A Year In Space

 Hmm..., news, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 152019
 

We’ve known for a long time that long durations in microgravity does the human body no favors. Scott Kelly’s year in space has helped nail down the effects, but a lot of confusion remains.

What a Year in Space Did to Scott Kelly

A lot of it boils down to “things changed while in orbit and changed back when he came back to earth. Some effects went really weird… his cognitive function went *up* in space, dropped well below normal when he came back, and slowly crawled back up… but not to the pre-flight standard.

 

So far as we know, there are three main influencers on human physioloy while in space:

  1. Stress
  2. Lack of gravity
  3. increased radiation

The lack of gravity, of course, can be dealt with… just build your space stations and long duration spacecraft with artificial gravity in mind. Stress… shrug. Being in a tin can in space is probably gonna be stressful no matter what you do. Radiation… a few tricks can be played, but until the time we’re building spaceships so vast that several *meters* of physical shielding separate you from the cosmic rays zipping around, radiation is just going to be one of those things.

 

 Posted by at 4:16 pm

Notre Dame

 AARRRGH, art, blather, Crazy, Gah., history, news, religion, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 152019
 

As is doubtless news to nobody at this point the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire earlier today and is, as I type this, still burning. From the looks of it, the cathedral looks like it will end up being a virtual total loss; the main spire has collapsed and the entire wooden structure is likely to end up as ash, with the stonework fire damaged and likely to at least partly tumble. The artworks and relics inside are likely gone.

‘Everything is burning, nothing will remain’: Famed Notre Dame cathedral ablaze in Paris

I am not a religious person; certainly not a Catholic. Still, there ain’t nothin’ funny about this. Nothing culturally or economically useful to be gained by burning this 800-year old cathedral to the ground. This is just *bad.* When the Big Butter Jesus caught a lightningbolt from Thor and burned to it’s steel structure, leaving only the Terminator Jesus endoskeleton? Sorry, that sh!t was damned funny… because it was cheap, tacky, recent and easily replaced. The Notre Dame cathedral was a monument to the heights that man can aspire to and achieve even when mired in the muck and superstition of  medieval Europe.

In all probability the fire was the result of the restoration work being done on it. A grinder or a welder shedding sparks, an electrical arc, spilled paint thinner, oily rags… there are a *lot* of possibilities. Doubtless an investigation will nail it down, though it’s entirely possible that some worker right now *knows* exactly what happened. And he *knows* that he’s responsible. Imagine having that on you conscience, especially if the feller is a Parisian Catholic. Yeesh.

As for turning this tragedy into a political screed, I’ll hold off on that and leave it to, of all people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has said that the cathedral was a “symbol of France and our European culture.” An ancient  construct of surpassing beauty and genius, the envy of the world, taken for granted, inadequately cared for and finally burned to the ground: yup, that’s a good symbol of European culture.

 

 Posted by at 3:46 pm

CBS All Access

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 152019
 

I was never all that likely to pony up cash for CBS’s paid streaming service. The world is already far too full of such things. The only show they had that even close to tempting me was “Star Trek: Discovery, and that was only *before* I started seeing what a trainwreck the show would become; once I saw the pilot that aired on regular CBS, the whole idea of signing up became laughable.

I never spent a dime on CBS All Access.

But after seeing how they are now advocating violence against American citizens who express political views they don’t like… I want my money back.  They have a show called “The Good Fight,” which is apparently about people trying to overthrow American society and replace it with a Lenin-approved wokepocalypse, and recently posted an ad to Twitter. This ad advocated physical violence against those you (or at least the writers at CBS) disagree with. The Twitter ad seems to have been pulled down, but chunks of it are up on YouTube:

This is based on the tired “is it ok to punch a Nazi” thing. Sure, if there’s an *actual* Nazi advocating violence…. then, maybe. But the far left has so futzed with the culture that virtually *anybody* can be declared a Nazi. I was originally going to type “anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders can be declared a Nazi,” but then I remembered that BLM didn’t think he was woke enough and took the mike from him. Raving loonies on Twitter are claiming that Disney polling indicates that more than a quarter of Star Wars fans are literal fascists. Clown world, indeed.

And note in the video that even thought they show Richard Spenser, white nationalist, the riotous actions shown are from an American point of view almost entirely the province of *left* *wing* activism, and the “blue vest” rioters seem to be a takeoff on the French “yellow vest” protestors, who seem to be to a very large degree leftists.

So CBS All Access is openly declaring that it is not only acceptable, it is *right* to commit acts of violence against people who express views you do not like.

So, yeah, no STD for me.

Is it OK to clothesline a commie yet? “Some speech is not equal. Some speech requires a more visceral response.”

 Posted by at 11:02 am

Where’s the police state when you need it?

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, Gah., youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 132019
 

California has a lot of money, and a *lot* of regulations. There are laws against all manner of wacky things… an average American citizen can’t even own a Tommygun (which I discovered *after* I moved there in 2000). And yet they don’t have the policing wherewithal to bust a bunch of eminently bustable heads here:

Now, on one level, I could hardly give a damn less about some flowers. To first order, who cares. But on the other hand… these idjits *know* they’re not supposed to go romping around out in the poppies, but they do so anyway because of their sense of entitlement. They need to be educated to the fact that they don’t get to do whatever they want with other peoples stuff just because they have a following. otherwise these morons will be running for Congress or starting their own idiot religions based on ancient space aliens blowing up volcanoes with nukes, and we already have quite enough of that nonsense.

Person A: “The rules don’t apply to me because I’m an influencer.”

Person B: “Have some pepper spray, scarecrow.”

The human brain is an amazing thing, but it needs to be exercised to reach its fullest potential. I don’t know if these people are inherently truly stupid, but getting to spend a few weeks in jail, a ten grand fine and a five-year social media ban would learn ’em some smarts right quick.

 Posted by at 7:34 pm

My God, they’ve actually succeeded!

 art, blather, Meh., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Apr 122019
 

I never thought it could be done… but they’ve actually succeeded in making a major new Star Wars movie look *dull.*

The only to interesting things here:

1: A chunk of a Death Star sitting on a planetary surface… presumably either the moon of Yaavin or the forest moon of Endor. The latter would be my guess… and it would actually be lice if the desert scenes were *also* on the now-former forest moon. Because having a 160-kilometer-diameter space station explode directly overhead and rain down gigatons of high velocity toxic waste, charged magic batteries and a bagrillion citybuster warheads is just exactly the sort of thing that would utterly trash a planetary environment.

2: Palpatine is back in some fashion. Presumably force ghost, presumably lurking around that trashed Death Star.

#1 is kinda interesting, but it of course raises questions. Considering the scale of the Death Star, that chunk of it shown probably extends well above the sensible atmosphere of the world it’s sitting on. It seems unlikely that a structure not meant to sit on a planetary surface, that got kerploded by the detonation of a reactor powerful enough to make laserblasts that themselves can blow up a planet, and then fell a couple hundred miles out of the sky, would be in even that good of shape, rather than just a flattened smear of metal on the ground.

#2 Seems like a lame attempt at fan service.

I suppose my apathy about this first look trailer means I’m a sexist/racist, because that’s the only possible reason why anyone would ever be unimpressive with this sort of thing these days…

 Posted by at 8:17 pm

Boeing Model 767-85M

 aircraft, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Apr 122019
 

A Boeing diagram of the Model 767-85M, a pre-767 jetliner concept from 1971 designed to cruise at Mach 0.98. In order to achieve that, the design was massively aerodynamically optimized for transonic efficiency… with “wasp-waiting” taken to something of an extreme. The aircraft would have been fuel efficient at high (but still subsonic) speed, but would have been a nightmare to manufacture.

I’ve made the full-rez scan of this large format diagram available to above-$10-subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program/Patreon.

If this sort of thing is of interest, consider subscribing. Even a buck a month will help out; but the more you subscribe for, the more you get… and the more you help me get from eBay and save for the ages.

 

 Posted by at 7:52 pm

Alexa, are you listening to me for the entertainment of Amazon employees?

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 122019
 

Looks like “yup.”

Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa

What’s particularly interesting is that Amazon employees aren’t just listening to you when you’re specifically engaged with Alexa… but just *whenever.* It’s ALWAYS ON. The people at Amazon have recordings of people singing in the shower, children screaming and, apparently, a sexual assault. Which they heard live but did nothing about.

 

When I was a kid in the Before Times when there was no Alexa, no YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat  and all the rest, people thought of their privacy as inviolate. “1984” included TVs that transmitted video of *you* to the government intelligence services, and we all shuddered at the idea. Now people livestream everything they do. People livestream themselves driving to work, eating their meals, doing the hunka-chunka, getting shooty at the local Mosqueateria. They share photos of their meals, their children, their vacations. People have effectively given away their privacy, but on their terms. Now we have intelligence gathering machines within our homes, and we *know* that these things are broadcasting what we do to strangers.

On one hand… creepy. On the other hand… this could have major influences on society. When I was seeking a security clearance going on 20 years ago, the FBI researched me up one side and down the other, looking for embarrassing stuff. Not – presumably – to hold over me, but to see if I had anything that somebody else might hold over me. If it turned out that I had some freaky weird preversion, the Russians or Chinese or somebody could theoretically find out about it and use that knowledge to blackmail me into providing them secrets. But let’s say that, rather than two decades ago, it was *today.* If I did indeed have freaky weird preversions… hell I might have my own for-profit webcam site. Rather than being embarrassed to the point of being blackmailed, I might try to sell a subscription to the service to the investigating FBI agent.

And so perhaps the fact that you have a device that gives you some small measure of convenience while utterly erasing traditional notions of privacy might become completely accepted. We do indeed live in Clown World, so maybe what seemed creepy as hell to me will be seen as perfectly normal and nothing to bother about.

 Posted by at 1:43 pm

They say it’s horrible, but they don’t say *why.*

 blather, Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Apr 122019
 

News has broken that the White House briefly considered doing the blatantly obvious: sending the massive flood of refugees and migrants to cities that *want* massive numbers of illegal immigrants. Watching CNN, all the talking heads are yammering on about how horrible this is, how it’s an idea unworthy of the Presidency, blah, blah, blah. But if the US *has* to house these people, WHY NOT put them into sanctuary cities? Honestly, where better to put them?

There are regions that do not want hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals taking up resources, and then there are sanctuary cities, typically rich regions with electorates and politicians who think mass immigration is just awesome. How can it be that “sanctuary cities” and “massive influx of resource-free immigrants” isn;t a match made in Progressive Heaven?

 Posted by at 10:37 am
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