Arecibo has collapsed

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., history, news, photography, politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 012020
 

Ain’t no repairing it. The 900-ton instrument platform formerly suspended near the dish’s focus by cables, has fallen.

Arecibo telescope collapses, ending 57-year run

This was an inevitable result of the National Science Foundations divestment from Arecibo funding, indicating a desire to decommission the place as far back as 2015. it is not now repairable; it is only replaceable. And it really should be: the Chinese FAST scope is bigger, but not only does it not have Arecibos radar capability (thus is can;t search for things like incoming asteroids), it has also been horribly mismanaged in the way that only greedy communists can do 9they built a cell-tower equipped tourist city right next to the damn thing).

So the question would be *where* to build a replacement. Might make sense to build on the footprint of the old, right there at Arecibo. But politically it would be a good idea to take this opportunity to help shove Puerto Rico out into the world on its own as an independent nation… it has been an unincorporated US territory quite long enough. No, it is time to do what should have been done in the seventies: build radio telescopes on the moon. SpaceX’s Starship program will, if it works, provide cost effective lift capability of the kind needed for such a venture.

 

 

 Posted by at 9:39 am

Storytime: OK, Netflix, gimme my money

 art, blather, science fiction  No Responses »
Nov 222020
 

While driving down the road I had an idea for a comic book. With my luck it’s probably been done, maybe even a few times. But if so… shrug. Not like comic book ideas are all that unique anymore. Anyway, here’s my idea:

The main character(s) is just a guy. An accountant, or an analyst, something like that… boring guy, boring office job, 9 to 5. No superpowers. Not super intelligent or rich. But reasonably intelligent, average basically uninteresting guy who who works in midtown Metropolis. After work he goes to the nearest bar and has a beer or two with a group of his like-mindedly dull co-workers.

So, the world they inhabit is standard dullsville. The closest thing to truly abnormal they’ve got in the news are the stories of that caped weirdo vigilante down in Gotham City, the one with the rogues gallery of equally bizarre villains. But that’s got nothing to do with our guys, except to spice up their conversations from time to time. But by the end of the first issue, something new has appeared in Metropolis: some weird guy in red and blue tights who seems to be able to fly.

In the second issue, people are learning about this “Superman.” Perhaps our main characters see him flash by from time to time. As the months go by they begin to understand his powers: the standard non-insane set of abilities, like great strength, bullet resistance, flight, laser vision, great hearing. But he’s not super smart, not telepathic, not omniscient. So as time goes by our main characters watch as the crime in Metropolis changes. Bank robbers, muggers, back-alley rapists start finding themselves captured. Street level crime goes in two directions: in some ways it fades as criminals decide the risk isn’t worth it; in some ways it goes kinda nuts as muggers decide that the only way to ply their trade is to go about it *fast.* Stab the victim in the back, kill them before they can utter a sound. Higher level criminals start finding their jobs are becoming very risky. And people start to see the rise of “super criminals,” people that commit risky robberies and try, to various degrees of success, to actually counter Superman using crazy technologies and strategems involving threats about hostages and the like. As this goes on our mains learn more about Supermans psychological limits… won’t kill, won’t brutalize or torture, won’t even threaten the bad guys with anything but capture. But on the whole, criminals, including the organized crime families, start to find life becoming very challenging.

So, our main characters being regular people, they shoot the breeze. The local news breathlessly covers the details of every failed criminal caper. And our guys start wargaming the issue: if *you* were a criminal, how would you go about your job with Superman breathing down your neck? Our guys come up with a hundred different plans, and then start working them through. This one fails because of X, that one because of Y. But *this* one… it might work. As time goes on, they keep daydreaming and discussing; the plans get revised and perfected. It’s all in good fun. But they begin to find that their planning of criminal ventures is more exciting, more fulfilling than their actual jobs. How long before they actually try to enact the plan? One day, just for giggles… they do. And they get away with it. It’s nothing spectacular, but they succeed. And Superman never got involved. Their schemes do not involve trying to fight Superman, but to stay below his radar. And with one success, they decide to keep it up. And as time goes by and more super heroes and super villains show up, our accountants keep their enterprise going. While Superman is duking it out with robots made by Lexcorp, our guys are using their knowledge of the systems, coupled with knowledge of history, to successfully rob banks, plunder warehouses, pilfer crime lord mansions. After a few successes they try to focus on robbing from the bad guys of the world, but it’s defined a bit loosely. They use knowledge of successful resistance efforts: the cell system allows them to be several steps removed from the actual crime. They use decoys: they hire and train street thugs to go rob two banks on the same day. Superman can only be in one place at a time, so the first bank robbery is an expendable diversion. The second robbery is *also* a diversion. While Superman is dealing with the robberies and the cops are cleaning up the mess, our heroes are yoinking diamonds out of a storage facility on the far side of town or knocking over a mob boss while making it look like his main rival did it.

