Aug 192009
Aug 192009
Aug 182009
A sneak peek at Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N5. Aerospaceplane (“ASP”) was an early 1960’s USAF program to develop a practical “orbital airplane,” with multiple bidders turning in a wide range of competing designs based on some wildly differing propulsion systems. Unlike the 30-year later, but largely identical, X-30 NASP competition, in this case the various bidders were not constrained by the government dictating all aspects of the design.
While ASP was certainly well beyond the technological capabilities of the early ’60’s, it cannot be reliably declared that it could not have been made to work if development had been continued. As with far too many aerospace programs, large sums of money were spent, considerable knowledge and talent were gathered… and then it was all pissed away, only to be repeatedly resurrected years later, and then again pissed away. All the money spent on the myriad of “orbital airplane” programs over the years (ASP, Dyna Soar, NASP, X-33, X-34, X-43, etc) could have easily led to an actual vehicle, if only a rational development program had been initiated… and stuck with.
Bah. Anyway, V2N5 of APR will have an article describing a “snapshot” in time of the ASP program, including the above designs.
Aug 182009
Raedthinn started off a few years ago as a half-starved half-wild kitten. He quickly grew to be a pretty enormous housecat. While it seems he’s perfectly happy with his size, it does mean that he doesn’t fit certain places that he, as a housecat, is supposed to. Including the top of this little cat playhouse thing:
On the other end of the humor spectrum, visible in the background is what may be one of the last photos of Fingers. A few days ago she developed a lump on the left side of her throat that quickly grew… and quickly lost fur as she scratched at it. By yesterday it was an ugly, hideous thing an inch and a half in diameter that looked like a bright blood-red scab; it prevented her from moving her head, and clearly was a source of great pain. By this morning she was clearly weak from lack of eating and, most obviously, agony. So I caught her and put her in the basement with ready access to food and water, hoping that without other feline competition she could eat in peace. A few hours later I went down to check on her… and saw just about the nastiest, most freakin’ horrible thing I’ve seen in a good long while. She managed to scratch through the scab-thing, releasing what looked for all the world like chocolate milk. *Lots* of chocolate milk. VAST quantities of the stuff, actually spurting out all over everywhere. It was… really, really horribly disgusting. So, into the crate she went, and then on to the vet. The end result was that the vet cut away the affected skin. Which turned out to be just about a *quarter* of the skin on her neck… from right down the middle up her throat, to the left side below her ear. It was really… tragic. Since this ain’t Rotten.com or Ogrish, I will post no photos of it. It’s sufficient to saw that her muscles are exposed over an area of about 4 square inches. The vet said she should pull through fine… but I have doubts.
This sort of thing is just par for the course for outside cats. The world is full of dangers, pain and sorrows, and outdoor cats are exposed to more than their share of it. One must accept that this is so, because it is so. Still, one cannot be expected to be happy about it. It was not a happy day.
To make the day even less cheerful, while at the vet I saw a set of Xrays on the wall display, showing the interior torso of a largish dog. Complete with two air rifle pellets. And on the floor was a vet-nurse, sitting with that very dog, who looked in his own bandaged and chest-tubed way as bad or even worse than Fingers. I gather that he was not expected to pull through. As I left the vets office with Fingers – sedated really heavily (Fingers, not me) – I passed an Animal Control cop going to check on the dog. While I’m not a dog person, I hope that someone, real soon now, is going to get a nice visit from some cops who *are* dog people.
Aug 162009
I don’t believe that this piece of artwork has been seen publicly too often. Comes from a Convair report. Irritatingly, Convair liked to reproduce their art on “pebbly” paper in the late 50’s/early ’60’s, leading to inevitable “pebbly” reproductions.
Aug 152009
Another attempt at photographing the Milky Way with my Canon point-n-click produced this, the result of several 15 second exposures and the use of an astronomical photo stacking program.
Aug 152009
A bit of Boeing artwork from the late ’50’s/early ’60’s showing a notional vehicle that could either drive or fly. In this case, it had four bicycle-like wheels, with four spoke per wheel… each spoke being a rotor. To fly, it simply raised the wheel up and into a horizontal attitude, and spun ’em up. Looks fragile. Looks awesome.
No further data.
Aug 152009
It appears that the Obamists are using their bully pulpits and back-channel contacts to try to strip people they don’t like of their income and ability to speak their minds. This should hardly be a big surprise… but, if true, it should be a major scandal. Imagine if the Bush administration had tried as blatantly as this to get fired any reported who said unflattering things.
Caveat emptor: note the source of the article… World Net Daily. Not exactly the most respected or unbiased news source. Still, compared to “fake but accurate” reporting we get in the mainstream media…
Obama’s environmental czar started group targeting Beck
President Obama’s “green jobs czar” is co-founder of a black activist organization that has led a campaign prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Glenn Beck’s top-rated Fox News Channel program.
In recent weeks, Beck has done several critical segments about Van Jones, who was appointed as the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Beck’s segments were based in part on WND’s reporting that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader.
Now Colors of Change, an activist organization seeking to “strengthen Black America’s political voice” has led a furious campaign against Beck culminating in major companies such as Geico and Lawyers.com pulling their spots from the Fox News star’s daily show. The group also says it has garnered about 75,000 signatories for an online petition against Beck to be sent to advertisers.
How far does this sort of stuff have to go before it rises to the “legally actionable” stage?
Aug 152009
As a followup to this post that described how representative Sheila Jackson-Lee disrespected a speaker at a town hall meeting, here’s an interview between this intellectual lightweight and CNN’s Rick Sanchez where she spends about 7 minutes blathering and pretty much completely avoiding answering direct questions on the issue, and suggesting that it was a “doctored” video.
Astonishing.
Note that Sanchez initially goes out of his way to be a kissass to Jackson-Lee, but she quickly burns through his patience.
Aug 142009
But the racism in who?
http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl111408tpthreats.1b0d3e688.html
A black man from Mississippi has been arrested and accused of sending racist death threats over the Internet to three black students at Louisiana’s Nicholls State University.
I doubt that this will be an isolated incident. Expect to see more, much more, of this sort of chicanery. But don’t expect to see too much of it on the major networks, as it doesn’t fit in with their established naratives. Be dubious of anyone in a “town hall” meeting who goes really overboard with anti-Obama racism… chances are fair that these are actually leftists pretending to be right wingnuts.