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Somebody’s got some splainin’ to do

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, Utah, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  25 Responses »
Jan 252017
 

Weather has been rather aggressively wintery of late. For example, I am getting a serious uncomfortableness about the amount of snow and ice built up on my roof. Conditions on the roads have been similarly dodgy from time to time. So it wasn’t entirely shocking to hear on the news this last weekend that a Fed Ex truck got smacked by a commuter train in Salt Lake City.

But today the police released some dash cam footage that put a bit of a different spin on things. There was a police car *right* *there* when the incident occurred and good footage was obtained. You might think the truck driver is an idiot for pulling out in front of the train. But pay attention to the train crossing signals and barriers. More importantly, pay attention to the *timing.*

Ruh-Roh…

Note that there’s no audio. I *really* want to hear the audio. I bet it’s entertainingly expletiv-riffic.

 Posted by at 2:40 am

Democratic Party Chair Candidate stumps for Trump 2020

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, news, politics, youtube  6 Responses »
Jan 242017
 

Because racially divisive Identity Politics worked out so well for the Dems in the last couple of elections, DNC party chairman candidate Sally Boynton Brown doubles down and tells fellow Dems that she’s running to become the head honcho of their party so that she can shut down white Democrats who speak up.

Yeah. That’ll work *great.*

I fully support her and I hope she wins.

 Posted by at 7:26 pm

Radiation Clouds

 Hmm..., news, science  17 Responses »
Jan 242017
 

Well, here’s some good news…

Radiation Clouds at Aviation Altitudes

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Space Weather reports the discovery of radiation “clouds” at aviation altitudes. When airplanes fly through these clouds, dose rates of cosmic radiation normally absorbed by air travelers can double or more.

Wunderbar.

The hypothesis is that radiation is getting trapped in geomagnetic “bottles” which sometime burst and rain rads down towards the surface.

You really gotta watch out for radiation clouds when flying around.

pdvd_003

 Posted by at 1:36 am

The Cloverfield Universe

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 232017
 

I got a kick out of the 2008 Giant Monster movie “Cloverfield.” I would have preferred – a lot – if it had been a standard movie format rather than “found footage” with shakeycam, but you get what you get, I suppose. But what was presented left the door open for prequels, sidequels and sequels, and I though that that was a concept that could actually do well with further exploration. But such films were not forthcoming.

In 2016, the movie “10 Cloverfield Lane” came out. The producers said that it was kinda-sorta a sequel to Cloverfield; but the relationship between the two movies is really not apparent. Sure, both feature aliens, but they are apparently fundamentally different and there’s no obvious link between the two.

But the thing is: the producers went buggo on producing *tiny* scraps of evidence and scattering them hither and yon to be found by people with *way* too much free time. One such intrepid soul has put together a YouTube video that goes through a lot of *excessively* detailed analysis of the hints that J.J. Abrams & Co. spread around. in the end, if the analysis is even halfway correct, then the movies really are linked. In short… the events of “Cloverfield” pissed off Mom.

This sort of thing – lots of tiny details dropped here and there that link two apparently separate stories into a single narrative universe – is not new. “Necronomicon,” anyone?

 

 Posted by at 2:52 am

Polaris

 drawings, history, nukes, Patreon, rockets  12 Responses »
Jan 232017
 

Here’s an interesting illustration of the Polaris sea launched ballistic missile, taken from a technical manual. I’ve uploaded the full-rez version to the APR Patreon Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-01, so if you are interested, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

POLARIS

 Posted by at 2:02 am

Cast A Deadly Spell

 art, awesomeness, Crazy, humor, science fiction, youtube  14 Responses »
Jan 192017
 

H.P. Lovecraft is one of the more important authors in the history of horror fiction, yet there have been relatively few attempts made to film his works with anything resembling a “big budget.”Still, there have been a few times where Lovecraftian ideas or themes have been incorporated into original movies; “Hellboy” is one of the more obvious examples. Another example, perhaps less well known, is the 1991 HBO TV-movie “Cast a Deadly Spell.” This is not based on a Lovecraft story, but instead is sort of an “homage” to Lovecraft. The main character, Harry Phillip Lovecraft (played by Fred Ward), is a private eye in 1948 Los Angeles… a Los Angeles where magic is an every day, commonly used tool. “Cast” is, in a word, damned entertaining, in much the same way that “Deep Rising” was. And it’s a friggen’ crime that HBO has never released this on DVD or Blu Ray.

“How long is that in dog years?” still gets me laughing a quarter century later.

 Posted by at 10:37 pm

Nuking London

 AARRRGH, blather, history, nukes, politics, youtube  2 Responses »
Jan 192017
 

Is your main problem that you are just too cheerful? Is an overwhelming sense of optimism ruining your worldview? Well, boy howdy do I have the cure for you!

Back when I was a kid in the 80’s, it seems to my dim and rusty memory that the airwaves were *filled* with doom-and-gloom. Initially we were all going to die in nuclear fire, but soon enough AIDS was also going to do us in (I have particularly strong vague memories of people freaking the hell out when rumors began to spread that skeeters could spread AIDS). And then there was the crack cocaine and crime in general. It’s kind of a wonder than *any* Gen X’er ever managed to intentionally reproduce.

All y’all too young to remember the 80’s can’t really grasp just how shocking it was when the wall came down and the Soviet Union fell away *without* the world going up in nuclear fire.

 

 

 Posted by at 5:11 pm
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