SATURDAY NIGHT LITTLE STEVEN, LIVE.

Steven Van Zandt aka Little Steven with Bitter Fruit. From the album Freedom - No Compromise (1987).





Catchy song but I try not to listen to the lyrics too hard. Officially it's a song about bananas in Guatemala, but in reality it's about Little Steven having gone bananas himself. Everyone bringing out LP's with titles that sound like communist manifestoes should be regarded with a healthy dose of suspicion, and it ain't different with this guy. His only genuine claim to stardom stems from his musical talents, but for the lyrics you are far better off with Engelbert Humperdinck. Or Rihanna.


Live with All Over You. Album Throwing Copper (1994).





These guys - Ed Kowalczyk (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, songwriter), Chad Taylor (lead guitar, backing vocals), Patrick Dahlheimer (bass) and Chad Gracey (drums) - first came to my attention as Studio Brussel picked them up in the mid-nineties. Weirdo Kowalczyk left in 2009 and was replaced by a Chris Shinn. I hear he returned a couple of months ago however.


Goede nacht.


MFBB.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY (IWD) IS A COMMIE EVENT.

Astute article by Alexander Boot over at Liberty GB:

WE NOW CELEBRATE COMMUNIST HOLIDAYS.

"First we had Mothering Sunday, a religious holiday Western Christians celebrate on the fourth Sunday of Lent.

Then, under the influence of the US, Mothering Sunday was largely replaced by Mother's Day, a secular holiday without any religious overtones whatsoever. That's understandable: our delicate sensibilities can no longer accommodate any Christian festivals other than Christmas Shopping.

Now that secular but basically unobjectionable holiday has been supplemented by International Women's Day (IWD), celebrated by all progressive mankind on 8 March. Our delicate sensibilities aren't offended at all.

Actually, though the portion of mankind that celebrates 8 March calls itself progressive, it isn't really entitled to this modifier - unless one accepts the propensity for murdering millions just for the hell of it as an essential aspect of progress.

For, not to cut too fine a point, 8 March is a communist event, declared a national holiday by the Bolsheviks in 1917, immediately after they seized power and started killing people with the gusto and on a scale never before seen in history. A few wires were expertly pulled after the war, and IWD also got enshrined in Soviet satellites.






The event actually originated in America, where the Socialist Party arbitrarily chose that date to express solidarity with the 1909 strike of female textile workers. Yet the holiday didn't catch on in the States, doubtless because the Socialist Party never did.

Outside the Soviet bloc, 8 March went uncelebrated, unrecognised and, until recently, unknown. I remember back in 1974, when I worked at NASA, visiting Soviet astronauts made a big show of wishing female American employees a happy 8 March, eliciting only consternation and the stock Texan response of "Say what?"

The event was big in the Soviet Union, with millions of men giving millions of women bunches of mimosa, boxes of chocolates - and, more important, refraining from giving them a black eye, a practice rather more widespread in Russia than in the West.

But not on 8 March. That was the day when men scoured their conscience clean by being effusively lovey-dovey - so that they could resume abusing women the very next day, on 9 March. For Russia was then, and still remains, out of reach for the fashionable ideas about women's equality or indeed humanity. As the Russian proverb goes, "A chicken is no bird, a wench is no person."

Much as one may be derisory about feminism, it's hard to justify the antediluvian abuse, often physical, that's par for the course in Russia, especially outside central Moscow or Petersburg. Proponents of the plus ça change philosophy of history would be well-advised to read Dostoyevsky on this subject.

In A Writer's Diary Dostoyevsky describes in terrifying detail the characteristic savagery of a peasant taking a belt or a stick to his trussed-up wife, lashing at her, ignoring her pleas for mercy until, pounded into a bloody pulp, she stops pleading or moving. However, according to the writer, this in no way contradicted the brute's inner spirituality, so superior to Western materialistic legalism. Ideology does work in mysterious ways.