For years this goes on, our main characters raking in millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, funneling it into untraceable accounts and shell corporations. They live well, but not so well that even the IRS notices. Instead of living like Kingpin, they live a decent life happy in the knowledge that the money they’ve stolen has funded that private Mars colony, or built a dozen hospitals, or endowed five new major universities, or overthrown a half dozen corrupt Marxist dictatorships. They end up going to work for corporation that they just happen to own and run, though nobody can prove it.. or even suspects it.

The main characters start out as utterly boring complete nobodies. And years later they are, to all appearances, still that. But they’ve led a massive criminal enterprise directly under Supermans nose. They are technically bad guys. So given “Cuties” this should be the sort of thing Netflix should stand ready to throw a few dozen million dollars at to get made. Hell, SyFy: y’all actually wasted *how* *much* making “Vagrant Queen,” a TV series based on a comic book that sold *hundreds* of issues? I take cash, checks, PayPal.

©, baby!

 

 Posted by at 7:56 pm

BREATHE Act

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, nukes, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 222020
 

Well, this sounds just spectacular:

BLM Co-Founder Calls on Biden to Back a Crazy Progressive ‘Civil Rights’ Bill

The text of the BREATHE Act is available HERE. It calls for some interesting things, including but not limited to:

  • Abolishing the Drug Enforcement Administration
  • Abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement
  • Abolishing funding for drug interdiction efforts
  • Slash the budget of the DoD by 50%
  • Slash the budget of the Department of Energy by 50%
  • Eliminate the Space Force
  • Eliminate all modern fighter jet programs
  • Unilateral nuclear disarmament
  • Withdraw US military forces and assistance from everywhere in the world
  • Prohibit Federal police forces from using “less than lethal” systems, “military grade” weapons, drones or BODY CAMERAS

 

That last one there is interesting. At they same they want to stop Federal police from using “military grade weapons” (which in modern progressive parlance means any semi-automatic weapons) as well as tasers and pepper spray. This will make them *incredibly* vulnerable to criminals armed with little more than ball bats, never mind the automatic weapons that will be available to criminals in abundance. And they want to eliminate body cams, which will show how the federal cops are being set upon by the now-empowered criminals who do not have to worry about actually facing real resistance.

 

The BREATHE Act also repeals:

  • Laws against the material support of terrorism
  • Laws against conspiracy and gang offenses
  • Laws against prostitution

The Act would raise the minimum age to be tried as an adult to *24*

It would end both the death penalty *and* life sentences

End deportation of illegal aliens who also commit violent crimes

Basically end all bars to immigration

And here’s the really good part: within 5 years of the Act, prison population would be reduced 50%, and by 10 years, *all* prisons would be emptied.

There are 126 pages of this gibberish and I could not be bothered to read all of it. So go ahead and imagine how much of it  will be read by those genetic defectives in Congress who will vote for it. Will this pass into law? Almost certainly not. Even as addled as he is, Biden is probably goign to realize that this Act, were it to become law, would result in the prompt destruction of the United States as a going concern. Very few republicans would be stupid enough to vote for it, and a bunch of Democrats would likely realize how nonsensically destructive this BS is. Still: this is the sort of thing that some “mainstream” Democrats such as Pressley and Tlaib are pushing for.

 Posted by at 12:45 pm

Vinyl issue. WT actual F?

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., Hmm..., models, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 202020
 

UPDATE: “Good” news: a link in the comments section explains what happened here. Bleah.

I recent bought a model kit of a tank (a 1/35 Dragon T28). it has been *decades* since I’ve built a tank model, and right now with the Book projects building models is not a high priority, but what the heck. So I popped open the box, started looking at the parts and realized there was a problem.

