The “In Between” years of Star Trek

 art, blather, history, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 222023
 

A YouTube video discussing the time between the cancellation of Star Trek and The Motion Picture. It would be an era unimaginable to fans of a just-cancelled franchise today: back then, you either saw the showed when it aired, or you didn’t. Until it hit syndication, there was for all intents and purposes no way for someone to see the show. All you had were your memories, the verbal descriptions from others, the occasional magazine article, and a series of novelizations of the episodes. There was no renting an episode on tape at Blockbuster, no buying the DVD, no streaming it online. A few might have access to crappy films.

 

And yet… when the first Star Trek Convention was held in 1972, the place was swamped, and attendance only grew from there. It was an analog IRL experience unlike anything possible today. On the one hand it was lean, dark times, with limited resources and opportunities; on the other hand, it led to fandoms and communities of a kind impossible today. There is value in rarity, I suppose. People value that which they have to work for.

 

A post from a few years ago with a Star trek Convention film shot in 1976.

 Posted by at 5:58 am

That’s a weird way to “deNazify” Ukraine…

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, nukes, politics, russian empire, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 192023
 

I recently had a disturbing online conversation with a Russian aeronautical expert on the subject of Ukraine. One can reasonably expect a Russian will have a different point of view on the subject than a westerner would… but this was an *experience.* In short: It’s good and proper that Russia exterminate the Ukrainian people, because their culture, history and identity don’t exist; they’re a fiction, it’s all part of Russia and Russias destiny to retake that plot of land. “The history of Ukraine began with the betrayal in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in 1991 and will end in 2023.” Any who stand against the Russians goals deserve death and the nuking of western/NATO cities would be a small price to pay for Russia reclaiming it’s former empire.

 

Yeesh.

 

And of course one of the main excuses for why the “special military operation” is a wonderful thing? The need to get rid of all the Nazis in Ukraine. Ukraine, under the leadership of a democratically elected feller who I understand to be a Jew, is somehow being controlled by Nazis. Uh-huh. After years of weirdo whackaloons here in the west constantly banging on about fascists and Nazis – by which they mean anyone with politics to the right of FDR – I have no sympathy for Russians bleating on about Nazis. Especially when *this* is who the Russians are sending into battle against the Ukrainian people:

 

 

 

 

It’s bad enough that Russian leadership is clearly bugnuts, but that this has seeped out into the general populace is unnerving. I was told that Putin is felt to be too soft on the west, and: “If Kadyrov becomes president, the whole world will remember the beautiful and humane Vladimir Vladimirovich with tears.”

 

There have been more and more reports that NATO countries are running out of weapons and ammo. Again, this is both good and bad news. The bad is obvious. But the good is that the West is figuring this out *now* while our economies are still running and our factories are still standing. If the relatively tiny amount of ordnance the west is sending to Ukraine is drying up western armories… that’s a damned good sign that we need to start stocking up in a serious way.

 Posted by at 11:00 pm

FASA miniatures: an odd request

 AARRRGH, art, blather, history, Hmm..., science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 152023
 

Back in the mid 80’s, one of the things I got a kick out of was the FASA Star Trek starship combat game. Not just the game itself, but all the books and miniatures that went along with it. I bought, assembled and painted a number of the little metal ships, and have tried to keep them through all the decades since… but through numerous moves and general attrition and entropy, a bunch of the ships have vanished. Recently I’ve had an itch to take the ones I’ve got, strip their decades old paint and try again, and to replace the ones I’ve lost. I’ve looked for replacements on ebay with limited success. Most of what’s available are still in their packages, which means the prices are nuts, and the ones I really want to replace haven’t popped up.

 

So… does anyone have a collection of these things – or even just one – that you want to unload for a reasonable sum? If so, let me know.

 

 

Also: am I alone in having an attachment to these lead/pewter miniatures that simply doesn’t exist for plastic ones, including modern 3D printed versions? There just seems to be something special about them. Perhaps it’s the weight… and perhaps it’s the fact that these were what I had when my brain was developing connections that have ossified since I became an adult. I’d accept either or both explanations, but the fact remains: metal > plastic.

 

 Posted by at 1:46 pm

You and what army?

 awesomeness, blather, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 142023
 

Attorney General says if sheriffs won’t enforce gun ban ‘there are other people there to do the job’

The attorney general of the state of Illinois is annoyed that the great majority of the county sheriffs – elected officials who do not report to the Governor, nor can he remove them from office – have told the Governor to get bent over the issue of arresting several million citizens for the crime of owning semi-automatic rifles and standard capacity magazines. The AG believes that other police forces than county sheriffs can do the job, such as the State Police. Perhaps he thinks the Governor can call up the National Guard for this task. But for those sheriffs who take their jobs seriously, they may well arrest State Police who attempt to arrest citizens. And the sheriffs would be right to do so: their oaths tend to include words to the effect of “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and banning magazines and firearms is, especially in light of recent Supreme Court decisions, monumentally and obviously unconstitutional.