The Russian village still has the same roads (typically none) as at the time this was written, and it still has the same way of treating womenfolk - but not on 8 March. On that day the Soviets were housetrained to express their solidarity with the oppressed women of the world, or rather specifically of the capitalist world.

As a conservative, I have my cockles warmed by the traditionalist way in which the Russians lovingly maintain Soviet traditions, including the odd bit of murder by the state, albeit so far on a smaller scale. Why we have adopted them, at a time when communism has supposedly collapsed, is rather harder to explain.

But why stop here? Many Brits, especially those of the Labour persuasion, already celebrate May Day, with red flags flying to symbolise the workers' blood spilled by the ghastly capitalists. Why not spread the festivities more widely? I mean, May Day is celebrated in Russia, so what better reason do we need?

The Russians also celebrate 7 November, on which day in 1917 the Bolsheviks introduced social justice expressed in mass murder and universal slavery. I say we've been ignoring this glorious event far too long. And neither do we celebrate Red Army Day on 23 February - another shameful omission.

But at least we seem to be warming up to 8 March, an important communist event. At least we're moving in the right direction...."

Tell your wives and daughters.


MFBB.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO: BLUE ORIGIN'S NEW GLENN ANIMATION.

Via Blue Origin's website, a promotional video of the upcoming New Glenn launch vehicle. Blue Origin describes it as a 7 meter diameter rocket with two or three stages, of which the first one will be powered by seven BE4-engines and which will also be reusable.





Of special interest are the BE4-engines, which may or may not end the US Space Program's dependency on Russian-made Energomash RD-180 engines. These have been powering Atlas launch vehicles since 2000. The BE-4 [Blue Engine 4 - MFBB] is a staged-combustion rocket engine of which the design envisages 2,400 kilonewtons (550,000 lbf) of thrust. First use in flight is expected from 2019 on, which would be two years earlier than the congressionally mandated cessation of the use of RD-180s.

Details are hard to come by, but the BE-4 would be using a dual propellant (liquid oxygen/liquid methane), and its cycle would be a single-shaft oxygen-rich staged combustion. Chamber pressure would be 13,400 kPa (1,950 psi).

The staged combustion cycle (aka topping cycle or pre-burner cycle), is a thermodynamic cycle rocket engines using a bipropellant. A part of one (kind of) propellant is burned in a pre-burner. Depending on which propellant is used for the preburner we talk of either oxidizer-rich staged combustion (ORSC), like in the BE-4, or fuel-rich staged combustion (FRSC). Either way, the resulting hot gases power the engine's turbines and pumps. The exhausted gases are then further injected into the main combustion chamber, together with the rest of the propellant, and combustion is completed. The main advantage of staged, or "closed" combustion is that all of the engine cycles' gases and heat go through the combustion chamber. The result is very high pressures in the latter, which does cause excessive wear.

Some more info via Scott Manley:





I'm no fan of Jeff Bezos the person but I have to hand it to him, he's doing an amazing job.


MFBB.

WHY IT'S GAME OVER FOR SWEDEN IN ONE PICTURE.

Read and weep. Loosely translated from PI-News:

"These (castrated) steelworkers, welders, masons, electricians, welders, roof workers.... are very sad that they have so few female colleagues, so in 2014 they decided to no longer use the terms him or her (in Swedish "han" or "hun") but only the sexless it ("hen").

Today they also want to express solidarity with women by wearing female headgear. But that's not enough; these hooded "men" are excusing themselves for not being perfect and for being white males:

"The Gods know that we are not perfect - we are a bunch of middle aged white men. But at least we are wearing pink bonnets (Gudarna ska veta att vi inte är perfekta… Vi ÄR ett gäng vita, medelålders män. Men vi har i alla fall rosa mössor på oss.)"

If these bozos don't watch out, the Lion of the North will rise from his grave and choke these pitiful wankers to death by stuffing their pink bonnets down their throats:





Although sadly, I think we must rule out this possibility. If only for ole Gustavus down in his grave being prolly too heartbroken for what has become of the country he lifted up from irrelevancy to give a fucking damn anymore. So the appropriate sentiment is rather:





But oh-kay, "hen" you say? Fair enough. We will call you hens!



