White Castle was a real letdown. I've lived on the west coast my whole life and had only heard about them, then about 10 years ago I had a chance to go to Atlanta for my job. After picking up the rental, I was headed to the hotel when I saw a White Castle. "Hell yeah", I thought. I finally get to try a Harold and Kumar burger. So I get a slider combo and...... yeah, they wern't very good. Turns out I don't like steamed hamburger.

@ChaosEngine @Buck

My dad was in the Air Force. He was chosen for a particular program -- to be a Range Safety Officer on launches.

Once he got his Masters in Engineering at MIT on the government's dime, he was stationed at Cape Canaveral.

His job was to have his hand on the key that would blow up a missile when it went off course. The course was set so that if it went bad, the pieces would fall safely into the ocean. If it started to veer off course, you had to blow it up quick.

He was stationed at Cape Canaveral from something like 1958 to 1966. About that time frame. Early days, when they didn't know quite how to do a successful launch -- and he blew up a lot.

More than any other person -- and no one will catch up with his record, because it is no longer early days.

He got a Saturn. He blew up a Titan. He blew up a lot of Missilemen missiles.

He mostly worked on the unmanned launches. Only one launch (that I know of) was manned -- and he almost had to blow it up. He was sweating that one -- because of the stakes of blowing early or blowing late and no good result if you make the wrong choice. There was a wobble ... and he waited ... and it corrected.

But yeah. A Saturn.

After Cape Canaveral, he was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, NW of Santa Barbara. The west coast equivalent of the Cape.

PM me your email, and I'll send you a SERIOUSLY cool cartoon that was a gift when he left the Cape. Sitting astride a rocket that has obviously been launched from Florida, with silhouettes of all the missiles he blew up -- with HASHMARKS for how many of each.

It is seriously cool.

Yep. I hate that.
I get both east and west coast networks, so I get two bites at the apple.

Thanks. I am on west coast. FOX did this with its Orville episode last Sunday due to its delayed NFL game so I didn't get all of 5:00 PM PDT show. I had to record its 8:00 PM PDT. At least west coast got it twice.

Of course, as plane geek, if you are West Coast---
I have never been to Paul Allen's personal museum...but want to go!

http://www.flyingheritage.com

Have you gotten there? (Everett, WA)

I remember having to buy new edition Calculus book ($100+) because they switched the texts between calc 2 and calc 3. Wasn't this shit invented 400 years ago? Did I really need a new book with slightly different questions? apparently so.
Meanwhile the author (Stewart) lives in a multi-million dollar ocean-front mansion on the west coast.

Fun fact: the Indian government regulates textbook costs, and even though the editions sold there are paperback only and lower-quality print, they are <1/10th the cost of western-published books with identical content. (It's illegal to export them out of India though.) Isn't it nice when a democracy works for the people rather than for corporations?

? I can't drive across the Pacific to Hawaii...or the Atlantic to Europe...Although, for low budget buses between city pairs (East Coast NYC-Boston, Washington-Bos, Orlando-Miami? West Coast SFO-LAX-San Diego...) ---maybe?

I will follow you, Namor! First, let me use my Quantum Bands to wreak havoc and sink the entire west coast of the United States into the Pacific. And with the help of the Fantastic Four and the more agreeable Deviants, shield the land mass from all harm and construct that utopia: Atlantis 5.

Yeah, the other Atlantises were blown up and or phased out of time and space, but i have high hopes for A5. Better than liberal hubs named after Mesopotamian cities! Death to the Night Watch and beware gov't telepaths...

It seems to me that the fringes have become the loudest voices in both parties, but it's the right who is legislating based on their fringe (no more global warming according to the soon to be defunded epa is just one good example of that). Fortunately, the far left can't implement their banning of words (legally) in the U.S.....our constitution makes that impossible.

Big government is bad, but then you need to actually look into which party grew government and spending, you'll find that they both are near equal these days, no matter what rhetoric they spout.

The civil war pushed us to think that the state's deciding everything with no federal protections for human rights leads to trouble....but I do agree there should be less interference from on high. Consider, if the state's were allowed to be self deterministic, Calexit or Wexit (what I call the plan for all West coast states to form a new country) would be a serious consideration for us and a likelihood.

I would say you seem to have it backwards, the left of today is actually implementing the plans of the right from 20+ years ago, not the other way around.

Why do I get the feeling that Mr Sessions won't be asking that question to any of Trump's nominees?
Sweet zombie Jesus, we are so fucked. Closer to 1984 every day.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Can we start Wexit....the secession of the entire west coast? In today's climate, we might be able to get consent of congress or a constitutional amendment allowing it. The right sees us as troublesome bastard stepchildren as it is, many would be glad to be rid of us libtards, and many of us would be glad to leave.

You see hillbilly, I see an aging West Coast liberal hippy.

Potayto, Potato

But...it's not illegal....at least not on the West coast.....at least until Trump sicks the DEA on us, that is.

It's been pretty clear for decades that the most dangerous things associated with marijuana are the laws that criminalize it.

It's a beautiful pipe dream. Would make a great alternate history tale. Hawaii could join us and then we could form an alliance with Japan and begin the invasion of the west coast.

Followed by Trump America nuking the shit out of us all.

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

-----
"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.