Buttons update

 AARRRGH, blather, cats, news  3 Responses »
Aug 062014
 

As mentioned yesterday, yesterday AM he started a long bout of barfing. Well, in continued all last night and into today. So this afternoon he went back to the vet:

WP_20140806_016

Since yesterday he hasn’t had a speck of food or a drop of water that he didn’t yack back up within thirty minutes. To me, this sure sounds like he’s got a cork in him, somewhere. Vet says that a string, either balled up serving as a plug, or snaking through his innards serving as an irritant, is a likely possibility. So he’s spending the night at the vet and going to get an X-ray. However, strings don’t really show up on X-ray, so if they don’t see anything there, the next step is an endoscope. And the step after that is exploratory surgery, if they’ve ruled out everything else.

I have high hopes that the actual cause is a mutant hairball. This to me sounds not unlikely… as mentioned a few weeks back, he has recently taken up excessive grooming as a hobby, licking the base of his tail bald. It seems statistically unlikely that for a cat with few health issues to suddenly have two pop up more or less simultaneously without there being some link.

 Posted by at 5:27 pm

Yay! We’re doomed!

 blather, Hmm..., news  6 Responses »
Aug 062014
 

Vast methane plumes spotted bubbling up from the Arctic Ocean floor

Scientists are starting to see what appears to be methane hydrates on the ocean floor “melting” and releasing large amounts of methane gas. This not only serves as a possible indicator of global warming – the methane hydrates are stable so long as they are kept cold, but the oceans are warming, in places enough to melt formerly frozen hydrates – it also serves as potentially Bad News in that methane makes a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane is a tiny contributor to warming now, but if more methane is released, it could speed up warming. Which will speed up  methane hydrate melting, which will speed up methane release, which will speed up warming…

There are some possible actions that can be taken to alleviate this issue, at least in part:

1) Nukes. Lots and lots of nukes. As always, nukes.

2) Europe uses a whole lot of natural gas from Russia. But Russia has taken to acting like a dick lately. So… perhaps efforts could be instituted to switch over to ocean-floor methane. Cover the floor in vast plastic tarps; the methane released below will be captured, will try to rise up and “inflate” the tarp, and it can be tapped off. Realistic? Easy? Cost effective? Probably not. But if it’s “fund Putin” on one hand or “fight global warming DOOOOM” on the other, it seems a simple enough equation.

 Posted by at 1:38 pm

Power Module Construction

 art, history, projects, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Aug 052014
 

A NASA artists concept from 1977 showing the construction in low Earth orbit of a Power Module. This would be one of a *vast* number to be assembled; when finished they would be hauled up to geosynchronous orbit there to be assembled together into very large Solar Power Satellites. This design is shaped like a trough, with the bottom of the trough covered in photovoltaic cells; the sides of the trough would probably be extremely thin aluminum foil. The foil would reflect more sunlight onto the cells. This was done because thin aluminum is a whole lot cheaper *and* lighter weight than solar cells; additionally, these cells tend to operate slightly more efficiently at higher insolation levels (i.e. the more sunlight they get, the better they work).

This painting shows a Shuttle External Tank being used as the backbone of a Power Module construction base. At the nose of the ET is a small “Space Lab” for crew (with possibly more crew space within the LOX tank), and a large solar panel for power. Further down the side of the ET is a movable manipulator arm; at the end of the arm is what appears to be a manned pod which serves as the “hand.” The arm appears to have rails that run the length of the ET, allowing it to slide back as forth as needed. Further down the ET is the “beam builder,” a self-contained little factory that takes rolls of aluminum “tape” (the two “Mickey Mouse ears” on the back of the device) and forms and spot-welds the tape into large structural elements.

 
powermodule

 Posted by at 6:53 pm

AAAARRRRRGH

 AARRRGH, blather, cats  3 Responses »
Aug 052014
 

Buttons got better over the weekend; by yesterday he was back to normal. Today… he’s back to barfing. Started the day by not eating *any* of the food I made available, then proceeded to spew volumes of foam, now he’s chucking the water he drank to wash out the taste of the earlier foambarf. Wonderful. So I called the vet; earliest they can see him is tomorrow late afternoon.

I’m starting to come down on the side of “swallowed a string.” Gah.

