admin

May 232016
 

For a long time I blacklisted commenters *very* rarely. Maybe one every year or two. Recently, though, I’ve been blacklisting a number of obvious trolls because they are, well, obvious trolls. Here’s the thing: however long it takes you to write an argle-bargle comment about how I want to do this or that Horrible Thing, it takes me waaaaay less time to hit the “blacklist this idjit” button. And guess what: I’ve been on the internet a long time. Quite possibly longer than your standard troll has been *alive.* And while, yes, that does make me feel old, it has also been time enough to learn to just shrug off vile trolling. I don’t get all that upset by it anymore. I just hit the Button.

Yes, I’m all for free speech. And if you are a troll or associated form of jackass, you are free to yap all you like elsewhere. So, you want to tell me I’m wrong, fine. You want to argue, fine. But if you want to troll or insult, I’ll blacklist you with the same passion with which I hit the “spam” button on those robot-auto-ad comment things… none whatsoever. Just FYI.

Oh, and if you have been blacklisted and you are trying to find a way to come back to continue to be a jackass… take this opportunity to ask yourself why you even care enough to bother.

 Posted by at 12:17 am
May 222016
 

This here is what you call a  “supersonic split line nozzle.” It’s not commonly encountered out in the wild, but it has been tested for decades for use as a vectorable nozzle on relatively small solid rocket motors, generally military missiles. The ball-and-socket design allows the nozzle to be gimballed (either hydraulically or electromechanically); the unusual location of the splitline (where the fixed part meets the movable part) downstream of the throat means that the joint is moved out of the high-pressure environment within the motor. A nozzle like this *should* have lower leakage and erosion issues that a subsonic splitline nozzle, while being easier to move than a nozzle with a flexible joint (basically a rubber gasket that is bonded to both sides and requires a whole lot of force to horse around) with easier thermal issues.

ssslnozzle

 Posted by at 8:51 pm
May 222016
 

Fun times must be brewin’ over at the Clinton Election Politburo…

General Election: Trump vs. Clinton

 

Trump is up by 0.2%.

polls

Trump got real close to Clinton twice before, but only for very brief moments. Should be interesting to see if this lasts. If it lasts and is meaningful…

huhcat

In related news…

Gary Johnson sees huge jump in new poll

… former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is polling at 10 percent.

Run, Bernie! Run!

Could be real interesting this go-round.

 Posted by at 8:18 pm
May 222016
 

As much as I despise the very idea of “hate crime laws” since they set some people up as being more important than other (just about the most un-American thing I can think of, next to anti-blasphemy laws and soccer), I can’t help but get a chuckle out of this:

Louisiana could be the first state where targeting police is a hate crime

Targeting cops was *already* the sort of thing that got you extra time in the pokey, but now there’ll be even more plus extra fines.

 Posted by at 2:59 pm
May 212016
 

California’s last resort: Drink the Pacific

The article mentions that a desalination plant near Santa Barbara can be brought online with the expenditure of buckets of cash… and that the plant has been sitting there, idle, for 25 years.

Apparently, it was built during a drought, and about the moment it came online the drought ended, so they stopped running the plant. But the thing that gets me: during all the time that California supposedly hasn’t needed the water, California has been draining the Colorado river dry. Which leads to *this* news story:

Lake Mead declines to lowest level in history

Yeah, desalination is expensive. But then again, so are social programs and prisons and sanctuary cities. So I have no sympathy for a state that is rich as hell, blows it’s money on silly nonsense and ignores the things it needs to do. If California would build a hundred desal plants along the cast, each with its own nuclear powerplant, much of Californias water problem could be dealt with during droughts. And when the droughts end, the nuclear powerplants would power the state.

Something California doesn’t seem to understand is that there are *other* states that rely on the Colorado River… states that, unlike California, don’t have a vast ocean coastline to fall back on. I wonder about the possibility of states like Nevada and Arizona suing the bejeezus out of California, suing them for, say, a trillion dollars. *That* might inspire the California state government to finally shake off the scourge of Greenpeace and the like and doing what needs to be done to actually protect the environment.

 Posted by at 8:42 pm
May 202016
 

I really want to think that the next Star Trek movie will be good, but I dunno. I guess I’ll find out in July. Anyway, here’s the latest trailer where we see, once again, the starship USS Enterprise getting destroyed:

Several very brief shots near the end show another ship that looks a lot like the NX-01 Enterprise from the Star Trek: Enterprise series, but reportedly it’s actually this ship, the USS Franklin:

okpvd7sxf7gaueleiprk

It seems the Enterprise gets trashed, the surviving crew lands on an alien world covered in wrecked ships, and they just happen to find what I presume is an old Federation vessel just lying around on the surface. Scotty wipes down a few bits with WD-40, McCoy kicks an instrument panel and the thing coughs back to life.

 Posted by at 10:44 pm
May 202016
 

… I gotta wear augmented reality shades.

Anyone who has read Brin’s “Existence” (or a whole bunch of other sci-fi written since the 80’s) will recognize the world depicted here in “Hyper-Reality.” It looks… awful.

The trick is going to be how to deal with the overload. The internet has become swamped with ads and spam and malware; a highly interconnected augmented reality world will as well. The obvious answer will be the equivalents of adblockers and anti-spam/malware programs, but those lead to bloat and programs running slower and slower. The other answer will be to just take the glasses off/turn the implants off. But anyone who has seen a teenager glued to their phone knows that people who grow up with this sort of thing will become dependent upon it. So… dunno. The occasional random EMP burst, maybe?

 Posted by at 5:39 pm
May 202016
 

What happens when you institute socialism on a national basis? Stuff like this:

Mob burns Venezuelan man alive over $US5

“Life here has become a misery. You walk around always stressed, always scared, and lynching offers a collective catharsis,” Violence Observatory director Roberto Briceno-Leon said. “You can’t do anything about the lines or inflation, but for one moment, at least, the mob feels like it’s making a difference.”

Feel the Bern!

 Posted by at 2:28 pm