Apr 022016
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Apr 022016
At Least 20 Stung by Swarm of Bees at Arizona Mosque
Let’s face it: wild animals mass-attacking a religious site will never not be funny. Because what could the explanation for God’s critters doing such a thing possibly be?
Apr 022016
Not so fast, heretic!
Edinburgh University Student Threatened With Removal From Council Meeting After Violating Safe Space Policy
And what was this violation? She raised her hands.
Section 6c of the Student’s Association’s safe space policy says that council members should be respectful and considerate.
This is defined as: “Refraining from hand gestures which denote disagreement or in any other way indicating disagreement with a point or points being made. Disagreements should only be evident through the normal course of debate.”
This Sinner against the Safe Space only compounded her error when:
Wilson later shook her head whilst someone was speaking, and was threatened with another safe space complaint.
Boy are these losers in for a shock when they graduate and discover that the real world doesn’t care about not offending them.
Apr 022016
A current project nears completion…
Apr 012016
This image was passed along to me; it came from an ebay auction from some time in the past. No further info than this illustration, but it is clearly a Boeing “control configured vehicle” bomber concept.
I know it’s a Boeing design because a year and a half ago I lost out on an ebay auction for another piece of concept art showing the same aircraft, this time with “Boeing” clearly visible on the engine nacelle:
And I know it’s a Controlled Configured Vehicle because in the early 1970’s, Boeing studied a bomber that was very similar in configuration to this, known as the “CCV-100-2.” There are some obvious differences, such as the cockpit canopies and the engine inlets, but the overall configurations are very similar. The CCV-100-2 received a tiny bit of press in Aviation Week, and was granted a design patent for the overall shape. Sadly, I do not have anything on performance or dimensions; if anyone *does* know more about this, please let me know.
Apr 012016
Here’s a new one: a white dwarf has been found with an atmosphere of pure oxygen… no hydrogen or helium. Speculation is that it was part of a binary system; the companion explodes and blew the lighter gases off the white dwarf, leaving the more deeply-buried oxygen.
White Dwarf Star With Oxygen Atmosphere Discovered
Apr 012016
This story is a little… ummm…
Man builds ‘Scarlett Johansson’ robot from scratch to ‘fulfil childhood dream’ – and it’s scarily lifelike
“Scarily lifelife” clearly has a different meaning on the other side of the pond. Especially note this photo… I may not be a great expert on women, but something about that seems a little off. Is it normal for women to be supported by steel frames attached to their spines? Or to have ankles like that? My years of wild hedonism may have been mis-spent.
Mar 312016
Raedthinn and Fingers…
Mar 312016
First up: the recently ended “Mythbusters” is apparently coming back on The Science Channel. Yay. But then there’s this:
the Discovery-owned cable network has greenlighted a reality competition series titled Search for the Next MythBusters, … will focus on finding an “all-new generation of myth-busting science superstars with mind-blowing build skills and nerves of steel.” It will involve both social media and stunts
Ahhhhh…. ummmm….
A reality show, coupled with “social media.” Yeah. Sure. That will surely lead to some quality scienticians.
Well, at least they’re renweing “How the Universe Works” and “Through the Wormhole.”
Mar 302016
A quarter century ago when I was in college, it was the fashion of the day to put posters on your dorm room wall. For a lot of the straight guys, that meant posters of improbably hot babes… cheerleaders and models and such. Other guys put up posters of football and basketball players; by process of elimination, these would not seem to have been other straight guys.
This is one of the posters I put up:
I picked up this “Theoretical Performance of Rocket Propellant Combinations” poster by Rocketdyne at the Dayton Air Show sometime around 1989, and now it’s in pretty rough shape. It was stuck to a dorm wall with blu-tack and tape, and torn and taped back up; it survived college to wind up stuck to the walls at various places of aerospace employment and followed me all over the continent. I’ve finally gotten around to scanning the thing, and will expend some effort in fixing it up.
Never mind semi-naked hotties, *this* was the thing to have on your wall. This and the cutaway diagram of the starship Enterprise and the posters of nuclear mushroom clouds were *way* better. Yes, I was the coolest.
Some time ago I scored two other variants of the Propellant Performance poster off of ebay. The one below dates from 1964 and is printed on what has got to be the worst paper ever created… no flexibility whatsoever. I have books centuries old that have paper far less brittle that this thing. Fortunately I got it scanned and am well on the way to restoring the image.
And the third one? Frakked if I know where it is. I assume one of my cats has hidden it for some nefarious purpose.