Jul 242013
 

What was, to me, an irritating non-story about one baby out of, what, 300,000 or so born that day, has apparently irritated a bunch more people. But not because it’s a non-story… no, they’re upset that it’s a boy. More specifically, they’re upset that the family is *calling* it a boy:

12 People Who Want the Royal Baby to Choose it’s Gender, Not the Patriarchy

The royal baby is not a boy, because ze is not yet old enough to choose zir own gender.

STOP CALLING THE #ROYALBABY A BOY. ZIR BIOLOGICAL SEX IS NOT RELEVANT. This is how the patriarchy indoctrinated its future leader.

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If you’re upset about the baby being called a “boy”… there’s something wrong with you.

 Posted by at 2:56 pm
Jul 242013
 

Sale has ended.

 

Still going on, 1/3 or so off Aerospace Projects Review. Only a few more days.

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Volume 1: Normally $44.50 for all six issues; on sale now for $30.00

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Volume 2: Normally $52.50 for all six issues; on sale now for $35.00

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Volume 3 (so far… including N2&N3 Addenda): Normally $36.50 for all issues; on sale now for $24.00

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 Posted by at 1:37 pm
Jul 242013
 

A closeup of part of the “wheel” of the early-60’s Lockheed space station concept. Via NASA history office.

A number of early rotating space stations used “wheels” like this, with straight cylindrical segments forming a torus. While this would be relatively easy to build, it would have the result that the flat floors would be “curved” from the standpoint of “gravity.” Things would roll “downhill” towards the joints between segments.

 

There are some definite head-scratchers in this.

  • A whole lot of paper books, a pretty substantial library. Anyone who had ever picked up a box of books knows that paper is *heavy.*
  • That’s a heck of a couch.
  • With a small-minor-diameter torus like this, there’s no getting away from the fact that each compartment is going to have traffic through it. Still, it seems a dubious choice to put one of the main entryways into the torus in the machine shop. Anyone working in there is likely going to be effectively deaf, and possibly blind. Not to mention you’re going to have people wandering through a machine shop. This, I think, should be in a segments furthest from a “spoke” so that it gets less traffic… and nobody dropping in from above.
  • Once you’ve dropped into the machine shop from the spoke… good luck getting back up to it.
  • Don’t ask me to explain the rectangular doors with the circular doors built-in.
  • Is that a pile of logs? Stocking up for those cold winter nights, perhaps?
 Posted by at 12:44 pm
Jul 232013
 

Ugh.

Anthony Weiner not dropping out of NYC mayoral race after admitting to more lewd photos

Short form: Weiner resigned his seat in Congress in 2011 after photos went public provign that he was a scumbag, cyber-cheating on his wife. He did the weepy thing, promising to change, blah, blah. Well, it’s happened again, with photos from mid/late 2012. Note that this is well *after* he quit in 2011, while *still* married. Before this came out, Weiner was leading in the polls to win the NYC Mayoral election.

So here’s my suggestion: if, after this, Weiner *still* wins, that’ll be prima facie evidence that the voters of NYC cannot be trusted with even local elections. Consequently, their votes will no longer count for state and federal elections until such time as they prove to not be complete unutterable morons. Any man who cannot keep it in his shorts even after losing his career so publicly and humiliatingly is clearly someone who should not be entrusted with any position of power, and anyone who would nevertheless put such a person in a position of power is clearly an idiot.

Same of course goes for Detroit and Chicago.

 Posted by at 3:27 pm
Jul 232013
 

Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” impressed the hell out of ten-year-old me when it first aired back in 1980, and helped set me on the course I wound up on. And while some of it is dated today (the ulcerating over global thermonuclear war, mostly), it still largely holds up. Fox is going to air a whole new “Cosmos” in 2014, with Neil deGrasse Tyson taking Sagans place. And from the look of the trailer that was released at Comicon, it looks like they just might recapture the spirit and effect of the original. Here’s to hoping that it does, and that it impresses the current generation of younguns to be interested in science and the universe.

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 Posted by at 3:15 pm
Jul 232013
 

The world might have to wait until Wednesday to gaze upon the new royal crotch-dropping. Guessing they’re having trouble stapling those jug-ears to the sides of the skull

This is, of course, in reference to some kind what just got decanted over in Englandland, which, if the media yammerings are to be paid attention to, is almost as a big a deal as Lady Gaga posing naked. The very first post in the thread nails what is most important about this “news story:”

omgwthc

Let’s face it: who really cares? Sure, maybe, someday, the kid will be King of Englandistan. But when will that be? Do the math. His great-grandmother, the current Queen, is about 90. The family seems pretty long-lived. So he can probably expect his father to hang on till the age of 100 or thereabouts, perhaps longer. If dear old dad hangs on until the age of 118 (pretty old today, but who’s to say for decades down the line), junior won’t get to be king until THE TWENTY-SECOND CENTURY. Rattle that around in your noggin. Then try to find something to do with your day that doesn’t involve obsessing over some kid who is the offspring of someone who hasn’t done anything noteworthy, who is also the offspring of someone who’s done nothing of note.

 Posted by at 11:13 am
Jul 222013
 

A bit before 10PM tonight, a twin-engined plane buzzed the area repeatedly. Seemed to be flying some sort of pattern. Couldn;t have been visual-light aerial photography given how dark it was. Might’ve just been someone screwing around, but there seemed purpose in it. Makes me wonder it it might’ve been some sort of air quality sampler or something, given that ATK is just on the other side of the hill.

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 Posted by at 10:27 pm