I came across this horrid little monster near the Mantua reservoir today. With the low temepratures, it was moving pretty slow. Now, I’m not an arachnophobe, but this little thing gave me the screamin’ willies. It’s abdomen was about 5/8″ (call it 1.7 cm) wide.
Bleah.
Monday high temperature was 90 degrees,
Yesterday’s high was 85.
This was today at noon.
Two news stories of considerable awesomeness:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/30/2700922.htm
One report said the gang’s leader interrupted a speech by a local magistrate, produced a gun and shot him dead.
The villagers retaliated by killing three of the gang members. One was beheaded and the head hung on a power pole.
Another suspected gang member was killed the next day.
And…
Rukhsana Kausar, 21, was with her parents and brother in Jammu and Kashmir when three gunmen, believed to be Pakistani militants, forced their way in and demanded food and beds for the night.
…
When they forced their way into Miss Kausar’s home, her father Noor Mohammad refused their demands and was attacked.His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead.
She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.
Now *this* could be interesting…
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/events/international_blasphemy_day
Blasphemy Day International is a campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a day to promote free speech and to stand up in a show of solidarity for the freedom to challenge, criticize, and satirize religion without fear of murder, litigation, or reprisal. The event was created as a reaction against those who would seek to take away the right to satirize and criticize a particular set of beliefs that have been given a privileged status over other beliefs.
I like it.
Mohammad was not the prophet of any god!
Jesus died and was not resurrected!
Obama is a dumbass with bad ideas and ill-intentions!
Cows are good to eat!
The parts for the 1/144 scale XAB-1 atomic bomber for Fantastic Plastic have been printed:
A Consolidated Vultee study from 1943 for a large, twin-hull flying boat. This comes from a study (in the archives of the San Diego Aerospace Museum) that included a great many different and unusual configurations for large flying boats.
If you like this sort aerospace history and/or the other stuff I post, you can support the cause by Buying My Stuff, which includes aerospace drawings and documents, as well as the journal of unbuilt aircraft and spacecraft projects, Aerospace Projects Review. Or you could just Donate.
I had four of the large-format blueprints scanned in glorious technicolor today, with results you can see below (scaled way, *way* down):
I *really* want to frame the B-29 blueprint. But it’s 83 inches long. Whether I had it framed professionally, or framed it myself, I would be unable to transport it with my little beep-beep car. Feh.
Now this is just neat. Someone took a bunch of clips of Sagan from “Cosmos” (and Stephen Hawking) and not only set them to music, they used a computer to mutate the speech into singing. The voices are a bit metallic (not much of a change for Hawking, of course), but it still comes off hauntingly beautiful. I *highly* recommend this to anyone who was a fan of “Cosmos.” Sagan may have been a leftie nut when it came to politics, but damn, the man knew how to make the universe look like a thing of glory to a ten-year-old kid.
As mentioned here, Koshka is unwell. And at this moment, extremely unwell. I’m just back from the vet; I had them do double duty today, spaying Fingers, and rechecking Koshka and dealing with dental issues. They sedated her and extracted her two lower canines… she’s now half-fangless. They also pumped her full of fluids. But she’s having a hard time coming out of sedation… it’s hours later, and she’s still barely able to move. I have her on my lap as I type, a soggy, motionless ball of misery. Every few seconds I look down to make sure she’s still breathing. This is not turning out to be a good day.
Since ObamaKittyCare hasn’t kicked in, I had to pay up in cold hard cash… near to $200 for both cats. So if anyone wants to help out, I’m certainly not above accepting charity.