The Unwanted Blog

Either you get it why this is funny, or you don’t.

Via Examiner.com

Iran Successfully Tests 1st Radar-Evading Aircraft

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran has successfully tested the research model of its first home-made radar-evading aircraft named ‘Sofreh Mahi’(flatfish), a senior Iranian army commander announced on Sunday

“The research model of this plane which staged a successful flight passed all radar-evading tests that we desired,” Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army Air Force General Aziz Nasirzadeh told FNA.

The General said that the flatfish-inspired shape of the aircraft as well as the materials used in its structure have provided the aircraft with the radar-evading capability.

Couldn’t find any pics.

This seems odd.

White Cliffs of Dover to be sold to the French to help reduce Government’s debt

 The Port of Dover is one of a string of publicly owned assets which have been earmarked for privatisation as the Government battles with a record £830billion of national debt.

Its advisers have recommended selling Dover to France as ‘a very logical move’, but the plan has prompted outrage.

 

From a historical standpoint, I can see why some Brits would be miffed. But from a practical standpoint… who cares? It’s not like the French are going to attach tow cables to the cliffs and pull ‘em across the water to France.

Sales of real estate to foreign interests is a dandy way to raise funds without actually giving anything up. Hell, the US FedGuv could make a vast sum of cash by selling a few million acres of land to private citizens and companies. Nevada, Utah and Alaska woudl certainly benefit from that.

Found near this, and presumably done at Boeing at the same time. This shows the delta-winged “ferry rockets” sevicing what appears to be a rather large interplanetary spacecraft. Note the human figures in the windows. The spacecraft is bristly witha multitude of oddly attached propellant tanks, mystery containers, a radio communications dish, a solar-thermal power system (the “trough” at top) and what looks like a crane on the “command sphere.” Once again, I can’t see this as being based on actual engineering. Just artwork.

Note: on the left, that’s not lightning… that’s a crack in the print.

From ABC News:

Two burqa-wearing robbers have held up a French post office using a handgun concealed beneath an Islamic-style full veil, court officials said.

Officials said postal office staff let the pair through the security double doors of the banking branch near Paris, believing them to be veil-wearing Muslim women.

Once inside, the pair flipped back their head coverings and pulled out a gun.

What’s surprising is that it took so long for this to happen. Let’s face it… in Western societies, the burka is the perfect disguise for all manner of nefarious activities. How else can someone, man or woman, openly move about in society while *completely* disguised, and be able to feign insult when asked to unveil? In contrast, if someone is wandering around dressed in full Darth Vader regalia, that someone could easily be stopped on the street.

I’m left to wonder if some sort of Westernized burka might become popular with both men and women in surveillance societies like Britain. If burkas are allowed for one group… why not all? Hell, there’s already been a “Hello Kitty” burka…

How would Britains millions of CCD cameras handle this sort of crowd:

Or indeed even this:

Full-up burka regalia covers head to toe, blocks even a good look at the eyes, and includes gloves. Apart from a few details such as the wearers height and to a degree weight/build, the disguise is pretty much complete, with the age, race and even sex of the wearer completely hidden. And with all the loose flowy cloth, there is all kinds of room to conceal weapons. Criminals these days would be kinda stupid to not consider the burka.

Recently released is a home movie taken some 70 miles from the launch site.

Optometrist Dr. Jack Moss, however, was playing with his new Betamax camcorder that chilly January morning, and recorded the sad event from his front yard in Winter Haven, Florida, about 70 miles southwest of Cape Canaveral.

Moss had never shared the tape with the media or NASA, but a week before he died this past December, he fished it out of his attic and handed it over to the Space Exploration Archive, a non-profit organization in Louisville, Kentucky. The Archive transferred the video to digital formats and released it to the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the disaster this past week.

The distance gives it a perspective I’ve not seen before.

For those of you younguns to young to remember Challenger, it was… a hell of a thing. The Shuttle program was still young enough, and the whole Teacher In Space interesting enough, that many schoolkids across the nation were plopped in front of TVs to watch it. I, however, was not one of those… I was in history class. But when it happened, someone in the main office has the presence of mind to turn the PA system on and put the mike next to a TV. When we heard “the Shuttle has exploded,” the history teacher made no effort to stop three or four of us who bolted out the door, heading to the library (the one place where we knew there was a TV). As memory serves, I managed to maintain composure until I got home that afternoon, whereupon all pretence of emotional control failed me utterly.

History occasionally tosses those “You’ll always remember where you were when…” events at you. For me there are three… Challenger, Columbia, 9/11. Earlier generations had MLK/JFK/RFK assassinations, Pearl Harbor, the Moon landing, Hindenburg, VE and VJ Days. Seems like the majority of such events are Bad News, or, at best, the End Of Bad News. Few enough are Amazingly Good Events.

Bad journalism is not restricted to American journalism. Gentlemen, behold!

British astronaut Nicholas Patrick prepares for Nasa space launch

Final preparations are under way to launch British astronaut Nicholas Patrick and five colleagues to the International Space Station, on one of the last Nasa shuttle missions.
… Nasa’s long-haul exploration goals…
… the Nasa workforce …
… the head of Nasa …
… subsequent direction for Nasa …
… The head of Nasa …

What. The. Hell. Is… “Nasa?” Is it perhaps something like “NASA?” If so, Nasa is to NASA what the Raf is to the RAF.

Bah.

Anyway, the best part of the article:

One sign posted by workers at an entrance to Kennedy Space Centre yesterday accused Mr Obama of betraying a campaign promise to preserve America’s space programme. “Obama lied. Nasa died,” it said.

Snerk.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFv1KDPbvngI1hk4Y8UFGhAJkDpg

 Indonesian authorities said Monday they are considering a petition to tear down a statue of US President Barack Obama as a boy, only a month after the bronze was unveiled in Jakarta.

…

“Barack Obama has yet to make a significant contribution to the Indonesian nation. We could say Obama only ate and s (expletive) in Menteng. He spent his subsequent days living as an American,” the web page says.

Oh, if only that was all he’s done in the US, too…

Seems that a year or so ago there was not a corner of this world where you couldn’t find somebody with an irrational devotion to a man who had accomplished precisely squat in his life. And now that a year has passed and this man has failed to come through on the worshippers own expectations, the disappointment is turning into anger. Few people more angry than the disappointed cultist.

Thirteenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the final A-3 design as drawn by Ed Baldwin. This is Figure 63. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the A-3 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-3 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 118

Password: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 119

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 66, A-4-2 configuration

A bit of artwork published in 1988 (possibly dating from before) showing a Titan IV variant or derivative with three SRBs rather than the usual two SRMs:

Those certainly look like Shuttle booster rockets to me, indicating that the core is probably larger in diameter than the standard Titan core. Probably four rocket engines on the core rather than the usual two.

Of course, Titans with larger cores and extra boosters were not new ideas, even in 1988. See, for example, the “Titan 2+2” from 1965.