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The new face of terror

 Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, religion, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Dec 172015
 

Enrique Marquez, Syed Farook’s former neighbor, likely to be charged

Seems Ricky here bought the two AR-15’s used in the attack. That’s not illegal. But he bought them for Syed because Syed didn’t want them listed in his name (even though he would have been legally allowed to buy them). This is a “straw purchase,” which is illegal. He also planned a terror attack with Syed in 2012, but they chickened out. This may or may not have been illegal, based on how far they got in planning. Shockingly, Ricky was a convert to Syeds religion. Purely coincidental, surely.

enrique_marquez

Yup, that’s him.

Feel free to caption. Possibilities include:

“Oh Boy! I get to further the political ambitions of Diane Feinstein!”

“Oh Boy! I’m gonna be *real* popular in prison!”

 Posted by at 9:44 am

This looks as fun as a barrel of monkeys

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, paleo, religion, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
Dec 172015
 

Creationists expanding institute to include the ‘Dallas Museum of Science and Earth History’

Oy. The same cranks and crackpots that brought the world the “Institute for Creation Research” now want to build a dubiously named “Dallas Museum of Science and Earth History” that will teach that the Earth is a grand total of 6,000 years old. Even better, they’re proposing to build a 3D planetarium, also to promote the 6,000-year nonsense, in direct contradiction to everything astronomy has discovered.

Kinda like making a laser light show to prove that coherent beams of monochromatic light are a myth.

Behold the bullshit (yes, I generally prefer to avoid such colorful metaphors in posts… but there’s really no other world for the idiot lunacy spouted here). And before you hit “play,” ask yourself this: “Are they going to ask for money? ARE THEY?!?”

 

 Posted by at 2:10 am

Well. How about that.

 awesomeness, cats, news  9 Responses »
Dec 162015
 

The vet was surprised when I brought Bruce back into be re-tested for feline leukemia, since he didn’t seem to think there was much point. So imagine his surpris4e when, less than an hour later, he came out to speak to me and told me that the re-test shows that Bruce is FLV negative.

This was a pleasant surprise for me, and I guess a bit of a shock for the vet. He’s never had an FLV-positive cat turn into a FLV-negative cat. But he did some research and printed out some stuff from the database showing that in Stage Three of the infection, when it sorta busts out and spreads throughout the system, the immune system and sometimes rally and defeat the virus. Stage Three lasts just a few weeks. The database suggests that 2% or so of cats beat the virus. So… Bruce is a two-in-a-hundred cat.

So, he now has the run of the house. It’s a tentative thing… he’ll probably go back downstairs tonight. But overall it has gone well; no fighting. The process of keeping the critters separate but within sight of each other with a screen door seems to have largely worked… they’re used to each other and don’t feel the need to tussle. They’ve spent the past several hours playing, more or less.

Except for Raedthinn. He *hates* Bruce with a growling, hissing passion.

Note: my respect for Bruce went up a notch at the vet. He fought them so hard when it came time to draw blood that they had to gas him to calm him down. You go, Bruce!

So, the lesson here: when someone tells you that the best option is to pt down a cat… they might not be right.

 Posted by at 6:11 pm

AGM-129 Flashback

 aircraft, books, drawings, history, nukes, photography, weapons  5 Responses »
Dec 162015
 

I was reminded of the AGM-129 Advance Cruise Missile today, which reminded me of the small heavily illustrated booklet on the AGM-129 I put together a few years ago. It’s probably not too late to buy a couple hundred of these as Christmas presents for your friends and family. Here’s a retread of the original post from Back Then:

– – – – – –
Literally years in the making, I’ve put together two versions of a photo essay of several surviving examples of the AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile. Available free for the downloading is Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, Abridged Edition as a 13 page PDF booklet. This contains photos of the AGM-129s on display at Hill Aerospace Museum in Utah, the USAF Museum in Dayton and the Strategic Air & Space Museum in Nebraska, ready to print.

Also available is Stagger Around #3: AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, Full Edition. This 34-page edition includes more photos of these missiles, along with the missile at the San Diego Aerospace Museum restoration facility, a rare General Dynamics display model, official USAF photos of the AGM-129 in test and in service and drawings of the missile, including 1/32 scale layout diagrams. This is available through MagCloud, either as a downloadable PDF ($5.75) or as a professionally printed and bound edition ($11.80).

Don’t forget to check out my other MagCloud publications, including Justo Miranda’s Reichdreams Dossiers, Aerospace Projects Review, Historical Documents, and Photographing Stuff.

