I was asked about a poorly-documented idea for an aircraft to be carried in and launched from a Polaris missile tube in a submarine. The aircraft was dubbed “Dipper,” and from the extremely lean description I have seems to have been dreamed up by drunks. But while I have no further data, it *seems* irritatingly familiar. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
… with feline telekinesis:
Ummm…
Errr… no.
One of the “arguments” used here is that the works of Virgil and Horace are known from manuscripts written more than four centuries after their deaths. Thing is, though: the fact that the manuscripts exist indicates that they had authors. Occams Razor would have it that if the author claims to be named “Virgil,” then, great, attribute the work to Virgil.
Additionally: if you claim that you had oatmeal for breakfast… sure. I’ll believe you. If you tell me that you miracled oatmeal out of thin air and that the bowl was made out of Adamantium and the spoon from Vibranium and that the oatmeal tasted so good that it gave everyone in a five meter radius eternal youth… I’m gonna have to Press X To Doubt. The nature of your claim weighs on the believability of your claim. This Virgil talking about the goings-on of politics? Believable. Someone discussing miracles? Gonna need some evidence.
The writer if this dubious screed also claims that:
Additionally, the apostles’ willingness to die for their claims has tremendous evidential value, also confirming the truth of the resurrection. No one will die for something he invented or believes to be false.
Uh-huh. A belief in something that isn’t so is not proof that the thing is in fact so. Joseph Smith, after all, the inventor of Mormonism, died for his beliefs, as did a bunch of other first-generation Mormons… and I’d bet a nickel that the author here does not believe that Mormonisms claims about Jesus wandering around North America are factually accurate. “Heaven’s Gate.” “Nazism.” “People’s Temple.” “Solar Temple.” History is jam-packed with founders of nonsensical movements who were willing to die for their objectively wrong beliefs. And in fact a vast number of Muslims and Hindus are more than happy to die for their beliefs: does the author think that this lends weight to the factual accuracy of their beliefs?
The author claims that there are many “manuscripts [that] preserve the deeds and teaching of Jesus in the New Testament (about 25,000 total).” Maybe… but only the Bible can be considered even close to a primary source document. I often see Flavius Josephus used to back up the historicity of Jesus… but Josephus lived around 37 AD to 100 AD. He wrote about encountering Christians around 93 AD, and described their beliefs. That *they* believed that Jesus had been resurrected is hardly surprising. But there is little evidence that Josephus believed it, and an important bit of evidence that he didn’t: he was Jewish before he met the Christians, and he was Jewish afterwards. A Jew who believes in the New Testament is generally considered a “Christian.”
In the end, the terribly bad reasoning on display in the article linked above does not surprise me: the author is a “senior fellow at Discovery Institute.” The Discovery Institute spends a great deal of time and effort pushing the “Intelligent Design” myth. Anyone who uses the “watchmaker” analogy for how evolution works should never, *ever* be taken seriously.
Maybe Jesus existed, I dunno. Maybe he was nailed to a cross, died and came back. Dunno. Maybe when he died a great big earthquake wiped out a good chunk of Jerusalem, and that somehow got left out of the records. Dunno. Maybe when he died the graves in the area opened up and a whole bunch of zombies clambered out and started spooking the locals, and that rather startling detail somehow got left out of not only all the Roman records but also three out of four of the gospels. Dunno. Maybe it’s all true. But using fraudulent logic and outright lies is not a great way to convince some people.
So… Happy Easter I guess.
D’oh. My “gotta save money” goal just took some substantial hits… I bought some vintage *original* art, the *actual* paintings, on ebay.
Send help.
First: A 1980’s idea for a small unmanned hovercraft to help an F-15 lift off from a damaged runway:
Second: a 1970’s Bell concept for a C-130 with four turbojet engines as a demonstrator for the AMST program:
My credit card just went “WTF are you *doing?*”
Feel free to hit that “tip jar” or subscribe in order to do you part in enabling this sort of financially dubious aerospace history collection and preservation. What I think would be best is to scan the bejeebers out of these then donate them to a good archive or museum.
