Some good news for NASA

 awesomeness, news, politics, science  8 Responses »
Nov 222016
 

*IF* this comes to pass:

Trump to Cut NASA’s Climate Change Budget, Shift Focus to the Moon

Regardless of your views on global warming, it’s really not NASA’s job. It’s the NOAA’s job. NASA should always and forever look *outwards,* towards the future. They should be in the business of advancing technology. And while weather satellites and the like are fine, they’re no longer really what NASA is about.

Now, if Trump could shuffle the ISS over to the State Department where it belongs, then maybe NASA can get to work on a *proper* space station. An all-American one, in a 28-degree inclination orbit, with artificial gravity, actual space construction and a spacecraft hangar for Moon/Mars ship construction,a permanent crew measured in *at* *least* dozens, blackjack and hookers.

 Posted by at 12:34 pm

You’re Not Helping

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  17 Responses »
Nov 222016
 

Ever since Trump announced his candidacy for president he has been accused of being a racist. Since most of these accusations come from people who seem to say “he’s a racist” with the repetitiveness that other people breathe in and out, most of these accusations are readily ignorable. Similarly, accusations that the “alt-right” is white supremacist are equally ignorable due to the hysterics of many on the left.

But then you get stuff like this:

It’s *really” hard to deny that what we have here are white supremacists/neo-Nazis/whatevers.

The next few years should prove interesting. It looks like pro-white racism might (*might*) become as mainstream as other forms of racism have been in recent years.

 Posted by at 1:24 am

XF-103 Construction

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, cyanotype blueprints, history, models, projects, youtube  6 Responses »
Nov 212016
 

This video has it all:

  1. Unbuilt aircraft concept
  2. Scale model (wind tunnel model) construction
  3. Cyanotype Blueprints
  4. Complete lack of an audio track

The obvious question that this video raises is… what happened with the model? Most wind tunnel models end up getting scrapped – shredded and melted down to recycle the metal. but every now and then one escapes. The company keeps it for display, or in an archive, or sometimes an employee simply takes it home. Sometimes they end up on EBay.

 Posted by at 10:31 pm

You want Vikings? Cuz this is how you get Vikings.

 AARRRGH, history, Hmm...  3 Responses »
Nov 202016
 

Vikings might have started raiding because there was a shortage of single women

The theory in short: the rich guys in Norse society not only had weapons, warriors and bling, they also had all the wimmins. Due to the higher-ups in society marrying a number of women, there were fewer women available for the men in the lower levels of society. So, says the theory, some of the motivation for Viking raids was to:

  1. Kidnap some women from elsewhere to bring home
  2. Steal a bunch of stuff to come home rich so that the local women will find them marryable.

Good thing that that sort of thing was *then* and not now. Because if there were, say, 30,000,000 excess males in, oh, let’s say “China,” something unfortunate might result.

 Posted by at 7:09 pm

Offensive Humor

 art, awesomeness, humor, politics, wisdom, youtube  3 Responses »
Nov 192016
 

Whenever someone tells you “that’s not funny” or “you can’t/shouldn’t laugh about that subject,” just remember: yes, you should. Note that in this compilation, comedians tell jokes about topics or identity groups that we’re often told “there’s nothing funny about that.” And you know what happens when the comedians tell jokes about these unfunny topics? The audience laughs. Because it’s friggen funny.

A bunch of comics I’ve never heard of before. One guy, who’s first clip starts at about 7:30, is a feller name of Steve Hughes. I am now going to have to look up more of his stuff. Because he’s not just funny, he’s got a damned good approach to the angertarians who use PC (or in his words, “intellectual colonials and psychological fascism for the creation of thought crime”) to try to shut people up.

Sadly, the thumbnail image for this YouTube video has a Naughty Word clearly visible, so rather than posting the video itself, here’s a link to the YouTube page with the video. If you are in an office or school setting, you may contemplate hooking it up to the PA system and providing your co-workers/students/faculty with 23 minutes of humor. Just what the world needs in this fractious time! As a bonus, you can play “spot the easily offended” by looking for the ones turning beet red with steam comign out their ears.

But no, don’t do that. Even though it would be hilarious.

 Posted by at 10:02 pm

America recently had a choice. It chose poorly.