The tracks are supposed to be flexible bands of molded vinyl. Fairly standard for a model kit… the two general approaches are either bands of flexible vinyl, or individual tracks and links. The tracks and links approach can produce the best looking model, but it can be a time and brain consuming nightmare to link hundreds of parts.

But there was a problem with the tracks. Instead of being flexible vinyl… they’re more like brittle cast resin. They actually shatter and crumble in the packaging:

As best as I can determine, this is the legit actual part. Based on YouTube videos of other people doing reviews and assemblies, the color is spot on, the vacuum-packed plastic sealed bag is right. The molding is crisp and clear, far better than would be expected if I somehow got someone’s resin recast of the vinyl tracks. But as you can see, the tracks are extraordinarily brittle… and they’re wet. They’re soaking in what seems to be some sort of oil.

So what am I looking at here? Is this some sort of weird manufacturing mistake… a set of resin tracks instead of vinyl? Or could this be vinyl that has degraded to a phenomenal degree? Is the oil the cause of the brittleness… or did the vinyl exude the oil and become brittle?

I’ve contacted the manufacturer and *might* get a set of replacement tracks in a couple  months. That would be nice. But I am really curious about what the problem really is here. Anybody know of a series of reasonably safe tests that could determine what the oil is (silicone? hydrocarbon?) and whether the tracks are vinyl or resin. The easiest test I can think of: burn some resin, burn some vinyl. Then burn the tracks, which does it smell like? Simple, straightforward likely toxic as all get-out, so, yeah, no.

 Posted by at 10:56 pm

Well, let’s see how this goes

 art, blather, Hmm..., news, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 182020
 

“Wonder Woman 1984” was supposed to be released *months* ago.  But that was before China sprang a pandemic on the world and utterly borked the whole concept of going into a confined space with a whole lot of strangers for a few hours. The few attempts that have been made to release a movie into theaters in the last few months have been pretty disastrous, and there’s no obvious end in sight. so what’s a major movie studio supposed to do when they’ve already thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at a movie that that might not be able to properly release to movie theaters for perhaps another year? Well, they could just sit on the movie for that extra year and hope beyond the grasp of reason that movie theaters will actually still be a profitable thing in the future, rather than just empty shells sold off to condo developers. Or they could do what Warner Brothers/DC is doing and just say “Ta hell wit it” and release it onto a streaming service. In this case, HBO Max on December 20. They’re also releasing it in theaters on the same day, but I have a suspicion that box office returns are gonna be pretty damn meager.

So, what’s everyone think? Moviegoing now a thing of the past? Streaming the way of the future?

Bonus round: pretty much everyone either hates or has forgotten “Justice League” That there movie was a mess. But Warner/DC are releasing the “Snyder cut” in 2021, again on HBO Max. My understanding is that this will be a fundamentally different movie:

  1. Warner only used something like 15% of what Snyder shot (director Zack Snyder had to leave the production due to a family tragedy; the movie was taken over by Joss Whedon who decided to do something completely different with it)
  2. Something like 75% of the Snyder cut is stuff he shot but which was cut from the original release. And around 5% of it will be all new stuff shot specifically for the Snyder cut.
  3. The Snyder cut is supposed to be four one-hour episodes, so a whole lot more of a movie.

So it *could* end up being a wholly different movie. Of course, some of that “stuff shot but not used” could simply be Take 14 of a shot, when Whedon used Take 15. Or it could be from a completely different script. I have doubts that this will truly fix Justice League. The Marvel movies worked as well as they did, for as long as they did, because they set up most of the important characters before dumping them into a single bloated ensemble flick. Warner brothers, though, said “forget that character development nonsense, let’s get straight to the lame CGI eyecandy.” So… we’ll see, I suppose.

The Snyder cut will likely come out after the inauguration, so it’s not a sure thing that it will actually come out at all. The ChiComs  might just march straight into Taiwan and pop off a few tactical nukes over CONUS to make sure we sit down and shut up.

 

 Posted by at 7:24 pm

Burtons Skyscraper

 art, blather, Crazy, history, Hmm..., projects, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 122020
 

An architect name of Charles Burton proposed a 1,000 foot tall skyscraper. Nothing newsworthy there, except that the proposal was made in 1851. The idea was to take the iron and glass from the Crystal Palace Exhibition and rebuild it all into what would have been the worlds first skyscraper.

