Sep 252011
 

A few photos of a McDonnell-Douglas display model of a DC-10 modified to launch a pair of MX (or MX-like) ICBMs. The missiles are held in pneumatic tubes, with a high pressure gas system near the nose of each missile; clearly, the missiles would not be simply slid out the back, but rather *shot* out the back with some authority. While the photos do not show the underside of the aft fuselage, clearly there has been some major modification to the design there. Less obvious is a change to the outer moldline of the upper fuselage… “bumps” are added to provide sufficient clearance for the angled missile tubes.

 Posted by at 3:52 pm
Sep 252011
 

The Left has been using the “race card” like never before to defend the failed Presidency of Obama. Most recently, Morgan Freeman went on CNN (interviewed by Piers Morgan) to declare that Tea Partiers are a bunch of racists for wanting to get rid of Obama.

Virtually simultaneously, Herman Cain – a black guy, last I checked – won the Florida Republican straw poll.

So once again we’ve got Professional Leftie screaming that white people who support a black guy are racist for not supporting *his* black guy.

Gah.

There are a couple of possibilities. One obvious one is that Freeman is just locked in his own little world, one where actual facts cannot intrude. Another is that he knows he’s lying, and he’s doing so for purely political reasons. Either seems likely to me, but I lean towards the latter. The ability to be *so* closed off from reality would be startling for anyone with access to modern media. And Freeman is, after all, an award winning actor. In effect, he lies for a living. And his awards from his peers show that he’s quite good at saying things that he knows are not true.

I posted a little over two years ago that I thought that Obama’s term in office might bring about the end of racism in this country… not by making America a colorblind land of kumbaya, but by his supporters so overusing the term that it would cease to have any impact. And I think we’re well on the road. Like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” Obama’s lackeys are so overusing race baiting that I believe – or at least I hope – most people are getting bored with their bullcrap.

 Posted by at 3:26 pm
Sep 252011
 

Here are the first in-progress shots of the SSV CAD model being built with Rhino 3D. Most of the structure is worked out, but there’s a lot of surface detail to be fleshed out (is there *anybody* with the ability to take screenshots from the “2001” BluRay???). The model is being built for accuracy first, then some of it will be backed off a bit for the actual 3D printing process.. Some of the important details, especially those along the cables suspended alongside the spokes (the stuff in green), would be probably impossible to print, mold and cast reliably at small size, so some adjustments may be required.

 Posted by at 3:04 pm
Sep 242011
 

Over the years I’ve posted photos on my blog and even a few photo “products,” such as the panoramas on www.artbyearthlings.com and the DM-3 photo book. And people do keep telling me that they’re good and that I could make some money with my photos. Ha! In the two or three years artbyearthlings has been up, I’ve sold *nothing* there. “DM-3” sold *one* copy.

So… neener-neener! I proved ya wrong!!! BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

HAHAHAHA!!!

Ha.

Heh.

Umm.

I seem to have given myself a sad.

 Posted by at 2:29 pm
Sep 242011
 

Oh, sure, sounds like a great non-scary idea to me.

Behavioral Experiment Transparency vs Burden

Solicitation Number: TIRNO-11-Q-00349

Agency: Department of the Treasury

Office: Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Location: National Office Procurement (OS:A:P)

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to issue a sole sourced purchase order to the University of Minnesota’s Social Behavior Science Division Research Professors: Marsha Blumenthal and Laura Kalambolidis, for research experiments, data to explore the impacts of Behavioral experiments of alternative reporting regimes: transparency vs. burden.


BACKGROUND: The project involves a three-stage laboratory experiment to explore taxpayers’ willingness to accept increased reporting burden in exchange for either earnings or non-transparency of earnings to the authority. The first stage is designed to induce subjects to reveal their tendency to under-report taxable earnings in a voluntary reporting system with random audits and penalties for under-reporting. The second stage tests subjects’ willingness to pay for burden reduction when there is no opportunity to under-report earnings. The third stage presents subjects with two alternative regimes. One regime shall have no reporting burden, there shall be no opportunity to misreport. In the alternative regime subjects shall have to track their earning (a burden,) but subjects shall have the opportunity to increase their payoff by misreporting. Using our knowledge from the first two stages about subjects’ tendency to under-report, analysis of third stage behavior shall tell us whether the regime choice is an effective mechanism for separating compliant and non-compliant taxpayers.

Neat.

Here’s a thought: get rid of the income tax and go to a simple end-user consumption tax. All these problems go away. No need to mess about with psychological studies about this or that.

 Posted by at 1:42 pm
Sep 232011
 

Yet another neato virus that kills cancer. No word yet on whether it converts some percentage of the population into zombies or vampires.

Scientists discover virus that kills all types of breast cancer ‘within seven days’

Starting to look like sci-fi stories set more than a decade or two in the future will have to deal with the non-existence of cancer and the over-abundance of lots and lots of old people.

 Posted by at 7:43 pm
Sep 232011
 

If you want to see Christina Hendricks topless, there’s a very brief scene of that in the new movie “Drive.”

˙unbʇoɥs ɐ ɥʇıʍ ɟɟo uʍoןq pɐǝɥ ɹǝɥ sʇǝb ǝɥs

So, there you have it.

 Posted by at 4:52 pm
Sep 232011
 

Aeronautical, mechanical and computer engineers are justifiably proud of UAV’s. But even the most refined and advanced flying robot is a clunky piece of junk compared to the birds. Of course, birds have the advantage of being the end results of a billion years of evolution, but they are still capable of vastly more precise control than the best UAV. When a UAV can autonomously land on a stick like this owl, *then* the birds will have some competition.

[youtube x88rORdcA60]

 Posted by at 6:08 am