Is NYPD Sending Drunk Homeless People to Occupy Wall Street?
The short form: the Occupiers now have to decide whether or not they mean what they say, and actually represent those most economically downtrodden.
Oct 312011
Oct 312011
Taken a few days ago up near Mantua.
Oct 312011
Got a bunch of these:
Oct 312011
1: My furnace stopped working last night. It is thus really cold in here.
2: I’ve got pneumonia again.
The timing is spectacular.
Oct 302011
Alexander Lippisch, arguably the inventor of the delta wing, spent most of his post-war years in the US working on advanced or just plain odd aircraft concepts. One concept that seemed to fascinate him was the “aerodyne,” where most of the fuselage served as a duct for the propulsion system, and through the use of louvers the thrust could be directed either aft for forward thrust or down for vertical thrust. The bulk of his aerodyne concepts were devoid of wings, relying instead on directed thrust for lift at low speed and fuselage lift at higher speeds. Wind tunnel tests proved that the concept was viable, if not entirely practical… and certainly not exactly the safest designs in the event of an engine-out situation.
While all of the aerodyne concepts were unusual, this one pretty much takes the cake: not only wingless, but the planform shows that it’s not only an elongated teardrop, but a teardrop with a great big hole in it. The vehicle was something of a twin-fuselage design, but one where the fuselages are curved and join together at nose and tail.
The design features conventional inlets alongside the nose, with a long “slot” along the fuselage. This slot served as the exhaust for the engine(s), using the Coanda effect to increase thrust at low speed. The twin fuselage layout would, at least theoretically, serve as a duct, with the Coanda effect increasing thrust a little more. It seems probable, though, that the added thrust would be more than offset by increased weight.
Oct 302011
Heh.
[youtube tmfe5_6SV8U]
Oct 292011
The Space Station V CAD model is just about done. And not a moment too soon… the complete unified model clocks in at 190 megabytes. It’s big enough that my computer is just about to the point where it’ll just give me a blank stare when I try to do something with the model. The conical faces of the hub need some detailing, the Orion III needs a fair amount of surface detailing (note: that part won’t be detailed enough to print off as a model on its own… it’s being made to be detailed enough at 1/1400 scale), some noodling around will be needed with the structures flanking the “spokes” (I’m assuming at this point that those bits will have to be photoetch).
As can be seen, the model features the “unbuilt” rim. Photoetch parts are planned for the skeleton of the structure shown in the movie. I understand that additional completed rim parts will be provided so that the station can be shown in its final finished form.
Oct 292011
Compilation: 40 Examples of OWS Violence, Perversion, and Anti-semitism (With Pictures, Videos)
These people claim to represent “the 99%.” Do they represent you? They sure as hell don’t represent *me.*
In contrast, the Tea Partiers, who were pretty much universally dumped on by the media as “astroturf” or “racists,” never seemed to produce such stellar examples of scumbaggery as the fleabaggers seem to have in abundance.
Oct 292011
A few years back I got to poke around a little bit in the NASM Garber facility. Lighting was not the best and some areas were photography-discouraged, but there were a few things that I got some photos of. One was a large model of an early Boeing Dyna Soar configuration. It may have originally been a wind tunnel model that was repurposed into a display model, or it may have been a display model from the get-go (kinda big, though).
Oct 292011
Another op-ed from yet another left-wing unthinker on the concept of national reciprocity produces this nugget of fashionable fascism:
Guns: This isn’t Salt Lake City
That would mean that a permit from Utah, a state with notably lax standards for concealed-carry permits, as well as permits from every other gun-toting state, would be valid in Massachusetts. … It just means more guns on the street. If this bill is brought up in the Senate, John Kerry and Scott Brown — and every other right-thinking senator — should vote against it.
Once more, let’s go to the FBI for numbers.
Utah: population 2.76M, 52 homicides (18.8 per million), 22 gun homicides (8 per million)
Massachussetts: population6.55 million, 209 homicides, (31.9 per million), 118 gun homicides (18 per million)
So what we have here is some drooling moron who is afraid that someone from a state where the *total* homicide rate is approximately the same as just the *firearm* homicide rate will come and pay a visit and bring their lower crime rate with them.