From the title it seems like the reviewer is not going to like “Rogue One.” But then… he starts yapping. And it’s exactly the sort of impenetrable liberal arts word salad that makes you wonder if you are reading parody.
The director of “Rogue One,” Gareth Edwards, has stepped into a mythopoetic stew so half-baked and overcooked, a morass of pre-instantly overanalyzed implications of such shuddering impact to the series’ fundamentalists, that he lumbers through, seemingly stunned or constrained or cautious to the vanishing point of passivity, and lets neither the characters nor the formidable cast of actors nor even the special effects, of which he has previously proved himself to be a master, come anywhere close to life.
And.
So.
On.
Read through it and you get that the reviewer was not a big fan of the flick. Fine. Maybe it stinks. Maybe it’s great, but he’s an outlier. Maybe he’s just not the right audience. Whatever. But when you use gibberish like “corporate Kremlinology” and “There’s none of the Shakespearean space politics, enticingly florid dialogue, or experiential thrills of the best of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” entries (“Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”),” man, it’s really hard to take you at all seriously. In fact, it’s real easy to see this piece as mocking the reader. And after a political season where politicians thought they would win by insulting large swathes of the voting public, people are getting kinda fed up with that.
Here’s the thing: for *decades* I never had much use for the Star Destroyer from Star Wars. It just seemed “meh” as a design. But for reasons at best unclear, a few years ago the design started to grow on me. And the timing has been pretty good.
For most of the last 39 years, if you wanted a model of the Star Destroyer, you had one option, the MPC kit. And it, in a word, kinda sucked. It was pretty much what you’d expect from a 1970’s sci-fi model… it more or less replicated the shape of the thing, but completely cheaped out on accuracy and details. And even so, for many years the only way to get one of these things was to shell out a bucket of money on EBay.
But no more. There are several good options if you want a nice Star Destroyer to display. NOTE: you *should* be able to see illustrated links to Amazon items. But some browsers /ad blockers don’t show them, so hopefully the text links work.
First up: Disney has had a diecast metal Star Destroyer available for a few years now. It’s quite good in terms of accuracy and detail, and is a good size for a die cast replica – about 9 inches long.
Revell has released a large-ish (about 16 inches long) snap-together Star Destroyer kit. Like the other Star Wars models they’ve released since The Force Awakens, this comes with some toy-like features and a built-in electronics module that provides sounds and LED lighting. That said, it’s really pretty good. The accuracy overall seems pretty good and detail – except for the irritating “landing gear” on the underside that takes the place of a proper display stand – is excellent. t has been a number of years since I’ve put together a model kit, but this came together just in the last couple days in spare moments. I spent substantially more time in painting it than assembly… the parts come bagged rather than on a sprue, and there are essentially no issues with flash. The kit can be assembled straight out of the box with no glue or trimming and produce a respectable replica… except for reworking the “landing gear,” I put mine together in perhaps half an hour.
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I admit to admiring the Revell Star Destroyer I’ve put together and painted. I think it looks Damn Good. But as I looked at it, it seemed to me that the bridge module looks like it might be a bit wide, so I looked it up online to see if there was any discussion of that. In short… it seems that the bridge module *is* a bit wide (the hypothesis seems to be that the model was based not on the filming miniatures or a CG model made for Rogue One, but the CG models made for “Battlefront” which have the wider bridges). But more importantly, in looking this up, I found several references to yet another Star Destroyer model kit on the horizon. This time it’s coming from the Russian model company Zvezda. It’s not out yet in the West, but it seems to be available in Russia itself. It’s unclear if it *will* be released in the West, and if so, for how much (I saw numerous references to $80-$130 dollars).
But from what I can see, this is the first Holy Crap model of the Star Destroyer that you can obtain without having to sell your car. Behold this unboxing video:
There appear to be some somewhat inexplicable choices with the Zvezda kit. The Revell kit, for example, has eight separate turbolaser turrets, which snap in and can rotate; the Zvezda kit, probably twice the size, seemingly has the turrets in a fixed position. This was likely done to minimize cost, and is not really that big of a deal given how small they are.
The Revell kit is I think the best deal for the money, even with the too-wide bridge module. The laid-back modeler won’t notice, and may even appreciate the “landing gear;” for the sticklers, I’m sure someone will crank out a replacement bridge in resin or on Shapeways if they haven’t already. The Zvezda kit seems like it’ll be the new benchmark in Star Destroyer Awesomeness, just as the 1/350 Enterprises from Polar Lights reset the stage for Trek. But as with the PL Enterprises, the 60+ centimeter Star Destroyer might prove to be problematically large for many people. Of course, like the Bluetooth Communicator Cell Phones I posted about a while back, having one of those monsters proudly displayed in your home might be just the thing if you want to make sure that the ladies view you as Undatable.
