I’ll get the popcorn.
FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’
Sep 162011
Sep 152011
A lot of launch vehicles have a lot of mix-and-match options as far as upper stages, fairings, boosters and so on. This was certainly true for the Atlas. Shown below are some of the building blocks possible, from a Convair presentation of April 1967.
Sep 152011
This list was clearly aimed at people of my generation.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/40-things-that-will-make-you-feel-old
7. This year’s 18-year-olds were born in 1993
Sep 142011
WHO: Dangerous TB Spreading at Alarming Rate in Europe
Short form: drug resistant TB is going gangbusters in Europe. Mortality rate for regular TB: 7%. Mortality rate for drug resistant TB: 50%
Sep 142011
A long, long time ago in a NASA far, far away, the Ares V rocket was invented to carry American astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars. It had two five-segment solid rocket boosters developed from the Space Shuttle program, and four or five SSME’s taken directly from the Space Shuttle program. Eventually the SSMEs were replaced with RS-68’s because SSMEs are damned expensive and it’s kind of a waste to simply throw them away. And then President Obama cancelled the whole thing, and Ares V died.
But it didn’t go away. A number of influential Senators realized that the end of the Shuttle program meant the end of a boatload of jobs in their home states, so they demanded that NASA revive the design. The Senate Space Launch System was officially unveiled today, and its design is back to the early Ares V design, using five SSME engines. Since the SSME is no longer in production, where would they come from? Why, NASA has several in stock, ready to go. Of course, not a whole lot of them in stock, so all the Space Shuttle due to go to museums? Yeah… they might get there without engines. And eventually… no more SSMEs.
The design is truly hugenormous, with the biggest cargo version taller than the Saturn V and capable of carrying more payload.
[youtube KQxdrFeZkbA]
Sep 142011
When Obama blathered on in his droning “pass this bill right away” speech a week ago, some of the more observant pundits pointed out that he didn’t actually have a bill to pass. What he was essentially doing was telling Congress, a body whose express purpose is deliberation, to not deliberate and just wait on their hands and immediately sign whatever steaming pile of legislation he eventually dumped in front of them. His team finally unveiled their little 155 page “American Jobs Act” bill yesterday, but it hasn’t been actually introduced yet (it seems the Obama folks did take it to the House, but none of the House Dems wanted to actually sponsor the thing). Except… the “American Jobs Act,” HR 2911, was actually introduced earlier today.
It’s just not *Obamas* “American Jobs Act.” It seems Representative Louie Gohmert (R, TX) dashed off a two-page bill and got it introduced.
Too slow, Obama, you lost the title.
And what’s in the two page bill? Read It Here. In short, all it really does is cut the ridiculous 35% corporate income tax rate to… zero percent.
Currently, American corporations are sitting on big piles of cash and not hiring or investing in growth. Why are they doing this? A million reasons, but it’s a safe bet that they are simply waiting for the meddling and the threats from this administration to stop, or at least slack off. As Hoover & FDR’s meddling extended the Depression of 1929 into the Great Depression, the current President holding the position that “we must act and act now, there’s no need to debate” is a dandy way to make businesses decide to go Galt for a little while, and just sit back and try to ride things out. Even with a tax rate cut to zero, there probably won’t be much growth until the business community – including banks – believe that it’s safe to take risks again. But once that happens, having a tax rate of zero will cause businesses to pour into the US. A 35% increase in income – not to mention the sudden lack of need for an army of accountants – will be a hell of an incentive.
It won’t pass, though. Good idea though it is, it’ll simply get vetoed even if it does come up for a vote.
Related: one of those reeeeeaaaaalllllly creepy Cult Of Personality moments:
[youtube OoJK7PymvtA]
Sep 142011
My next model project for Fantastic Plastic has been confirmed: Space Station V from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” This will be mastered as a CAD model and printed out. The current plan is to include parts for both a *complete* SSV (all resin) and as the *incomplete* SSV as seen in “2001” (with photoetch parts).
Also to be included: Orion III spaceplane. There will, in fact, be *two* Orion III’s, and for a good reason: scale. Since there are no “canon” diagrams of the SSV laying out exactly how big it is, people speculate and make measurements off of screen captures. The closest there is to an “official” diameter was 1000 feet, based on some thing written by tech advisor Fred Ordway. But while the model may have been built to represent that diameter, the story goes that Kubrick thought the station looked too small compared to the Orion III, so he arbitrarily “scaled it up” optically to twice the diameter… 2000 feet. So what the FP kit will do is have two Orion IIIs, one twice the size of the other. The scale of the kit will then be up to the model builder. Current plan is to produce the model at about 8.57″ diameter… meaning either 1/1400 or 1/2800 scale, depending on which Orion III you choose.
Note: the scales listed on the Fantastic Plastic website are a little different from here. At this stage it’s no matter… it’s being built in the computer and can be adjusted with ease. The specifics will be determined a little later.
So.
Does anyone have a BluRay of “2001” and the ability to make full-rez screencaptures? If so, there are some shots that I would really appreciate.
Sep 142011
One of the favorite “arguments” put forward by Creationists is the notion that the eye is far too complex to have evolved on its own, and it needed an Intelligent designer. Unsurprisingly, this argument is bunk, and easily defeated.
[youtube 7jEhzAn1hDc]
And another example of the same basic idea:
[youtube fOtP7HEuDYA]
A longer (11 minute) version, with a computer program that shows that Darwinian evolution is far faster than purely random chance.
[youtube 6sdYGpTR0bM&NR]
Sep 132011
A Boeing painting depicting a 747 in the process of launching an MX-style ICBM. The total load was at least four such missiles. No further data than the artwork. A “bridge”-like cradle would go fore and aft carrying missiles and dropping them out a large hatch in the underside of the rear fuselage. Speculation: controlling the aircraft during the rather sudden shift in CG would have been interesting.
Sep 132011
Obama’s jobs bill has finally been revealed. All 155 pages of it, all apparently legalese.
Well, at least it’s not the 2500-page nightmare that Obamacare was. It’s short enough that maybe *some* Congresscritters and Senators might actually take a stab at reading it before they vote for it.