Caught these early this morning from my front yard:
Oct 082012
Oct 072012
Oct 072012
As of 1964, the GA of the Models 176, a lifting body, stowed-wing spaceplane. See HERE for late 1960’s artwork of a larger version.
Oct 072012
Ugh.
Republican Representative Paul Broun, Georgia, member of the House Science Committee:
All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. … You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth… I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them.
[youtube rikEWuBrkHc]
You’re not helping.
Now, don’t get me wrong. People who refuse to believe facts and instead want to believe the most monstrously obviously wrong and silly nonsense have the right to vote, have the right to run for Congress, have the right to win and holds seats if they win a proper election (how else would we have Democrats?). But what in Zarquon’s name are people who explicitly believe that science is not only factually wrong, but instead desperately EVIL, doing on the Science Committee???
Note: you want to believe in God, Heaven, Satan, Hell, Zeus, Tartarus, Shiva, Feklar, Crom, ghosts, souls? Sure, great, whatever. You want to believe that evolution is something other than an established fact? You’re WRONG. You are either intensely ignorant, or you are lying to yourself. In either case, you don’t pass even the most preliminary tests that should be required to be on a “science committee.”
Oct 072012
Here’s some straight-outta-sci-fi news for ya:
Mouse stem cells used to produce eggs, Japanese scientists say
If this can be translated successfully to humans, it means a woman with no eggs – due to a hysterectomy or whatnot – could nevertheless still produce eggs. Sperm were also produced. However, both experiments used embyronic stem cells, which is of course useless here for practical use… but if it works with embryonic stem cells, it can probably be made to work with adult stem cells.
Oct 072012
South Korea puzzles over oddball success of ‘Gangnam Style’
“Koreans thought if someone made it in the U.S., it would be the pretty girls or boys,” the critic concluded. “Not a middle-aged man singing in Korean.”
Well, duh.
The pop charts are loaded to the gills with pretty girls and boys. The masses trying to get onto the pop charts are packed with even more pretty girls and boys. We’ve got enough pretty people who think they can sing to fill up an entire B Ark. So we’re not looking for pretty girls and boys from Korea… for every one such trying to break into the American market, I have no doubt there are half a dozen American pretty girls or boys of Korean descent who are trying to break into the American market.
So, a slightly goofy-lookin’ middle aged Korean feller calling himself “Psy” succeeds where the pretty people have failed. Why? Well, have you seen the video? As of this writing, it has been watched on YouTube 392 *MILLION* times. Why? Well, partly because even though it’s in Korean, it’s fairly catchy. But mostly because, even though it’s in Korean, it’s FREAKIN’ HILARIOUS.
[youtube 9bZkp7q19f0]
I first saw this a few months ago, and laughed my ass off. Actually, it was the *second* “Gangnam Style” video I’d seen…. THIS one is what caught my attention:
[youtube kAWS57Xlwoc]
When your music video can make an overweight sports team cheerleader security guard into a national hero and a worldwide sensation, you’ve done *something* right.
Further: you’ve done something right when your video inspires a billion parodies, such as:
[youtube uYBCgV6a5kE&]
[youtube M660rjNCH0A]
Making it in America is often easier if you’re pretty. But more important is talent, luck and timing.
Oct 062012
A Bell Helicopter concept in model form of an armed derivative of the XV-15 tiltrotor. This dated from the early/mid 1980’s and represented a ground attack aircraft… largely what the US Army was looking for in what became the LHX/RAH-66 Comanche program, just in tiltrotor form. As a tiltrotor, it would have had a much faster and more fuel efficient cruise, but a less efficient hover, than a helicopter. The Army turned out to not want tiltrotors for this application, and made sure that they were effectively excluded from the LHX competition.
Note the hand-written notation that missiles would only be fired in hover… otherwise, they would pass through the proprotor disk. However, it seems likely that missiles could be fired while the rotors were tiltedless than fully upwards, meaning that the craft could fire and move at a fair rate at the same time, just not at full speed.
Oct 062012
Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril
It could become illegal to resell your iPhone 4, car or family antiques
The logic: you don’t own the copyright to that old novel or the Iphone you want to sell. Therefore if you want to sell it, you need to get the copyright owners permission.
Crazy? You betcha. But the Supreme Court is going to hear this very argument soon enough. Anything not made in the US may become *illegal* to resell. And since we don’t make much of anything anymore, that means pretty much everything may become illegal to resell.
Oct 062012
Every few days I drop into the Disqus (the commenting system used on the blog) spam bucket to see what if anything its caught. Usually nothing. Today there were quite a number of posts from the last few days that showed up there for no readily apparent reason, including posts from people who Disqus has happily and automatically approved before. I approved the comments, so if you posted and wondered where your comment went, now maybe you know. of course, there have been other commenters who have emailed that their comments never appeared, and that didn’t end up in the spam bucket so… dunno.
Oct 062012
Next up from me for AIAA-Houston, restored pages from the second article in the Collier’s “Space Series.”
Looks for the next issue of AIAA-Houston “Horizons” in several weeks.