MFBB.

MARCH 15: ELECTIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS.

On March 15, parliamentary elections will be held in The Netherlands.

It has been clear for a very long time that the Left - for that matter, the entire international Left - is a steadfast ally of islam and a promotor of deliberate islamization.

One of Geert Wilders' adversaries is Roemer, chief of the Dutch Socialist Party SP. This lunatic, who is advocating policies which would effectively kill The Netherlands as we know it, recently proclaimed that islam has nothing to do with terrorism.

In the following video, Wilders' party, the PVV [Partij voor Vrijheid, literally Part for Freedom - MFBB] powerfully rebukes such nonsense:





GO WILDERS!


MFBB.

THE JOYS OF MULTICULTURALISM: MIGRANT YOUTH AT SWEDISH SCHOOL ATTACK POLICE.

Now I understand why Sweden just reintroduced conscription! In the World's Humanitarian Superpower, where integration of muslim hordes is going SO well, at least if you happen to be a resident of La La La La La Land, a riot took place yesterday in the town of Hallsberg. When police arrived at the Alléskolan school to intervene in a brawl between to factions of Culture Enrichers, the hooligans made peace and started throwing rocks and glass bottles at the officers instead.

Via Breitbart:

"The SVT [a TV broadcaster - MFBB] team, headed by reporter Anders Nord, were on the scene for the riot and were also attacked by the young men. Mr. Nord said that while police had arrested some of the youths, “another group of masked youths, a little further away, shouted at police and threw stones. The scene commander then gave the order to police to put on helmets and approached the youth, who then ran from the scene.”

In total, police say around 30 individuals participated in the riot, though there were no reports of any serious injuries on the scene. The youths aren’t thought to be students at the school, but outsiders according to policeman Mats Öhman. “They came to the school from what I understand was a continuation of a fight that was from last Friday,” he said.

Öhman described how the events unfolded saying: “It was pretty uncomfortable. It happened before we got on our helmets and the attack came as a bolt from the blue. Had anyone got hit in the head it would have been bad.”

This is just the beginning. If authochton Europeans want to survive at all, and keep a modicum of their culture and society intact, at some point there will be no other solution than to fire heavy machineguns pointblank into these orc crowds.

If we are not prepared to do just that, I foresee a gruesome future with mass killings of whites in the streets.

More on the ever deteriorating situation in Sweden here.


MFBB.

FRANCOIS DESOUCHE: A MAP OF RADICALISATION IN FRANCE AND FEMINISTS JOINING IN ISLAMIC PRAYER.

Via François Desouche, a map detailing the known radicalisation cases: 11,820 in February 2017.

To these, according to Le Monde, where François Desouche gets its info, another 4,000 (persons under observation) must be added.

Add the unknown jihadist U-boats and we are talking about two enemy divisions on French soil:





The François Desouche article is interesting also for in its comments section a poster named "apostat du rock" provided a very interesting video of....





.... FEMINISTS participating in islamic prayers in a mosque!!!


Funny huh? Last week I wrote:

"...When I look at the western models donning islamic headgear on Haute Elan's website, or that white chick sitting among the muslim audience at that 'fashion' 'show', or frikking Lindsey Lohan willingly veiling herself, I am tempted more and more to think that out there, there's millions and millions of wretched young autochton women who are all potential converts to islam. And why? Because they killed, figuratively speaking, the Western Male through decades of feminist-inspired hatred. And they have been so successful in turning males in meek serfs who have come to detest their own masculinity that, poof! Suddenly it's hard to find Real Men! So I often wonder if behind the extraordinary fascination for the muslim world among so many western women there's not a deeper psychological mechanism at work. Our men have by now been so mentally bullied that tons of them shy away from attempting to make even the slightest move towards the other sex. Is it too far fetched to assume that western women, in the absence of the Manhood they were so content to suppress, subconsciously yearn for males who have no qualms about telling women in no uncertain terms who is Boss? Is it not possible that in the deepest recesses of their unhinged minds, feminists in fact yearn for penetration by the followers of the Prophet?