It’s certainly cool and all, but I have serious doubts that Victorian materials and construction technologies could have built a survivable skyscraper a thousand feet tall. It just seems like it would have been an accident waiting to happen. Winds would have caused it to sway; wrought iron already under incredible load doesn’t seem like a good choice here. And the exterior cladding of 1850’s glass seems like it would have come shattering down onto bystanders. And come 1940, the Luftwaffe would have had a hell of a fun time trying to bring it down.

Like the video says, the construction of this thing would have had a major impact on the future of very tall buildings. Had it worked, skyscrapers would have been much more popular far sooner; better structural steels likely would have been invented and commercialized sooner as a result. The world today might be populated with structures that make the Burj Kalifa look like a townhouse. But had it collapsed – perhaps even during construction – it probably would have set back the idea of skyscrapers, so that today cities would have spread out more sideways than upwards. Perhaps vast structures ten stories tall and a mile long would fill the cities instead of fifty and hundred-story towers crammed next to each other.

A single architectural decision could ahve changed the face of the modern world.

 Posted by at 7:01 pm

Depression or hilarity: 🤡🌎

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., humor, news, politics, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 092020
 

So, we appear to be on the edge of some potentially very dark times. The probable next administration has massively destructive plans and likely the will to carry them out. The only thing standing against them being able to launch a war of aggression on tens of millions of law abiding Americans is the control of the Senate which will be decided in early January in a pair of run-off elections which are sure to be spectacular examples of election fraud on an unprecedented scale. If those go badly, expect to see the Supreme Court get packed and the basic concepts of constitutional limited government go out the window as, in the words of Chuck Schumer, the worst people in the country “take Georgia and then we change America.”

This is the sort of thing that can make a rational feller a tad depressed. Perhaps not to the point of murdering effigies of political opponents in the streets; that sort of thing is for the party of crazy people. But there is another approach to dealing with the craziness… not depression, not  lashing out in violence, but recognizing clown world for what it is, and joining in on the laughter. This is the approach that seems right to me. In that regard, I am kinda the opposite of the guy who put the below video together. He has assembled a *lot* of clips showing how modern society is promoting flat-out insanity, making clown world literally real; his message seems to be that we shouldn’t accept it, that we should fight it. There is validity there. But how do you fight people who are quite possibly truly out of their minds, being backed up and promoted by people who are *not* crazy, but simply malevolent? I don’t know. But I *do* know that it would fill me with no end of glee if President BidenHarris’ inauguration was populated by a very large group of people who, once heshe started speaking, whipped out clown horns. If their words were drowned out by a sea of laughter wherever they and their idiot policies went.

If there’s anything that authoritarians dislike, it’s being laughed at. If nothing else, it lets them know that they have not beaten you down, that you retain mastery of yourself. So my suggestion over the next few years is laughter. Let “Ha Ha No” be your motto.

 Posted by at 2:34 pm

On other matters

 aircraft, art, blather, Book X, books, drawings, Hmm..., projects  No Responses »
Nov 052020
 

In the long long ago this blog focused far more on “unbuilt aerospace projects.” Last few years it has become far more about the culture war/war on western civilization/The Crazy Years.  This is not how I would have it… but then if it were up to me society wouldn’t be going crazy either, cities would not be getting trashed, Antifa and their violence and criminality promotion would be the stuff of alternate realities, the likely next President and the likely next *next* President would not be promising to toss me, my friends and family into federal prison. This sort of thing can kinda come to dominate a discussion.

All that said, aerospace is never far from my mind or my efforts. The thing is, though, my efforts have been devoted to a few books that I’ve got contracts to produce. This is a new sort of thing, and it is unsurprisingly a substantial time-sink. And since the publisher has not gone public with the books (they won’t until after the manuscripts are turned in next year), there’s not a lot I can say about them publicly.

*THAT* said, below is a render of a little CAD model I’ve recently made. The model is not the subject of the book; but it has been made for the purposes of making *one* diagram of a vehicle that incorporates this. One might argue that this is going a bit far for a small part of a diagram; this part of the diagram might be only an inch or so long. But while it is possible that these books might see a Second Edition, at this point I’m working under the assumption that I’m only doing this once, so I want to do it right.

