This Norwegian disaster movie looks like a whole barrel of fun:
Mar 112016
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Mar 102016
Back in the day, Christians (and Jews before them, and no doubt a whole bunch of other people) would now and then get tossed into a cage with a lion by the local political system for punishment or entertainment.Over the centuries this has come to be seen not so much as a horrible, stupid thing, but a “wow, aren’t martyrs awesome” thing. And since for some reason some people have gotten it into their heads that martyrdom is something to strive for or emulate, rather than something to be fought till the last, some people have something of a romantic notion about lions. Some people seem to think that God will protect them from lions real and metaphorical if their faith is strong enough.
Some people actually put that to the test. And while these people may very well have extremely strong faith that God will protect them… it’s clear that often enough the lions don’t share that faith. Gentlemen, behold:
Lion nearly killed prophet after botched miracle
The Christian “prophet” saw some lions gnawing upon an impala and decided to dash out of his car and charge towards them. The lions, in turn, decided that the prophet would make a fine snack, and charged towards *him.* The prophet had a sudden moment of clarity, turned, ran back to the car and discovered that lions are *fast.* And, well…
But before he could safely reach the confines of the car, one lion had snapped its paws on him thus causing major damage to his toilet sitting tool.
I’ve never heard of the buttocks referred to as a “toilet sitting tool,” but… well, it’s certainly applicable.
Now, how did the prophet survive? Did a flock of angels descend from Heaven? Did the lions suddenly convert? Nope. The park ranger with the group fired off a firearm, scaring the lions away; *doctors* then patched the guy up. The sciences of metallurgy, chemistry, physics (ballistics) and modern medicine saved the day.
Mar 102016
Adolf Hitler first man on the Moon? Nazi Germany’s ‘secret space missions’ revealed
What we have here is one of the all-time *worst*articles from a “news” site. Not just the inane topic, but the rambling, incoherent way it’s written, bobbing and weaving from one hand-wavey notion to another like a drunk howler monkey looking for it’s car keys, little realizing that since it’s a monkey, it doesn’t actually have car keys.
Mar 092016
Obama to Skip Nancy Reagan’s Funeral to Attend South by Southwest
“South by Southwest” is a music & movie festival. Because while First Ladies are forever keeling over – can hardly go a week without a funeral for one or two of them – entertainment is something that a hard workin’ guy like Obama just can’t seem to find the time for. Obama also skipped Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s funeral a week back.
Mar 092016
Still slowly slogging through the process of cleaning up the Sanger “A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers” report scans. Some pages are easy… a few minutes and done. Other pages, specifically the ones from the middle of the book, can take well in excess of an hour. The problem is that the Sanger report is hard-bound, and the feller who scanned it didn’t want to break the spine. As a consequence, near the middle of the book, the inboard bits of text are smooshed and blurred. The only way to digitally restore these is to copy/paste bits of text and individual letters to replace the bad bits. *These* pages can take a lot longer.
Fortunately the whole book isn’t like this. Near the front and back, the scans are quite good and easy to deal with. This includes the last two pages… pages that list where copies of the report were to be sent. there are some *very* interesting names in this list…
Mar 092016
Sometimes people who disagree with my politics mock me for referencing communism, because communism supposedly fell a quarter century ago (despite the fact that Marxism is alive and well int he minds of many, many people). But fascism fell seventy years ago… and yet, here we are, with two candidates for president who are readily compared to old school fascists (Trump’s aping of Mussolini’s style, Sander’s aping of fascist policies). And not just these two… fascism is apparently quite popular on college campii today. Witness:
Student Assembly for Power and Liberation Demands (WWU)
These Junior Fascists are demanding the creation of a new “College of Power and Liberation,” funds, physical infrastructure and the power to conduct inquisitions against students and faculty that are insufficiently politically correct. Teachers would face discipline if they main insufficient “safe spaces” int heir classrooms… in other words, if they say, do, teach anything that any precious little snowflake finds to be uncomfortable or just contradictory to their views.
Gah.
I have, from time to time, entertained the notion of wandering up to the University in Logan and finding whoever it would be I’d need to find and attempt to convince them that what the University desperately needs is a new course on “Science for Science Fiction Authors.” It would cover the basics of such things as space flight (including orbits, the actual scale and scope of the universe, propulsion systems, etc.), basic physics and relevant chemistry, biology (including “so what happens when you leave the spaceship without your spacesuit”) and so on. And a not inconsiderable section on sci-fi weapons. Lasers, KE systems, what it would actually take to blow up a planet, that sort of thing.
And every time I consider teaching such a course, I suddenly get this vision of a sizable fraction of the class, populated by English lit majors, suddenly freaking out about not feeling safe in a discussion of phaser guns. And I just can’t imagine that going terribly well, since I have, and can have, no sympathy for their position.
Mar 082016
Returning home last night well after sundown, just a few hundred yards from home a dog decided it would be an awesome fun time to dash out into the road right in front of my car. My car had been loaded with stuff like groceries and lumber and such… none of which ended up where I’d originally put it. Good news: my brakes work.
Mar 082016
And far more relaxed than any human being ever has been or ever will be.
Mar 082016
The real value of *good* science is the ability to predict the future. And so, coming off January and February 2016, which were apparently the hottest months on record, with an El Nino that has been pretty impressive, some climatologists are predicting that the rest of 206 will be Damn Hot and filled with wacky weather.
El Niño’s Disastrous Worldwide Consequences Are Just Getting Started
The global warming “pause’ that seems to have occurred for a dozen or so years appears to be over. The thermal energy that didn’t seem to be jacking up the atmospheric temperature was instead being drawn into the deep ocean, warming cold waters. But with El Nino stirring things up, that thermal energy is apparently being dumped back into the atmosphere, leading to a remarkable temperature rise rate.
And so, if 2016 *does* turn out to be a year filled with extraordinary climatic horrors… you know who to blame: anti-nuclear activists. Had they not shut the program down in the late 1970s/early 1980s, we’d have a lot more nukes, a lot less coal & oil plants, a lot less CO2 in the air and a less wacky climate.
Mar 082016
Iran conducts new missile tests defying US sanctions
A number of apparently new missiles, with range capabilities of 300 to 2,000 kilometers were (apparently) successfully test fired.
I’ve got a good feeling about those nuclear agreements!