I fear that it is possible."

You bet.


All of them stupid bitches boasting they have neutered western males are now yearning for muslim dicks. Wretched chicks who eschew robes now turn to men wearing robes, yeah, that's right, among muslim males those who don robes seem to be the real tough guys, bwahahahahaaaaa!!!

It would be a howler of cosmic proportions, if it weren't so tragic.

Over and out here messieurs et madames, The Fight Goes On!



MFBB.

MOON EXPLORATION THROUGH THE VAN MONCKHOVEN TELESCOPE.

One week ago, my best friend organized a stargazing evening in Lovendegem, a small locality in the north of the province of East Flanders. While there - and checking out Sirius, Orion and the Andromeda Nebula - some chap mentioned something about an old, impressive telescope still in use at the University of Ghent's Volkssterrenwacht Armand Pien, the so-called Van Monckhoven Telescope.

My interest thus aroused, and knowing that on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 March there were open door events at observatories all over Flanders, I decided to check out that telescope myself. It turned out that Volkssterrenwacht Armand Pien operated its observatory on top of a university building smack in the middle of Ghent (no ideal situation, light pollution being a serious issue and all). If you follow this link, you see that particular cupola housing the Van Monckhoven telescope.

I got there on Friday evening at almost 10pm.

Boy I was not to be disappointed:








WOW. I said 'WOW'! What a discovery! The Van Monckhoven telescope turned out to be a refracting telescope manufactured around 1880 by a York, UK based company with a fascinating history, T.Cooke & Sons.





A refracting telescope, or in short refractor, uses a lens as its objective to form an image. The image you see is inverted, so north becomes south and vice versa. The magnification is calculated by dividing the focal length of the objective lens by that of the eyepiece. The Van Monckhoven telescope allowed for changing the objectives, so that different magnifications could be obtained. When I was there, the particular magnification was 63.

Unfortunately, the sky overhead turned out to be very cloudy. Only towards the horizon there was no cloud deck, although there were fast-moving chasing clouds. The Moon was low however, the observatory's chief pointed the telescope to our nearest neighbor. And this is what I saw:





Mag-ni-fi-cent! And what a privilege to glimpse my best view of the Moon evah through a historical apparatus like this one!





The lunar phase being a waxing crescent, I could see perhaps 30 per cent of the right side, with the segment tilted to the right of course (in the northern hemispere, waxing crescent means the right side moonlit between 1 and 49 per cent). Keep in mind that with my naked eye, the sunlit segment was at the bottom right, but the Van Monckhoven being a refractor, what you saw through the device became inversed, so that same segment was visible on top and to the left.





All in all there were not too many details too discern, but what struck me most of all were two craters so close to another that their rims at the point of contact became as one (I marked them with a green "X"), plus darker areas above and to the left. I decided to check them out when I got home.

I couldn't find any decent Moon map on the net (but then I didn't search for too long), so I photographed the south pole of a decent map in "De Maan. Mysterie, Natuur en Exploratie", a decent Tirion Natuur book I bought in 2010. I inverted the image so that I could more easily compare it to my photos - which is why the characters you see are inverted, of course.

It did not take me long to identify the Moon features I could see: very quickly it was established that the two craters were Theophilus (on my photo, the one to the left) and Cyrillus (the one to the right). They were named after Theophilus of Alexandria and Cyrillus of Alexandria (later Saint Cyril), 4th-century Coptic Popes. Keep in mind that the Moon is bigger than you think, since both craters have a diameter of around 100 kilometers! Check out a fantastic shot of Theophilus in this Lunar Orbiter 3 photograph, taken in 1967.

The dark areas on the Moon are volcanic lava plains and called mares (seas), as I'm sure you know, and once I was certain of the identity of the two craters, it was clear that the mare just above Theophilus ('above' in my photo at least, in reality that night it was to the southeast) was Mare Nectaris, the "Sea of Nectar".

