I’m looking for one of the Halcyon model kits of the Sulaco. I don’t need it to be mint-in-box, just complete and more or less intact. It can be had on ebay, but at very inflated prices. So if anyone has one they want to unload, let’s talk.
Yay, YouTube! At least until the “YouTube Heroes” program leads to these videos being flagged by the super-snowflakes…
SpaceX knows that the helium system was responsible for the explosion. But what caused the helium system to fail? It’s a well know, quite robust, nearly off-the-shelf system. So, they’re running down all leads. Including…
To be clear, there is (at least publicly) no real evidence of sabotage. But it’s a logical thing to look for at *all* times when you have a high-tech, high-dollar-value system. And it’s especially important to look for if your system is kicking over the established order. There would be a *lot* of suspects, from direct competitors such as ULA, to less direct competitors such as the Chinese, Russians and Europeans, to those who are opposed to the companies long-term goals of mankind (and more specifically, Americans) conquering the universe. And that last one there is probably a pretty long list and would include groups as varied as Greenpeace, PETA, the IRS, various religious organizations (especially Peaceful Religious groups) to just about every government on the planet.
Most likely the failure was due to somebody screwing something up. Maybe a nut didn’t get tightened sufficiently. But when you’re dealing with billions of dollars and the future course of history, it pays to be a little paranoid.
If you have the money, this looks pretty slick: a high-fidelity replica of the original series Star Trek communicator that is Bluetooth-enabled, allowing it to sync up to your smart phone, and to be used *as* a phone.
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Now, if someone would get on the ball and produce a high-quality phaser replica that could sync up to a .45….
Only thing better than a doomsday story? *Two* doomsday stories on the same day:
Short from: 200+ small earthquakes under the Salton Sea have caused some geologists to wonder if the San Andreas fault is next to snap.
But wait! There’s more!
Conflict on the border saw two Pakistani soldiers killed. Good thing that region of the world is renowned for rational behavior.
Twenty years ago I worked for a guy who loved to self-promote on the subject of space exploration. One of the results of that was that I, Minor Peon #2 at the company, somehow got barraged with emails and messages and letters and packages from people who wanted me to pass on to The Boss Guy their crackpot theories, ideas and designs. Initially it was a whole lot of “what the hell is this” and trying to make sense of it all, in the naive belief that these people were on the whole *not* whacko. But once childlike innocence was replaced with proper adult cynicism, things got easier. And once the Crackpot Index was discovered, good times could be had by going through the writeups and totaling the points. If you are of a mind to, this would also seem to make the beginnings of an effective drinking game, if the goal of the game is to get blind stinkin’ drunk with great efficiency.
The next time you are going to go to a UFO conference or anywhere where Elon Musk is going to make a presentation to people likely to be fresh from Burning Man, make sure to print out a couple copies and keep them handy. Have a non-player with you with 911 on standby, because ethyl alcohol poisoning is a near certainty.
The full Crackpot Index is after the break.
So some people have a problem with personal pronouns like “he” or “she,” Mr.” or “Miss.” Because, you know, they cannot be contained and defined by binary gender descriptions, blah, blah, blah. And modern American universities, being the hotbeds of idjit coddlign that they are, are leadign the way towards enforcing a diverse, tolerant tomorrow by lettign people pick how they want to be described. Well… apparently they didn;t get the memo from Boaty McBoatface or Nukely McMeltface that if you let people participate in a process that’s silly, you’ll get silly results.
As a result of this new policy, professors are now expected to call students by their personally designated pronoun, even if it has no basis in their biological sex. … With that, Grant Strobl, a conservative student at the University of Michigan and chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom Board of Governors, decided to change his preferred pronoun to “His Majesty” — in an attempt to make the point that this policy has no basis in reality.
What other personal pronouns can you come up with that might make the point?? A-number-one, top of the list would seem to be:
“Massa.”
Ho-lee-carp. Imagine someone ballsy enough to put that one down.
Others: Sir. Sire. Master. Boss. His Highness. The Man. Der Fuehrer. El Jefe. My Lord.
From Wikipedia:
Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ге́льевич Ду́гин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political scientist whose views have been described as fascist[4][5][6] and who calls to hasten the “end of times” with all out war.[7][8][9][10][11] He has close ties with the Kremlin and the Russian military,[12][13] having served as an advisor to State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov[14] and key member of the ruling United Russia party Sergei Naryshkin.[15] Dugin was the leading organizer of the National Bolshevik Party, National Bolshevik Front, and Eurasia Party. He is the author of more than 30 books, among them Foundations of Geopolitics and The Fourth Political Theory.
He focuses on the restoration of the Russian Empire, through bringing back control over former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine, and unification with Russian-speaking territories, especially eastern Ukraine and Crimea.[16][17] In the Kremlin, Dugin represents the “war party”, a division in the heart of the leadership concerning Ukraine,[18] and is seen as the driving conceptual force behind Vladimir Putin’s initiative for the annexation of Crimea by Russia.[19] In 2014 he expressed the view that the war between Russia and Ukraine “is inevitable” and appealed for Putin to start military intervention in eastern Ukraine.[19]
That’s swell. I feel greatly comforted by our candidates in November… one who thinks that Putin (and by extension his cronies and advisors, like Al here) is just neato-keen, the other who is too weak and disrespected to stand a chance of standing up to Putin and his cronies.
| Part of the Politics series on |
| National Bolshevism |
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Yeah, apparently that’s actually a thing.
Read the rest of the Wikipedia article. It’s quite entertaining. You think American politicians and academics are bad? Ha.
Well, this looks fun:
If India and Pakistan fought a war detonating 100 nuclear warheads (around half of their combined arsenal), each equivalent to a 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb, more than 21 million people will be directly killed, about half the world’s protective ozone layer would be destroyed, and a “nuclear winter” would cripple the monsoons and agriculture worldwide.
Well, at least that’s a load off my mind… no more worrying about global warming.
I need these guys to hold off on their little nuclear war for a few decades, otherwise it’ll mess with some stories I’m writing. And that would be a tragedy.
