A Russian VTOL tailsitting remote controlled airplane built around a 12-gauge shotgun, for blowing pesky drones out of the sky. Load this sucker up with Dragonsbreath rounds, and the fun would be complete.
Imagine the regulatory freakout if an *American* had the temerity to build something like this. Sigh.
No points for correctly guessing what this is. I *suspect* that recognition of this*might* be age-related. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Obviously this is early in the modelling process. But it *should* be recognizable…
Take a look at the photo. Aldrin’s fashion sense is… unique. And why not: he’s been to the moon. Have you?
There is a lot of evidence of bee-keeping out here in rural Utah. You see a lot of mobile beehives parked around certain farms, the bees pollinating the plants; locally produced honey is available for sale *everywhere.* Heck, the local print shop in Tremonton has a section among the printer paper and envelopes for one brand of locally produced honey products. So bees are important.
But bees are also a pest. You get a beehive in your house, you want it *gone.* There are two approaches to that:
1) Kill it. Either hire someone or wrap yourself in bubblewrap and hose the hive down with Raid; or, if you’re feeling frisky and are none too damn bright, burn it with fire.
2) Call a local beekeeper. They are often looking to expand their “work force,” especially with the collapse in bee populations over the last couple decades. Bee keepers will often come and, for free, remove the hives.
Option #2 is obviously the preferred one. You win… you get rid of the problem for free. The bee keeper wins – they get a new presumably healthy hive for little cost. The bees win…. they ain’t dead. So, who would possibly have a problem with this setup?
Oh, look, it’s a politician.
Rep. Theresa “Terry” Meza (D.) of Irving, Texas has authored House Bill 4212 that would make the process of bee removal illegal. Unless of course the person removing the bees has undergone 160 hours of both class room and field training in beekeeping and removals. That amounts to over 3 college semester classes worth of training! A normal college class of 3 semester credit hours is around 45-48 contact hours. This nonsense will make almost all bee keeping removal services illegal overnight! If this bill passes, nobody will be able to legally remove and relocate bees after January 1, 2020 until after they go through 160 hours of training and licensing.
There is currently no agency, organization or authority that is set up to train such licensed bee removers in Texas. The legislation would place licensing and training specifics under the authority of the Texas Department of Agriculture.
Additionally, the “licensed” bee remover must obtain $600,000 in liability insurance. If that wasn’t enough, the bee remover must also have $300,000 in workman’s comp before being able to legally remove bees. Oh and you have to pay a yearly licensing fee and whatever fees are associated with your 160 hours of classroom and field training.
Brilliant! Something humans have been doing for thousands of years, now made prohibitively expensive. *Why* these changes are desired does not seem to be in the text of the bill.
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/86R/billtext/pdf/HB04212I.pdf
SpaceX’s “Starhopper” testbed for their Raptor engines, intended for use on the “Starship” fired up a single engine and*apparently* lifted off yesterday on a tethered flight. This probably means it got no more than a few feet off the ground at best.
Unmanned test flight *was* to be in may, now August.
Prolly shouldn’t’a cribbed the capsules flight control software from the 737 MAX program…
In these times of trouble and strife, solace can often be found in music. So… here ya go.
And because Diversity Is Our Strength (TM)…
Late last night the power went out during a mild rain shower. Turns out a power pole caught fire and trashed the transformer and such, cutting things off for most of the night. Fortunately the temperature was not an issue and most everybody was asleep, but having a house full of uninterruptible power supplies suddenly all beeping incessantly was a pain in the keister. But the situation did lead to some interesting sights, straight out of Project Blue Book: a few miles off, a few police vehicles with flashing lights along with a utility truck pointing spotlights up at the pole while the workers fixed it. The lights were reflected not only by the mist in the air, but also the low-hanging clouds.
When they mess with the origin story of Spock, I become annoyed. But comic book characters are necessarily different: there are dozens of different takes on, say, Batman, and even they though conflict and cannot be reconciled it is in the nature of comic book characters to be constantly re-invented and re-imagined. Sometimes they go too far, of course. Making Batman a poverty-stricken Puerto Rican woman in rural Alabama would not make sense. The “Suicide Squad” Joker really didn’t work for me, while the Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger versions did.
Joaquin Phoenix is the next Joker, and this one seems further removed than most. It appears that it will be set in the 1970s, and it appears that Batman will either be nowhere to be found or very, very minor. The Joker here is quite unlike any previously seen. And I gotta say… I’m intrigued. Prior Joker origins have usually had him start off as some sort of crime boss who ends up dumped in a vat of toxic chemicals. This one replaces “toxic chemicals” with “the people of New York in the 1970’s,” which, from what I remember of the 1970’s, is just about right.