Tragedy of the commons

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, I'm from the government  2 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

Spain to receive shipwreck treasure after legal battle

Short form: a Spanish ship sank in 1804 with a bunch of gold & other treasure. Odyssey Marine exploration, Inc. fished up 49,000 pounds of goodies, worth about half a BILLION dollars. The US government declares that sunken treasure belongs to the nation of origin, not to the finders. US government gives the treasure to the Spanish government, not even allowing the company to get compensation for having stored the treasure.

Money quote from Melinda MacConnel, Odyssey’s general counsel:

“They have not considered the high cost of storage and conservation of these coins, but more importantly they have failed to consider that in the future no one will be incentivized to report underwater finds.

“Anything found with a potential Spanish interest will be hidden or even worse, melted down or sold on eBay.”

Good job, Spain. Say goodby to any more treasures from the past. Were I a professional treasure hunter, I’d certainly consider melting down any found gold, or just selling it one doubloon at a time.

 Posted by at 9:21 pm

NOBODY’S PEЯFECT

 aircraft, awesomeness, humor, youtube  8 Responses »
Feb 232012
 

Snerk.

An old Teledyne-Ryan Aeronautical-produced film that actually pokes fun at Teledyne-Ryan. Bits of it are actually pretty damn funny… and pretty much the sort of thing that would get people fired today.

[youtube Ln-CJ5ITUoQ]

 Posted by at 7:17 pm

This seems vaguely familiar

 blather, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, science fiction, youtube  3 Responses »
Feb 232012
 

A forthcoming movie “4:44 Last Day on Earth” deals with people preparing for an apparently unstoppable and precisely timed apocalypse.

[youtube A-1Q7EevCy8]

Hmmm. Seems like an unfunny version of “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.”

And then a few months back there was “Melancholia,” which dealt with Earth getting whacked by a whole other planet, and the way the last few days were handled by a group of apparently depressed people.

What’s to me weird isn’t that movie makers crank out movies with unlikely plotlines in the same year (Dante’s Peak/Volcano, Armageddon/Deep Impact, etc). What seems weird to me is this *particular* plotline. Sure, end-of-the-world movies have been around for a long time. But they usually fall into two categories:

1) The end is coming, and heors work to prevent it

2) The end happens, and survivors struggle to make it through

This to me seems fairly unique: The end is coming, and there’s nothing that you or anyone else can do, and you’re all going to die. The other types speak to some kind of hope in the darkness, or sheer cussedness, or something along those lines; this new trend is sheer hopelessness.

Hopelessness and Change, baby…

And so long as I’m yammering on about Doomsday…

 Posted by at 5:47 pm

The Necromongers are at it again

 blather, books, Crazy, dumbassery, religion  4 Responses »
Feb 232012
 

Afghan’s Karzai demands public trial for Quran burners

Some cultures… well, they just don’t belong.

Our soldiers are dying because a whole bunch of morons have been brainwashed into believing that their little supernatural handbook is somehow more special than all the other supernatural handbooks. Fug’em. We should bail… and salt the land behind us as we go. Send U-2’s at high altitude over their little craphole of a country and rain half-burnt copies of their book on ’em from high altitude.

 Posted by at 1:33 pm

Faster-than-light neutrinos could be down to bad wiring

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Feb 232012
 

What might have been the biggest physics story of the past century may instead be down to a faulty connection.

If true… sad, but hardly surprisingly.

No, check that. This *does* surprise me a bit. Not that there would be an issue with the instruments, but that the scientists would have staked their reputations on such a remarkable claim without having done a sufficiently complete evaluation of their system.

Sounds like someone may get their ass handed to ’em.

 Posted by at 9:33 am

Judge rules that it’s ok to assault atheists…

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, news, religion  7 Responses »
Feb 222012
 

… if you are a Muslim.

Judge rules against atheist attacked in costume

Short form: during a Halloween parade in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (yes, that’s in the USA), an atheist was dressed as “Zombie Muhammed.” This offended a Muslim immigrant, who not only thought that it was illegal to dis Mo, but also took it upon himself to assault Zombie Mohammad. This was caught on crappy YouTube video. The assaulter was sent before a Judge… who ruled that the atheist was a “doofus” and sent the assaulter on his way, no conviction, case dropped.

A while back one of the trolls hereabouts was arguing that it was wrong to have a judge come before his employers and explain his decisions. Here is a case where a judge *really* has some ‘splainin’ to do. Unless something really good comes out, I’d say that he might need to be given an opportunity to explore a new career in fast food preparation or entry level data entry. Because it certainly looks like he sorta missed out on the whole “rule of law” thing.

There is, however, another aspect to the story: the Judge, one Mark Martin, is himself a Muslim. The victim of the assault posted a YouTube video with the audio of the trial (a little over half a hour); at the 31:28 point you hear the Judge mention that he’s a Muslim and offended by the “Zombie Muhammed” costume. Right after that he tells the victim “You have that right [to dress up as Zombie Muhammed], but you’re way outside your bounds of first amendment rights” (go ahead and try to figure THAT out).

[youtube Sv9IyrpOnbs]

 Posted by at 10:02 pm

Nuclear Saturns

 drawings, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
Feb 222012
 

A July 1964 illustration from NASA-Marshall showing two configurations for the Saturn V with a nuclear upper stage. The first image seems to be a RIFT (Reactor In Flight Test) design. The second design seems to show a direct-landing Apollo… an Apollo Command and Service Module that lands directly on the lunar surface, no need for a separate lunar module. The Saturn V was not capable of launching such a mission, due the the mass of the needed additional stage (shown below the CSM) that would lower the CSM almost to the lunar surface, leaving the SM with enough propellant to get home.

 Posted by at 8:40 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries