Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter Will Soon Have a Coliseum Diorama with Romans, Shields… and a Dinosaur
https://www.facebook.com/aigkenham/posts/1327716147258738
So much sculpting/modeling talent being squandered on utter bilge.
Nov 292016
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Nov 292016
Two caveats:
1) It’s from the Daily Mail
2) It’s from Russia
So accuracy is not assured.
The CLONED dogs of war: Russia unveils genetically-enhanced canines which will work with Putin’s Special Forces and were created by scientist attempting to restore woolly mammoths
The notion of cloning special dogs for certain roles is interesting, but it’s very likely to be of dubious practical value. The utility of a dog for sniffing out drugs or explosives comes down to their breed and training, and cloning does frak-all to pass on training for anything more advanced than a flatworm. And if you happen to like a particular breed, there are easier ways than cloning to get more of ’em. A male and a female, some mood lighting and Barry White playing over the kennels PA system would not only be sufficient, it might be argued as being a bit excessive for the goal of getting more of that breed.
And cloning is still a sufficiently new practice that it’s not at all clear than the clones will be as healthy or long-lived as the original.
Nov 292016
Trump suggests loss of citizenship or jail for those who burn U.S. flags
Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016
Sigh.
Flag burning is a Supreme Court Ruling Protected form of free expression. It may be rude, it may be dumb, it may be offensive… but that’s what the 1st Amendment is *for.*
Nov 292016
I’ve not devoted much cogitation to the EM drive, mostly because it just strikes me as bunk. There has recently been some renewed interest due to the appearance of a peer reviewed paper that seems to back up some of the claims… but when the thrust level for 100 watts is measured in *micro* newtons, I just can’t scrape up much interest. Especially when the guy behind the idea was claiming that it would be able to power flying cars (capable of VTOL) and space launch boosters, requiring an improvement in T/W on the order of ten to a hundred MILLION times. And, oh yeah, overturning the laws of thermodynamics. Whenever something claims to do that, I tend to tune out.
If the EM drive actually works (and it seems more likely that it works like a radiometer), then it’s kinda like everything else that has ever been touted as actual functioning magic. Yeah, sure, great, you can bend that spoon with your mind. But look at the effort required; using magic, you’re doing it the hard way.
Here is a good if lengthy explanation of why the EM drive most likely doesn’t work, and even if it did, why it sucks:
Nov 282016
Yesterday evening was, of course, bad. But today the region got whacked by the first winter snowstorm… providing a dandy opportunity to *not* go anywhere. Under the circumstances, that seemed just fine. So, without further ado, here’s some bad lip reading from “Empire Strikes Back:”
Nov 272016
While the title of the post can certainly apply to the recent long-awaited and half century+ overdue demise of a certain Cuban dictator, it actually refers to an unexpected little tragedy out here in rural Utah tonight, where I got to sit at the side of the road in the cold for half an hour, seeing off a cat I’ve never met before*. That little critter did *not* want to go, and damn did she fight… but the two cars who hit her – including the one that hit her AS I WAS TRYING TO RESCUE HER FROM THE FRIKKEN ROAD, had other ideas.
So, yeah. Tonight has utterly sucked.
*Nobody should have to die alone in the cold and the dark.
Nov 262016
Celebs keel over in three, so goes the legend. Mrs. Brady, Fidel Castro and now Shepard Book (Ron Glass) has died.
Nov 262016
Any excuse to trot out that line…
Leggings made of goat hair prove popular with online shoppers
Photos at the link. At your own risk.
Nov 262016
Fidel Castro is, at long last, dead.
I recall that after Osama Bin Laden was capped, some people went out of their way to announced that they weren’t goigng to celebrate the death of another human being, that every death was a tragedy, blah, blah, blah. Well, screw that hippie noise. Castro was a monster who subjugated the entire island of Cuba under Communism for more than half a century.While I’m not going to actually celebrate any further than the writing of this post, I admit I’m happy to see him go and wish it could’ve happened sooner. Like maybe 1957 or so.
If there is any justice, he’s currently being passed around between some undead fire giants in Niflhel, to get used and tossed in the soggy box of weeping scorched worn-out remnants with Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, FDR, Zinn and the rest of the collectivist scumbags who helped turn the 20th century into a freakin’ charnel house.
Nov 252016
In 1965, the US Army briefly examined a need they didn’t know they had: firearms for use in space and on the Moon. The US Army Weapons Command in Rock Island, Illinois, put out a brochure detailing some ideas for lunar weapons… “The Meanderings of a Weapon Oriented Mind When Applied in a Vacuum Such as on the Moon.” While not a detailed engineering study, it nevertheless provides and interesting look at the sort of weapons that might be developed for use in a low gravity space environment.
Conventional firearms would work just fine in space… at least for a while. A vacuum would cause most lubricants to outgas and turn to waxy solids or hard rubber-like crud. The extreme differences in temperatures between sunlit and shaded would cause many metals to warp and mechanisms to seize up. And there’s always the possibility of vacuum welding, where two similar metals will simply stick together, fusing into one. And recoil that gives a shooter a good kick on Earth might knock them over on the Moon, or send them tumbling in freefall. The authors described these problems and pointed out potential solutions. Additionally, they provided a number of notional concepts for hand-held weapons, ranging from modifications to the normal sort of firearm, to guns powered by springs (with, it must be said, rather optimistic muzzle velocities) to gas-guns and handheld mini-rocket launchers. It’s odd that the Gyrojet was not included. A laser weapon is said to probably be just the thing, but development of such a thing would take 20 years. A man-portable laser weapon capable of doing useful damage in a combat situation remains sadly unavailable.
Note that the weapons have quite unconventional ergonomics. Some don’t even have proper pistol grips; those that do have triggers roughly the full length of the grip. This is so that a space-suited hand can squeeze the trigger, something very difficult for a conventional single-finger trigger.
The brochure ends with several pages of useful math, providing calculations for ballistic range in other gravity fields, penetration capabilities and muzzle velocities and gas pressures.
The report can be found here:
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.