It followed that the mare to the left of Mare Nectaris, (Sea of Fertility) but separated from it by a lighter area, was the Mare Fecunditatis, an 840-klom in diameter crater which has the distinction of being the area from where the first automated rock samples took place, by the Luna 16 probe in 1970. (on my map, it's the red cross marked Loena 16). Oh those Russians! How I admire their engineering prowess! Too bad their talents didn't lead to full fruition because of the communist system.

Somewhat more to the left (on the photos) another mare follows, Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). It is also separated from the previous one by a lighter area, so that the three mares, Crisium, Fecunditatis and Nectaris, appear as three dark, comparable spots forming a slightly bent arc. Of interest is that Mare Crisium is the landing are of three other Luna probes, and has also the small crater Picard in it, named after Jean-Luc Picard, the Enterprise Commander of the second Star Trek series (at least if you were processed by the Chicago Public Schools system).

But then, if we gaze to the right from Mare Crisium, after hopping over a diamond-shaped plateau named Palus Somni, we arrive at what is probably the sole Moon mare of which the name may ring a bell with everyone, even common core products: Mare Tranquillitatis!

Mare Tranquillitatis, or Sea of Tranquility (we call it the Zee der Stilte, or Sea of Silence, in that coarse peasant's language you know), will forever be remembered as the place where Apollo 11's Eagle touched down and Man, in the person of Neil Armstrong, set first foot on another celestial body. The landing spot at 0.8° N, 23.5° E has been named Statio Tranquillitatis because Armstrong, upon touching down, radioed the flight controllers on Earth: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

Van Monckhoven's telescope was far too weak too discern any human artefacts left on the Moon. No Earth-based telescope can do that... not even the Hubble Space Telescope. But at least this 137-year old magnificent apparatus allowed yours truly to see for the first time, with my own eyes, the landing area where the first humans to visit the Moon came down.

And for that, and for the fact that our readers can do so too via this here humble blog...

... I am very grateful.



Finally, who was Van Monckhoven? He was a Belgian chemist, physicist, inventor, author and photographic researcher, born Désiré Charles Emanuel van Monckhoven in 1834. Extremely talented, he wrote a book on chemistry when he was 16 (!). Two years later, another book, "Elements of Physics" appeared. From this period dates also his interest in photography, and after high school he began working for Charles D'Hoy, an early photographer. In 1855 already, he published 'Traite de photographie sur Collodion' in Paris, followed by 'Traite general de photographie' in 1856, which became a standard work. In 1857 he started studying physics at the University of Ghent, to become Doctor in Physics in 1862. In 1866 he moved to Vienna, where together with a certain E. Rabending he operated a successful photo studio. When Van Monckhoven returned to Ghent in 1870, his name was made, not least because he had written several of the earliest books on photography and photographic optics. His original French works (remember that at the time, although Ghent was a city in Flanders, Flemish was considered a coarse peasant language) were later translated to English and even other languages, so that he became known throughout Europe. Van Monckhoven also invented or developed an enlarger (1864), a dry collodion process (1871), and improvements of the carbon print process (1875–80), and of silver-bromide gelatine emulsions.

I suspect that his intense interest in photography led to his procuring the telescope which would in time be named after him, but here the mystery starts, for I haven't been able yet to check out how the apparatus came to be such a prominent part of the Armand Pien Observatory. What I did learn was that for a very long time it was forgotten after Van Monckhoven's death in 1882, that it was found in a crate in the early nineties (of the LAST century, to be sure!) and that subsequently it was painstakingly restored, and installed under the observatory's main dome in around 1996. To ensure stability, it was bolted on a concrete column some thirty meters high.

If you happen to be in Ghent on the appropriate moment (generally Wednesday evenings), you have the chance to check out Van Monckhoven's famous telescope for yourself.

And if you now feel a sudden keenness to take up astronomy, download Stellarium. You will not regret it - I guarantee!


MFBB.