Oct 222021
 

Below is a somewhat rambling video by a YouTuber who focuses on comic books. He makes, eventually, what I think is an interesting point. He realized that a *lot* of British authors seem fascinated with magic and wizards and sorcerers and the like, putting magic into stories in somewhat the way Americans might put guns into a story. The YouTubers hypothesis is that this is because magic is to the British “creation myth” like what guns are to the American “creation myth.” Of course, America’s creation is hardly mythical, since records keeping was fairly reliable at the time… but guns were as important tot he Revolution as Merlin was to Arthur. There are, as he also points out, distinctly American “myths” such as Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed… and as he also points out, nobody much cares. Paul Bunyan chopping down trees hardly stacks up with that time George Washington routed the entire British army with a small number of Dodge Chargers.

Of course, with changes in British educational/government policies, British “creation myths” and other cultural tales will be largely unknown to British children within  decade, if not sooner.

 Posted by at 1:25 pm
Oct 222021
 

Noted Social Justice maniac Alec Baldwin has killed someone:

It would hardly be the first time that an actor has shot dead someone on the set of a movie using what was supposed to be a prop gun; see the death of Brandon Lee for the most famous example. But in that case, the fault was very clearly with the ordnance folks/prop masters who failed to properly clear a firearm. Something quite like that may have happened here, with either an actual live round installed instead of a blank, or a pistol with a projectile jammed in the barrel was loaded with a blank (which is what happened to Lee). But in tis case, with the exceedingly limited info available so far, it seems that the actor himself has some culpability. Because while it might be his job to point a prop gun at another actor and pull the trigger, here he shot  a director. This would *seem* to indicate that he was either careless or screwing around… or acting in a threatening manner 9given his vaunted temper…). Another possibility is that the gun was loaded with nothing but blanks, which are usually harmless at a range of more than a few yards… but deadly if fired within a few inches. And if 8that’s* the case, there’ll be some ‘splainin’ to do as to why he was pointing a gun, prop or otherwise, at a human a very short distance away.

 

 

 Posted by at 12:43 am
Oct 192021
 

Almost four years ago I posted about a project known as “Flashback,” a vaguely-described mid 1960’s program to carry and drop a giant *something* from a B-52. What it was, exactly, was not described with any clarity, but there were enough clues that I tentatively speculated that it was a design for an American “Tsar Bomb” with a yield of fifty or more megatons. To my knowledge I was the first person to yap about it publicly. I sent what I’d found to a few atomic and aerospace researchers to see if they knew anything. At the time, they were as mystified as I was.

Today there’s less mystery. I was contacted by one of the researchers I had contacted back then, letting me know he’s writing an article to appear in a month or so in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, covering Flashback among other things. He has Found Some Stuff. In short… Flashback was a design for a 50 to 100 megaton hydrogen bomb.

Giggitty.

 

 Posted by at 10:49 pm
Oct 152021
 

Yow:

Amnesty International brief against right to bear arms

AI displays some shocking lack of reason. A group supposedly meant to help people attain and maintain their human rights, they are opposed to people being wiped out in genocides being granted the means to defend themselves:

“We at Amnesty International are not going to condone escalation of the flow of arms to the region.” Indeed, “You are empowering (the victims) to create an element of retaliation.” “Whenever you create a sword-fight by letting the poor people fight back and give them arms, it creates an added element of complexity. You do not know what the results will be.” In sum, “Fighting fire with fire is not the solution to genocide. It is a dangerous proposition to arm the minorities to fight back.”

And more recently, they are currently arguing that New York finally recognizing the right of its citizens to bear arms would be against international law, Constitution be damned. The whole thing is worth reading… and then passing on to anyone you know who may be a donor to AI. AI’s position is that international law makes it a requirement of the US Government to protect criminals from *victims,” that allowing victims the means to defend themselves violates the criminals rights.

ᛖᚪᛏ ᛗᛖ, Amnesty International.

 Posted by at 6:21 pm
Oct 152021
 

Well, a couple of them, anyway. It’s interesting to listen to the reactions as well as to the dishonesty and outright lunacy from the gun grabbers. The notion was floated that the NRA was responsible for increased gun laws in the 1960’s due to black folks getting guns; the fact that it was largely Democrat politicians passing those gun laws was somehow overlooked. Similarly, the laughably false notion was raised that the crime wave that black folks today need to worry about is white supremacists… and that, somehow, gun-grabbing laws are *still* the right approach.

Note that some in the audience laugh when one of the hosts announced that she recently purchased a pistol.

 Posted by at 10:03 am
Oct 132021
 

The Dutch national airline KLM equipped their long range Arctic-crossing airliners with some interesting stuff. In 1958 they began stocking their DC-7’s and DC-8’s with Armalite AR-10 semi-auto “sporter” rifles for use against polar bears in the event the plane was forced down onto the ice. The AR-10, as I’m sure I don’t need to explain, was a design that preceded the AR-15/M-16, and was chambered in 7.62X51mm NATO. This is a reasonably substantial round that hits a lot harder than the littler BB’s that the 5.56mm AR-15 shoots… but it shoots fewer of them due to the rounds being larger and heavier. However, when you’re faced with a polar bear or two rather than hordes of Commies, a smaller number of bigger bullets is the way to go.

KLM’s Arctic AR-10

Article includes a link to a KLM publicity photo showing a stewardess training with an AR-10. Note that the trigger guard for this particular rifle was designed to flip down to make it easier to handle while wearing mittens; it’s not folded down here, so she’s going to have a big of trouble pulling that trigger when the snowtroopers and the Wampas storm Echo Base.

 Posted by at 3:33 pm
Sep 282021
 

This feller made himself some Gyrojet rounds. Their performance is… meh. I can see some clear ways to improve the design; lead weight in the nose of the case, nozzles swaged into the rear of the case rather than pinned, properly formed propellant, cast with a machined teflon mandrel to create a multi-fin grain for high initial thrust and very brief burn time. And use better propellant; the stuff he used is sugar-based… fine for amateur model rockets, but you want *good* propellant for this application. Ammonium  perchlorate oxidizer, aluminum powder fuel, HTPB “rubber” as the binder. Throw in some iron oxide to goose up the burn rate, some superglue to speed cure time, and hey presto, about as good as it gets. Deployable fins might improve stability at the cost of additional cost and complexity.

Further: consider cutting down the case length and bonding a pointier brass, bronze, copper or steel nose to it to improve stability, aerodynamics and penetration. Other propellant grain options exist; one I’d like to see more work on is a thin sheet of propellant, perforated to turn it into a mesh screen, rolled into a tube with the layers separated by thin strips of bonded-on propellant. A whole lot of surface area, very fast burn, labor intensive to manufacture.

 

 Posted by at 9:26 pm