48-hour auction: Who wants a Geiger Counter?

 history, Hmm..., nukes, science  No Responses »
Sep 262019
 

I have a vintage Geiger Counter. Seems to be from the 50’s or the 60’s, looks it pretty good condition, no obvious damage. Some signs of age in the chrome finish, some genuine artisanal Utah dust. I have no idea if it works, but I bet there’s a good chance that if you plugged the right batteries into it it’ll start clicking away. Comes with the headset that plugs into a jack on the upper face of the unit. Whether it works or not, it looks great as a display piece. If you are interested, it’ll go to the highest bidder, plus postage. Auction starts when this is posted, ends 48 hours later. Minimum bid, $50. If you’d like to submit a bid, email it to:

A blog-rez photo:

Nine full-rez photos are available at the following link (should be, anyway… anyone have any trouble accessing the folder, let me know):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pjm2xpr0p1jf4h7/AAAFTI06RWi1W0-70Ymgh0GVa?dl=0

 Posted by at 5:28 pm

NASA Black Hole Visualization

 art, awesomeness, science  No Responses »
Sep 252019
 

Produced at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, this depicts a black hole with an accretion disk. Views from different angles show how the extreme gravitational lensing turns a simple flat disk into something truly bizarre and difficult to understand.

A fixed view:

And an “orbit:”

Some variations on these vids are here:

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13326

 

 

 

 Posted by at 8:48 pm

Just like the rest of us

 AARRRGH, art, Hmm..., science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 242019
 

George Lucas ‘couldn’t hide his disappointment’ when he was shown ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

According to the story, George was disappointed twice: first, early on in the development of “Force Awakens” when he was told the plot and realized that his suggestions were utterly ignored; second, when he saw the actual movie and realized that it was derivative crap.

No reference is made to how he reacted to “Last Jedi.” One assumes that “disappointment” transformed into “disgust” and/or “rage.”

 Posted by at 8:55 pm

Back in my day…

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., history, Hmm..., Meh., politics, THIS is why Trump won, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 242019
 

The one where Gropey Joe does his best Grandpa Simpson impression and rambles incoherently. If he was a Republican, this story would be considered massively racist and the Cancel Culture Warriors would be out in force.

Keep in mind that this goofy old man is leading the pack of Dems. Just *imagine* the twelve-hour state of the union addresses…

Yeesh. This is politics in America, Current Year. A guy who if he’s not senile, is certainly doing a damned fine impression of it; a guy who wants to turn America into a police state where his minions go door-to-door to arrest tens of millions of gun owners; another one who wants to nuke American cities; a woman who rode stories of Indians in her distant past to gain undeserved benefits; a woman who’s stuck in Pyramid power; another goofy old man who thinks that breadlines are a good thing. *These* are the people  the Democrats think would make good leaders of the free world. Guh.

 

 

 Posted by at 11:16 am

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Large Unmanned Space Launcher

 history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 232019
 

Continuing…

In 1985 Rockwell pondered the business case for a brand-new Saturn V-class expendable booster specifically for the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) program. The heavy payload capability coupled with large diameter payloads would allow the launch of sizable space-based lasers and similar systems. In order for the booster to warrant the high development cost, there would have had to have been a need for the capability, and obviously the USAF hasn’t filed the sky with orbital laser systems.

The launcher illustrated is not one I’ve seen elsewhere. It has three Shuttle boosters, a core seemingly larger in diameter than the Shuttle ET, and a propulsion module (presumably recoverable) with five or six engines, presumably SSMEs.

 Posted by at 10:36 pm

RIP Nog

 AARRRGH, news, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 232019
 

Further evidence, as if any was needed, that the universe has no concept of fairness: the actor who played Nog has died, but Star Trek: Discovery continues to survive to further trash the legacy of Trek.

“Star Trek: Captain Nog” is a series I would’ve watched.

It is with extreme regret and sadness to announce that my love and best friend, Aron Eisenberg, passed away earlier…

Posted by Malíssa Longo on Saturday, September 21, 2019

 

 

 Posted by at 1:00 am

Down the memory hole goes western civilization

 AARRRGH, books, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., history, I'm from the government, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 222019
 

Some of the people teaching our nations children are… not good people.

Trashing Unwoke Books

In short, a school library dumped a lot of books into a dumpster. The true cause for this is unclear; it is a sad reality that libraries often have to relieve themselves of large numbers of unwanted/unneeded/damaged books. And the further reality is that a great many, perhaps most, books are of no real great cultural or historical value, and wind up just taking up space. This is an issue I’m wrestling with myself, with the end result being that several car loads of paperbacks and a metric ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛏᚩᚾ of National Geographics will have to go to a thriftstore or, worse, the dump. This is a reality that I recognize… but it’s not one I *celebrate.* Because I’m not a gorram woke SJW who revels in the erasure of my history and culture.

In contrast:

It’s impossible to make out what’s in those dumpsters. Could very well be a boatload of multiple copies of obsolete textbooks, the loss of which is often no real loss. But to celebrate tossing them out in order to replace them with woke rubbish of no talent, skill, virtue or value is just friggen’ tragic. Worse, the person doing the celebrating…

… is the head of “English Language Arts” for the public schools in Washington Township, NJ.

Ye gods.

The rest of the article is worth reading, especially the bits about how that township has a paid position for some to oversee the implementation of “equity” and the nonsense that goes with it:

 Posted by at 7:27 pm
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