Tomy’s 1/350 die cast USS Enterprise looked pretty likely to fail… till they dropped the number needed again. Originally 5,000 units, then 2,500, now 2,000. With three days to go, they’re now at more than 94%.
With fewer units sold, these things should become that much more valuable in the future. Imagine the barter value for guzoline or with the bullet farmer! You might be able to trade one of these for an oxen with only moderate radiation sickness. I have doubts that Lord Humongous will have much interest in them, but I bet Master Blaster will.
It would be fantastic if the media and the culture would raise up the heroes in society with more enthusiasm than it tears them down and props up the villains. Eli Dicken and Shay Goldman should have a movie made of their actions at the Greenwood Park Mall. Hell, the mall could do worse than to erect a bronze statue in the food court. We don’t erect statues to heroes anymore; we tear them down and erect statues of dirtbags who died due to their dirtbaggery.
But Dicken isn’t the only young hero worthy of note. Take, for example, the story of Nick Bostic:
Bostic was out delivering pizzas for Dominos when he happened across a house on fire, ran in and saved five kids. Four were able to be hustled out – because Bostic notified the 18-year-old babysitter what was going on – and he ran himself back into the fire to save a 6-year-old girl, receiving injuries in the process.
“You did good dude, OK?” an officer tells Bostic.
Damn straight.
I fear that a few days of news coverage will be all that comes of this… well, that and the currently half million dollars being raised on his Gofundme.
I’m all for Dicken and Bostic – not to mention Rittenhouse – walking away with financial windfalls (curiously a Gofundme set up to cover the inevitable legal fees Dicken will accrue has only gathered 23 grand). Good for them. But for *society,* they should be made into role models. Make ’em mythological role model if need be. if it turns out that one of them is actually kind of a dirtbag… the movie can either gloss over that, or show how he has overcome that and become a better person. Would that be historically accurate? Well… dunno. But given how Hollywood doesn’t give a crap about historical accuracy anyway (witness the forthcoming “The Woman King” which looks like it’s going to glorify the objectively evil kingdom of Dahomey), why not do these things in a way that makes culture *better?*
The US used to make cultural icons of war heroes, cowboys, explorers. You know, people who actually did good stuff. A lot of the stories were overblown hagiographies, true enough… but it helped craft national myths that brought us together. In my lifetime, that sort of thing has pretty much all fallen away.
They’ve introduced a new design. Whether this one will come anywhere near getting built is anyone’s guess; the history of such things does not bode well.
Boom Supersonic's NEW Overture design. Here's the breakdown
– Four engine design – Quieter operations – Contoured fuselage – Gull wings – Carbon composite structure – Net zero carbon
Ballet has been dropped from auditions at leading dance schools as staff say it is rooted in “white European ideas”.
The Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD), which aims to be a “progressive institution”, has reviewed the “elitist” art form as part of a diversity drive that has seen the introduction of new policies relating to gender and race.
Say, that’s neat. The school has a problem with ballet because:
1) You have to take classes to get good at it (what art form *doesn’t* require buttloads of practice???)
2) It has problematic ideas of body forms (imagine someone morbidly obese as a ballerina. Outside of “Fantasia,” it ain’t happenin’)
3) It has distinct gender roles. Because I guess it makes all kinds of sense for a petite ballerina to pick up a… ummm… ballerdude, whatever they’re called, and spin ’em around overhead.
4) Perhaps most importantly, it’s “European.” I guess that’s a problem in FRIGGEN’ BRITAIN.
So what they’re after is a form of dance where you can’t tell who’s a guy and who’s a gal, where someone extremely out of shape can perform as well as an athlete, and where you can pick it up without any sort of professional training.
Neato. Every object in this image, apart from the over-exposed objects with the “lens flares” (which are nearby stars) are whole galaxies billions of light years away.
A piece of artwork attributed to the DoD (1984 or before) depicting a large structure being built in space. Since it’s DoD, it is most likely a surveillance or mapping radar system of some kind, or an electronic listening system. Since it doesn’t seem to have either large PV arrays or a nuclear reactor – at least not yet at this stage in construction – I’d lean towards it being a listening system. Of course, a great deal more stuff may have been added to it after this… assuming it’s an actual design and not pure art.
Before the RAH-66 Comanche, there was the LHX (Light Helicopter Experimental) program of the 1980’s. Initially the need was broadly defined, and companies such as Bell interpreted it to include the possibility of single-seat combat tiltrotors. The Bell Advanced Tiltrotor (BAT) was one such design. It was design for battlefield surveillance, ground attack/anti-tank… and for blowing Soviet Hinds out of the sky. Whether a tiltrotor could be made that could be safely handled by a single pilot while doing all that craziness is far from certain, especially with 80’s-tech, but the design was certainly appealing. Unlike attack helicopters and F-18’s, the BAT could escort the V-22 on its missions.
Clearly the overall configuration has a great deal of similarity to the XV-15 and the V-22.
