“Bio Weapons Labs” in Ukraine

 AARRRGH, blather, Hmm..., Meh., politics, russian empire, science, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 152023
 

The idea that there are bioweapon labs in Ukraine is pretty effectively debunked by Ryan McBeth:

The fact that there are *biological* labs in Ukraine strikes me as entirely unsuprising… and entirely to be expected. Ukraine is an agricultural nation, and where you find agriculture *and* modern society, you find laboratories that study agriculture. And a large part of that is studying the diseases and pests that can damage agriculture. The midwest of the United States is littered with such labs, many in local universities, where researchers study everything from anthrax to locusts, aphids to fungi. But the Russian propagandists months ago made a big, fake deal of this, and a distressing number of people in the West fell for it.

 Posted by at 2:09 pm

A protocol right out of sci-fi: does it exist? Should it?

 AARRRGH, blather, Hmm..., nukes, politics, science fiction  No Responses »
Feb 142023
 

So by this point it should not be a spoiler that a flashback at the beginning of episode 2 of HBO’s “The Last Of Us” has a scientist realize just what biological horror has been unleashed in Jakarta, Indonesia. In short, it’s a mutated fungus that essentially kicks off a zombie apocalypse. There is no medical treatment for this; the only response is to “bomb.” The Indonesians apparently try that, but with minimal effectiveness. And because of course: if you need to burn down a major city with millions of people, destroy everything and kill everyone, going about it with some strike fighters and maybe some cargo planes is just not gonna get the job done. Ya gotta nuke. And Indonesia doesn’t have nukes.

 

The same basic idea has popped up elsewhere from time to time. It was the climax to the movie “The Crazies,” where the US nukes a city in Iowa to stop the spread of an engineered war bug. A nuke would have been the right response to “The Thing.” A nuke was going to be the climax to “The Andromeda Strain” till they realized that the radiation would only make the alien disease hulk out.

 

These are of course science fiction situations. A zombie apocalypse is almost certainly never going to happen; aliens that can absorb terrestrial life and spread at nightmarish speeds are equally unlikely. But *some* disease outbreak that could endanger human civilization, or even human existence? Sure, that’s conceivable. Someone could try to understand an outbreak in some third world village only to realize that it’s a strain of super-smallpox, something the existing vaccine would have no effect on; one person gets away with it, and billions could die. Nuking the village – and the surrounding ones – would be a reasonable response in that situation.

 

The existence of an emergency protocol where some third world government could ask the US, Russia or China “could you please nuke me,” or where such a strike could be called in by WHO officials, would almost certainly never be publicly acknowledged until it happened (if even then). But would such a protocol even be diplomatically possible? Would the nuclear powers sign on? Would the non-nuclear powers sign on? If it had to be called upon, would the nuclear powers be relied upon to do it… and would those who *didn’t* set off the nuke be relied upon to not use the situation for political gain?

 

Assume The Plague breaks out in some backwater in the Yucatan. Mexican officials figure it out, realize the severity of the problem, and ask for some canned sunshine. Half an hour later, eight warheads come raining down, courtesy an Ohio-class boomer out in the Atlantic. Rain forest goes *foom,* tens or hundreds of thousands die, maybe millions. Does the US explain why? Do Russia and China, along with Britain and France and the rest, step up to the podium and say “We concurred, and had it been in our back yards, it would have been out nukes?”

 

A difficulty here is that the process would have to be *fast.* And under some situations, the response might have to be damn near apocalyptic. Let’s say instead of a jungle village, it’s Jakarta. You have a *big* city to deal with… and you have all the airplanes that left the airport in the last hour or three. You’ll need to somehow convince the pilots to immediately land, and keep everyone on board. And those that don’t, and especially those that report an outbreak, you’ll have to deal with. Simply shooting them down won’t do: they’ll spread the problem when they crash. You’ll have to nuke the planes in flight, and I’m not sure that capability even exists anymore.

 

 Posted by at 8:37 pm

This sure sounds like copium

 blather, Crazy, Hmm..., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 142023
 

Not everyone can have kids, due to physical issues, or bad circumstances, or whatever. Not everyone *should* have kids. Not everyone *wants* kids. Not having kids is not something to be shamed for. But not *wanting* kids is at least a little weird; like it or not, that’s the meaning of existence. Screw supernatural or divine reasons… you are on this Earth because a billion years of evolution has ingrained within every single being’s DNA the urge to reproduce their kind. That’s just the way it is. You are the end product of the better part of a trillion generations of sexual reproduction, and to think that it ends with *you* is a little disconcerting.

 

Some people realize that *they* should not reproduce because their DNA is messed up. They have a genetic disease that could/would get passed on, leading not only to misery for the kid, but degradation of the gene pool. Or they know that they are psychologically messed up – either through bad genetics or bad life experiences – and they know that they would mess up the kid. The people who make these realizations and intentionally refrain from having kids should be simultaneously pitied *and* celebrated. They are doing the species proud.

