An oldie but a goodie

 awesomeness, science fiction  7 Responses »
Sep 192010
 

A Bridgestone Tires commercial from almost 2 years ago (January 2009, I believe) has suddenly been all over the TV again. For once this doesn’t annoy me, because it’s entertaining as hell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblFjj_HM84

While it’s only 30 seconds, and from a scientific standpoint doesn’t make a lick of sense… it’s still one of the best bits of science fiction I’ve seen in a while. Why? Because instead of showing space exploration as some horrible disaster-filled terror, or boring-as-hell drudgery, it shows astronauts enjoying their job. I can’t remember the last time I saw space exploration portrayed in such a “joyous” light.

That is something that I would think NASA would want to promote. While NASA does not of course produce TV shows or movies, you’d think that someone there would be able to have some sort of influence on Hollywood. And if so… influence them to create something that shows space exploration – *manned* space exploration, not exploration-by-robot-proxy – as something that your average person would *want* to be involved with. Sure, “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” showed spaceflight as vitally important, but also showed it as somethign nobody in their right mind would want to be a part of. Similarly, most series/movies that feature NASA and/or astronauts portray space as, in the words of Dr. McCoy, “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”

 I’d pay real money for a series that showed mankind exploring the solar system, using practical technology (no warp drives, gravity fields, etc.), where the explorers aren’t the pawns of some horrible conspiracy or a pack of loons with Space Madness, but instead regular people who take joy in their work and are awed by what they find. Hell, I could even write such a thing, but I know I couldn’t do it well and it wouldn’t be taken seriously. But maybe someone at NASA could knock some heads, I dunno.

 Posted by at 10:09 pm

The Democrat War On Wicca

 blather, dumbassery, politics  18 Responses »
Sep 192010
 

Friday, far-left “comedian” Bill Maher released a clip from his defunct “Politically Incorrect” show from 1999 that show Tea Party darling Christine O’Donnell claiming to have “dabbled in witchcraft” as a teenager. What’s interesting here is that Maher clearly uses this as a form of “blackmail.” Ostensibly this seems to be to try to force her onto his show, but the actual purpose is obviously to damage her political career.

 Hey, whatever, it’s what one expects from Hollywood… torpedo the chances of any politician that doesn’t fit their mold.

However, it’s the choice of blackmail subjects that surprises me: to Maher, and much of the Left that is getting off on this, having been involved with Wicca is a laughable idea. But would they have laughed as hard if O’Donnell had instead said that as a teenager she’d dabbled with Islam? Or Buddhism? Or Hinduism? Clearly, the Left hates Wiccans.

 Posted by at 1:03 pm

Unknown! #5 Now Available

 aircraft, awesomeness, drawings, new products, projects, weapons  6 Responses »
Sep 182010
 

Back in March, my laptop suffered an “issue,” and as a result all the data on the hard drive got wiped out. For the most part that’s not too much of an issue, so long as I keep up with the external hard drive backups. Well, one thing that *hadn’t* been backed up were the scans for Justo Miranda’s “Unknown! #5,” and thus they (and others) were lost. In the chaos that followed, efforts to rebuild and get back up and running, re-scanning those documents got lost in the shuffle. Well, I finally got back around to it, and I now present Unknown! #5.

This issue 60 pages of technical illustrations with 1/72, 1/24 and 1/5 scale drawings and English text. The Unknown! series is at the bottom of this page:

http://www.up-ship.com/blog/drawndoc/rd/rd.htm

Horten Schnellbomber H IX (earliest drawing), Horten Schnell-Kampflugzeug and Horten Ho 229C

R4M “Orkan” German air to air rocket and its launch systems “Abschussrost”, “Federtrommel”, “15er Wabe”, “Wabenrohr”, “Trommelanlage” with graphs showing its installation on the Ba 349B “Natter”, Blohm und Voss P.213.03, Heinkel He 162 A-2, Arado Ar 234 C “Heeresflugzeug”, Arado Ar 234 P-5 and Messerschmitt Me 262 A-1b. Also included, drawings and performances of the R4/HL and air to air rocket “Schlange”

“Beware-Kangaroos”, a combat story by John Baxter

From the “Boomerang” to the “Kangaroo” (part I) describing the evolution of the “Boomerang” into four versions: CAC P-176, CAC XP-17 and CA-15 (4/11/42 drawing) and CA-15 (1943 drawing)

“Outpost” lifeboat, describing the re-entry vehicle designed by Kraft Ehricke in 1958

Jet Shinden versus Jet Ascender, including a graphic study of the installation of No. 130 turbojet in the Kyushu J7W2 “Shinden Kai” ultimate Japanese jet interceptor and scale drawing of the jet version of the Curtis XP-55 “Ascender”.

Blackburn B-44 with scale drawing of several seaplane fighters with retractable floats. It includes profiles of the Ursinus Seaplane, Latécoère 671, “The Scarlet Stormer” and “The Lancer”. These two last designs from the Bill Barnes fiction series

Reggiane Re 2007, an essay trying to shed some light on the mystery of this mythical project, gathering in one theory all the available information. It includes scale drawings of the Re 2006 R (Hypothetical), Re 2007 (Cometti version), Re 2008, Yak-15, Yak-17, Ambrosini “Sagittario I” and Airfer “Sagittario II”.

