Jan 162020
 

“Underwater” is a relatively small-budget sci-fi/horror movie currently making very little money at the box office. Which is a little sad, because it’s actually *reasonably* good. It’s not a really innovative story… there’s a drilling rig on the bottom of the ocean (in this case in the Mariana Trench, seven miles down), things start going wrong, sea monsters cause a ruckus, plucky survivors need to make their way to escape capsules, etc. It has been summarized as “Alien under the ocean,” and that’s kinda fair.

The main character is played by Kristin Stewart, who turns in a performance typical of her usual charisma-free persona. Also starring is T.J. Miller as comic relief, a casting choice I found remarkable since he has been “cancelled” by Hollywood for Me Too violations and a subsequent Smollett-level bit of bomb threat nuttiness. But it turns out that this movie has had a rather lengthy production, and it was shot before his career imploded.

It’s a serviceable monster movie, like a bajillion before it.  That said, there’s one thing that the director threw in that wasn’t in the script that makes this movie a bigger deal for folks like me than it otherwise woulda been. It’s rather a big spoiler, so it’s after the break and in white text (if’n ya gotta read the spoiler, just highlight the blank area). But even sans spoiler, it was a good time at the theater and I recommend it if you like this sort of thing.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 6:15 pm
Jan 162020
 

… the dumbest movie review you’ll read all day.

“1917” has one major flaw – it’s irresponsibly nationalistic

The film has amazing acting and technical achievements, but its simplistic storytelling falls in line with Trumpism

I watched “1917” today. It was a fine war movie… perhaps even a great one. Technically it is an amazing achievement… the whole two hour run is made to look like one (well, two) continuous shot. Every frame is filled with beauty and/or horror. The acting and visuals are impeccable. The plot is simple and straightforward and, in its way, tells a small story: two soldiers have to go from A to B to deliver a message.

But that’s not enough for the scold who wrote the “review” for Salon linked above, who demands that every movie tell not just a story, but an ideological one. And, of course, that better ideology had damn well better be the *right* ideology. Woe betide the film that skimps on cramming Present Day into stories set a century ago.

I’m sure there are people who will defend “1917” by saying that it’s the story of individual soldiers in a greater conflict, not a political manifesto. There are three problems with that argument. First, as mentioned earlier, it is immoral to tell a story about a war without analyzing the reasons behind that war.

Cripes, it’s like saying that every Batman movie *has* to include a scene of Thomas and Martha Wayne getting plugged by a low-rent Single Source Socialist. Every movie about spaceflight has to include a discussion of whether Tsiolkovsky, Goddard or Oberth is the true founder of modern rocketry. Every Terminator movie has to have a discussion about the politics of yellowcake uranium trafficking.

So, do yourself a favor *and* cheese off some single-minded SJW fanatics and go see “1917.” It’s a good movie well told… and, to be honest, it could *easily* be re-written to make the nationalities whatever you like.

 Posted by at 2:24 am
Jan 152020
 

… it’s that they’re working to bring one about. Behold some recent news stories:

Bernie 2020 Field Organizer States “F***ing Cities Will Burn” if Trump Wins Re-Election; Calls for Violence, Mass Murder of Opposition, and “Reign of Terror”

Sure, this isn’t Bernie himself calling for violence and extolling the virtues of gulags; it’s just a low-level campaign worker. But then… an EVEN LOWER-LEVEL Bernie supporter took it upon himself to try to kill as many elected Republicans as he could, so it’s hardly unlikely that even more people who support Bernie’s democidal policies will decide that active measures are just what’s needed.


A modest proposal to save American democracy

Where the far-left online rag Vox extolls the virtues of a plan that would chop up Washington D.C. into more than a hundred little divisions… each of which would be admitted to the Union as a State, each with one representative and two Senators. By chopping up D.C. into 150 new states – some little bigger than a housing development – then D.C. *alone* could determine all future American policies. The rest of the states, even if they banded together and voted as a unified bloc, would not have enough votes to over-ride what the Democrats of D.C. want to do in the Senate.


W.Va. Senate votes to invite Frederick Co., Va., to become part of Mountain State

Why is West Virginia inviting counties from Virginia to join West Virginia? Because those Virginia counties are “Second Amendment Sanctuary” counties, a response to the new Democrat majority’s scheme to strip Virginians of the Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms.

 

So… we’ve got supporters of one of the main Democratic candidates openingly advocating for democide. We’ve got professional left-wing agitprop organizations calling for an obscene “packing” of the House and Senate. We’ve got Democrats in Virginia passing laws so egregiously anti-American that neighboring states are willing to takes in whole counties.

Gah.

Look, I’ve said it before: anyone who thinks that a new civil war would be *any* kind of a good thing is either an idiot or a maniac. yes, the sane civilians in the US are the ones who largely have the firearms… but it’s not just civilians who are armed. A very large number of government employees are armed to the teeth and many of them, like Representative Swalwell, would be more than happy to pull the trigger on their fellow citizens. A new civil war would not be some glorious adventure; it would be a blood-soaked descent into the end of civilization, quite possibly on a planetary scale. So anyone who is actually advocating policies that drive people towards war like this should be viewed with *extreme* distrust.

