A Practical Solution To Prison Overcrowding

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, politics  13 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

Ship ’em to Canada:

Florida mother who fled US after being convicted of having sex with teen boy is granted ASYLUM in Canada from ‘cruel and unusual’ 30-year prison sentence

Seriously… how about this: when someone is convicted of a modestly serious crime like this, the courts could come down with a multiple-choice sentence: either decades behind bars at considerable expense to the taxpayers, or the criminal could give up their American citizenship and be shipped to Canada or England or Australia or some such sensitive place. What’s not to like?

Those convicted on drug charges could be offered a free trip to the Netherlands, say.

 Posted by at 10:53 am

Again with the Hans Kammler

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, Hmm..., projects, rockets, science, science fiction, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  9 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

General Hans Kammler was a high ranking bureaucrat in the Nazi regime, in charge of developing the death camps and, by the end of the war, in charge of production of the V-2 rocket and jet engines. At the end of the war, he vanished, reported having killed himself rather than be captured. One of a whole lot of Nazi scumbags who simply disappeared under a mountain of corpses.

But over the years, Kammler has been kinda like the Elvis of Nazis: he keeps being reported to have survived the war, having escaped to Antarctica, or escaped to South America or having escaped on an alien flying saucer or a time machine, whatever the inventor of the tale thinks will make him a buck. Well, huzzah, there’s a new one:

Did US fake top Nazi’s WWII suicide and spirit him away to get hands on Hitler’s secret weapons programme?

The idea here is that the US quietly took Kammler to the US to help with rocket programs and the like. And it’s of course true that the US did bring a whole lot of German scientists and engineers and their data to the US for the purpose of aiding with American research programs. But there is a massive problem with this hypothesis for Kammler: He would have been useless.

Kammler was a civil engineer. That’s why he designed death camps… at its heart, a large camp (“death” or otherwise) is a matter for people who know how to build buildings and transportation infrastructure and the like. But the US had no need for death camps, nor the expertise on how to make them. The US was *loaded* with civil engineers. We didn’t need more. What we need were weapons designers… aeronautical and mechanical engineers, physicists, chemists.

(As we said back in my college days, aerospace engineers make weapons. Civil engineers make targets.)

During his stint running the V-2 and turbojet programs, he was in charge of seeing to it that production of these complex devices that required unusual alloys was successfully carried out. But here again, it would have been a useless skill in the US. If there was anything the US was good at in 1945, it was building things in large numbers at high quality on a budget. Scrounging for rare alloys? Just buy ’em. Rounding up slave labor? Not an issue.

Kammler probably didn’t know a damn thing about what made the weapons work or the physics behind them; nor did he need to. That wasn’t his job. And the job he did do… the US didn’t need.

So while I suppose it’s possible that the US took Kammler, there would have simply been no point in it. Those we took in Project Paperclip we were quite open about. Von Braun and his team were plastered all over the pages of Life and Time. If Kammler made it to the US, he can probably be found in a shallow grave somewhere in the Texas desert with a 0.45 inch diameter hole in the center of his forehead, buried shortly after arrival when they figured out just what a useless tool he was.

 Posted by at 10:33 am

Slender Man strikes again

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Meh., news, ಠ_ಠ  6 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

Hamilton Co. mom: Daughter’s knife attack influenced by Slender Man

Dratted kids these days. Trying to kill people because some internet meme told them to. Sheesh. Why, back in my day, kids killed for better reasons: because when you played Judas Priest backwards, Satan told you to drink your Ovalkwik and take out the cheerleaders with your plasma cannon.
Why don’t we see kids stabbing people for Cthulhu, that’s what I want to know. Friggen’ Philistines, ignoring the classics…
 Posted by at 9:30 pm

Here’s your new media obsession

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, ಠ_ಠ  16 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

Well, the media *finally* has what they’ve been waiting for for years… Tea Partiers who have turned violent.  The two chuckleheads who gunned down two cops and a civilian in Las Vegas before capping themselves were, as has been and will continue to be widely reported, fans of the Tea party movement and had spent time at Bundy Ranch protesting against BLM/Fed actions. So, congratulate yourselves, lefties, you now have someone you can point to and blame limited government ideology on.

But the story has *everything* the media can gnaw upon, with the exception of missing airliners and – presumably – abducted cute little blond girls. For example:

1) The civvie who got shot was a concealed carry license holder. So now you’ll see a whole bunch of “civilians can’t defend themselves.”

2) The male killer was a felon, and thus was not allowed to own guns. His wife apparently couldn’t either, since she lived with him. So the guns they used don’t seem likely to have been legally obtained.

3) They were apparently white supremacists (why is it that the people who claim to be from the Master/Chosen/Superior/Divine/Cosmic/Whatever Race always seem to be such genetic losers?).

4) On their Facebook page, they “liked” the likes of Ron Paul and the NRA and FreedomWorks and other right-wing & gun groups… and Alex Jones and a bunch of marijuana legalization groups

5) This is good: “the married couple liked to dress up as the villainous “Batman” characters Joker and Harley Quinn”

6) And then the newsgasm: “the man also sometimes dressed as Slenderman, a fictional horror character that recently surfaced in the stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Wisconsin.”

 Posted by at 6:33 pm

NB-36H film

 aircraft, history, Hmm..., nukes, youtube  27 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

A Convair film describing the NB-36H. This was a B-36 modified with a nuclear reactor in the rear fuselage, in support of the nuclear powered bomber program then under development. The reactor was a real reactor, and was brought up to power in flight, but it never actually provided any power to anything – nor was it meant to. it was meant to simply demonstrate than an aircraft could fly with a functioning reactor.