So I still spend a whole lot of time with aerospace. It just doesn’t translate to blog postings right now.

 Posted by at 3:10 pm

Looking at the bright side

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 042020
 

Pennsylvania is still Trumps. But overnight Michigan and Wisconsin kinda magically flipped to Biden; as things currently stand, Biden looks like he’ll win. For some forty or fifty million otherwise law-abiding Americans who have been staring down the barrel of either tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in NFA taxes for the mere privilege of exercising their basic rights – or of spending a decade in Federal prison, a power-grab unheard of in American history –  the prospect of a Biden/Harris Presidency is of course a very bad thing. However: as things currently stand, it looks like the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, and conservatives currently have a substantial majority in the Supreme Court.

Bidens gun grabbery is of course wildly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court would have been certain to – eventually – hear the case and smack it down (quite possibly after a great deal of damage had been done), so the Biden/Harris plan has been to pack the court. But with the Senate in the hands of the Republicans, this is – at least for the next two years – probably off the table.

What’s left to be seen is what Biden/Harris will do to NASA and the USSF. The USSF seems to be moving along nicely, so one can at least hope that it will be allowed to continue, but it’s impossible to say. As for NASA… it is pretty much traditional for new administrations to tear up the old administrations plans. So don’t be surprised if Artemis gets redesigned, setting back yet more years, if SLS gets shoved back even further. SpaceX – if the incoming administrations plans to punish the successful is stymied by a Republican Senate – should arrive on the Moon long before NASA, and on Mars likely *decades* earlier. So… perhaps that might be for the best. If the USSF isn’t strangled in the crib, and if it is run sensibly, the USSF will likely become a major SpaceX customer.

Now a very likely real positive: the economy tends to do better when there is gridlock in Washington, such that the government can’t “fix” the economy via “intelligent design.” Instead, economic evolution through natural selection is allowed to play out, and things tend to run pretty well because the government is too busy fighting itself to “help” the economy.

But a potential serious negative: Biden/Harris will take over during a pandemic. Expect lockdowns and all kinds of efforts to change society on a permanent basis, including attempts at the Green New Deal and the imposition of actual factual Socialism, all based on the “in this time of crisis…” brand of fear-mongering policy-making.  The US will likely be dragged back into suicidal international efforts to crush the US economy by blaming us for all the carbon in the air, while the Chinese and the Indians get a pass. The Republican Senate will be watched *very* carefully to see if they have the fortitude to stand up to that nonsense.

I’m frankly curious to see if Biden/Harris pulls the US embassy out of Jerusalem.

What about the riots? One would expect them to die down, now that their guy is likely in. Those who burned and looted and drove up the homicide rates will get a pass. But the likes of the McCloskeys and Rittenhouse… expect them to be served up for the dastardly crime of defending themselves against the mob.

 

My main suggestion: watch those videos of SJW meltdowns… and learn from them. Don;t be like them. We survived Obama, we’ll likely survive Harris. But it will require vigilance and stoicism.

 Posted by at 9:17 am

And now come the shenanigans

 blather, politics  No Responses »
Nov 032020
 

As I type this, Trump looks like he will win the electoral college. One of the remaining question marks that could determine the actual outcome is Pennsylvania, where at this writing 65% of the total votes have been counted, with the bulk of the remainder  likely to be “mail in” ballots. As I type this, the tallies are 2623695 for Trump, 1948417 for Biden. If I’ve done my math right, that means the total votes counted so far are 4572022 and the theoretical total vote count at 100% will be about 7033880. So for Biden to win 50% of the state, he will need to win an additional 1568513 votes, or about 63.7% of the remainder. Given that the mail in votes seem to come largely from urban areas like Philadelphia, winning two out of three of the votes outright does not seem impossible, but it’ll sure seem suspicious.

UPDATE, 2:30 AM (because of course it is): Some updated numbers… PA has 74% reporting, with 2964853 for Trump, 2286865 for Biden. Something like 1845198 votes left to count, of which Biden would need to win 68.3% of. The *trend* has been a steady improvement for Trump. A sudden reversal of fortune at this point would raise eyebrows.

 Posted by at 11:35 pm
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