Boggle.
And by “accommodate,” they mean “provide two tactile interpreters (people who lay their hands on the hands of the deaf-blind patron, using sign language which the patron reads through feeling) at the cost of several hundred dollars per showing.” And by “court” they mean the “3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.”
So after the Mandalay Bay Massacre, the usual pack of political ghouls are pushing for a ban on “military style assault weapons” (i.e. guns that function) and “high capacity (i.e. standard) magazines. But they’re also going after bump stocks… simple bits of plastic that turn perfectly adequate semiautomatic rifles into high firing rate inaccurate bullet hoses. The usefulness of the latter for preventing future crimes is dubious. The sole purpose of a bump stock is to *legally* simulate full auto; if you want full auto and don’t care about legality, modifying your firearm is generally easy enough. Bump stocks just made it a little bit easier. If bump stocks suddenly vanished, criminals wanting full auto capability would simply modify their weapons some other way.
But if bump stocks went away and criminals decided they *really* wanted bump stocks, how hard would it be for them to make their own? As it turns out… not that hard.
Or even easier:
Which results in this:
These are just regular schmoes, making these things for the entertainment value. Imagine what actual criminals can do.
Or just wrap a rubber band around the trigger:
Interesting:
It’s a small plane, seating only 12, designed to go about 700 miles at an airspeed of about 340 miles per hour. It is to use two electric motors running off batteries, with a backup jet fuel powered generator to extend range and keep the craft airborne when the batteries run dry. Improvements in battery technology would allow the plane to be fully electric and to eventually extend range. As a small aircraft it is meant to operate from smaller non-hub airports, theoretically shaving hours off actual trip time due to avoiding the nightmare that is modern airport security theater.
WHEEEEEEEE!!!!!
“Blade Runner 2049” is… meh. And I don’t mean “meh” in “it’s not everything it could/should have been” way, it’s”meh” in the “I sat through it, pointed my eyes at it, listened to it, and very little of it made any sort of impact whatsoever” way.
It was competent film making, I suppose. But the plot was muddled, the main character was the polar opposite of “interesting,” *everything* was dismal and depressing (the original was set in a rather dismal Los Angeles, but “2049” is actually a post-apocalyptic wasteland on the “Judge Dredd” side of “Mad Max”). The original had some amazing visuals; this one… not so much. The original had some impressive music; this ones soundtrack was, sad to say, pedestrian and utterly forgettable.
Oh, well. At least they didn’t redesign the Klingons…
There were a few interesting things, like the fact that the “Blade Runner” universe is apparently an alternate history where the Soviet Union is still a going concern (as is Pan Am). But on the whole… meh.
I have a number of new aerospace cyanotype blueprints available. Until I can repave the catalog page, I have slapped together a PDF catalog of the new items. Until Wednesday, I’m making these new 12X18 prints, as well as the earlier 12X18 prints, available. The earlier 12X18s are viewable HERE. The new items are in the following PDF file:
If any are of interest, Paypal to the email address in the PDF file, and add a note in the order which items you want…. AND what your mailing address is (PayPal doesn’t automatically add the address to payments like this).
After Wednesday the prints will be again unavailable for a little bit while I retool and work on some things.
UPDATE: over for now. After some retooling I hope to have all the cyanotypes, small and large old and new, available for regular sale.
None of *MY* critters can do this…
Buttons had to go to the vet yesterday to get a shot. This did not please him.
An article discussing a theoretical form of aluminum (via a certain crystalline arrangement) with a bulk density of only 0.61 grams per cubic centimeter… meaning it would float. The researchers behind this study haven’t actually produced any, so it’s not certain that it can be done on any sort of scale.
The research paper is paywalled, so I can’t tell if the researchers have predicted what the mechanical properties of the stuff would be. *If* it is anything like conventional aluminum, it would make for some interesting applications, especially if it has interesting thermal properties. But it’s metastable, which means that it *could* fall apart rather suddenly, potentially energetically. Quite likely what it means is that the low density aluminum would sit there and be well behaved until some external force came along – a temperature increase, water, oxygen, a whack with a hammer, foul language, a stern glance – and then the crystalline structure folds up like a university dean confronted with a pack of feral SJWs and the density goes back to normal.
Some fellers are working on nano-satellite “kits,” and have set up a Kickstarter to fund the project. The end result will be Raspberry Pi computer powered little satellite simulators that will – at the upper end – apparently be launched atop sounding-type rockets. The people behind this project had the good sense to have me produce a 12X18 cyanotype blueprint of a diagram of the original Sputnik satellite to serve as one of the funding rewards.
The Kickstarter page is currently a bit lean on details, but I’m told they’re going to flesh it out in coming days. Take a look:
