State Department orders 5,000 BODY BAGS and 160,000 hazmat suits for African Ebola outbreak
Ummm… yay, I guess?
Sep 152014
Sep 152014
In a sane world, this would be one of the biggest stories in the developed world’s news. But in a sane world, this story would have never happened.
British Town Of Rotherham Shocked By Revelations Of Sexual Abuse
The ultra-short form: Rotherham had a “ring” of men who trafficked and gang-raped girls for a long time. This, sadly, is not an especially novel development… it happens far too often, far too widely, in places where you’d think the people woudl be far too civilized for that sort of thing. But horrible as the generic “sex trafficking of children” label is, it gets worse, due to the sheer *scale* of the operation: up to 1,400 children over 16 years. And the local authorities were repeatedly informed, but over a span of years did little to nothing. Why? Because they were afraid. Not afraid of the sex traffickers themselves, per se, like one might expect… it’s not unreasonable to assume that such a ring would be composed of and associated with dangerous men and organized criminals. But they were afraid of something far, far worse: political correctness. As it turns out, the men involved here were, in the vague terms so often employed, “predominantly Asian.” And by “Asian” they’re not talking about Koreans or Siberians or Chinese or Laotians or Russians or Indians. No, in Brit-speak, “Asian” seems to mean “Pakistani.” The victims were predominantly *not* “Asian,” but dirt-poor actual-ethnic-English.
Don’t you *dare* try to draw any conclusions from that. Don’t even think about it. Put it out of your mind.
And we’re now back to:
Sep 152014
There is a photo of the Colombian womens cycling team making the rounds online today. Normally a photo such as this, which simply shows ’em at some PR event standing side by side wearing their uniforms, would be of minimal interest to me, and of minimal relevance to this blog. The photo is entirely safe for work, as it shows nothing untoward or inappropriate. But I won’t post the photo, because it *appears* to be very, very NSFW. It is, in fact, one of the more bizarre and predictable fashion fails I’ve ever seen.
https://twitter.com/Ultimo_km1/status/510493354090835968/photo/1
As I said, there’s nothing truly NSFW there. But it could get a guy in trouble. If someone *wanted* to cause a ruckus with an overzealous HR department… well, leave me out of it.
Sep 152014
Artwork showing the major Dyna Soar/Titan III contractors. The Titan IIIc show here includes the large pitch stabilization fins (and small yaw fins) attached to the solid rocket boosters. Not depicted are the thrust vector control fluid tanks. At the time, the fins were thought needed to counteract the pitch moment that would be produced by the wings of the spaceplane way up front. In the end, it was concluded that thrust vector control would be more than adequate for the task; and while the Titan IIIC never launched a Dyan Soar, it retained the TVC capabilities that were produced to deal with the Dyna Soar.
Much, much more on the Dyna Soar, including the final few Titan III variants, can be found in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N4.
Sep 152014
After the quake, tsunami and reactor meltdown in Japan a few years ago, one feller decided it would provide a morale boost if he dressed up like Batman and tooled around the city of Chiba on a custom three-wheeled “Batpod.” And apparently he was right.
[youtube 2CzHFhZFk3g]
Favorite part: when interviewed, he answers in Japanese, which seems somehow appropriate for a Japanese feller. But he also answers using the Christian Bale “Gruff Voice” from the recent movies. But where it gets awesome: the BBC translator *also* uses Gruff Voice. Heh.
This is the sort of thing that DC/Warner Brothers might take an interest in. If they’re smart, they’ll find a way to *support* the guy, so long as he’s not doin’ nuthin’ stooopid.
Oh, and here’s a refresher on the Gruff Voice for those who might’ve forgotten:
[youtube w2yv8aT0UFc]
Sep 132014
So if Scotland decides to split from the UK, one of the issues will be that the British navy’s Trident missile subs are based in Scotland. There are apparently currently no good Trident bases in England or Wales. So where would the subs go? It looks like the US is a distinct possibility:
EXCLUSIVE: Send British nukes to US if Scotland votes Yes say military chiefs
Sep 132014
As odd as the FXM-1 Airacuda was, the McDonnell XF-85 was far odder. Designed to serve as a defensive fighter for the B-36, it was small enough that it could fit within the parent aircrafts bomb bay. It is dubious whether it would have been able to stand up to conventional Soviet jet fighters, but in any event testing of the “trapeze” needed to deploy and recover the parasite fighter showed that recovery was virtually impossible under normal circumstances, much less combat.
