Heh.
.@Telegraph cartoon#LondonBridgeAttack #narwhaltusk #FireExtinguisherMan #EverydayHeroes pic.twitter.com/Mmqtb2gFLH
— Bob Moran (@bobscartoons) November 30, 2019
Dec 032019
Dec 032019
This is the best the Dems have.
That time when former VP @joebiden is standing right next to you at the Corn Stalk Cafe and you just don’t care. pic.twitter.com/YFr7J6eY87
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) December 1, 2019
If your Biden starts getting fussy, just put a little whisky on your finger and rub it on his gums. pic.twitter.com/3flaSVrfBp
— Dave Schilling (@dave_schilling) December 1, 2019
Dec 032019
By 1985, the Solar Power Satellite was essentially dead, killed off by the plumetting price of oil. But the technology developed for it was still valid, and Rockwell thought there might be a use for microwave power transmission systems. Their idea here was to use a space-based nuclear reactor – apparently something along the lines of the SP-100 – to generate electricity and then use SPS-derived microwave beaming tech to send that power to distant “customers” such as space stations and satellites. This would permit the customers to basically have nuclear power, but without the risks of having a nearby radiation source. The receiver would be much lighter than a PV array in terms of construction, and vastly more efficient, since all the energy coming in is of a single fixed frequency. A space station could presumably have a power receiver in the form of a mesh “net,” perhaps a single sphere a few meters in diameter at the end of a modest mast, capable of capturing dozens to hundreds of kilowatts of clean electrical power. This would lower the cost and mass of power systems compared to PV arrays… and it would greatly reduce the drag produced by those giant sails.
Dec 022019
One of the few network shows that I watch is “The Rookie,” a relatively bog-standard “beat-cop procedural” with Malcolm Reynolds playing an over-the-hill rookie cop. Pretty much what you’d expect, entertaining yet forgettable. But an episode I watched last night got me thinking. The episode “Fallout” has the entire city of Los Angeles receiving an official FedGuv text message stating that a ballistic missile was inbound, due to arrive in 29 minutes. Hijinks ensue, and at the end, as you’d expect, it turns out to be a false alarm. Everything resets, back to normal, on to the next episode.
But… consider an alternative. The episode ends not with everything back to normal, but with a Mighty Flash followed by a growing rumble in the ground and a blast wave, fade to black, “continued next season.” Next season, same characters (mostly, as some got converted to high temperature vapor), still cops, still in L.A…. but an L.A. that got converted into a crater surrounded by a firestorm due to a Nork nuke. The cops are now no longer issuing tickets and hunting down gangbangers, but rescuing people from crushed buildings and working, over the next four or five seasons, to rebuild L.A. back into a functional city. Or, perhaps better, they’re trying to make sense of a world where L.A. was just one of *thousands* of cities blasted to oblivion in a global thermonuclear war.
In short, the idea is to run a Perfectly Normal Sort Of Show for several seasons and then to utterly flip the script, changing not just plotlines but genre. I’d had the same sort of idea years ago several seasons into “House, M.D.” when I thought it’d be neat if, over the course of a season or two hints were dropped of some mysterious new disease and then the show becomes about some apocalyptic pandemic… smallpox-like, zombie outbreak, Andromeda Strain, whatever. Watching Gregory House deal with a plague followed by an alien invasion seemed like it’d be a hoot.
Just a thought. Back to work.
Dec 022019
Visited an animal shelter today that had a cat room and and a bunch of dog kennels. Here’s why I prefer cats: the cats who didn’t like me? They avoided me, or simply ignored me. The dogs who didn’t like me? They would have *killed* me had they been able to do so. I don’t speak dog, but I’m pretty sure a lot of that barking would translate into something akin to “me eat your throat out” or “doghu ackbar” or something.
A room full of cats and kittens, though? A small slice of rightness in the world.
Dec 022019
A diagram showing how Boeing figured they could pack 61 Deloreans onto a 747-100F freighter for transport from Ireland back to the States.
Dec 012019
On top of everything else, a couple weeks ago my phone started acting up in a “well, it’s about time to die” sort of way. I guess I should not have been too surprised… it was five years old, which is probably about four years past the expected replacement date. So, I had to plunk down yet more money to procure a replacement (a “mid-grade” version… I sure as hell wasn’t going to blow $900 on a phone). At least the new phone’s camera seems to work pretty well.
Examples: a few photos of Buttons taken at fairly extremely close range.
Bonus photo: Banshee saw a stargate and figured that that was her chance to return to her homeworld. Alas, it was merely Hollywood trickery.
Dec 012019
Real Men will wield narwhal tusks:
Polish man attacking the London bridge terrorist with a narwhal tusk.
Somebody give this dude a suit of shining armor already.
The Polish don't mess around 🇵🇱
His name is Luckasz. Share this act of bravery!
History will not forget this man.pic.twitter.com/RFa0U6DSKW
— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) November 30, 2019
When Usman Khan decided to help enrich the culture of London by using Knives Of Peace, a Polish chef named Łukasz pulled a tusk off the wall of “Fishmongers Hall” and decided to enstabulate Khn with it. Another Londoner hosed Khan down with a fire extinguisher.
Khan, as it turns out, was an interesting fellow. Here’s a photo of him (far left) and his fellow Bo-lu from 2012 when he was jailed for a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange:
A few questions immediately spring to mind:
1: If he was convicted of an an attempted terrorist bombing less than a decade ago, what the frak was he doing out and about? Answer: there was a maximum sentence permitted under British law, and he was set free.
2: Why the frak was he still in Britain, rather than deported back to Caprona? Answer: he was apparently a British citizen, born and bred there. As English as the Queen, eh wot.
Might be a few lessons there.
Dec 012019
Another piece of early 70’s NASA artwork depicting the sort of capabilities the Shuttle would soon bring about. But only two of the categories, that of “Large Astronomy Observatories” and Spacelab, came about.
Nov 302019
Rockwell suggested in 1985 that manned versions of their ballistic cargo return systems could be used to return astronauts from the space station in the event of an on-orbit disaster. Two concepts are illustrated (“ENCAP” and “SAVER”), one similar to the Douglas “Paracone” from the 1960’s, and a version using a balloon to provide drag. So presumably the cargo return system, illustrated with a lifting body diagram, would actually closely resemble one of these systems.
