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Turns out smugglers might not be 100% honest

 blather, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics  13 Responses »
Mar 012016
 

It seems we might have all been a bit wrong about Germany willingly turning itself over to the colonists. They might not have built walls or sent in the troops… but they sent in the bureaucrats, and that seems to be getting the job done.

Refugees buying one-way tickets home after finding Germany intolerable

Seems a lot of them were sold a bill of goods by the people they paid to transport them to Germany. Many seemed to believe that in Germany they’d live a carefree, easy life, filled with free houses and free everything else. Which is never going to happen *anywhere,* no matter how  vast the welfare state.

Now, here’s the thing. The article, by the quotes it includes, is generally of the “aw, isn’t this sad for these poor folks” type. But… these people left war zones, supposedly as refugees. Because their homes were just so dangerous they just couldn’t stay there. But many are going back because Germany didn’t make with the freebies like they were expecting. This indicates that these folks *weren’t* actually war refugees, but just mooches looking to score free stuff. Consider: if a bunch of Eastern European Jews showed up in NYC in 1944 and found that the US would let them in, but would provide *nothing* for them… how many do you think would say “screw it” and hop the next boat back to Warsaw?

 Posted by at 11:45 pm

Dog v. Robot: Dawn of Justice

 critters, Hmm..., science, science fiction, youtube  6 Responses »
Mar 012016
 

So, here’s a video of a Boston Dynamics “Spot” robot (human controlled, *not* autonomous) interacting with an actual dog. One thing that’s immediately obvious… regardless of how impressive an engineering achievement Spot is, that dog can run circles around it.

Now, I don;t know from dogs. Some people are saying that this is a confused, disturbed or angry dog, challenging the robot to a fight; others suggest that this is a dog trying to get the robot to play with it. I dunno. Now, if in a year or three Boston Dynamics scales Spot down to cat size and has it interact with a cat, I foresee one of two probable outcomes:

  1. The cat just ignores the robot and goes back to sleep
  2. The cat arches its back, hisses, freaks out and runs away

I just don’t see cats ever looking at robots like this as playpals.

 

 

 Posted by at 4:39 pm

The robot apocalypse: an explanation

 Hmm..., politics, science fiction  6 Responses »
Feb 292016
 

So, science fiction author Nick Cole wrote a book about a robot uprising with the goal of wiping out mankind. It is, by this point, an old and tired cliche, so he decided to put some thought into *why* the robots would want to destroy mankind. And his idea is actually fairly interesting.

It’s a little ways into the future. One of the most popular shows on TV is an entirely believable idea… a “bridezilla” show that wallows in venal hedonistic BS and materialism. The bride-to-be has a pre-marriage hookup that ends up with her getting pregnant; since being pregnant during the wedding and honeymoon would e an inconvenience, she decides to have an abortion. While the show is playing, the AI’s are watching. They realize that humans are lame enough to kill their own offspring for the purposes of convenience… which realization disturbs the AI, and leads them to decides that rather than waiting for mankind to abort *them,* they’ll strike first.

It’s an interesting take.

And if the author is to be believed, it was a sufficiently non-“Progressive” notion that his book contract was cancelled.

Banned by the Publisher

 Posted by at 6:11 pm

Probably shoulda done some more research on the nanny…

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., news, religion, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Feb 292016
 

Woman Carrying Child’s Severed Head Arrested in Moscow

Not just any woman, but the childs nanny; not just carrying the head around, but apparently she was the one who chopped it off in the first place; not just carrying it around silently, but apparently she was shouting – wait for it, you’ll never guess – “Allahu Ackbar.” She was wearing a hijab while doing all this. Hmm. I wonder if there might have been any warning signs in advance of all this that the family might have used to say “You know, maybe we shouldn’t hire *this* particular nanny…”

The video below, censor-blurred to obscure the childs severed head, shows Jihadi Poppins wandering around in front of a KFC shouting that she’s a terrorist and that she’ll blow herself up.

English-language Russian news coverage:

 Posted by at 10:36 am

Cat (Grade 1)

 blather, cats, history, photography, rockets  4 Responses »
Feb 282016
 

A little snippet from a 1967 issue of Interavia magazine, showing the type of employee every high-tech facility needs.

“An official Lockheed Propulsion Corp. Portrait of Cat (Grade 1) Tiger guarding the microphone used for rocket motor count-downs. Tiger guards the master control complex against mice which formerly caused many thousands of dollars worth of damage by chewing instrumentation wiring.”

cat grade 1

When I worked at United Tech in California, there was the main plant, overrun with the Union, where things got done real, real slow (and where things getting done *wrong* led to the destruction of the place). But there was a small spur of the facility, RAT canyon (Research and Advanced Technology) which was not unionized; that’s where people tried to go if they had to get something done that was either crazy, sensitive or needed doing before the sun explodes. And RAT Canyon had a guardian, Fang. Fang was a big cat, bigger than Raedthinn, and all muscle. And he earned his name; mouth closed, his fangs stuck down below his upper lips by about 3/8″. His purpose was to control the varmints, and he did his job well. I’ve often wondered what happened to Fang when the facility folded; I hope that the manager of RAT Canyon, on his last day there, as he loaded his last box in his truck, scooped up Fang and took him to a new home. But who knows.

 Posted by at 8:36 pm

Whoopsie…

 AARRRGH, Crazy, news, youtube  2 Responses »
Feb 282016
 

A few days ago a road crew was working on a hillside that has slid a little bit onto a road leading into Elk City, Idaho. As one does, one of the workers was videoing the process when he noticed a few sticks and pebbles continuing to slide down the hill. This continued for a little while… then it got a little interesting.

The end result was 40 feet of debris on the only road in or out of Elk City.

Elk City is not exactly a major metropolitan area… population seems to be 202. Still, it’s undoubtedly a headache. Looking it up on Google Maps, it occurs to me that Elk City would be a fine place to visit… hell and gone away from anywhere else, smack in the middle of the NezPerce-Clearwater National Forest. But I think I might wait a few days.

 Posted by at 4:27 pm

AH-56 & JVX

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, Patreon, projects  4 Responses »
Feb 282016
 

I’ve put scans of a 1968 Popular Science article on the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter and a Boeing-Bell brochure on the JVX tiltrotor (which became the V-22) on the APR Patreon dropbox, in the 2016-02 folder.

The Pop Sci article featured cover art by Robert McCall. Just cuz, I tinkered with the cover art, attempting to scrape off the text and restore it to just the painting. Perhaps not a 100% success, but not too bad. The JVX is not *quite* the final V-22 design; a notable difference is the inclusion of a .50 caliber gatling gun in the nose and a rocket launcher hanging off the side the cockpit.

If interested in getting these, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon. The “Extras” are available to all $4 patrons. Quite a pile of high-rez stuff is available now.

jvx ah-56

 Posted by at 3:02 pm
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