the tax cut, the economy, and infrastructure. All of these messages now will be swept aside. Ryan owns his share of the blame; too often, he behaved as if he was some deferential junior VP at a Trump resort and not the leader of the House of Representatives in a co-equal branch of government. The idea, popular among the House leadership, that a diet of ass-kissing and deference would make Trump into a normal president who didn’t need the political equivalent of Depends was always a strategic mistake.
Ryan is now paying the price. The rest of his caucus will pay in the fall.
The election season will now feature a Republican leadership fight with all the reality-TV tropes we’ve come to expect in this vulgar, stupid age, as it inevitably devolves into a shabby bidding war over who will be more amenable and obedient to Donald Trump. The purity tests from Fox News, the screeching teenagers in the Donnie Trump Tiger Beat Breitbart Fan Club, and Trump himself will ensure this contest—like every damn thing in America today—is All About Him.
Ryan’s unfulfilled agenda, including entitlement reform, is now a dead letter, along with the hopes so many in the conservative movement had reposed in him. The Kochs and dozens of other free-market folks were invested in Paul Ryan’s future. Those investments were squandered like Granny’s Social Security check at the Trump Taj Mahal. Regardless of who succeeds Ryan, the agenda of limited-government conservatism based on fiscal probity, personal responsibility, free trade, and limited government is as dead Donald Trump’s marriage.
A top Ryan aide texted me this morning: “It’s going to be a civil war. No one knows how bad this will get. Kevin [McCarthy] is such a fucking moron he’s going to get rolled by Pelosi every day. FML.”
Another Ryan insider echoed the “civil war” sentiment, and noted that Ryan’s decision will set off still another wave of Republican retirements.
This week marked the final surrender of the GOP on the central economic issues of our time: the debt and entitlement reform. Did our talk ever truly match our walk when it came to the economy? Not as often as I’d like, and I’m sure Ryan feels the same.
Still, he was a fluent translator of Conservative to English, a bridge between Hayek and hope. He lacked the needy edge and insecurities so evident in this president and so beloved of the new GOP. Ryan had been the endpoint of a conservative philosophical movement that combined Jack Kemp’s optimism about growth, opportunity, economic freedom, and the value of work with a profound understanding of the painful need to reform how the federal government operates.
Kiss that goodbye. Trump’s economic message is profoundly, inalterably negative, defensive, small, and bitter. It’s about how stupid Americans are, and how the wily Chinese and murderous Mexicans are stealing from us, tricking us, and robbing us blind.
His base is conditioned to having their fear centers endlessly stimulated by his constant drip of apocalyptic, conspiratorial rhetoric and fed hazy promises of the creation of walls, the smiting of the Asians, the launching of trade wars, and the kicking of asses.
The collapse of the economic leg of the GOP’s coalition is complete. We’re now the party of Credit Card Don, the King of Debt. Our base worships a man who’s own Bhagavad Gita reads: “Now I become Debt, destroyer of Republicans.”
The trillions in new spending, the blowout tax bill’s monstrous costs, and Trump’s moron-grade nationalism and state capitalism mean the ideal of making government smaller, smarter, and better is over. It was one thing to talk about dynamic scoring and positive job growth based on the tax cut. It was quite another to predict levels of growth approaching asymptotic.
The grunting, pig-ignorant Trumpentariat types are doing their usual ranting street-preacher genius analysis of the situation, declaring you’ve triggered duh libs and now Ryan will be replaced with a speaker who, as the Trump Constitution clearly states, will behave with properly knee-padded deference to President for Life Kim Jong Don. They see this as the greatest possible loss for the hated establishment, a draining of the swamp.
Those poor, dumb bastards.
First, Ryan’s departure just pulled the plug on the most powerful and successful legislative fundraising machine the Republican Party has ever known. For all the bitching from the Purity Posse crew about Ryan and the lobbyists, they sure were happy he when he was passing money to them through the NRCC or his own campaign committee. To quote the great Chuck Yeager, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”
Donald Trump won’t save his party’s House majority. In fact, the more he becomes the center of the discussion for the members still running in 2018, the worse the ground looks for the GOP. All that’s left is hope that the Democratic Party’s notoriously terrible campaign operation can find a way to screw up the gift they’ve been given.