 

But then you’ve got people like Z-list celebrity Chelsea Handler, who doesn’t want kids because they’d get in the way of her hedonism. Sure, in her case it’s best that she’s had not children – and at age 47 her chances of reproducing are now incredibly low, probably zero – because she’d mess them up. But it’s not selflessness that motivates her, but selfishness.

 

Here’s the video she posted that’s making the rounds. Judge for yourself: does she come across as someone truly happy with her choices, or someone who now has to live with her choices and is rationalizing real hard?

She’s basically whacking you over the head while she repeats at loud volume a mantra about how happy she is.

 

She’s getting pushback. Which is… I dunno. It’s worth pointing out how weird her attitude is, but it’s not worth getting in a twist over. My little blog post here will be abut the sum total of my giveadamn about the issue. But she has responded to it, and it just seems like more copium. What *does* disturb me is the “oh, so stunning and brave!” applause she gets from her audience about this (insert conspiracy theory about They Don’t Want You To Reproduce Yourself):

This sort of thing comes across to me like someone who is objectively *not* physically attractive sitting in front of a mirror, smiling real hard, and telling themselves over and over and over just how beautiful they are. That’s just weird.

 Posted by at 8:34 pm

And the balloonageddon continues

 aircraft, blather, Crazy, Hmm..., news, politics, rockets, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 122023
 

US Shuts Airspace Over Lake Michigan, Cites “National Defense”

 

Seems the balloons are coming pretty fast.

 

 

 

Clearly if the Commies are swarming our skies with balloons, they need to be shot down. But while balloons are cheap, AIM-9X missiles are expensive as are F-15 and especially F-22 sorties. Reserving air supremacy fighters for swatting balloons over Canada or Montana means they can’t be deployed elsewhere for roles more requiring their capabilities. The ability to take out balloons *cheaply* is needed. A suggestion: instead of expendable missiles launched from advanced fighters, how about reusable missiles launched from cargo jets, or modified corporate jets? Missiles such as AQM-37C. This missile was a target, and some variants were fitted with a parachute recovery system. The AQM-37C was capable of Mach 4 flight up to 100,000 feet. The AQM-37 series is now long out of production and no longer in service, but the design has worked for fifty years and could be certainly updated. It could be rebuilt for precision command guidance or some onboard guidance; it could be meant to simply dart through the balloons envelope, or blast over it real close while spewing out small submunitions. Build them in vast numbers for economies of scale; build variants for other roles such as surface attack, recon, whatever, to spread the cost and utility around. If you’re *real* good, build them for in-flight snatching; if you are *extremely* good, build them to be snatched by the launch aircraft.

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 6:17 pm

Picard Season 3 review: Not Positive

 AARRRGH, blather, Hmm..., politics, science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 112023
 

I haven’t seen it, so don’t blame me. But this reviewer *really* didn’t like it:

Don’t watch ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three, it’ll only encourage them

The third season is yet another misguided waste of everyone’s time.

Whoa.

The previews look better than the first two execrable seasons, but that’s a low bar indeed.

I am reminded of a reaction video I recently saw. Even in my advancing decrepitude that’s not that big of a mental achievement, considering I saw this video yesterday:

The young lady in question watched “Galaxy Quest” without the benefit of being a fan of Star Trek. Without, in fact, the benefit of actually knowing much about Star Trek. And yet, with minimal exposure to TOS or TNG… she got “Galaxy Quest.” Maybe a few of the jokes skipped past her, but the main themes? Fully understood, accepted and appreciated. A point she raised that caught my attention: near the end when the nerd-kid is contacted and learns that his favorite show is actually real, the young lady stated that she thought that this must have been the dream of many Star Trek fans. Little does she know: whole generations of Trekkies and Trekkers  lived in the desperate hope of living in the world of Star Trek. For some this meant daydreaming about serving aboard the Enterprise. For some it meant doing what needed to to become authors or actors or film/TV show makers in the hopes of bringing their own dreams of trek to life (looking at you, Seth MacFarlane). For some of us it meant going into science and engineering in the hopes of starting mankind on the road to trekking the stars. And her realization got me thinking.

Over the last twenty-some years some “Galaxy Quest,” it has been almost universally hailed as one of the best Star Trek Movies. It is certainly one of the movies that shows most clearly a love and understanding of the original Star Trek. Within the movie, an alien race has picked up TV transmissions of the sci-fi series “Galaxy Quest,” and they decided to rebuild their entire society to conform to the vision of “Galaxy Quest,” and in doing so the saved themselves from oblivion and gave themselves hope and a new reason to go on. So… my thinking is this: the “Galaxy Quest Test.”

