Snerk.
[youtube IkMPZ7WeDck]
Dec 222012
Dec 222012
A cutaway illustration of the S-IVb second stage of the Saturn Ib launch vehicle, from a Skylab mission flight manual.
Dec 212012
An interesting article. The short form: The forthcoming movie tells the story of a natural gas company that comes to farm country in order to do some fracking, but Heroic Environmentalists stop them since fracking is so horribly, horribly dangerous. What’s interesting is that this movie was apparently funded by the UAE, which of course would be less than thrilled with the US becoming more energy independent.
Dec 212012
Make sure to play this at the office REAL LOUD.
[youtube KqryALqiQW0]
Dec 212012
Here’s the Audio of the NY Gov. Talking Gun Control: ‘Confiscation Could Be an Option’
Where we hear New York Governor Cuomo discuss what to do about “assault weapons,” and suggest that confiscation is an option. With a new AWB, existing guns and magazines would not be grandfathered in… if you owned one, the State could compel you to turn it in to them.
Well, ok, hardly a surprise. However, keep in mind that the great majority of gun murders are carried out not with long guns, but with pistols. So it seems safe to say that a grab of handguns will also be considered. You know, “for the children.”
So what would an American stripped of legally owned firearms look like? Many people try to suggest comparisons to Europe, where they don’t murder each other at the same rate we do (until they fire up the long-range bombers and the death camps). But that’s not a good comparison… American ain’t Europe. Our cultures are quite different. A far better comparison would be to… America itself. There are places in the US where such bans on legal firearms have been in place for a long while. Take, for example, the shining gun-free city on the hill that is Chicago. Where we find:
446 school-age children shot so far this year – 62 actually murdered
As of Dec. 20, 518 homicides in Chicago
With a population of about 2.7 million, that’s a murder rate of 19.2 per 100,000. Now, extend that to the whole US, with a population of 310,000,000. The new national murder total would be 59,474. Compare that with the current score of 16,799.
You can expect the murder rate in the US to go up by a factor of about three and a half. An extra 42,675 murdered folk thanks to a drive to have *fewer* murdered folk.
This is not entirely a silly little math exercise. If a nationwide gun-grab occurs, who will be disarmed? The law abiding, obviously. The criminals will not of course turn their guns in. Indeed, this would only embolden them… they still have their guns, while the citizenry victims do not. Now, the gun-grabbers might argue that over time, the guns would be removed from the criminals hands; and this is true; every time a gun breaks or is captured, it’s out of service, probably forever. But consider:
1) The border patrol cannot stop *bales* of weed from sneaking across the border. And weed, unlike guns & ammo, has a distinctive chemical trace that dogs & such can pick up on.
2) People can make guns in home shops now.
3) People will soon be able to simply *print* guns at home.
OK, the next claim will be that ammo will be just as strictly controlled, and will quickly run out. Well, sure… but see #1 above. And then there’s…
4) As technology advances the gun of tomorrow might not need ammo as it has been known. Gauss guns today are a bit of a joke; but they are improving. Hand-held lasers today are a bit of a joke; but they’re improving. And it’s certainly conceivable that the rapid prototypers of the year 2020 would be able to stamp out every single component needed for such weapons.
And of course, even without ranged weapons, criminals would have the upper hand over much of society. Have you seen them? Most of them are hardly reed-thin stick figures, barely capable of taking on Justin Bieber. No, a good fraction of them can break you in half. And when they do get caught and thrown in the pokey, what do we do with them? Give them exercise equipment, assuring that when they get out they’ll be even *worse.*
So, cast your eyes to Chicago if you want to see the future.
Dec 212012
“Code One” is the in-house magazine put out by Lockheed-Fort Worth. They have been adding a lot of good stuff regarding projects to their website over the years, and now have a page devoted specifically to diagrams of unbuilt aircraft:
Aviation Archeology
Only a few just now, but they say that there are a lot more coming.
Dec 202012
Or something. In the words of Han Solo: I feel terrible.
UPDATE: Still alive, systems rebooted.
This flu followed the usual progression of flues, in my experience: a few hours of feeling funny, a sudden *WHAM* of cold sweat and horribleness, and about 24 hours of sheer unpleasantness. Reading the comments, I can only marvel at the apparent bucolic nature of other people’s experience of the flu… wrap up, stay warm and sleep. In my case… ah, no. Without getting into details: the most important thing is to always be within 10 seconds of the toilet. And yes, dehydration is a serious issue. Here’s a mental image for y’all: imagine offloading so much fluid so fast you can actually *feel* your blood pressure crashing.
Anyway, the first 24 hours ended about midnight, and at that point I was able to actually get to sleep. Things seem to be more or less back to normal, though I feel kinda beat to hell. Gotta get back to work… in all yesterday I think I had *maybe* 10 minutes of meaningful functionality. Bleah.
Dec 202012
A Splendor Seldom Seen
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn’s shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are backlit. (The sun is behind the planet, which is shielding the cameras from direct sunlight.) In addition to the visual splendor, this special, very-high-phase viewing geometry lets scientists study ring and atmosphere phenomena not easily seen at a lower phase.
Since images like this can only be taken while the sun is behind the planet, this beautiful view is all the more precious for its rarity. The last time Cassini captured a view like this was in Sept. 2006, when it captured a mosaic processed to look like natural color, entitled “In Saturn’s Shadow.” In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making “In Saturn’s Shadow” one of the most popular Cassini images to date. Earth does not appear in this mosaic as it is hidden behind the planet.
Also captured in this image are two of Saturn’s moons: Enceladus and Tethys. Both appear on the left side of the planet, below the rings. Enceladus is closer to the rings; Tethys is below and to the left.
This view looks toward the non-illuminated side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ring plane.
Images taken using infrared, red and violet spectral filters were combined to create this enhanced-color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 17, 2012 at a distance of approximately 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale at Saturn is about 30 miles per pixel (50 kilometers per pixel).
Dec 192012
Dec 192012
Because perspective is important. From Wikipedia comes this graph showing the leading causes of preventable death in the US (from 2000):
Even just as it is, “firearms deaths” is pretty low on the list. But note that this is “deaths,” not “homicide.” In fact, it’s an important distinction. The 29,000 “Firearms Deaths” breaks down thusly:
Suicide: 16,586
Homicide: 10,801
Accidents: 776
Legal Intervention: 270
Unknown: 230
Homicide is only 37% of the total for firearms deaths, with suicide takign up the great majority. With that in mind, here’s the chart revised to showcase homicide alone rather than suicide and all the rest:
Note that now, firearms homicides are clearly the lowest of all the causes listed here. Compared to motor vehicle collisions (or the newly added “Doctors” category, covering the 44,000 to 98,000 killed annually by medical screwups), it’s barely a blip. So for those who use arguments like “American firearms murders scare me,” get some perspective. If you are a foreigner contemplating visiting the US for business or vacation, you really don’t need to worry about getting shot. You do, however, need to worry about getting run over. And don’t try the drugs, booze or smokes… compared to our guns, those are certain death. And poisons? Diseases? Clearly, you should avoid the US like the plague.