[youtube 3eOYHkiBkzA]

There is one notable error due to artistic license. The NB-36H had an all-new cockpit (the B-36 used for the project had been trashed by a tornado and lost it’s cockpit to storm damage, so this actually worked out well), a massive structure of steel and lead with leaded-glass windows nearly a foot thick. The result was that with all ten engines at full power, the cockpit was reported to be nearly silent.

 

 Posted by at 2:28 pm

Critters in zero-g

 aircraft, blather, cats, critters, history, Hmm..., spacecraft, youtube  11 Responses »
Jun 082014
 

A 1960 USAF film describing testing being done in support of space biomedicine. Included are early vomit comet flights with kittens and pigeons…  they don’t really seem to be able to get a grip on just what’s going on. But then, they didn’t exactly have the situation explained to them, and only had zero-g in fifteen second chunks to learn.

[youtube mI4ZHSd5vNs]

It may look kinda cruel to do this to cats and the like, but it’s necessary. not to learn about how humans are going to handle zero g… we’ve got that. No, we need to put critters in zero g because we’re going to be taking them with us when we finally get up and head out. Of course, when we finally have family-sized colony ships heading out to stake claims in the asteroid belt they will almost certainly rotate for artificial gravity, but zero-g will be something that everyone will have to learn to deal with. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty sure that in a zero g environment cats can probably learn to get around, so long as the walls are covered in burlap and they have their claws. Dogs, I’m not so sure. They’ll have to have velcro booties, I think. Monkeys will almost certainly figure it out, but they’re horrible dangerous little beasts you’ve probably have to be insane to take with you on a space ship.

Also note the Moment Of Extreme Mad Men Fiftiesismocity at about 10:22: a guy is in a Mercury capsule-like impact couch and dropped a few years to WHAM onto the ground. Within mere feet is an Air Force office in full regalia… smoking a pipe like Bob Dobbs. Something about that strikes me funny.

 Posted by at 10:19 pm

Minuteman – From Design To Delivery

 AARRRGH, blather, history, Hmm..., nukes, rockets, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Jun 082014
 

A propainfotainment film from 1963 describing the development of the Minuteman ICBM.

[youtube WmSUoVJ1im0]

Point of note: 1963 is 51 years ago. With all the advances in the last half century, America still relies on the Minuteman. Since the Minuteman was developed, we also developed the Midgetman and Peacekeeper ICBMs… and got rid of them.

Also of historic note: when the Minuteman was developed, a lot of components that, were they to be developed today, would be digital were then analog. The safe-and-arm for the solid rocket motors was essentially a heavy chunk of clockwork. The S&A simply served the purpose of making sure than an accidental electrical or mechanical discharge somewhere, if it inadvertantly set off the ordnance lines leading to the motor igniter, would not actually get to the igniter. They are simple mechanical blocks that prevent the signal from getting through unless they are properly activated.

The Minuteman S&A’s worked well enough. So, when Thiokol was developing the  solid rocket boosters for the Shuttle, they used the Minuteman S&As. And since once something is designed and fielded at NASA it almost never changes, the 1963-vintage S&As stayed with the RSRMs throughout the lifespan of the Shuttle. Last I knew, they were also in use on the five-segment boosters to be used on the “next generation” Space Launch System.” So *if* the SLS gets built (doubtful) and flies for decades (doubtful), the relatively ancient Minuteman S&As will probably fly with them throughout the SLS’s lifespan. If SLS flies in 2020 and lasts 20 years, the Minuteman S&A will have an 80 year operational life. Of course, by the time the SLS is retired, the Minuteman ICBM itself might still be in service.

 Posted by at 2:28 pm

Music Break

 art, blather, science fiction, youtube  4 Responses »
Jun 082014
 

Because sometimes you need to sit back, relax and listen to some light, cheerful tunes. Like… “Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs & Orchestra,” used to good effect in both “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Godzilla.”

[youtube HhwWAciO6F4]

 Posted by at 2:07 am

APR V3N4 previews

 aircraft, APR, blather, drawings, history, new products, news, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 082014
 

I’m getting close to being done with this one. The main article, clearly, is the one on the Model 2050E Dyna Soar, the second far smaller article is on the McDonnell F-4(FVS) and derivatives, the third is the old Bill Slayton CL-295 article from the original version of APR. There will be a few more small pieces, not shown here.

v3n4 ds2050e v3n4 cl295 v3n4 f4fvs

Issue V3N5 will almost certainly be smaller than this. Apart from the Lunar Gemini article, it will likely be composed of a number of all-new smaller articles. I’d like to move forward a short article from further down the run to this one, due to having some new info, but that info is embargoed by the source till later in the year. It’d be nice to get back on the two-month schedule for APR, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

 Posted by at 12:12 am

WANT!

 art, awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., science, youtube  6 Responses »
Jun 072014
 

OK, obviously this magnetic levitation device is really kinda pointless apart from “art,” but ya gotta admit it’s cool. Somehow, though, I suspect I’d need to pawn a  kidney (preferably someone elses, and more preferably, someone I don’t like) in order to afford it. Comes from the Netherlands, and according to their website, you have to request a quote. That’s rarely a sign of affordability. Sigh.

[youtube 1gMMM62NC-4]

Note that one of the demos is a levitating pillow which they then add a sizable brick to. You know what would’ve been better? A pillow that a cat adds itself to. A levitating, sleeping, rotating magic cat. You *know* that’d be awesome.

 Posted by at 10:13 pm
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