And don’t forget to check out Stagger Around #1, F-104A Starfighter, and Stagger Around #2, Starship Enterprise.

NOTE:

If you liked this and want to see more like it… feel free to toss fifty cents, a buck, a hundred bucks, whatever, my way. Think of it as a donation to a worthy cause. Or a bribe. Whatever you’re more comfortable with.

– – – – – – –

When I originally put this out in 2012, the PDF version was orderable through MagCloud. If anyone wants to order it straight from here like most of my other stuff, let me know.

 Posted by at 1:31 pm

Tie breaker

 cats  2 Responses »
Dec 162015
 

In a couple hours Bruce goes to the vet to get the third feline leukemia virus test. To recap, in late October he tested positive; last week he tested negative. There are good reasons to suspect a false positive, fewer good reasons to suspect a false negative. But before he is allowed to freely mingle with the others, I need to  have some certainty. So… later today he may be allowed to roam the whole house, which will lead to lots of fun fights, I’m sure.

If he tests positive again… well, that’ll be a problem. And a bit of a head-scratcher.

PS: Here’s Raedthinn showing off his choppers. Getting a good look in his mouth is virtually impossible, but this shows what’s left.

WP_20151207_013a WP_20151207_014a WP_20151207_014 WP_20151207_013

 Posted by at 1:09 pm

Say hello to a whole new bureaucracy

 aircraft, blather, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics  39 Responses »
Dec 152015
 

FAA announces drone registration rules as report highlights soaring dangers

The main point: if you, Mr. or Ms. American, own an RC aircraft/drone/quadcopter/whatever that weighs between 0.55 and 55 pounds (including any payloads), you have until February 19, 2016 to register it with the FAA and pay a $5 fee.

The full set of rules is available as  PDF on the FAA site HERE. I admit to having not read the whole thing… but then, it’s 211 pages.

I’m of two minds here. On the one hand, RC aircraft seem to becoming more and more common. The technology is getting cheaper and easier to operate; it has transitioned from something requiring considerable funds and skill to operate to almost something you can buy in the checkout aisle of the grocery store for your eight-year-old. With that comes the fact that more and more of them are ending up in the hands of jackasses and dumbasses; they’ll crash them into other peoples property (or other people); interfere with aircraft; use them to spy on other people, and just generally annoy the hell outta folks.

On the other hand… new federal bureaucracy. Which means new bureaucrats, new laws, new regulations. All of which will likely be not only immortal, but also liable to immense growth. Regulators who will see their purpose in life to stifle innovation at every turn.

Basically, I think the regulations were pretty much inevitable. Probably dodged a bullet here… the Feds could have easily decided to just outright ban RC aircraft. But that’s not saying that that couldn’t still happen down the line. The more the government gets involved in something, the more power the government has to ruin that something.

Whattaya wanna bet: coming soon, similar efforts to regulate lasers and high power LED flashlights.

 Posted by at 3:37 pm

People seemed to like “Star Wars”

 news, science fiction  1 Response »
Dec 152015
 

Last night was the world premiere for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” seen by celebrities and rich folk and such. Spoiler-free Twitter reviews and such seem to indicate that, on the whole, they liked it.

Whether that’ll translate into popularity among us little people, I dunno. But I’d like to hope so.

The First Spoiler-Free Impressions of The Force Awakens, Straight From the Premiere

 Posted by at 12:47 pm

Childhood’s End

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science fiction  13 Responses »
Dec 142015
 

Having seen Part One, I gotta say I approve so far. Based on Arthur C. Clarke novel, the miniseries changes a lot of the details, but has retained the general plotline and message. Sadly, the bullfighting scene seems to have been deleted, but, importantly, they didn’t cheap out on the reveal of Karellan. He looks as described in the novel. Surprisingly, Karellan *wasn’t* a big mass of CGI, but, instead, Charles Dance under a whole lot of practical effects and makeup. Mostly it works. And if you need a Supervisor Of Earth voice… you couldn’t do a whole lot better than Charles Dance.

The miniseries doesn’t waste a whole lot of time getting to the appearance of the spacecraft over the cities. This is a scene that, while Clarke was perhaps the first to describe in literature 60 years ago, has appeared several times on screen… the Visitors ships in V, the city destroyers in Independence Day. Still, I thought it was impressively done. It was aided by music that reminded me a *lot* of the music that played during the visit to the Tet in the under rated Oblivion. The aircraft helped to show just how futile human opposition would be.

Looking forward to part two.

 Posted by at 9:28 pm
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