A McDonnell propaganda film about the XF-85 from 1948 or so:
[youtube jmZIDgPISR8]
And some silent footage of the XF-85, including a test “anomaly” where the tiny plane rammed the trapeze. The trapeze turned the aircraft into a convertible, sending the pilot on a mission to get to the desert below ASAP.
[youtube JIX9BsbtiTA]
Sep 132014
You know how the band keeps playing at graduation ceremonies and the like? There’s a reason for that. And it’s admirably demonstrated here, where the final, rather ridiculous “medal ceremony” at the end of Star Wars (“Well, we just blew up the Death Star on our doorstep, so the entire Imperial Navy is probably only moments away, so let’s gather everyone into one big room to stand around rather than pack up our crap and get the hell out of Dodge ASAFP”) is reworked without the John Williams score:
[youtube Tj-GZJhfBmI]
Sep 132014
CNN takes a moment away from reporting on missing airliners to bring us…
Will the ‘God particle’ destroy the world?
Short answer: probably not, but maybe.
My answer: it’s a big universe. Hell, it’s a big *galaxy,* and an old one. The probability is that many civilizations as advanced as ours sprang up in our own galaxy millions, even billions of years ago. And if the creation of Higgs particles bring with it the definite possibility of dropping the universe into a lower energy state – a process that would expand outwards at the speed of light from “ground zero” and would destroy every single particle – then it probably would have already happened by now.
Sci fi answer: sure, why not. Of course, since it’s a disaster mechanism that expands at the speed of light, not only can you not run away from it, but neither can you have any warning. The night sky would look perfectly normal, and then BLAMMO, you’ve evaporated. But here’s the hook for the story: assume this happens some time in the future, after we’ve invented hyperdrive, warp drive, jump engines, whatever. We can cross a hundred lightyears in an afternoon. Well, if some mad scientist sets off a Higgs Doomsday Device on Ceti Alpha V, the rest of the Federation wouldn’t know about it except for the sudden ending of subspace communications. Warp drive ships sent in would not report back. When someone finally starts piecing it together, an automated hyperdive ship is sent in, stopping every light-month to drop off a beacon that beeps in subspace. At some point the hyperdive ship vanishes, never to be heard from again. The Feds watch the beacons bleeping away, with one disappearing every month as the field expands.
Once they have it figured out, there’d be little choice but evacuation by their fastest ships. If you have meaningfully FTL ships, you can easily outrun the field… a jaunt of a thousand lightyears will give you a millenium of breathing room. And what to do during that millenium? Why… build a time machine, of course! Go back and stop the mad scientist, paradox be damned.
It’s the same old story.
Sep 132014
If you (“F14——“… all the rest of y’all, this ain’t meant for you, but it might prove instructive) are reading this, the reason why you’re not getting emails from me is because your email system won’t accept them. The inevitable return message for ever email I send you says:
From: Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON@AOL.com> [Add to Address Book]
To: scottlowther@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
Date: Sep 13, 2014 8:06 PM
Attachments: Delivery report Undelivered Message Headers
*** ATTENTION ***
Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with its
delivery. The reason your mail is being returned to you is listed in the
section labeled: “—– The delivery status notification errors —–“.
The line beginning with “Diagnostic-Code:” describes the specific reason
your e-mail could not be delivered. The following lines contains the
RFC822 header of the original email message.
Please direct further questions regarding this message to your e-mail
administrator.
–AOL Postmaster
—– The delivery status notification errors —–
<f14——@aol.com>: host core-mia09e.mail.aol.com[xxx] said: xxx
Your mail could not be delivered because the recipient is only accepting
mail from specific email addresses. If you feel you received this in
error, please contact the recipient directly and ask them to check their
email settings. (in reply to end of DATA command)
So… there ya go.