I don’t often feature musical items on this blog, but this one is useful, nay, important enough that I think it’s worth including.
Nov 232016
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Nov 222016
This USAF film report “Aerospace Systems Program Highlights” from 1961 describes the current state of the Atlas, Titan, Minuteman and Blue Scout programs. Basically, there’s nothing in it that *isn’t* interesting. Four stars, would watch again.
Nov 222016
I can’t imagine why someone thought of this, but they did. Here is Jerry Seinfeld’s “Bee Movie,” but slightly sped up anytime someone says “bee.” As with all exponential entertainment, it really picks up in the last few seconds.
Nov 222016
Due to other commitments, progress has been slow on Pax Orionis. Still, a few days ago I posted a new piece, “Birth of the Bomb Part Two,” for Pax Orionis patrons. This is the second of a two-part newspaper article… the first described an event in the 1990s – well after the Great War – that led to Orion spacecraft becoming far more economical. In the second part, a reporter catches up with the people responsible. Excitement! Adventure! Inadvertent multi-kiloton nuclear detonations! Death from above! What’s not to like?
As with all Pax Orionis tales, each part comes with two bonuses: a technical diagram describing some piece of technology important in the Pax Orionis universe, complete with both in-universe and factual descriptions; and a small newspaper or magazine article that, when all put together, tell an important part of the Pax Orionis backstory.
If interested – and why the hell wouldn’t you be – check out the Pax Orionis Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/PaxOrionis
There are two level of patronage… $1 and $2. At $1, you get a new story when it comes out. At $2, you get the story, the tech diagram and the article.
Any Pax Orionis patrons who have read the most recent story, feel free to leave a comment. Praise or constructive criticism or anywhere in between.
Nov 222016
*IF* this comes to pass:
Trump to Cut NASA’s Climate Change Budget, Shift Focus to the Moon
Regardless of your views on global warming, it’s really not NASA’s job. It’s the NOAA’s job. NASA should always and forever look *outwards,* towards the future. They should be in the business of advancing technology. And while weather satellites and the like are fine, they’re no longer really what NASA is about.
Now, if Trump could shuffle the ISS over to the State Department where it belongs, then maybe NASA can get to work on a *proper* space station. An all-American one, in a 28-degree inclination orbit, with artificial gravity, actual space construction and a spacecraft hangar for Moon/Mars ship construction,a permanent crew measured in *at* *least* dozens, blackjack and hookers.
Nov 222016
Ever since Trump announced his candidacy for president he has been accused of being a racist. Since most of these accusations come from people who seem to say “he’s a racist” with the repetitiveness that other people breathe in and out, most of these accusations are readily ignorable. Similarly, accusations that the “alt-right” is white supremacist are equally ignorable due to the hysterics of many on the left.
But then you get stuff like this:
It’s *really” hard to deny that what we have here are white supremacists/neo-Nazis/whatevers.
The next few years should prove interesting. It looks like pro-white racism might (*might*) become as mainstream as other forms of racism have been in recent years.
Nov 212016
This video has it all:
- Unbuilt aircraft concept
- Scale model (wind tunnel model) construction
- Cyanotype Blueprints
- Complete lack of an audio track
The obvious question that this video raises is… what happened with the model? Most wind tunnel models end up getting scrapped – shredded and melted down to recycle the metal. but every now and then one escapes. The company keeps it for display, or in an archive, or sometimes an employee simply takes it home. Sometimes they end up on EBay.
Nov 212016
Nov 202016
Vikings might have started raiding because there was a shortage of single women
The theory in short: the rich guys in Norse society not only had weapons, warriors and bling, they also had all the wimmins. Due to the higher-ups in society marrying a number of women, there were fewer women available for the men in the lower levels of society. So, says the theory, some of the motivation for Viking raids was to:
- Kidnap some women from elsewhere to bring home
- Steal a bunch of stuff to come home rich so that the local women will find them marryable.
Good thing that that sort of thing was *then* and not now. Because if there were, say, 30,000,000 excess males in, oh, let’s say “China,” something unfortunate might result.
Nov 192016
Whenever someone tells you “that’s not funny” or “you can’t/shouldn’t laugh about that subject,” just remember: yes, you should. Note that in this compilation, comedians tell jokes about topics or identity groups that we’re often told “there’s nothing funny about that.” And you know what happens when the comedians tell jokes about these unfunny topics? The audience laughs. Because it’s friggen funny.
A bunch of comics I’ve never heard of before. One guy, who’s first clip starts at about 7:30, is a feller name of Steve Hughes. I am now going to have to look up more of his stuff. Because he’s not just funny, he’s got a damned good approach to the angertarians who use PC (or in his words, “intellectual colonials and psychological fascism for the creation of thought crime”) to try to shut people up.
Sadly, the thumbnail image for this YouTube video has a Naughty Word clearly visible, so rather than posting the video itself, here’s a link to the YouTube page with the video. If you are in an office or school setting, you may contemplate hooking it up to the PA system and providing your co-workers/students/faculty with 23 minutes of humor. Just what the world needs in this fractious time! As a bonus, you can play “spot the easily offended” by looking for the ones turning beet red with steam comign out their ears.
But no, don’t do that. Even though it would be hilarious.