 

This would not be unprecedented. Recall the ATF agent who got himself arrested a couple years ago. This was an arrest and tazing that didn’t need to happen; it followed the same script as so many other arrests: someone high on drugs or entitlement refuses to comply even a little bit with simple orders of the police, and things go badly for them. in this case, the ATF agent was high on his sense of overwhelming power… which it turned out he didn’t actually have.

 

I imagine if State Police or some such start actually arresting the law abiding, various resistance movements will start up that will keep them under surveillance and sic Sheriffs and vigilance committees on them. Real-time monitoring of anyone suspected of trying to enforce the unconstitutional law would seem entirely feasible in this day and age.

 

Also: virtually all police enjoy “qualified immunity,” which protects them from getting sued when they behave badly. But as I understand it, that immunity goes away if they are doing something unconstitutional. So, ummm… if you are a State Police officer who really doesn’t want to lose his house, his saving and his kids college fund, maybe think twice before violating someones Constitutional rights. Just a thought.

 Posted by at 10:29 am

So… is this a good thing?

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, politics, religion, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 132023
 

In general you want your opponent to be dumber and less capable than you. In matters of war and serious geopolitics, you want them to believe things that just ain’t so, to be generally gullible. But at a certain point, those who oppose you can start to believe in false stories that are *so* dumb – the “wage gap,” “white supremacy,” ‘trans women are women,” and so on – that they begin to pose an all new kind of threat.

And so… to Russia:

Russia Is Afraid of Western Psychic Attacks

Psychic powers and the supernatural are, on their own, wholly unthreatening. Things that don’t exist can’t hurt you… the Kremlin can have their psychic warrior beam Bozo Rays at me all day long, won’t harm me a bit. But such things *aren’t* on their own. A belief in nonsense could end up with Putin, say, believing a “psychic” who tells him that the United States just launched a thousand cloaked warheads at Moscow, each filled with a Sith lord dolphin powered by Mary Kay brand dark matter. Since the Russians don’t have an anti-Sith dolphin defense shield, their only recourse would be to strike back at the US with a full nuclear barrage.

In general I fully support my enemies spending as much of their time and treasure trying to gain the upper hand in psychic warfare. Every ruble spent on Miss Cleoski is a ruble not spent on an AK-47 or a MiG or an ICBM. But at some point they go a little too far. Hell, imagine if the Russian leadership began to believe that their psychics were capable of stopping a full US nuclear strike on Russia. That might incentivize a Russian first strike.

 Posted by at 12:00 pm

OK… Maybe a *little* excessive

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, wisdom  No Responses »
Jan 082023
 

Finally saw unedited video of the recent shooting of the armed (with a toy gun as it turns out) robber in Texas. With the edited videos, you can’t tell anything about the customer’s shooting of the robber other than at least one shot in the bad guys back. But with the edited video there appear to be *nine* shots, including multiple shots into the guy while he’s down… and a few seconds later, one more shot which kinda seems like it might have been a back-of-the-head shot. Which, you know… maybe a bit much. Do I feel bad that a robber got rubbed out? Not in the slightest. The fact that he had a fake gun doesn’t matter, the *fear* he was determined to generate was real enough. But riddling a dead guy with holes… people are gonna question that. But I dunno: you threaten to kill someone, chances are real good that that *someone* is going to get amped up on adrenaline, and might not be thinking to straight for a minute or three. I know the wokescolds and the prosecutors are going to yammer on about how he shot too many times… but when your life has just been threatened, how rational are you really expected to be?

The greater lesson here: if you don’t want to be turned into Swiss cheese, don’t go robbing people. Seems a simple enough rule of thumb.

 

 Posted by at 11:14 am

The constantly evolving “Enzmann Starship”

 aircraft, blather, history, Hmm..., Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 022023
 

The “Enzmann Starship” is named after Robert Enzmann, who “designed” it decades ago. Just exactly *when* has been an issue of some confusion in recent years.

It first came to light in the late 60’s or early 70’s, with claims that he thought it up around 1964 or so. The design is unique: a giant spherical ball of frozen deuterium fuel at the front, followed by a cylindrical ship, ending with a series of Orion-style nuclear pulse engines. It was an *ok* concept for a practical starship, though relatively recent analysis presented in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society argued that it was not nearly as good as imagined. It became something of a sensation in the 70’s after appearing on the cover of “Analog” in 1973.

Nothing has ever been produced, so far as I’m aware, backing up the concept with any sort of detailed design of analysis until that JBIS paper. No reports, proposals, pages of math, from Enzmann seem to be available… just text descriptions of a few sentences and some art. And that’s fine. But in recent years the claims have become more and more expansive. Enzmann, near the end of his life, claimed that the design for a nuclear-pulse vehicle dated not from the time of the Orion program, but back to the *40’s*.

I spoke to Enzmann on the phone a few times over the years. He was enthusiastic, verbose… and baffling. He made lots and lots of claims about having worked on this or that amazing program, but when asked for verifiable details… it was classified. Those who have picked up his mantle and are trying to carry his torch seem to be following in his footsteps there, continuing his claims without much apparent criticism. I’ve recently engaged their twitter contact to get some sort of verification of his claims… but we have now reached the point where not only am I convinced that no such evidence will be produced, I feel no reason to assume anything remarkable is true at all. Behold:

Claiming that nuclear powered aircraft were actually built in the fifties and then buried in a mountain? Yeah… no. I’m out.

