Yay! We’re doomed!

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news  9 Responses »
Feb 142013
 

Foul conditions aboard stranded Carnival cruise ship Triumph: Passengers describe ‘sewage running down the walls’ and people acting like ‘savages’

OK, this sounds like a really bad vacation. But that’s what it is… a vacation that went bad. After an engine room fire that took out most of the electrical generation capability, the cruise ship Triumph was left adrift in the Gulf of Mexico with seriously reduced air conditioning, food prep and toilet-flushing capability. And in four days, new reports are coming out describing at least some of the people onboard as “savages.”

Now, here you have a bunch of people who are *not* starving (food prep may be hampered, but the ship obviously was fully stocked with a whole lot of food for the cruise). The passengers know that this is a temporary situation, and when it’s over they’ll be back to a fully-functional civilization. Yet there are reports of people fighting over food.

Consider for a moment that, instead of an engine room fire on a cruise ship, the problem was an EMP burst over CONUS or Europe or east Asia, taking down the power grid for tens or hundreds of millions of people. Yellowstone goes *foom.* A major plague breaks out. The economy collapses. The food trucks stop rolling into cities for a week or three air conditioning is out; the lights go off and stay off; the dead rising from the grave; cats and dogs living together; mass hysteria.

Similarly: just a few days ago we witnessed the spectacle of the LAPD completely losing their minds over “rogue ex-cop” and enthusiastic Obama supporter Chris Dornan. When some LAPD saw a truck of a different model from Dormans, with a different license plate, painted a different color, with two hispanic women rather than one hugenormous black guy, they decided that it was clearly time to act… and opened fire on the truck, shooting it dozens of times. This demonstrated that not only will those whose  very reason for being is to maintain civilization sometimes resort of complete barbarism… they might be pretty incompetent at it, as they didn’t even kill the two women in the truck.

My point: the best of us are about five seconds from completely flipping out. And when you pack humans in tight, as on a cruise ship, a housing project or a major city, you’re just asking for trouble of nightmarish proportions.

 Posted by at 10:31 am

Marvin Update: Morning

 cats, news  4 Responses »
Feb 142013
 

She has just been dropped off at the vet to get spayed and to have her tumors removed. All goes well, she’ll come home this afternoon.

She did not much appreciate being put in a little plastic box.

Img_5403

 Posted by at 8:58 am

How much for just the asteroid?

 Hmm..., reshaping the world, rockets, science, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Feb 132013
 

Asterank is an economic and scientific catalog of over 580,000 asteroids in our solar system.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the site (just stumbled across it myself), but it’s an interesting idea. The most valuable asteroids are worth more than $100 trillion a pop; the most cost effective asteroids in the neighborhood of $40 trillion each. I doubt, though, that these take into account the fact that if you mine many tons of, say, platinum from an asteroid and drop it into the terrestrial market, the market will get flooded and the price will drop.

Of course, if a large source of platinum was suddenly found, a lot more uses for the stuff would be found, demand would go up, and the price would rise again.

 Posted by at 8:42 pm

History Channel, Vikings & Violence

 awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., news, religion, youtube  1 Response »
Feb 132013
 

A new scripted series premieres on History Channel March 3rd, “Vikings.” From the clip shown HERE, it looks to be impressively violent.

The official synopsis:

Vikings follows the adventures of Ragnar Lothbrok the greatest hero of his age. The series tells the sagas of Ragnar’s band of Viking brothers and his family, as he rises to become King of the Viking tribes. As well as being a fearless warrior, Ragnar embodies the Norse traditions of devotion to the gods, legend has it that he was a direct descendant of Odin, the god of war and warriors.

Now, they’ll *really* have edge-of-the-seat exciting television if they have a crossover episode where the Vikings storm onto the set of “Ancient Aliens.” I’d pay good money to see that.

