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And the insanity spreads

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, politics, ಠ_ಠ  7 Responses »
Sep 282017
 

There is a time and a place for most things. Kneeling during the National Anthem as a form of protest… it can be insulting, but so long as it’s in a venue where the people who feel insulted can withdraw their finances from you, that’s fine. But you know where such form of protest *isn’t* appropriate? Let’s take a look…

 

There is question about just what’s going on here. The origin of the photo itself is a bit of a mystery… it’s entirely possible that this occurred *before* the current obsession by tattooed millionaires for “taking a knee,” maybe he’s just typing his shoe, etc. But if it is what it looks like – intentionally disrespecting dead soldiers – then it’s monumental jackassery.

 

 

 Posted by at 6:19 pm

Some good news in the courts

 news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Sep 282017
 

D.C. Circuit lets stand concealed-carry ruling, cheering gun-rights activists

In a win for gun rights advocates, a federal appeals court on Thursday decided to let stand a ruling that found it is unconstitutional to require firearms owners prove a “good reason” in order to be permitted to carry a concealed handgun in the nation’s capital.

While it’s good news and a step in the right direction, it’s insane that it was a necessary step in the first place. Imagine if some municipality put a rule in place that in order to vote you needed to show a “good reason.” Or even to drive… which, unlike bearing arms is a *privilege,* not a right.

The case is now likely to go to the Supreme Court. Chances are good that if it does so, reason will continue to prevail. And here is a case where it makes sense to recognize one of Trumps few true successes. imagine in Clinton had installed her own Supreme Court justice rather than Gorsuch. Shudder.

Something the FedGuv needs to do is end the nonsense of allowing political regions (cities, counties, states, whatever) to not recognize another districts CCW license. Again, witness the drivers license… or the marriage certificate.

 Posted by at 5:53 pm

More On Sportsball

 history, Hmm..., politics  1 Response »
Sep 272017
 

Get it? “More On Sportsball… Moron Sportsball?” Bah. My comic genius is unappreciated in my time.

Anyway…

From Mike Rowe’s Facebook:

In democracies, we the people get the government we deserve. We also get the celebrities we deserve, the artists we deserve, and the athletes we deserve. Because ultimately, we the people get to decide who and what gets our attention, and who and what does not.

…

The fans of professional football are not powerless – they’re just not yet offended enough to turn the channel. Should that ever change in a meaningful way – if for instance, a percentage of football fans relative to those players who chose to kneel during today’s games, chose to watch something else next Sunday – I can assure you…the matter would be resolved by Monday.

How the Pentagon Paid for NFL Displays of Patriotism

“Until 2009, no NFL player stood for the national anthem because players actually stayed in the locker room as the anthem played,” ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith explained in 2016. “The players were moved to the field during the national anthem because it was seen as a marketing strategy to make the athletes look more patriotic. The United States Department of Defense paid the National Football League $5.4 million between 2011 and 2014, and the National Guard $6.7 million between 2013 and 2015 to stage onfield patriotic ceremonies as part of military-recruitment budget line items.”

The amount spent by the DoD for “paid patriotism” is really small taters in the grand scheme of things, and it’s remarkable just how recently this “tradition” started.

I suspect this will blow over like most other political-moral panics; in a week or two this will be old news. But given how recently it began – 2009 – if the issue has legs I’m sure the NFL will come to regret having taken that small sum from the DoD. Had they not and had the mutants stayed in the locker room during the anthem, I doubt to many people would have cared.

 Posted by at 10:45 am

“Evaporation Engines”

 blather, Hmm..., nukes, science  2 Responses »
Sep 272017
 

Could Evaporating Water Be the Next Big Thing in Renewable Energy?

Claim is that the US has the *potential* for 325 gigawatts of electrical power from harnessing the power of evaporation, sing technologies that seem a little tenuous. Utah supposedly had the potential for 47 gigawatts.

Of course, this sort of system of power generation is weather dependent, like solar and wind. Evaporation rates go down when the temperature goes down, such as night and winter. Still, *if* his sort of thing can be made practical… I have an idea.

First, dredge out the Great Salt Lake (a half baked crazy notion I’ve mentioned before). Dig it out substantially deeper, refill with ocean water, stock with fish.Turn the lake – currently pretty useless – into a productive gigantic fish farm. Then put the evaporation power systems in place over much of it. These would block a fair percentage of the light, but enough would get through to keep the ecosystem humming along. On warm sunny days, the evaporation power system cranks out the gigawatts.

At night, on cloudy and cold days… the nuclear systems in the lake kick on to full power. Bopping around under the lake would be purpose-built submarines, basically mobile nuclear reactors. They would use the lake water as the heat sink for the heat exchangers for the power systems; this would heat up the lake during winter… actually promoting evaporation. The subs need not do a whole lot of traveling; they’d be tethered to electrical nodes with massive power cables, and would only need to move around enough to make them untargetable for terrorists in jetliners and the like.

Honestly, I think covering the lake with perforated mats of PV arrays would be better than evaporation engines, but… whatever works.

 Posted by at 12:50 am

Can a C-17 operate from an aircraft carrier?

 aircraft, blather, Hmm..., My Fiction  16 Responses »
Sep 262017
 

Something little known is that the US Navy ran trials of operating a C-130 from an aircraft carrier (the Forrestal). For reasons that seem good to me, I’m pondering the question of whether a C-17 could operate from a modern carrier such as the Nimitz or the Ford.On the surface it looks like no, since the stated takeoff run is about three times the length of the Ford or Nimitz… but with reduced cargo?

Alternatively; what aircraft capable of substantial payloads (mostly passengers) could operate from a modern carrier, while flying at least 2,500 miles?

Yeah, the purpose is fiction. The situation is an emergency, something that has to be slapped together in at most a few days, so it’s not a call for major modifications or a new design.

 

 Posted by at 11:55 pm

Something else to shake your head at STD about

 art, Gah., science fiction  9 Responses »
Sep 262017
 

Unsurprisingly, the people who dressed the sets added a bunch of “easter eggs,” giving shout-outs to the original series. And in principle that can be cool… but come on, have a little craftsmanship.

First up, Captain Georgiou had a set of books on a shelf. You can’t see them closely enough on the show to make out the titles, but they are actually the titles to some TOS episodes. That’s kinda nifty. But take a closer look:

https://twitter.com/abaiers/status/912153348991627264/photo/1

Closer….

ALL OUR YESTEDRDAYS.

YESTEDRDAYS

And then there’s a bottle of booze, from “Chateu Picard.”

Which is nice. One of Captain Picards ancestors bottled that wine in, according to the label, 2267. Which is nice.

Ahhhhhuuuummmm…

“First officer’s log, Stardate 1207.3. On Earth, it’s May 11, 2256, a Sunday.”

 

So the bottle is from 12 years in the future.

 

 Posted by at 9:42 pm

Well, that explains it…

 awesomeness, Crazy, critters, Hmm..., russian empire, youtube  2 Responses »
Sep 262017
 

Have you ever wondered why there are so many dashcam videos out of Russia showing spectacular car crashes? The usual explanations include bad roads and booze, but I think I’ve discovered the real problem: bears. Bears on the roads. Bears in vehicles.

NATO better watch out. When Russia invades Lithuania, Poland and Portugal to protect the local ethnic Russians, they’re going to show up with bear cavalry.

 

 

 Posted by at 8:33 pm

An engineer among the liberal artists

 AARRRGH, art, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., humor, science, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  16 Responses »
Sep 262017
 

This… this struck many a nerve. Back in my aerospace engineering days, I had a *lot* of meetings that went more or less like this.

The end result, both in the video and in reality, is for the engineer to just give up and say “yeah, sure, I can do the crazy incomprehensible thing you think you want.” Work from that point forward then becomes an effort not to produce the impossible thing, but to plan out in advance how you’re going to blame who for what.

There were times when I was told to design a component that would only be physically possible in a reality with four physical dimensions. There were *many* times when I had to actually invent something (not just design, but invent, as in come up with a new propellant combination and propellant geometry that had apparently never been tried before, with all the tests and undoubtedly failures and revisions that would require) and I had to tell management in advance how much it would cost and how many man hours it would take, to within a few percent accuracy. There were times when I was told to replace an electrical conductor with a non-conductor, but to make sure that it maintained its conductance. Told to make a rocket motor that performed as well as a standard one, weighed the same, cost the same, but didn’t have a hot exhaust plume. And so on. And every time I made an objection I was told I was being “negative” or was told “that’s your job” or “make it work.”

This also works as an allegory for “a rational man among the social justice warriors.”

 

 Posted by at 3:15 pm
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