“Target Panama” by John Baxter. Part II of the story published in UNKNOWN! #4

————–

Unknown #5 can be purchased for download for $18.50.


—————-

un05-1.jpg

un05-2.jpg

un05-3.jpg

un05-4.jpg

 Posted by at 8:03 pm

Show This Article To An Arachnophobe

 awesomeness, critters, science  11 Responses »
Sep 182010
 

Like many a geek, I saw “Return of the King” several times in the theater. On one of the return viewings, I happened to be sitting one row in front of and three or four seats down from a woman who clearly had a serious problem with spiders. Which kinda sucked for her, since Shelob the giant evil spider got a fair amount of screen time. It was actually more entertaining to watch the freakout than the screen when Shelob was out and about. Funny as hell.

I suspect that that woman might have just as much trouble with this particular eight-legged critter:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9001000/9001866.stm

A newly discovered species of spider living in Madagascar makes the world’s longest known web, spanning 25m. … Darwin’s bark spider, a species new to science, weaves its huge web over flowing rivers, stretching from bank to bank.

Yeah…. no thanks.

Perhaps usefully, this newly discovered spider produces silk that turns out to be the strongest biological structural material yet discovered. Some genetic engineering and some interesting chemical setups, perhaps some weird genegineered bacteria modified to produce the spider silk proteins, and Kevlar might find itself obsolete.

 Posted by at 12:02 am

Burning Imaginary Korans

 dumbassery, religion  2 Responses »
Sep 172010
 

After the recent flap about some podunk preacher planning on burning a Koran (then pussing out at the last minute), now comes news that – SURPRISE! – Afghan religious nuts (AKA “moderate Muslims,” at least in that part of the world) went into riot-mode over rumors that Australian troops were busy burning Korans. As it turns out, the Aussies were simply burning garbage… feel free to make your own wry comment at this point.

A thought occurs: What happens if you have an electronic copy of the Koran – let’s say a PDF or Word file of it – and you delete that copy? Will that incur the wrath of the whackjobs? Do you stand a chance of starting a riot if you “burn” a Koran onto a CD-ROM?

 Posted by at 11:47 pm

X-29 with vectorable nozzle

 aircraft, projects  No Responses »
Sep 172010
 

A 1982 NASA-Langley or Grumman painting depicting the X-29 forward-swept research plane with a 2-D vectorable nozzle, sort of the predecessor to the nozzle currently in use on the F-22. Artist name is Giardino.

x-29.jpg

 Posted by at 11:32 pm

‘baptise an alien’

 blather, religion, science fiction  7 Responses »
Sep 172010
 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312922/Pope-astronomer-Guy-Consolmagno-Aliens-souls-living-stars.html

Short form… the Pope’s Astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, says:

1) Aliens are out there

2) They have souls

3) He’d baptise ’em… but only if they asked

4) Intelligent Design is “bad theology” 

Regardless of your views on religion/Christianity/Catholicism, these are respectable, adult positions for a Catholic priest to hold. Space aliens have been almost wholly the property of science fiction, and religion and science fiction have rarely mixed well. And when they do mix (such as “Deep Space Nine” or “Babylon 5”), what is usually depicted is that each alien race has its own distinct religion. But assuming that we ever meet aliens and that we are mutually comprehensible… it seems to me that there will be some religious interestingness. Almost certainly there will be some cargo-cult sort of religion form among the less advanced race. But there may also be some attempt at evangelizing each other. With any luck, whoever we eventually run into won’t be rampaging across the universe on some sort of Covenant/Necromonger/Muslim Jihad to convert or kill all before them, and we’ll be able to get along. And if we can, almost certainly there will be attempts at converting them to human religions. A Catholic Klingon is an interesting notion. A Scientologist Vorlon would be something of a head scratcher.

Science fiction tends to tackle some topics well before religion does… cloning comes to mind. And so SF has been attempting to understand aliens for more than a century, while religion has not. It is impossible to guess when we might actually meet aliens… but it’d be best for religions to try to wrap their minds around this concept sooner rather than later. One of the spookier visions of the future that I can envision has aliens landing on the White House lawn, ready to welcome us into the Galactic Federation… only to be set upon and burned at the stake by relig-u-whacks convinced that the aliens are actually demons. For all I know, the aliens might see evangelism as the direst insult imaginable; but that’s a lower order of probability than being offended at being attacked as Satan’s minions. And so… bring on the priests who’re willing to baptise the Martians.

 Posted by at 12:59 pm

We have always been at war with Global Climate Disruption

 blather, dumbassery, I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics  3 Responses »
Sep 162010
 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/16/white-house-global-warming-global-climate-disruption/

From the administration that brought you “man-caused disaster” and “overseas contingency operation,” another terminology change is in the pipeline.

The White House wants the public to start using the term “global climate disruption” in place of “global warming
” — fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is.

And in other Newspeak News…

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/09/the_obama_tax_cuts_for_the_mid.html

Call them “the Obama tax cuts for the middle class.”

Top Democratic leaders in the House are discussing using that phrase to rebrand President Obama’s proposed extension of the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250,000…

 Posted by at 11:51 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries