Apr 082013
 

Saw this today. If you’re ever in the Ogden area, stop in Impact Guns. Even in their currently depleted state, they have lots of neat stuff. If you want a full-auto STG-44, they’ve got one. They have an indoor shooting range in the back with lots of rentable guns.

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And because why not, here’s as good an explanation as any as to why Kim Jong Whatever is acting the way he is:

kimsnickers

 Posted by at 8:32 pm
Apr 082013
 

Back to the Moon? Not any time soon, says Bolden

Where the current NASA Administrator points out that NASA will not send another human to the moon in his lifetime.

On the one hand, the utter uselessness of NASA (not entirely their fault, of course) depresses the bejeebers out of me. On the other hand… bring on the billionaires and the private corporations. I’ll take the Weyland-Yutani Corporation over a bloated government bureaucratic monopoly any day.

 Posted by at 8:01 pm
Apr 082013
 

Some test footage of the Laser Weapon System  installed on the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105). This was previously shown HERE (and discussed HERE and HERE). In the footage, shot apparently last July, it’s shown frying (rather slowly) a small drone aircraft. Previously released video showing the laser knocking down identical flying-wing drones seem to have featured a ground-mounted system; this new video would seem to indicate that the shootdown occurred with the ship-mounted system. No data on how fast the ship was going and how rough the seas were. Guess: sitting still in calm seas.

[youtube OmoldX1wKYQ]

UPDATE: now with newsification.

The future is now: Navy to deploys lasers on ships in 2014

 

It somehow seems vaguely relevant to this news item:

PETA Plans to Fly Drones That Would ‘Stalk Hunters’

 Posted by at 7:14 pm
Apr 072013
 

A little while back some weather blew through late at night. Under the full moon, the clouds looked pretty interesting. Not all the photos, however, were terribly well composed. One in particular was the result of accidentally setting off the shutter release while still setting up the tripod.

 

 Posted by at 5:37 pm
Apr 072013
 

I’ve always heard that Howard Stern did a good job on 9-11-2001. On that day I was going to work in a van pool, and we listened to network news radio on the long drive in; I didn’t listen much to Stern, and didn’t hear him that day.

It turns out that Stern’s people finally put an edited version of the show on YouTube back in February. The video starts with a whole lot of Stern’s lowbrow NSFW humor about Pam Anderson… but once the news story begins to unfold, that came to an end. Stern maintains composure and was remarkably reasonable, but callers…. not so much. The Howard Stern Show  was a comedy show, and they tried to keep humor going, but the seriousness of the situation swept in. It’s really interesting.

[youtube dhPz8LlDRIo]

One bit that got me: at 46 minutes into the video – after the first tower had collapsed – Howard tells his staff that if they want to leave to go to their families, they were free to go. But shortly after, the general manager of the radio station tells Howard that if *he* wants to go, they’ll “fill.” Howard’s response was a flippant yet somehow kinda  powerful “I got nowhere to go.”

 Posted by at 12:33 pm
Apr 072013
 

Lamborghini Miura SV catches fire in central London. I gather this car is kinda pricy.

[youtube fqpa1HB-wOc]

—————-

Grozny, Chenya, was pretty well flattened by the war with Russia. But a number of skyscrapers went up pretty quickly afterwards… and one caught fire a few days ago. Methinks building materials were substandard. It looks like the exterior of the building was clad in fiberglass, or perhaps just plastic.

[youtube CVB4qvgon7M]

—————–

And here you have the human intellect, perhaps the most valuable thing known, burning in the flames of dumbth.

[youtube l1msS71xL00]

[youtube QKW7386h0JI]

 Posted by at 12:12 pm
Apr 062013
 

A photo of the Bell Helicopter BAT (Bell Advanced Tiltrotor) mockup built in the late 1980s. This was an early competitor in the Light Helicopter eXperimental (LHX) program, eventually won by what would become the RAH-66 Comanche. While the BAT met the early requirements of the program, it was too unconventional.

 Posted by at 10:57 pm
Apr 062013
 

You know what’s more dangerous than a gun? A nut with a gun. What’s more dangerous than a nut with a gun? An anti-gun nut with a gun.

‘Mayor Against Illegal Guns’ Arrested In Gun-Related Incident

The details are entertaining.

James Schiliro,  mayor of Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, apparently had one of his cops bring a 20-year-old male to his home, where he got said minor liquored-up and tried to make the Republican With Two Backs with him. When the kid chose to not be involved, the mayor reportedly pulled out a pistol and fired it into the floor (or maybe the wall) to force the guy to play along.

Superfun: the mayors 13-year old daughter was home at the time.

 Posted by at 5:02 pm