Since I have cemented that status for myself, if I see one of the Zvezda monsters – and if I can afford it – I’m’a gettin’ me one.
A little over two weeks ago I linked to an old Army report on the idea of hand-held weapons for use in space. At *roughly* the same time the Army was pondering the need to kill Commie bastards on the moon, Winchester was looking at a shotgun that kinda was almost exactly what the Army wanted: the Liberator.
The Liberator was a short-lived idea for a four-barreled shotgun “Derringer.” It would be easy and cheap to manufacture, simple to operate, great for dropping into Viet Nam or Cuba or some place else with People We Like who are fighting People We Don’t Like. Shotguns are great for “bush” areas where the line of sight often isn’t that far, and where marksmanship training isn’t that great. DARPA was involved in pushing the idea.
Three Liberator models are shown in the video below. The Mk. 1 is just a wooden mockup, and was intended to use a four-round pre-assembled package of ammo… you put in the one chunk, fire it four time, pop the expended chunk out. The Mk. 2 used conventional shotgun shells and a simple break-open arrangement, like a greatly enlarged Derringer. The Mk. 2 is the design of interest here. It was made of magnesium castings; this would have made it strong and light and cheap, but I just can’t get past the idea of being creeped out about firing a weapon made out of *magnesium.* On Earth, with rough handling and humidity and such, you’d expect the magnesium might not hold up so well, and while it was undoubtedly an alloy of magnesium which was substantially less burny than pure magnesium… still, you wouldn’t want a scuffed-up shotgun to decide Now’s The Time and spark up in your hands.
But in space? Magnesium would be just fine in a vacuum.
Also of note: the Mk. 2 doesn’t have a standard trigger meant to be pulled by a single finger, but a squeeze bar for the whole hand. Just the thing for a Marine in a space suit. Additionally, note that the trigger guard actually folds up so if you have big fat gloves you can get a grip on the thing.
This does make me wonder. It was meant for low-end combatants who didn’t have anything better. Well, in the 1960’s, how often would that description have applied to anyone outside of the tropics? How often would someone need to handle this weapon while wearing mittens? It’s unlikely… but maybe, just maybe, the design features were put in with the thought that this could be used in space (NOTE: almost certainly not). The latching handle is *huge,* again just the thing for use with a spacesuit glove. DARPA could have been thinking about this for use in places just a little higher up than the hills of Cambodia.
A paperweight? A conversation piece? A work of art? It’s up to you, but this smooth Los Angeles-area stone—wrapped in rich, vegetable-tanned American leather secured by sturdy contrast backstitching—is sure to draw attention wherever it rests. A traditional hardening process gives the leather a beautiful ombré effect. Like all Made Solid leather pieces, this one is cut, shaped, sewn and finished by hand in artist Peter Maxwell’s Los Angeles studio. Using vintage leatherworking tools and traditional saddle-stitching techniques, Maxwell aims to create beautiful designs that embody both simplicity and functionality, and that develop rich character and patina over time.
3″ x 4 1/2″ x 2″
Each piece is unique and will vary slightly
Vegetable-tanned leather/stone
Made in the USA
Love Pop-In Shop
And if it wasn’t sold out, it could be yours for a mere $85.
OK, kids, it’s time to speculate. Seems to me there are two leading possibilities:
The “artist” behind this is one of those cranks who actually thinks hokey junk like this is actually Important Art (subset: “Ironically”)
The “artist” behind this is something of a jokester.
I’m hoping for #2. The world is full enough with the sort of lameass “artists” who think that a rock in a leather pouch is something special. In comparison, the world needs more scam artists.
All that said: damn, I wish *I* had thought of this.
Of course this is terribly preliminary and *not* sourced; the CIA as an organization hasn’t made the claim, just a subset of analysts. But who knows.
Best as I can figure, the reasoning behind the conclusion seems to be that Russian hackers managed to hack both the Democrat and the Republican email systems, but only released info damaging to the Democrats. Unless the Republicans didn’t actually have any juicy scandalous stuff in *their* emails (and, honestly, what are the chances of *that*), then, if true, it does point strongly towards an anti-Dem motivation.
But even if this is all true, it’s not really tampering with the voting itself, but rather a form of pro-Trump (or at least anti-Hillary) propaganda. People still voted how they voted, and the votes were still counted (or not) based on the built-in American systems. But if the Russian government can be proven to have actually done dirty tricks to aid Trump, that will not aid his first four years to go well.
And that, I think, is a better explanation than “Putin likes Trump,” or “Trump is Putins puppet.” Rather, the goal here was to actually get caught successfully tampering with the election. This would help to screw up the image of American democracy not only here but around the world, and for years to come