 Posted by at 11:55 am

Gardening = Racism

 Crazy, Forward!, Meh., politics, ಠ_ಠ  7 Responses »
Aug 052014
 

Either that, or what we have here is another academic with too much free time on his hands:

Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time accused of being a vehicle to project ‘racist’ leanings

British people talking about plants? Clearly, that’s racist!

“The distinction that gets made between native species and non-native species and this kind of policing of what belongs and what does not belong I think is symptomatic of a kind of desire to defend the fantasy of the national space.”

Meh.

 Posted by at 10:19 am

Lovecraftian music video

 AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, Crazy, Gah., youtube  3 Responses »
Aug 042014
 

Apparently I’m three years behind the curve on this. But if you like Lovecraft, you’ll go out of you mind with the music video “Fantasy” by DyE. It’s on YouTube. Am I gonna link to it? Nope. Why? Because it’s NSFW. Holy *crap* is it NSFW (I suspect it would’ve made ol’ H.P. his own self turn green and spew). But if you’re interested, just search for DyE and Fantasy on YT, and it’ll take ya right there.

In short, it starts off looking like it might be an animated slasher flick. Then it turns very Lovecraft, as least Lovecraft as filtered through John Carpenter. And then in the last few seconds, it turns into the best full-on interpretation of the cosmic madness lurking behind the Cthulhu Mythos I think I’ve ever seen. As with the best Lovecraft tradition, the payoff isn’t until the very, very end… and as with the best Lovecraft tradition, you don’t quite actually get a look at the Great Old One.

Because if you did, y’know, you’d be driven insane.

 

rage__dye_fantasy_by_thehappyspaceman01-d5umzw3

 Posted by at 7:03 pm

Want something excessively awesome?

 art, awesomeness, weapons  8 Responses »
Aug 042014
 

If you are in the market for a firearm and you have just a whole lot of money, perhaps you should consider the .950 JDJ:

As its name implies, rifles chambered for the cartridge have a bore diameter of 0.950 in (24.1 mm), which would normally classify them as Destructive Devices in the United States under the 1968 (1934) National Firearms Act. However, SSK sought and received a “Sporting Use Exception” to de-regulate the rifles, meaning they can be purchased like any other Title I rifle by a person over age 18 with no felonies on their criminal record.[citation needed] The rifles themselves, of which only a handful have been made, use McMillan stocks and extraordinarily thick Krieger barrels bearing an 18 lb (8.2 kg) muzzle brake. Overall, depending on options, the rifles weigh from 85 to 110 pounds (39 to 50 kg) and are therefore only useful for shooting from a bench rest or heavy bipod.[3] Despite the weight, recoil is significant, and shooters must be sure to choose components (i.e., scopes and bipods) that can handle the abuse. The sheer size and weight of these weapons makes them impractical for hunting use, as they cannot be carried afield. Thus, they are largely “range queens”—rifles that are brought to the range for a fun time, but not usually used for hunting or other “more practical” uses. Additionally, the cost of owning and operating such a firearm is beyond most shooters

The cartridge propels its 3,600 gr (230 g) bullet at approximately 2,200 ft/s (670 m/s). This yields a muzzle energy of 38,685 ft·lbf (52,450 J)[1] and a momentum of 154.1 Newton-seconds, about the same as a 20×102mm Vulcan round.[citation needed]

By comparison, the 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge, used in the M16 rifle, produces between 1,200–1,300 ft·lbf (1,600–1,800 J), while the .308 Winchester, a favorite for hunters and medium-range police/military sniping, produces between 2,000–3,000 ft·lbf (2,700–4,100 J) depending on the load used. The ballistics of the .950 JDJ are more similar to that of the 20mm autocannon round, which delivers approximately 39,500 ft·lbf (53,600 J). The muzzle energy of the .950 JDJ is comparable to the kinetic energy of a 2,800 lb (1,300 kg) automobile traveling at 20 mph (32 km/h).

yow

lMoQY

 Posted by at 5:28 pm

Jaffa Kree!

 Hmm..., news, politics  4 Responses »
Aug 042014
 

Here’s a thought…

Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’

What the feller in fact called for is this:
1) Conquest of Gaza
2) Institution of Israeli law and governance (annexation, in other words)
3) Gazans who don’t want to be Israeli will be paid to go live somewhere else
4) The rest will become Israeli citizens
Shrug. If Russia can annex Crimea, taking it from a nation that was *not* shooting rockets into Russia… hard to argue against the military conquest of a nationless region that *is* shooting rockets at you.
 Posted by at 4:29 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries