A 7.2 quake in Baja, California.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Maps/US10/27.37.-120.-110.php
| Magnitude | 7.2 |
|---|---|
| Date-Time |
|
| Location | 32.128°N, 115.303°W |
| Depth | 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program |
| Region | BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO |
Somebody alert John Cusack!
Drawings of the Aero Spacelines “Mini Guppy,” a highly modified version of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser for carrying outsized cargos.
Via Mark Nankivil.
Anyone who thinks that humans have souls but that cats don’t… explain how cats can show so clearly such things as joy. For example, the simple joy of playing with one’s food, as demonstrated Saturday evening (at twilight, explaining the blurriness of the images) by Fingers and her supper.
Insert “You Got Served” joke HERE.
The cover of the February, 1959, issue of Astounding Science Fiction features a painting illustrating the story “The Pirates of Ersatz” by Murray Leinster. I have not yet read the story, so I don’t know how faithful the painting is to any particular scene… but it does illustrate a common feature of many sci-fi stories and illustrations from that general era. Note that the pirate looks somewhat stereotypical for a “pirate,” bandana wrapped around his head, boarding a ship via ladder with pistol in hand. But where an old-school pirate might be illustrated with a dagger clenched in his teeth… this feller’s got a slide rule.
I am just old enough to have been trained on how to use a slide rule in middle school. And I am just young enough that the kids in the class found it to be an insanely stupid waste of time, as we had cheap pocket calculators that could do anything a slide rule could, far faster and more accurately. I seriously doubt that slide rule training lasted much longer… I have no doubt that some of those reading this blog may well have never even seen a slide rule.
But in the 1950’s, there was no practical alternative to the ol’ slipstick. Computers were giant room-sized machines prone to burning out vacuum tubes. The idea that by the mid 1980’s electronic calculating devices would be solar powered, the size of an ID card and so cheap that they’d be sold in the checkout line alongside gum probably never occured to *anyone.*
But the curious thing: many sci-fi stories from the 1950’s and a bit before/after featured hugenormous Univac-style computers, capable of running the numbers but devoid of graphics capability, speech and personality… and they also had humanoid robots running around doing everything from sweeping up to being best friends of the lead characters. I’m at a loss as to how the connection between the two concepts was so rarely made. What exactly made the robots work… some device that would fit within the robot’s chassis and would impart to them the approximate computational power of the human brain… but would not be able to take the place of the giant tube-filled computers that littered the future of so many 1950’s space operas?
Sometimes people just miss the obvious, I suppose. And it only becomes obvious decades later. I shudder to imagine what will look silly and stupid from 2010, forty years down the line…
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Women-march-topless-in-Portland-without-incident.html
PORTLAND – About two dozen women marched topless from Longfellow Square to Tommy’s Park this afternoon in an effort to erase what they see as a double standard on male and female nudity.
OK, sure, whatever. A bunch of women go publicly topless, and the absolutely inevitable happens:
The women, preceded and followed by several hundred boisterous and mostly male onlookers, many of them carrying cameras…
That a bunch of men would be interested in watching a bunch of topless women should come as a surprise to precisely nobody. And yet… it does:
Ty McDowell, who organized the march, said she was “enraged” by the turnout of men attracted to the demonstration. The purpose, she said, was for society to have the same reaction to a woman walking around topless as it does to men without shirts on.
Snerk. Sorry, toots, but what you intend does not necessarily have the slightlest impact on what’s actually going to happen. Many men pay damned good money to see women’s jiggly bits; of course they’re going to show up for a free public display. You might as well get annoyed at someone who watches a free fireworks display, or who picks up money thrown out into the street.
McDowell said she plans to organize similar demonstrations in the future and said she would be more “aggressive” in discouraging oglers.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Look, it’s real simple. Men find women attreactive. Men like to look at naked women (any man who says he doesn’t is either gay, crazy or lying). And it’s best that this is so. If men didn’t find women attractive… there wouldn’t be a next generation. Some men of course go too far with this sort of thing; but the existence of such is no more an indictment of men’s interest in the female form than Westboro Baptist Church or the American Nazi Party are an indctment against the concept of free speech.
Let’s face it… if nekkid wimmins can bring warring alien species together, then it should be pretty obvious to even the most thick-headed feminist that men are *always* going to be interested in looking at women.
“Gentlemen! Of all things in life, are females not the finest?”
I have a very limited number of the F-23A blueprint posters in large size, mentioned here.They’re not quite 24X36, more like 23X34; but they are printed on high-quality paper (there were some minor miscommunications regarding intent at the print shop…) rather than the basic paper. Even slightly smaller than absolutely full size… they look freakin’ *awesome.*
So if you are interested at the previously mentioned 24X36 price, let me know. A few of y’all did so via email before, but I’ve succeeded in losing those messages. Gah.
The July, 1961, issue of Analog science fiction magazine features a cover painting showing a mechanism blasting an asteroid… presumably a mirror reflecting sunlight onto the asteroid to melt portions of it. A spacecraft floats nearby bearing the name “Astro Steel Corp.” At the bottom of the cover is the note “HEAVY INDUSTRY – 1995” indicating that melting asteroids for steel would be a big business some 34 years down the line. Apart from a brief notation beneath the table of contents – “COVER BY THOMAS” – no further information seems to be provided; it does not seem to relate to any stories or articles within the magazine (a rarity).
Sigh…
I recieved the 3-D “prints” of the Nexus model today. Holy crap… it’s huge! it’ll be an easy model, since the parts shoudl be relatively few… but it is truly hugenormous. Chances are now good that a line of 1/288 launchers will follow… Saturn Ib, Saturn V, others.
Also now in works is the CAD model for the 1/72 scale “Space: Above and Beyond” Hammerhead fighter. This one will be a hybrid of CAD/stereolithography and a lot of good old fashioned stratchbuilding. The CAD part will assure that the outlines are right and symetrical, the hand sculpting will get the contours far more efficiently than trying to hammer it out on the computer.
Didn’t see this a few days ago, but now that I have, it’s FRICKEN’ AWESOME.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-utah-eminent-domain29-2010mar29,0,1717770.story
For those of you who use MS Paint or Powerpoint to “illustrate” concepts, look upon this example of real artwork and despair. This is a cutaway illustration of the Chance-Vought V-341 carrier based fighter, which would have been capable of nearly VTOL operations.
This is a development of the XF5U-1, two examples of which were built but not flown. The primary difference is the replacement of the two P&W R-2000 radial piston engines with early turboprop engines. This should have made the craft both lighter and more powerful. However, this was not built.