 

 Posted by at 10:43 am
Jan 142020
 

Junior anti-human rights fascist David Hogg is continung to try to stay relevant by updating his “look,” as if anyone but the most shallow and venal celebritards actually give a damn about such things. So he posts a photo to Twitter, and the reactions… well, they’re not especially kind.

And so:

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:09 pm
Jan 132020
 

Recently added to the NASA Tech Report Server is NASA/TM-2019-220142, A Meteoroid Handbook for Aerospace Engineers and Managers. It covers a range of interesting topics such as effects on spacecraft, airbursts, dust in the air, etc.

At the beginning of the Space Age, spacecraft designers and mission planners were very concerned about meteoroids. They envisioned vehicles being ripped to pieces by streams of fast-moving space rocks, a notion promoted by the science fiction novels and movies of the time. The reality is, of course, different—the meteoroid streams that produce meteor showers are not dense by laypeople’s standards, having spatial densities of just a handful of particles per cubic kilometer, even during meteor outbursts. The ever-present, diffuse, sporadic background, which produces observed meteor rates of only 5 to 8 meteors per hour, makes up 90% of the meteoroid risk to spacecraft that spend at least a year in low Earth orbit (LEO), whereas the visually spectacular but short-lived meteor showers make up the other 10%. Still, meteoroids do pose a significant risk to spacecraft. At Earth, they can travel 12 to 72 km/s. These high speeds cause even small meteoroids to carry enormous kinetic energy, making them capable of doing serious damage to spacecraft. For example, a 1-mm-diameter meteoroid moving at 25 km/s can inflict the same damage as a bullet fired from a 0.357 Magnum pistol. An exterior wire can be severed by a 0.1-mm (100 mm) particle, a spacesuit can be penetrated by a 0.5-mm meteoroid, and an unshielded pressure wall (like the cabin of the Space Shuttle) can be perforated by centimeter-sized particles. Along with mechanical damage, meteoroids can also cause other types of spacecraft anomalies. Meteoroids can transfer their momentum to the spacecraft, which can destroy or damage equipment such as shunt resistors and charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors with a clear view of space. Meteoroid impacts can also generate plasma. The impact vaporizes material, producing a crater and an expanding plasma, which can in turn provide a conductive path for any charge accumulated on the spacecraft. This effect is thought to be responsible for the demise of a satellite in one case: the OLYMPUS communications satellite was sent tumbling out of control during the 1993 Perseid outburst, and a Perseid meteoroid strike has been posited as a possible cause (McDonnell et al. 1993; Caswell et al. 1995). Other researchers have suggested that very fast meteoroids could produce a small electromagnetic pulse capable of disrupting spacecraft function (Close et al. 2010).

The abstract and other data is HERE, or directly downloaded as a PDF HERE.

 

 

 Posted by at 7:03 pm
Jan 122020
 

Elizabeth Warren, Democratic party policy spokesmodel, has some interesting ideas on how destroying the American economy while letting China and India and Russia and Africa spew out all the CO2 they want can save the world:

Warren Says She’s Willing To Ban Construction of New Homes in America

“That means we’ve got to be willing to do things, for example, like regulation. By 2028, no new buildings, no new houses, without a zero carbon footprint.”

Go ahead. I double-dog dare you to come up with a construction method that somehow produces as much energy as it consumes. And then tell me what you can make a house out of that is “carbon neutral.”

 Posted by at 9:46 pm
Jan 112020
 

“Star Wars: Resistance” is an animated Star Wars series currently in its second – and last – season on Disney. I’ve found it to be at best “meh.” A lot of that is due to the target audience… it is clearly meant to be a kids show, with a lot of pratfalls, slapstick humor, simplistic characters and storytelling, etc. And a lot of the problem is due to the timeframe: it’s set at the time of “The Force Awakens,” which automatically kinda makes it suck. The most grating aspect of the show is the main character, one Kazuta Xiono, who is portrayed as someone who in a better series would be the comic relief. He’s a clumsy dumbass who is difficult to take at all seriously.

But then…

Which does kinda shift my opinion of the character. In a franchise that has repeatedly depended on space wizards and my least favorite trope of all time, “Chosen Ones,” Kaz is a guy with no force-powers whatsoever who succeeds by the fact that he has learned skills through hard work and training. Compared to MaRey Sue, who is the Bestest Jedi EVAR without needing a moments effort to train or learn, Kaz is freakin’ Shakespearean in his quality.

 Posted by at 11:39 am
Jan 112020
 

Who coulda guessed?

Iran plane crash: Ukrainian jet was ‘unintentionally’ shot down

Iran says its military “unintentionally” shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board, Iran’s state TV reports.

The statement said it had done so due to “human error” after the plane flew close to a sensitive site belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

This is zero surprise whatsoever. However, where things can get arguable is the definition of “unintentional.” I have no doubt that nobody involved explicitly wanted to shoot down a Ukranian jetliner… but I’d bet that a lot of those involved wanted to shot down *something.* The Revolutionary Guard is filled with people like Qasem Soleimani, crazed homicidal maniacs who are less distressed by killing innocent civilians than they are in failing to have killed the *right* innocent civilians.

 Posted by at 12:25 am