 

Here’s the official trailer, which doesn’t have what the clip linked above has:

[youtube 7rcozIVtujw]

 Posted by at 6:17 pm

Hobbit Hole Litter Box

 art, awesomeness, cats  No Responses »
Feb 132013
 

Here’s a neat idea that’s almost entirely impractical that your cat simply won’t appreciate:

Hobbit Hole Litter Box

It is just concept art, but I’m sure there’d be a market. It would also be fairly simple to build yourself… wood and actual sod & grass, say, or even just cardboard & astroturf. I wonder if the “shell” could be made of some lightweight and perforated material (chickenwire?) and the “grass” could be some sort of moss or fern or… something that would happily grow and filter out the stank of cat poop.

 Posted by at 12:47 pm

Pavarotti Break

 awesomeness, blather, youtube  1 Response »
Feb 132013
 

Whether or not you like opera, you gotta admit the man knew how to belt out a tune.

[youtube RdTBml4oOZ8]

[youtube bPvAQxZsgpQ]

[youtube TOfC9LfR3PI]

His last public performance was at the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. It was pre-recorded and lip-synched (apparently he was not up to sub-freezing performance anymore, and knew his voice wouldn’t be up to the challenge), but he still rocked the house and got the biggest applause of the whole ceremony. A few months later he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died in September 2007.

[youtube O0Sx5lbVlQA]

 Posted by at 1:38 am

Cthulhu Has An Air Force

 aircraft, critters, Hmm..., news, science  3 Responses »
Feb 132013
 

Add “mollusc” to the list of animal phyla that can fly.

Japanese researchers confirm squid can fly as fast as Usain Bolt

———-

Scientists Confirm That Neon Flying Squid Can Fly, Announce Speed

Basically, they are jet propelled; this is not really news as their underwater propulsion is basically jet propulsion, but Ommastrephes bartramii uses that to burst out of the water and fly about thirty meters in about 3 seconds. More interestingly, rather than being simple bullets in the air, they use the large fins on their mantle as canards, and spread out their arms – with membrane webbing – to form wings. They seem to have the ability to not simply glide, but to be able to control their glide. Their airspeed was clocked at 11.2 meters per second (25 miles per hour).

 Posted by at 12:28 am

Yay! We’re doomed!

 blather, Crazy, history, news, religion, ಠ_ಠ  1 Response »
Feb 122013
 

So Pope Benedict has decided to hang up his Pope-hat and take up golfing (or whatever it is retired Popes do to fill their days). This obviously means that another Pope will soon be selected to take his place. Where DOOOOM comes in: according to the “Prophesy of the Popes,” this next Pope will be the last Pope.

end is near

The Prophesy was first published in 1595, claimed as the work of Saint Malachy in the middle of the 12th century describing 112 Popes with short sentences. There is apparently no other record of Malachy having produced such a prophesy, so people who aren’t insane generally consider the prophesy to be a late 16th century hoax. Sadly, there’s lots of crazy in the world…

According to the prophesy, the last Pope is described thusly:

Petrus Romanus, qui paſcet oues in multis tribulationibus: quibus tranſactis ciuitas ſepticollis diruetur, & Iudex tremẽdus iudicabit populum ſuum.

Or: Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.

Whether Rome gets trashed at the end of the next Pope’s reign, and whether the end times will come, we’ll just have to wait and see. But part of that prophesy I can confidently state WILL come to pass: he’ll be “Peter the Roman.” How do I know this?

1) The Papacy is known also as the Petrine Ministry, after the Apostle Peter. Every Pope is thus, sorta, “Peter.”

2) Dude…  the Vatican, it’s in Rome.

Thus: Peter the Roman. Ta-da…

Fun fact: the prophesy, published in 1590, describes Popes from 1140 to “sometime in the future,” and the descriptions for the Popes from 1140 to 1590 are usually pretty clearly accurate… while those for the subsequent Popes need to be stretched and squinted at while hanging upside down in order to see ’em work. Odd, that.

Me, I’m doubtful. I’ve been promised doom many times and been disappointed every time.

mayans

 Posted by at 4:29 pm
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