Success! The Mars landing has happened!
I don't know if you've looked at the tech utilized for the landing but if you haven't, you really should. We had a killer talk at Berkeley a good number of years back that went over the whole deal and beyond the super coolness of the talk it illustrates the time needed for something like this to come to pass. Years of work and analysis well before any launch can even be contemplated. Achievements like this really make you think "YES, humans can accomplish great things!" And yet, you then read the news and hear the ignoranti screaming in alarm about that devil SCIENCE and the stuff that science deals with on a daily basis- facts. It's such an amazing dichotomy that one part of America embraces reality, honors intellectual achievement and supports education while the other seems to be running full tilt back into the Dark Ages. Makes me wonder what this country will be like in twenty years. Will it be more Monty Python's "Bring out yer dead!" or 2001 a Space Odyssey? Well, that was interesting. I was driving with my wife yesterday and noticed a car ahead of me. It had a distinctive personalized license plate, and I had a brief moment of "wonder what that means?". That was all.
Fast forward a few minutes and we've parked at a fancy grocery store, gotten our food, and were walking toward my car, which was at the far end of the parking lot. Directly between ourselves and the car was ... a new Rolls Royce Dawn. Parked so that it was in side view. It got my attention because it's quite a large car but only seats two AND is a convertible. Hence the convertible soft-top is large. And that's what triggered my brain: "THAT'S a large top - what car is it? Hmmm, look at the bulky body. I bet that's the Rolls Royce Dawn.". So I invited my wife to peek in to see what an uber-car like the Dawn looks like inside. And then I moved to the front to show how the Spirit of Ecstacy hood ornament was retracted so as to resist thieves. Which is when I had "the surprise". The surprise being - the front license plate. First off, there WAS one. California mandates front and year license plates but I'm surprised someone who could afford a Rolls Royce would care about the potential cost of a fix-it ticket enough to mar the front end of their motorcar. However the BIGGER surprise was that this license plate sported the same word as that one I'd spotted on the road some minutes earlier. AXAXA1 or someothing like that. WHY was that a surprise? Because at no instant did my brain go "Hey, a Rolls Royce!" when I first spotted it on the rear of the car. Normally I immediately go "Oh, that's a whatever" when I see a car because cars are an interest of mine and I'm pretty familiar with the various models. But the Dawn drew ZERo recognition when I first noted it. All I noticed was the odd license plate. That's not great for Rolls Royce. When I see the rear of a Ferrari I know it's a Ferrari. When I see a Porsche I know it's a Porsche. And when I see a million dollar Pagani I know ... it's a Pagani. But the rear of the Dawn is so plain, so unobtrusive, that my brain registered nothing at all with regard to the car. Zero recognition. I suppose if you're wanting to be stealthy, that's a good thing. But somehow, if I were to purchase a Rolls Royce, I think I'd want it to stand out a bit more that as an anonymous canvas on which to hang a license plate. Here's my advice to EVERYONE sitting down to comment on a FB post.
Type out your response and then ask yourself "Would Churchill have written this in a letter? Would he have used those expressions and been so liberal with his punctuation marks?" And if the answer is "no" then rewrite it until it attains Churchillian standards. Only then would someone like me read it and actually feel motivated to possibly respond. I weep for our species. Not because of the scumbags who created the scam shown below but because of the existence of this actual notice from an actual police department to actual adult humans. It was considered "a helpful thing".
Sorry, but if anyone is so out to lunch as to believe what the scammer is proposing, then that's reasonable grounds for a full-time caretaker to be assigned. This isn't fancy pants scam-baggery. This is barely at a "Why yes, this $5 watch I'm selling IS a genuine Rolex" level of believability. Just happened to be browsing online and found this one of mine in the Wall Street Journal. Appeared in July 2020. How long since it was accepted? Well, that occurred in April of 2018. Yup, more than a two year delay until publication. That's pretty usual in my experience. Anyway, enjoy!
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