This one I think will take some explaining.
Yelchin was discovered by friends at home around 1 am, after he was late to rehearsal. He had been pinned by his car in his driveway at his San Fernando Valley home. Yelchin’s death was confirmed by his publicist earlier today. Foul play is not suspected.
Buh? Pinned by his own car, while alone? That’s… a bit odd.
What’s the use of a gunship without guns?
The Tachi/Rocinante looks best with its PDCs out…
Alejandro “Jano” Fuentes was shot three times in the head Thursday. Ah, Chicago, jewel in the crown of the anti-firearm lobby…
This came less than a week after Christina Grimmie, another “The Voice” contestant, was shot by some random whacko in Florida.
And the most important science news of the day:
Basically, cats use their hunting skills to predict the future.
The EM drive has caused a lot of debate, in no small part due to the fact that it seems to violate the known laws of physics… and because other experimenters haven had difficulty replicating it. Well, it *seems* some experimenters have gotten it to work *and* have come up with an explanation for how it works… and how it works without busting Newtons laws.
In short: the “exhaust” spat out by the EM drive is just photons. It’s a photon rocket, something that has been understood for decades. But the EM drive has been confusing because it hasn’t been seen to emit photons. The theory here is that it *does,* though. But rather than just your standard flood of photons (such as you’d get from a flashlight, a laser, a microwave oven or a social justice warrior who has undergone spontaneous proton decay), in this case each photon is paired up with another. And the two are paired up in such a way that they cancel each other out… they are emitted, their momentum is transferred, but their not detectable because the crest of the wave of Photon A is matched with the trough of the wave of Photon B. Or so goes the theory, anyway.
Gotta admit this one is a bit of a headscratcher. On one level I get the idea of the waves cancelling each other out; junior high school double-slit experiment stuff. But imagine if the EM drive was *ridiculously* powerful. Say, it spat out a hundred megawatts of “invisible” energy. If you put something fragile and easily damaged behind it (like an industry standard Trigglypuff), you’d be dumping a whole lot of energy into it that’s undetectable. So does your Triggytarget burst into flames or not?
Buh.
I’m looking for good diagrams of the Lockheed XF-90, especially cross-sections of the fuselage. Here’s where it gets a little weird: I need to be able to accurately 3D CAD model the XF-90… but it’s not for an XF-90 kit.
More later (of course, the first to provide such diagrams gets the full lowdown on what’s up).
This 1/48 kit should be pretty straightforward to assemble. The hollow construction should also allow more enthusiastic modelers to scratchbuild an interior if so desired. Not shown: an astronaut figure, currently being made the old fashioned way (plastic and sculpting).
So I saw a variant of this commercial a short while ago. It’s been around for a year and a half or so, and during that whole time it has BUGGED THE CRAP OUT OF ME. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the song. But the song is entirely wrong for the message. On the surface “come with me now” sounds like a perfectly fine tune for a commercial for a vacation destination. But if you listen to the whole song it’s about some guy trying to sell his soul to the Devil and apparently being drawn down into – or at least tempted into – Hell. Doesn’t seem to me to be the best PR message: “Satan invites you to Orlando.” Of course, with the recent attacks of gay Jihadi Democratic alligators in Orlando, maybe they were spot on.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just me, though. While I am not even close to conventionally religious, it wasn’t for lack of exposure back in my podling days; got my butt kicked out of Bible School for arguing with the teacher about “how the hell do you pack all those carnivores on that little boat for all those months.” And for as long as I can remember there have been two phrases that just creep me right the hell out, for reasons I can’t adequately explain: “Come with me now” and “Come and see.” That last one comes from the book of Revelation from the Bible, spoken by some sort of beast as the world gets bitchslapped by God. I have always associated it with some sort of evil force saying it; the phrase was used thusly in the first season of the “Sleepy Hollow” TV series, uttered by a demon, and in “X-Men:Apocalypse,” uttered by what is essentially an evil mutant demigod.
“Come with me now” and “come and see” both seem like the sort of thing that would be the last phrase heard by a sane mind confronted with Nyarlathotep or some such Lovecraftian horror from beyond. Whatever it is that person sees would either drive ’em mad or outright destroy ’em. Whether Lovecraftian or Biblical, the message is kinda the same: knowledge leads to destruction (remember that tree in that one garden?). And that annoys the bejeebers out of me, and is probably why the phrase gets on my nerves: the idea that there is an invitation to learn, to gain knowledge, but the experience will be used to squash you like a bug. The idea that the safe way is the ignorant way… just doesn’t sit right.
So if you ever read one of my stories and you see someone say “come and see,” you know something really unfortunate is afoot. Best response to it would be:
“Come With Me Now” was performed by the Kongos, a South African band performing in a South African style. Durned if I didn’t think it was a group from Louisiana or some such, though, making music like Cajuns.
Getting close-ish…
The most pathetic thing you’ll read today:
And what was learned? Primarily that the author of the piece is a man not to be respected (bolding mine):
It felt to me like a bazooka — and sounded like a cannon.
One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers.
But mostly, I was just terrified.
The man-child continues:
The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don’t know what you’re doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
Oh FFS. As someone on Fark correctly posted:
Ye gods. Compared to most “military style” weapons – the M-1 Garand, the M-14, the M-16, the AK-47, a good shotgun – the AR-15 is a BB gun. The standard AR-15 platform is *small,* the bullet is small, the cartridge is small. I shudder to imagine what this guy would have done had he been confronted with a Barret. Or Odin forbid, a Ma Deuce.