Aug 142019
 

NASA Giving Away Apollo-Era Saturn Rocket to Anyone who Wants It

It’s free to a good home. Just pay the modest $250,000 shipping fee.

I have an obvious choice: SpaceX. The Saturn S-1 stage was, as we all know, originally intended to be recovered after flight via parachutes with an ocean splashdown; this option was eliminated as a mass and cost savings measure, as were plans to add Rogallo wings or parafoils for a horizontal runway landing.  I suggest that SpaceX get this stage, refurb it, fix it up and fly it, using one of the several proposed recovery methods.

Why? Because it would be cool, that’s why.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 4:39 pm
Aug 132019
 

In 2006, CBS and Viacom split apart and, for reasons that evade me, the rights to Star Trek also got split apart. Since then, it has been essentially impossible for anyone to legally make *real* Star Trek because of the crazy licensing issues. But CBS and Viacom are merging again and the Trek licenses are all coming back together. So going forward there will be NO EXCUSES for why good, quality, canon Star Trek *can’t* be made. There will doubtless be lots of excuses why it *won’t,* including the wokification of Trek or the desire to trash viewer expectations, but it should at least be legally possible to make real Star Trek again.

‘Star Trek’ Poised To Become New Marvel? CBS & Viacom Merger Brings Franchise Under One Fleet

From now on, shows like “Star Trek: Picard” and “Lower Decks” should be able to feature actual Star Trek designs, iconography, canon, characters, etc. Shows like STD are of course a lost cause, and it would be in everyones best interests if the showrunners would just come out and say that “this is in a different timeline/multiverse/whatever from Canon Trek.”

Who knows what will happen. With an improved licensing environment and a possible shuffling of the suits, it *might* even be possible to dream of a future where CBS gives a damn about Trek, and we wind up with an anthology Trek series where “amateurs” such as the Axanar people are given a small budget to crank out an hour or two of product… that, if good enough, could serve as back-door pilots.

I’ll just get right on holding my breath for that, shall I…

 Posted by at 3:51 pm
Aug 132019
 

There’s something just absolutely fantastic about this story:

Monsters, men and magic: why feminists turned to witchcraft to oppose Trump

If you must have opponents, you want them to be ineffectual. And magic and witchcraft are about as ineffectual as you can get… what with them being non-functional bunkum. if someone hated me, I’d far rather have them placing hexes on me or burning effigies of me or jabbing needles into voodoo dolls, than having them taking up arms or even just voting against me. Come election day, stay in your prayer circle, light some herbs on fire and chant gibberish. Thanks. That’d be great.

What’s especially awesome is that the Guardian newspaper ran this piece, and either didn’t know or didn’t care that the author actually seems to think that witchcraft is a valid way of creating physical change in the world. That the author is an idiot is apparent right up front where she claims that witchcraft – here seemingly indistinguishable from Wicca with a fresh coat of third wave radical feminism slapped on it – is an “ancient pagan art.” Ancient rarely ever means “dates all the way back to the 1920’s,” but that’s what modern witchcraft is: a load of commercial spiritualism created in the 20’s and 30’s using some of the iconography of the older – and largely basically lost – witch-beliefs of Europe.

You wanna be a Wiccan, hey, knock yourself out. It is, for the moment, sort of a free country. Just don’t BS anybody, yourself included, that it’s more than any other religion: rituals and such that make you feel better, but which don’t work any better than examining bird entrails or praying viral infections away.

If you believe that your power comes from magic (or, more insufferably, from magick), then you have no power. Magic, conjuring, the supernatural… these are all less than useless when it comes to doing anything of use or value. They might make you feel good; but then, so might playing the slots or taking a drag. Time, effort and funds spent on honing your magical abilities is time spent becoming less powerful, more useless.

There is a fire on the horizon. You can see it burning, out on the edges of the world. The violence we have survived can be our guide to what needs to change. The fire that burned the witches can be the fire that lights our way. Our power is waiting for us, out in forbidden spaces, beyond the world of men. Step forward and claim it. Step forward into the boundless and female dark.

Hey, here’s a thought: maybe we can somehow convince the gun-grabbers that their years of legal and political efforts towards disarming the civilian populace have failed, and that they need to try magic now. Get them to devote their time and effort to hexing firearms to make them vanish.

 Posted by at 2:47 am
Aug 132019
 

Some evening cameraphone photos.

“Belt of Venus” over the mountains to the south-east, moon above.

Might be a little hard to see, but with the naked eye these lines of clouds were fairly remarkable.

Again the camera doesn’t do it justice, but the contrast between the blue and the pink was kinda startling.

 Posted by at 12:49 am
Aug 122019
 

Chris Cuomo, who seems to have no concept of self control when confronted with anything less than fawning obeisance:

I look forward with great interest to watching future guests on his show refer to him as “Fredo.” Or, perhaps “Frodo.”

UPDATE:

 Posted by at 7:21 pm
Aug 122019
 

Noted Nazi cosplayer Sarah Silverman has discovered that SJWs have long memories, no sense of humor and no mercy:

Sarah Silverman reveals she was recently fired from a movie over her 2007 blackface character

In a podcast interview with Bill Simmons posted Thursday, Silverman touched on Hollywood’s push to increase diversity and call out needlessly offensive storylines. She cited her own work on “The Sarah Silverman Program,” which ran a 2007 episode featuring the comedian in blackface commenting on racism. The comedy sketch show, which ran from 2007 to 2010, chronicled the daily shenanigans of a fictionalized version of Silverman. 

“At 11 p.m. the night before (filming began), they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode,” she said, without offering any details about which movie she was referencing. “I didn’t fight it.”

This lost her her job:

 

But not this. This is just fine:

The “blackface” sketch was supposedly something-something-racism-bad, while the “Hitler” bit was something-something-Trump-bad. Dressing up like a Nazi is forgivable when done in the service of Wokeness, but it seems that nothing can ever forgive blackface.

I’ve sure Silverman was upset at getting canned for something she did more than a decade earlier. I also assume that she hopes that the problem is over. But I have my doubts. Let’s say you apply for a job, the interviews go well, and everything is on track… but just before they sign on the dotted line and hire you, they discover that you served time for murder. Regardless of whether or not you have served your time, regardless of whether or not you are remorseful or have changed your ways, you remain a “murderer,” and you will stay a “murderer” until the day you die: at which time you become a “dead murderer.” Well… Silverman remains a Blackface Enthusiast, and will until the day she dies, at which time she will likely be remembered as a Noted White Supremacist. Since she, by her own admission, did not fight against getting fired, she has effectively ceded ground in advance to anyone who might have hired her but who would have declined due to her blackface sketch. She has admitted that it is good and proper to leave perpetually unemployed anyone who has done something that could be *interpreted* as being sufficiently unWoke.

Personally, I find the whole thing ridiculous. It is the *job* of comedians – which Silverman purportedly claims to be – to do things that are sometimes offensive. And Cancel Culture is a fricken’ plague on society, as are the pestilential cancerous homonculi who engage in the outrage mobbery behind Cancel Culture. And yet, I can’t help feel more than a wee bit of schadenfreude seeing a leading light of the looney left getting hoisted on her own petard.

 Posted by at 1:23 pm
Aug 122019
 

Our Galaxy’s Supermassive Black Hole Has Emitted a Mysteriously Bright Flare

Seems Sagittarius A* either swallowed or tore apart something that put up a bit of a fight… or at least a death rattle.

 

 Posted by at 12:11 pm
Aug 112019
 

I have many boxes of aerospace stuff to scan to preserve it for the ages. A lot of it is technical documentation, but some of it is historical stuff of probably rather esoteric interest. For example, a few mementos of the 1963 “Old Timers” reunion. This was a get-together of the rocket scientists from Fort Bliss, 1945: you know, von Braun and the gang. One of the booklets included many photos… and many cartoons drawn for the occasion, including the one below. I suspect that if someone had the temerity to create and publish such a thing *today* there’d be a social media firestorm and a tussle down in HR.

 

 Posted by at 11:11 pm