 

Where the thread started:

 Posted by at 11:06 pm

Cyanotype update: irritation edition

 AARRRGH, blather, cyanotype blueprints, history, Hmm..., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 282022
 

I have been poking away at resuming cyanotype production using the new setup and the old transparency negatives. In order to go forward successfully, I need to be able to print on transparent film up to 2 feet wide by six long. I have encountered a lot of trouble here, which has baffled me. No print shops within a hundred miles seem to be able to do that. I put in an order to buy a roll of the film myself to keep at one of the local shops to print off on as needed… and was informed today that the roll will be delivered no sooner than late *February.* The manufacturers don’t have the raw materials for it.

 

What’s baffling is that when last I worked with this, circa 2017 or so, getting these sort of prints was no trouble whatsoever. I’d send the files to a local print shop in Utah and within a few days the job would be done at reasonable cost, no sweat. Now, though… it’s just not done. And it turns out there is a reason: up until about 5 years ago, it seems people were still regularly using diazo-type blueprinting for architectural and other industrial diagrams, which required this sort of film. But around five years ago, digital printing finally drove the last nail in diazotypes coffin. Without the market, there’s no supply.

 

So, hopefully the film will still arrive. But I have a customer who kinda wants his custom job, and that’s an unreasonable wait. So something new is being done. The customers line diagram is being printed not on thin transparent film, but on thin *plexiglas.* I can see this resulting in superior cyanotypes; the plexiglass will be vastly less prone to being anything other than dead flat, so the prints should be sharper. But plexi is *far* more expensive (two full size prints will cost as much as the entire roll of film that’s hopefully coming)… and when not in use, I can’t just roll it up and stick it in the corner. If I get 24 inch by 72 inch prints on these, not only is storing them going to be a problem, I can’t even fit them in my car. Grrr. These are problems that will be solved, but, grrr. Everything is always harder not only than it needs to be, but than it used to be.

 Posted by at 1:57 pm

Putin’s War

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 182022
 

Yes, I’m shocked too… I’m linking to a New York times article that is both interesting and informative:

 

Putin’s War

A Times investigation based on interviews, intercepts, documents and secret battle plans shows how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia.

 

For no readily apparent reason, YouTube of late has been tossing videos at me that suddenly started focusing on people reading aloud stories posted on Reddit (handy for when I’ve been working on the cyanotypes). In particular, “HFY” stories… “Humanity F Yeah!” stories, science fiction short tales featuring, generally, aliens deciding to attack dumb ol’ weak humanity and getting their asses handed to them by those hairless monkeys who turn out to be *insanely* capable in the art of war. They are generally fun little tales… usually not *great* by any stretch, often fairly bad by the usual measures of such things, but entertaining. And the idea that Plucky Humans could save the day against galaxy-spanning ravening hordes and evil empires is always fun. But then I read stuff like this NYT article describing the state of the Russian war machine and war effort.

Yes, sometimes humans can be spectacularly expert at the art of war. But often we are phenomenally incompetent. If the Russia that launched this war against Ukraine was the standard of human military capability, even the most mediocre and half-assed alien invasion fleet would mop up Mankind in a lazy afternoon.

 Posted by at 10:10 am

No more private tigers

 blather, cats, Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Dec 082022
 

I’m conflicted:

Big cat bill unanimously approved by Senate, heads to Biden’s desk

The legislation prohibits any “import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce” and the breeding or possessing of such wildlife. Possession of big cats and cross-breeds would be limited to wildlife sanctuaries and state universities, as well as certified zoos. … Current owners of big cats will be able to keep their animals but are prohibited from breeding, selling or acquiring any of the prohibited wildlife species. They are also banned from allowing their animals to engage in contact with the public and must register the cat with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service within 180 days of the bill’s enactment.

Hmmm.

Big cats are often owned by people wholly unable to care for them correctly. But on the other hand, there are more tigers in private hands than in the wild. On the gripping hand, legislating “you can’t own that” is never a good thing. The passage of this law will doubtless be used by some to say “Well, we can ban the ownership of assault rifles. We can ban the ownership of standard capacity magazines. Internal combustion engines. Bitcoin. VPNs. Books we don’t like.” Etc.

It’s unclear to me what exactly will happen with all the privately owned big cats, especially the ones used in crappy “attractions” for some sort of income. I suspect at least some will be simply driven into the sticks and let go. Which won’t be good for anybody.

 

Perhaps the thing to do would be to start off by walling off Central Park in New York and turning it into a free-range sanctuary for one particular species of big cats… tigers or lions or some such. Won’t be able to sustain a lot of them, but it’ll be a start. All of those gigantic and horribly expensive sportsball stadia built at taxpayer expense might also serve.

 Posted by at 6:25 pm
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