There’s another much more interesting piece I’m hoping to hear something good on regarding an offer I made.
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
So, who knew… apparently you can make a living doing nothing but taking commercial flights and posting videos about them on YouTube. Sometimes this means taking the most expensive and luxurious flights from one continent to another; sometimes it means taking a puddlejumper from one tiny airport to an even smaller one. And sometimes it means trying to take a Greyhound bus from LA to NYC. In February. If you aren’t from the US, maybe “road trip across the USA in February” sounds reasonable. If you’re hopelessly optimistic, perhaps “road trip on a bus” makes you think “what could go wrong?” So this British feller decides to give it a shot. It does not go to plan… but it still goes *way* better than it could’ve.
As the blog post says, though, the comments make it worthwhile:
Two weird things. First this headline…
… is exactly the same text as the complete article:
The Russian military says the damaged Moskva missile cruiser sank while being towed to a port.
So… there ya go, I suppose.
Second: more than a day later and not a single verified image of the thing. How can *nobody* have taken photos pf video of it? Surely there were at least a few commercial satellites passing roughly int he area that took a look. No doubt more than a few recon planes were in the area. The Russians must have had ships in the area, taking pictures to prove it was still on the surface; and doubtless Ukrainians with drones or navalized farm tractors video’ed it to prove that it wasn’t doing so great. But so far as I’ve seen… squadoo. A number or mis-attributed photos and videos of other ships, one craptacular “night vision” video showing… *something.*
Whoopsie:
The Moskva was (*was*) the most important Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea, until it’s ammunition caught fire. Stories differ about *why* it caught fire… the Ukrainians claim to have struck the ship with missiles, the Russians claim… well, not much.
A day or so ago, the Moskva was going to be a giant threat to the Ukrainians. Now it’s apparently a burning hulk.
A week ago:
Yeah, maybe operating in a predictable pattern isn’t the best idea, especially when you’re in range of people you have pissed off.
So someone shot up a subway in Brooklyn. Amazingly, nobody was killed, but a lot of people were injured. The shooter seems to have done this for political and/or racial reasons. This is *exactly* the sort of thing that the news media should be all over. Except… this story doesn’t slot into The Narrative. Expect it to quietly evaporate from the headlines. Don’t expect to see marches, protests, riots, burning, looting, murders over this story.
He’s a black nationalist and a fan of the Nation of Islam. He disliked Trump and white people.
Breaking: NYPD named Frank James as a person of interest in the #Brooklyn mass shooting. I looked into his social media. Like the Waukesha suspect & the Louisville BLM activist who allegedly tried to assassinate a mayoral candidate, he appeared to be a fan of black nationalism. pic.twitter.com/aUQZGakJfW
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) April 12, 2022
There are certain things you don’t do. These folks seem to like to do them all.
They stand RIGHT FREAKIN’ NEXT to a sizable rocket engine as its being tested. With no protective walls, armor or even helmets, gloves or safety glasses. What’s better; the propellants are freakin’ toxic (furfuryl alcohol and nitric acid). They have to flee the cloud of nitric oxides.
The company website has a “Team” page with names and photos of those involved, but no links to their qualifications. This comes across more as a technically aggressive art project than an engineering one. I can appreciate the desire to charge ahead, say damn the safety weenies… but go-fever can get ya killed in some pretty horrifying-yet-entertaining-for-everyone-else ways.
It was small, only a foot and a half in diameter or so. But it impacted the atmosphere over Papua new Guinea moving at about 130,000 miles per hour. Sporty! At that speed, one kilogram of rock – or ice, or iron, or whatever – has about 1,688,688,236 Joules of kinetic energy. one kilogram of TNT has 4,184,000 Joules of chemical explosive energy, so that rock is 403 times more powerful than a conventional bomb by mass.
A one kiloton explosion would be produced by 2,481 kilograms of impactor, or about a car and a half.