The test is simple: take a series or a movie that claims to be Star Trek, and imagine that it gets beamed out into space. It is picked up by an earnest alien race capable of understanding it. They have much the same ethics, hopes and fears as humanity, even if they don’t look anything like us and are really rather innocent, despite the fact they are being ground out of existence. What are the chances that these aliens will watch the show or movie and decide that the vision they’ve watched and understood is such a wonderful thing that they will choose to emulate it?

I can see this with TOS. I can see it with TNG. I can see it with Lower Decks and certainly Prodigy. I can see it with Voyager. I can kinda see it with Deep Space Nine. But the Kelvin movies? *Any* season of Discovery or Picard? Not a chance in hell.

So, when watching Star Trek Picard season three, keep this question int he back of your mind: “What would Mathesar think of this?”

 

 

 

 Posted by at 5:59 am

Laws and ethics lag reality

 blather, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., science, science fiction, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 032023
 

The video below is a bit yammery, but some important and interesting points are raised, discussed and… dunno. Apparently there’s drama going on among a number of twitch streamers; I’m a bit proud to say I don’t know who the hell these people are, but the crux of the matter is that someone set up a website that shows deepfakes of a number of these “e-girls” in X-rated situations. Some of these women kinda do that now; some of them don’t. What’s the law on this sort of thing? What’s the ethics? Is it wrong to look at such things? Part of the drama is that some e-guy was found to have, ah, utilized the website… and he and his wife are personal friends with some of these women. Awkward. Is he in legal trouble? Seems unlikely. Is he in trouble with the friends? With his wife? Seems pretty likely.

We are in early days of this sort of thing. With the rise of AI art generators and constantly improving deepfake-tech, this sort of thing will only get more prominent, and society is not even really trying to play catch-up yet. As always, people ignore science fiction at their peril.

Soon enough, it will be possible to spool up Naughty Imagery/Videos of *everyone*, made to order. Like do-it-yourself genetic tinkering, this sort of tech is inevitable and unstoppable, and lots of people will want to do it. How will society handle dirty imagery, fake vs real being indistinguishable, being readily available of *everyone?* Seems to me that, eventually as people grow up with it, people just won’t care anymore. You could walk past a giant billboard showing *you* going at it with a tapir and you’ll hardly notice. What effects will that have on society and on people? On one hand, it’ll be damned hard to blackmail people. The job of private investigators will become first really easy, and then really hard, as their photos and videos become unusable as evidence, much less proof. But a larger effect might be an acceleration of the baby bust. As such things become virtually universal, interest in going at it with the opposite sex might very well fall to prit near zero. And thus baby-making might become rather a niche interest, and the populations of developed nations will slip into the dark to be replaced with large numbers of imports.

That would doubtless be to *someones* liking.

 

 Posted by at 7:28 am

Could Illinois become a Second Amendment Sanctuary State?

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 312023
 

The Dem-dominated government of the state of Illinois passed an “assault weapon ban” that bans not only commonly owned firearms but also standard capacity magazines as part of their policy of decriminalizing violent crime while criminalizing the law abiding. But the law was so badly written – and badly conceived – that I wonder if the inevitable boomerang effect might end up with Illinois finally entering the twenty first century and ditching *all* of the unconstitutional tyrannical nonsense that has been on the books. Consider:

Appellate Court Affirms DeVore’s Equal Protection Argument, Assault Weapons Ban Temporary Restraining Order, Binds Courts Statewide

The ban on common rifles is clearly unconstitutional on second amendment right… but it’s *also* unconstitutional – state and federal – on “equal protection” issues. Because while it bans *some* people from owning, say, an AR-15, it exempts current and retired police, current military and security guards. The point is often raised that the same politicians who rail against average schmoes being able to defend their homes, persons and property with a semi-auto rifle often have armed guards packing semi and even full auto weapons.

One can hope that the court smackdown of the “assault weapon ban” will hit so hard that other existing gun laws in Illinois will be brought down. By over-reaching, the gun-grabbers might well have assured that all gun control laws across the US end up before the US Supreme Court. It would be spectacular if the NFA winds up going the way of the dodo, as it should. There are few enough arguments that support banning fully automatic weapons; there are none for bans on suppressors and short barreled rifles and shotguns.

 Posted by at 11:33 pm

Another Cyanotype update

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, blather, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, history, news  No Responses »
Jan 282023
 

The hardware has been modified to “print” up to the full six feet in length (actually a little more, maybe 6’8″). I continue to crank out test prints, with about a 50/40/10 mix of “awesome”/”disappointing”/”dismal.” Now it seems the production part of the project is largely dialed in; it seems that *chemistry* is responsible for much of the trouble. There is a window in which the fluid can be properly used:

  1. When the two chemicals are first mixed, they produce a liquid that is mud-brown. When used right off, it doesn’t seem to stick to the paper very well, or doesn’t react adequately. In any event, the result is massively faded. Wholly unusable. It seems to take about 24 hours from mixing to reliable usability. After 24 hours, the fluid has turned from brown to dark-ish green. Seems to work great at about that point. After another day, it turns a *dark* green, then trends towards blue. As it goes, it becomes increasingly useless. So there is a 24-48 hour window, it seems. I can work with that, now that I got it more or less figgered.

 

While the hardware is set up for in excess of 6 feet, so far the biggest print I’ve done is 56 inches, a *spectacular* pair of isometric interior structure views of the B-2A. yeah, I’m a bit surprised that the original was declassified, but it was, so there it is (and it was sent to me by a Russian feller, so it’s out there). I’ve done 2 so far… one is as close to perfect as I can hope for; one is *slightly* flawed via faded bits.

 

When I left Utah, my cyanotyping hardware got trashed. But I had the foresight to roll up all the transparencies I had. And wow, I have a lot of them. And WOW are they dirty. Utah is great and all, but it *is* the desert and full of dust… it’s coarse, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere. All of the transparencies will have to be washed and windexed. And I’ve washed, but not yet windexed, the first of the six-footers I plan on printing: a CAD diagram of my own, the SLS in 1/72 scale. A good businessman would have had this ready for the Artemis mission a little while ago but… shrug.

 

These test prints will probably go up on ebay to get some sense of the interest in them. I suspect an Etsy store would be the best next step. There are a *lot* of crappy digitally printed aerospace “blueprints” there… one of the very first ones to pop up is a digitally printed 12″x72″ Saturn V that almost certainly was derived from Space Drawing 4.  I previously sold actual cyanotypes of this at the exact same size… for $50 compared to the digital print at $75. I feel rather like a chump. There are actual cyanotype prints available as well, but the one’s I’ve seen all look rather bland and low-effort. Bah.

 Posted by at 1:09 pm

My tenuous, tangential link to the “adult daycare centers”

 aircraft, art, blather, Crazy, Forward!, history, Hmm..., Meh., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 262023
 

Because in present Day, everything has to be All About Me…

 

Several years before I left Utah I was contacted by an aerospace historian/ museum feller about a potential project. It seemed that a big tech company was purchasing an old Hughes Aircraft hangar with the intention of turning it into office space; I was asked if I might be interested in building a large (IIRC, wingspan in excess of twenty feet) replica of the Hughes H4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” to be hung in the  large open space.  My response was something along the lines of “hell yes,” but it didn’t go much further than that original discussion; like a lot of things it just faded away. Still, I’d dug out what plans I had of the Hercules and started dreaming up how I was going to do it… I’d model it in 3D CAD, lay out the internal structure and have ribs and longerons and frames and all cut out of quality plywood, clad probably in *really* good, really thin plywood, sanded baby-ass smooth and painted appropriately. I had discussions with a local wood shop about getting the many, many parts CNC milled. Woulda been a thing of beauty… and something I could have built several of and presumably made bank on. But it was not to be, and in the years since I’ve not given the project a second thought. Until yesterday…

 

So there was this TikTok video by some vapid person yapping about her day of meaningless food consumption and unproductivity at the Google LA office, built into a former Hughes hangar. Lo and behold, on display is a “sculpture” of the Hercules hanging from the ceiling, visible about 8 seconds in:

My old brain fired up and I contacted my acquaintance who had originally presented me with the idea years ago… and, yup, that’s the place, and that sculpture is what they went with rather than my planned subscale replica. More info and a decent photo of it is here:

HistoricHangarBecomesHistory-MakingWorkplace

There are a number of things that jump right out at me. First, the volume of space available in the hangar is vast… and it *seems* like the volume of space actually used for offices and such is *small.* It appears to be horribly inefficiently utilized. And second, here’s the description of the Hercules sculpture:

Comprised of 2,800 individually hung chrome spheres, this perceptual sculpture by Michael Murphy appears to be an amorphous silver cloud until seen from the sole viewpoint where it reveals itself as the “ghost” of the Spruce Goose.

 

It’s a “perceptual sculpture,” only visible correctly from a single vantage point. Basically, it’s not “real” as such, it’s kinda like a hologram made of ball bearings. That’s… interesting, I guess. but I can’t help draw some analogies: What I had suggested was a real, tangible Hercules, visible as such from all aspects and viewpoints. What they went with was smoke and mirrors. What I had believed the place was going to be was a workplace where people got stuff done. What it ended up being was, apparently a holding facility for people who did nothing of value all day.

 

Would have been a nice project though. Oh well.

 Posted by at 8:42 pm
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