 AARRRGH, art, blather, Gah., Meh., science fiction  14 Responses »
Nov 192016
 

According to Box Office Mojo…

Trolls: Domestic Total as of Nov. 18, 2016: $102,564,533 

Arrival: Domestic Total as of Nov. 18, 2016: $34,980,799

Ugh.

And lest you think that it’s specifically Americans who are teh dumm…

Trolls: Foreign: $129,338,668

Arrival: Foreign: $10,845,054

You know, those of us who appreciate*good* science fiction often bemoan the lack of it in theaters, compared to explodey eye candy (Dr. Strange has so far made half a billion). But when the rare smart science fiction movie comes along and performs this badly, is it any wonder that more like it aren’t made? Granted it’s only been one week, but it’s unlikely to suddenly zoom into popularity from here. So after that one week it has made $46M off of a $47M budget (dirt cheap by Hollywood standards), probably about half what is required to break even. With luck the coming weeks will see it inch towards profitability, but what with “Fantastic Beasts” stomping all over the box office, I’m not sure I’d bet on it.

FYI:

Star Trek: Beyond, budget $185M. US:$158.8M; Foreign: $184.5M, total: $343.3M. Did poorly enough that “Star Trek 4” is in doubt.

Ghostbusters 2016, budget $144M. US: $128.4M, Foreign: $100.8M, Total: $229.1M. A moderate bomb.

And to really give you a “WTF is *wrong* with you people?!?!?” vibe…

BOO! A Madea Halloween, budget $20 M, Worldwide: $72,644,026

 Posted by at 2:19 pm

M-21/D-21 Art on the road

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, photography, Utah  1 Response »
Nov 192016
 

Here’s something I don’t see every day: an RV with a painting of the M-21/D-21 combo on the back:

wp_20161102_003 wp_20161102_002

As the speed limit was 80 MPH, there wasn’t a whole lot of hanging aroung to try to get details, so what you see here is what I got. Perhaps the RV owner worked on the project; perhaps he/she just liked it.

Nostalgia moment: So, who else here is old and creaky enough to remember that vans are supposed to have airbrushed on their sides wizards, barbarians, warrior women in dubious armor and dragons?

 Posted by at 11:46 am

A Modest Proposal

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., politics  12 Responses »
Nov 182016
 

So, the losing Presidential candidate is almost universally acknowledged as being intensely corrupt and by a large fraction of the public as having engaged in criminal practices. The winning Presidential candidate is widely acknowledged to be pretty vindictive and incapable of “letting go.” So the obvious conclusion to draw is that President Giant Middle Finger will sic the Justice Department on Angry Grandma the first chance he gets. This will set off a firestorm, with the sizable fraction of the public that actually thought that Hillary Clinton would make a good President believing that to be a banana republic sort of event. Regardless of how justified (or not) sending the Presidential Loser to prison would be would be, it would be an unfortunate precedent.

Fortunately, I have a solution. It’s simple, entirely feasible, Constitutional and will make everyone happy. On Day One, President Trump simply pardons Hillary.

This should make the lefties happy, because it ends the wrangling and doesn’t send Hillary to prison. It results in the end of the idea of the President using the power of government to punish his political enemies (well, in this one area, anyway).

Now, why would the anti-Hillary folk back this idea? It sounds like kind of a loser for the people who want to see corruption punished. But consider: you don’t get pardoned for being innocent. Having been pardoned for violating security clearance laws with the email server will be one of the first things people think about when they hear “Hillary Clinton.” And the wording of the pardon could well be made interesting; it could be a masterpiece of left-handed complimenting. Say exactly what Hillary is guilty of (“influence peddling,” “gross violation of State Department email handling rules,” “bathing in the blood of kittens,” whatever), then say she’s pardoned for it. The beauty of it is that there is no need for “due process,” and no court to appeal to… a President can pardon whoever he likes, and if the pardoned person doesn’t like it, well, that’s just too bad.

Done right, this could essentially torpedo any possibility of Hillary running again for President (not that there’s a whole lot of chance of that, anyway). Sure, it gets her out of jail time… but that was probably never going to happen anyway. She is facing the worst punishment anyway: with no prospect of being President or otherwise in a position to direct national policy, who the hell is going to shower her, Bill or Chelsea with insanely large buckets of money to give pointless speeches or monumentally vast advances for books nobody is going to buy?

 Posted by at 11:27 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries