It’s also very likely skewed polling and hand-selected quotemining, but still…
Claim is 84% of Brits polled want to keep children from seeing images of hunting.
Sep 182012
Sep 182012
Suggestion of a married Jesus
Short form: a *tiny* scrap of an ancient papyrus page from a codex has fragmentary lines written in Coptic, one of which says: “Jesus said to them, my wife.” Researchers suggest this is from of a Christian sect that, a few centuries after the fact, believed that Jesus was married.
Clearly this is an insufferable blasphemy. When can we expect embassies to go up in flames?
Sep 182012
In the US, we get tornadoes. And we get wildfires. But leave it to the Aussies to produce fire tornadoes.
Soon to be a majorly bad SyFy Channel movie.
Sep 172012
Ultimatum to US: ‘Criminalise blasphemy or lose consulate’
LAHORE: Several Muslim parties and a Christian group held rallies on Sunday to protest against a movie released in America.
Around 10,000 people participated in the main rally… the director, the producer and all those involved in the production and release of the movie must be hanged publicly. “The US must make a law against blasphemy – or we will not let the US consulates in Pakistan function,”
There was one truly good bit of news in this article: one of the jihadis died after inhaling the smoke from the US flags they were burning. Heh.
Sep 172012
A 1959 design, produced by North American Aviation for Boeing, for a reusable Dyna Soar booster. The launch vehicle, powered by two Rocketdyne E-1 engines, could put this very early Boeing Dyna Soar vehicle into a 300 nautical mile polar orbit.
Sep 172012
An interesting article on efforts to keep the B61 nuclear weapons stockpile up and running:
The B61 bomb: A case study in costs and needs
And here’s the line that will fill you with optimism:
“We bought three or four on eBay,”
Nukes are not really “wooden rounds.” You cannot build a nuke, pack it in a box, leave it in a dry cool place for a decade and expect it to function; they need constant attention and scheduled maintenance. And to do it right, they need an infrastructure that knows what it’s doing. By chopping away at the nuclear bomb-building base, you end up losing the experience needed to simply maintain what you already have, never mind build new stuff.
Sep 162012
The B-17 on display inside the Hill Aerospace Museum:
Sep 152012
A bit of honesty slipped into a bit of goofy political theater.
[youtube j8nLVNQxtDM]
Translation: “Obama is so desperate he wants you to steal other peoples stuff, sell it, and send him the money.”
Bonus: symbols of the current administration includes waffles and bobbleheads.
I’m left to wonder if maybe this is actually some devious scheme on the part of anti-Obama film makers…
Sep 152012
Grrrr…….
Pet jerky treat death toll: 360 dogs, 1 cat, FDA says
At least 360 dogs and one cat reportedly have died in the U.S. after eating chicken jerky pet treats made in China, even as claims of illnesses tied to the products have topped 2,200, federal veterinary health officials said.
Sep 152012
As should be obvious, one of my jobs is that of “model maker.” This is a job title that I suspect is not long for this world; more and more it’s going to 3D CAD & 3D printing. Additionally, American craftsmen in areas such as this simply cannot charge the cheap prices that the Asian “genuine Philippine mahogany” sweatshop/slave labor firms do. So to compete, we’ve got to be *better* than the Asian crap and/or often touch on more obscure topics. I try to do both.
Ebay is a source for a lot of the cheap Asian models. I check in from time to time to see what thing they’re cranking out now. I saw a Project Orion model listed… and I gotta laugh:
Wow. That’s just so wrong on so many levels.