The rubes still think Trumpism sells. It doesn’t, outside of the deepest deep-red seats. They seem to honestly believe that in the 25 swing seats where Donald Trump is as well-liked as a case of genital herpes that muh wall and MS-13 TV ads are going to save the majority.
They still think that races are won with MAGA hats and badly photoshopped Hillary Pizzagate memes. They conflate Trump’s Russian-supported, celebrity-driven win against the luckless, joyless Hillary with actual campaigning.
History repeats, first as tragedy, then as Trump. This is the Watergate pattern writ large. In 1973, Republicans were screaming that the investigation was nothing but a Fake New Witch Hunt. They lost 49 House seats and eight Senate seats in 1974, two months after Nixon resigned.
Everything Trump touches dies, andPaul Ryan’s legacy is no exception.
Game nights are great: you skip the cost and chaos of going to a bar, actually get to talk to your friends or connect with new ones, and can escape into another world that doesn’t include scrolling through your phone. A true miracle.
For many, the phrase “adult board games” only brings to mind Cards Against Humanity. And no offense to the offensive game, but there are so many other amazing games you should have in your arsenal. Below, a few top picks curated using a mixture of personal opinion, the advice of gamer friends and, of course, the fine work of Amazon reviewers.
In a nutshell, The Resistance is about how well you can lie to your friends. The game is set in a dystopian future where resistance fighters face off against a corrupt government who have unleashed spies into to the resistance ranks. Through a series of “missions,” you try to deduce who among you are the spies, and who is part of the resistance. It’s simple, but you’d be surprised how quickly it delves into absolute mayhem in the best way possible.
One Amazon reviewer wrote “currently I (and my group of friends) have played this game over 800 times. So when I tell you that this is a fantastic game, it’s a bit of an understatement.”
Dixit is unlike any game you’ve played. It’s avant garde, centered around beautifully illustrated cards that are, erm, strange. (Think dogs wearing monocles, a potion master who is also a cat, a sad man made out of paper.) When it’s your turn to go, you pick a card from your hand and tell everyone a phrase, noise, movement—whatever—and they pick a card from their hand that they feel matches that description too. Next, you shuffle the cards and vote on which you think was the original card. If other people snag some votes away from the actual card, they get points too.
One Amazon reviewer wrote about her experience playing the game with a reluctant group of people. “The comments I received were like, ‘This is the most unusual game I've ever played,’ and, ‘I'm engaging parts of my brain that I never use!’ It was a hit and a half, so if you're reading this you need to get this game.”
I’ve never played this game, but 1,950 customer reviews on Amazon give the impression that Betrayal is spooky and fun. The gist is that you are building a mansion, but in the process, may stumble upon an “omen” which then begins “The Haunt.” One Amazon reviewer likened this game to the child of Clue and Dungeons and Dragons. The only downside? Another reviewer complained that the figurines “are very low quality” with faces that look “warped and inhuman.” Noted.
In this game, you play a scientist trying to stave off a pandemic outbreak. Based on reviews, this game seems a bit more complicated to get the hang of, meaning it’s probably not the best choice for an impromptu game night. That said, once people understand the game, they can’t seem to stop. One reviewer wrote, “this is one of the best board games I've ever played that features a team dynamic,” adding that unlike the classic strategy gameSettlers of Catan, “which will ruin any and every relationship you ever had, this co-op will reveal the true colors of anyone daring to pick up a colored pawn.”
My favorite review read: “We played several games. We lost our first few, then kept winning. Our kids were annoying us with petty stuff like, ‘Daddy, I'm hungry’ and ‘Mommy, my toe fell off’ but sometimes you just have to tell your kids that now isn't a good time, because Daddy is building a research center and then has to fly to meet Mommy in Milan, and there is leftover ham in the refrigerator.”
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Thursday 12thApril2018
ReplyDeleteThe ‘Human Computer’ Behind the Moon Landing Was a Black Woman.