Thai MP Boonsong Kowawisarat ‘accidentally kills secretary’
Senator Kowawisarat, in the restaurant, with an Uzi.
Aug 132012
Aug 132012
The XP-71 was a sizable Curtiss-Wright design from 1941 for a long range escort fighter. Irritatingly little has been publicly revealed about it. This is assuredly not due to the XP-71 being such an incredibly advanced design (although it was incredibly complex), but rather due to it having been a failed concept. Armed with two 37mm and one 75mm cannon, the XP-71 was bigger and substantially more expensive than a medium bomber such as the B-25, and would likely have been less nimble than a smaller fighter. While the armament would have packed a mighty whollop, targeting an Me 109 or a Zero would have been a matter of great luck or incredible skill. The XP-71 effort lasted from 1941 to 1943.
While I’ve recently been clued in on a Curtiss-Wright report with some good drawings of an oddly swept-wing version of the XP-71 (release of further info currently embargoed), very few decent quality drawings seem to have been released. One of the very few “official” three-views is a rather small diagram from a NACA report describing a great many spin-tests. I’ve not yet located the specific test reports dealing with the XP-71.
Aug 132012
Dusty in here.
Donations Pour In Granting Oklahoma Vietnam Vet’s Dying Wish And More
Sad but great story of a dying Vietnam veteran getting his medical bills paid and a trip to finally see The Wall in D.C. (But wouldn’t Honor Flight cover this?)
Aug 122012
Take virtually *any* YouTube clip from the Middle East showing violence… whether it’s an Al Queda video showing an attack on American soldiers in Afghanistan, or a street battle in Iraq, of protestors vs cops in Egypt… or Syrian rebels throwing *postal* *workers* off the roof of a municipal building:
[youtube Su-vte9Iw9k]
(Note: this clip may not be visible, what with it being “inappropriate” and such.)
What do all these scenes of violence have in common, apart from violence? One phrase: “Allahu Ackbar,” or “God is great,” being shouted by at least one and often many of the witnesses to the violence.
Now, the rest of the world is hardly violence-free. But what you generally *don’t* hear in videos of western-world violence is stuff like “Jesus is awesome” or “Joseph Smith is neato-keen” or “The Pope is spiffy” or even “Ooooodiiiinnnn!” while someone shoots, stabs, clubs or blows up an enemy. By associating religion with every single violent act – regardless of whether the violence is religiously or politically motivated – then it’s hardly unfair for people outside that religion to associate that religion with violence.
Aug 122012
A decade or so ago, Free Republic was a decent place for conservatives of all types to hang out. But it has been quite a number of years since it began a serious decline into niche nonsense. Take, for example, this thread started by the founder of Free Republic:
Ryan is a good man, but does not redeem the abortionist/homosexualist statist Romney
Lastly, we’re having a bit of changeover on our moderator staff. At least two moderators resigned this afternoon after I flatly refused to rein in a so-called anti-Mormon “bigot” on FR. Well, if being in opposition to false prophets and false prophecy makes a Christian believer a bigot, then I guess I’m a bigot. I’ve posted before that I flat do not believe that the Book of Mormon is the true word of God. Nor do I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. The Christian bible warns us to be weary of false prophets and that I am. Romney being the presumptive Republican nominee does not change that fact.
Wow. Not the way to help win elections, jackass.
One thing I’ve never really understood is the drive some people have to support only those candidates that fit 100% with their political and even religious ideology. It’s a drive in contradiction to both reason and history… the same dweebs bitching about Romney not being conservative enough are pretty much the same ones who, four years ago, bitched that McCain wasn’t conservative enough. And so (so they said) they’d withhold their vote from McCain so that Obama would win and thus the RNC would be forced to nominate a Real Conservative in 2012. And now they claim they’ll not vote for Romney… thus helping Obama win another four years.
Dumb.
Aug 122012
I’ve got a song stuck in my head. It’s the worst kind, too… I don’t know *what* song it is. A snippet of it can be heard in the last ten seconds of this YouTube clip. Does anyone know the song, so I can look it up, listen to it and dislodge it?
Aug 122012
A few nights back I took hundreds of photos of the night sky in hopes of getting some good meteor photos; I only caught a single meteor, and it was pretty pitiful (especially compared to the ones I’d seen with the naked eye that crossed ~120 degrees of sky). But the location was interesting… actually pretty close to the Andromeda galaxy. Something the size of a grain of sand flaring briefly into incandescence, and for a fraction of a second outshining a hundred billion mighty suns.
A pity that the sky was, thanks to dust and smoke and the lighting from the urban metropolis of Tremonton, Utah, such a horrible color.
Aug 112012
A 1969 Convair concept for a space shuttle. The Triamese used three vehicles that shared outer mold lines and many components… two as boosters, a third as the orbiter. The orbiter would have more complex rocket engines, featuring extendable nozzles for improved high altitude performance. All three included cockpits, relatively small high aspect ratio wings that would be stowed internally and flip out for landing, and flip-out turbofans for re-entry cruise and go-around capability. Numerous variants were studied including biamese versions using dissimilar boosters and orbiters.
Aug 112012
Cracked.com has a thing up about the 13 most disturbing vintage ads for household products. Fark.com ran with it. Revolvers for children, Lysol for The Ladies (if you get what I mean, and I think you do), booze for children, heroin for everyone, vibrating devices that I suspect might not have been quite what they were advertised as. My favorite:
Yeah, I don’t think they’ll be running that one again anytime soon.
Aug 112012
3D printing continues to advance. Nanometer scale printing, titanium and stainless steel printing of items the size of truck engines, printed optical lenses.