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Jul 202017
 

A few weeks back I posted an old Chrysler ad I found online. The image quality was ok, but kinda small. Subsequently I found a copy on ebay, bought it, scanned it and cleaned it. I’ve posted the full-rez, fully cleaned version of the ad to the 2017-07 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available for free for all APR patrons at the $4 level and above. The full rez image is 4043×6270 pixels, or 13.5×20.9 inches at 300 dpi. It could probably be safely printed off at 200 dpi, giving 20.2X32.35 inches.

Here’s a dinkyscale version of the new scan:

And here, because I want y’all to know that these things take time and effort, are some full-size crops from both the final version and the raw scan, showing the improvement in image quality. Some of it is done via a few keystrokes, such as tweaking the rightness and contrast, but erasing thousands of little specks and fixing flaws? That’s all genuine artisanal hand-made old-school photoshoppery craftsmanship.

 

If you are interested in accessing these and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

 

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 Posted by at 4:49 pm
Jul 202017
 

Because why not, I’ve written a short story. Not sure if it’s any good or not, so I’m hoping to find three martyrs volunteers willing to give it a read and give me feedback. There are two things:

  1. Ya gotta be willing to reply back here with your general impressions after you’ve read it. It hasn’t really been edited yet… I scribbled it out in a day, and I’m sure it’s chock full o’ grammar errors. Just looking for “I would read more of this” or “meh” or “that sucked ass” or “take my money,” stuff like that. And any other comments.
  2. Ya gotta be a fan of Lovecraft, and reasonably knowledgeable in the Lovecraftian basics. Otherwise, this just won’t make much sense. This isn’t “Lovecraftian in tone or theme,” it’s an outright shameless pastiche.

I’ve been poking away at the next Pax Orionis story, but this one sort of popped into my head and I had to scribble it down. If interested, comment. First three volunteers get to read free fiction.

 Posted by at 4:28 am
Jul 192017
 

Through the use of cats, humor and profanity, exurb1a explains the limitations that our brains put on understanding the universe… and how those limits might grow. There’s a good line about how our descendants might grow in capacity and learn things we alive now would be wholly incapable of understanding… “they couldn’t have gotten there without us, but they’ll get there without us.”

 Posted by at 11:16 pm
Jul 192017
 

Party members told to give up religion for Party unity or face punishment

“Party members should not have religious beliefs, which is a red line for all members … Party members should be firm Marxist atheists, obey Party rules and stick to the Party’s faith … they are not allowed to seek value and belief in religion,” Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) wrote in an article released in the Qiushi Journal on Saturday, the flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee.

Officials who have religious faith should be persuaded to give it up, and those who resist would be punished by the Party organization, Wang wrote.

How terribly progressive of them.

“It is important that Wang constantly reminds Party members not to have religious beliefs. Some people who claim to be scholars support religious beliefs in the Party, which has undermined the Party’s values based on dialectical materialism,” Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the Ethnic and Religious Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Ah, the ol’ “dialectical materialism” ploy.

It should be pointed out that in Marxism, “atheism” isn’t exactly “atheism.” The normal definition of an atheist is someone who does not believe in god (cue the arguments over the difference between “not believing there’s a god” and “believing there is no god”), but commies are a bit different. They yammer on about how there is no god, and about how religion is bad, and how their form of “dialectical materialism” is good. But at the same time, they elevate the state to the *role* of god, turn the Communist Party and its ideology into the exact duplicate of a religion, and the objective results of their materialism *sucks.* The only reason why Communist China has turned itself into something of an economic powerhouse is because they have fallen from the true communist faith and have embraced capitalism, just not in name. They are now something far closer to National Socialism than Communism in the way they run their economy, but the way they run their government is still classically communist.

Some of this is due to an innate need in many, perhaps most, humans to believe that there’s some sort of magical superpower out there, whether it’s God or the State or Fate or whatever. But mostly I think it’s because religion was developed over perhaps tens of thousands of years and refined into a *really* quite effective way to keep most of a society in line, and commies, who are all about power and control, want that ability for themselves.

Remember, kiddies: this is the same China that a whole lot of people are hoping will take the reins from the US as the “leader of the world.”

 Posted by at 10:28 pm
Jul 182017
 

Because.

Raedthinn chillin’ in one of his favorite spots, backed up by Fingers.

Fingers gazes with disdain down upon her subjects.

Buttons looks with dismay upon the unwelcome scene of the vet clinic

Speedbump looks up in befuddlement at, well, everything. He’s not that smart.

 Posted by at 1:27 pm
Jul 182017
 

A little while ago there was a commercial for a childrens charity that deals with kids who need hospitalization. As is traditional for such things, many scenes of injured & sick lil’ adorable moppets were shown, but one of them CREEPED ME THE HELL OUT. The first time I saw it I had my glasses off, so I saw the screen burrily and wasn’t able to quite make out what I was seeing. What they were showing on screen was a little girl who was missing her left leg and learning to walk on a prosthetic. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that. But… the prosthetic leg is a simple “stick,”and, for reasons that effectively evade me, they painted it BLOOD RED.

Behold:

Ye Gods.

Seen out of focus and for just a split second, it sure looked to me like a little girl who had just been attacked by a swarm of piranha. Or maybe she was the undead. In any event, it just wasn’t a good look.

BLAAAARRRRGH

 Posted by at 1:16 pm