Statistics

 news  No Responses »
Mar 212020
 

For the Kung Flu:

http://covid19stats.global/

Gives data by country, but state, by Aussie state, Canadian province, Chinese province.

Column 2 is number of confirmed cases. Followed by deaths, recoveries and mortality rate. Behold the two states that, as of 21 March, have the most confirmed cases, New York and Washington:

New York 11,710 60 0 0.5% 0.0% 10,978 93.7% 57 95.0% 0 n/a
Washington 1,793 94 1 5.2% 0.1% 1,150 64.1% 54 57.4% 0 0.0%

Something that will take some explaining: NY has a mortality rate of half a percent. Washington’s is more than ten times higher. Bwuh?

China’s mortality rate is *reportedly* 4%, Italy’s is 9%, the US sits at 1.2%. Germany 0.4%, UK, 4.6%, Iran 7.5%.

UPDATE: a chart from Wiki. Sure does look exponential to me… and, sadly, this is to be expected at this stage. Even if the entire US went into full lockdown, it would take a while for those already infected to show symptoms.

 

 Posted by at 11:30 pm

F-16 goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT

 AARRRGH, aircraft, dumbassery, Gah., news, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 

Too bad it wasn’t shooting down the enemy, but instead shooting up its comrades:

Mechanic ‘Accidentally’ Fires Vulcan Cannon & Obliterates F-16 Sitting on the Runway

 

Whoopsie.

 Posted by at 9:47 pm

Tax day moved from April 15 to July 15

 news, politics  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 

More time to procrastinate!

This only seems to apply for federal taxes, not state. So… it really doesn’t help a whole lot …

 Posted by at 8:58 am

The most important debate of our time

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 

What do we call the pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China? “Coronavirus” seems to be the accepted standard, even though that’s a whole family of viruses, not just the specific one that has locked down the planet. COVID-19 is specific but kinda blah. I’ve been calling it the Wu Flu for brevity and accuracy. The White House calls it the China Virus. But there’s an even better name:

Kung Flu. I like it.

Still: since when is naming a disease after the place it came from/was detected/was identified at “racist?”

West Nile

Ebola Zaire

Ebola Reston

Marburg (Germany)

Guinea Worm

MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome)

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Spanish Flu (even though it seems to have originated in Kansas)

Lyme Disease (Old Lyme, Connecticut)

Zika (Zika Forest, Uganda)

Japanese encephalitis

Ross River (Queensland, Oz) Fever

Norovirus (Norwalk, Ohio)

Lassa (Nigeria) Fever

German Measles

Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (Russia)

Hantavirus (Hantan, South Korea)

La Crosse (Wisconsin) Encephalitis

Hong Kong Flu

 

Yes, it’s a nightmare. As previously mentioned, I’ve got a reasonable expectation that I myself will be dead inside of a month or two, due to craptacular lungs which are probably primed to simply dissolve if I get it. And along with myself, it’s not impossible that millions of other Americans could die of this thing in a similar timeframe, especially if people keep acting stupidly. That said: if you’re looking at an existential crisis, what better way to confront it than with humor?

More memes after the break.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 8:35 am

Lockheed Flying Crane

 aircraft, art, projects  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 

The design below dates from late 1964  or so. it could be used to fly 100 passengers or 20 tons of cargo. Length was to be 100 feet with a 120-foot rotor diameter and a 90,000 pound weight. it certainly looks a *lot* like the S-64 Skycrane.

 Posted by at 6:02 am

A pandemic brings out the cringe

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., humor, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 

So a bunch of celebs thought that it’d be neato to sing one of the last century’s most insipid-yet-pretentious songs, because what the world needs now is the loving support of people who get paid millions of dollars for a few weeks of playing pretend:

It is indeed cringe inducing. A “challenge” I’ve seen in the very recent past is “how long can you play this before you turn it off;” I got about 15 seconds in. There is, however, a succinct response to this from the always reliable Gilbert Gottfried:

 

 

Ah, autotune. Sometimes it *can* be used for good (if by “good” you mean “turn them into the voices of demons”):

 Posted by at 12:09 am

United Technologies Dyna Soar booster concept

 history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 192020
 

United Tech was mostly interested in solid propellant boosters for the Dyna Soar program… specifically, boosters to strap to the side of the Titan II. Initially conical in shape, those early concept boosters would turn into the UA-1205 boosters fitted to the Titan IIIC booster. But UTC also studied liquid propellant boosters for the Dyna Soar, including the Saturn derived design shown below which featured a Saturn S-II stage for the first stage, an S-IV (*not* an S-IVb) for the second stage and an S-V stage (a modified Centaur) for the third. The design of the Dyan Soar is purely notional; United Tech seemingly did no design work on that and simply sketched in a spaceplane roughly along the lines of the design Boeing had.

 Posted by at 5:55 am

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Space Command Post

 history, nukes, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 182020
 

In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in a space station with a singular purpose… to serve as a command post in the event of a nuclear war. Its position would let it confirm Soviet ICBM launches and direct space based weapons in their response. Presumably this means that there would need to be several such orbital command posts. The brief description suggests that the command post would be in “high orbit,” perhaps geosynchronous; to have global coverage, at least two and preferably three or more such posts would be needed. The lower the orbit, the more would be needed to see the whole planet.

 

 Posted by at 5:10 pm
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