A tiny, postage-stamp-sized illustration in a double-page advertisement for Lockheed in a July, 1988, issue of Aviation Week shows a CAD diagram of a jet fighter. This appears to be a twin-engined stealthy air superiority fighter. The illustration appears to be a photo taken of an old-school CRT monitor, and mirrored for some reason. Sadly, none of the text is useful or readable, and dimensions are undeterminable.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The “labor force participation rate,” basically the percentage of the civilian population over the age of 16 who actually have jobs, is 62.8 percent for October, 2014. This means the *actual* rate of unemployment in the US is nearly forty percent; the only reason why it is generally listed as being much lower is because most of the unemployed have stopped looking for a job, and are thus no longer considered unemployed (it doesn’t make a lick of rational sense, but this is politics we’re talking about here).
And the rate has been dropping steadily:
So clearly, what the US needs is Even More low-skilled foreign workers flooding in.
Yay, imperial fiat!
Finally, a candle of Toht, the Gestapo scumbag who melts at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Give this little 5-minute animation a watch and just see if it doesn’t perk up your day:
[youtube HUngLgGRJpo]
As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, I remember going into the “Waldens” book store at the mall from time to time and looking at all the sci-fi and fantasy books. This was in an era when Frank Frazetta art was all over the place and Chevy vans were like as not to have airbrushed wizards and dragons on the sides (the 70’s were crazy).
Somethig I clearly recall were the “Gor” books of John Norman. At the time, they were omni-present in book stores. But I never read them; most of my early reading was library books, and the libraries never seemed to have them. And then sometime in the 1980’s they vanished, like the fever-dream of the Carter era, never to be seen again.
But then in 2008 I have a brief stint in Maryland. And like the Carter era reborn under Obama, the Gor books returned… or at least a whole bunch of ’em at a hole-in-the-wall used bookstore near Elkton, MD. They were cheap ($.50 each, IIRC), and looked like cheap mindless entertainment, so I bought ’em and started reading. They started off pretty much as I expected… a goofy mis-mash of sci-fi and fantasy tropes… aliens and magic and swords and barbarians and such. Not in the slightest good literature, but decent enough mindless entertainment.
But after a couple books, a disturbing trend began to become apparent. The author started to work into the story details about the system of slavery used on the world of “Gor;” in and of itself that’s not a biggie, as slavery is a pretty much inevitable result of fantasy (or pre-industrial or non-capitalist reality). But it became clear that the author thought that slavery itself was a pretty good idea… and that it was the natural state of women. A woman unslaved and unbeated was, it seemed, a great tragedy. Sado-masochism, all that weirdass stuff. This soon became the over-riding theme of *all* of the books, overwhelming what had previously been adequate Edgar Rice Burroughs-style cheapo fantasy. Bad as the whack-you-upside-the-head-message became, the writing became boring. My stubbornness was defeated by the books awfulness and I gave up after a small fraction of the books.
I suppose maybe I shoulda Googled ’em before reading them. Shrug. Live and learn. Well nearly fifty years after the first Gor book was written, John Norman is apparently still plugging away at them; the most recent having been published in 2013. Somehow I seem to have managed to fail to buy the newer stuff since that original purchase of old paperbacks in ’08.
So imagine my surprise to find these “unpublished Gor books” that almost seem as if they might be entertaining…
More such books at the link.
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And because why not:
The latest releases in the “US Projects” line (see the full library HERE):
Issue #02 of US Transport Projects, done in the same format as US Bomber Projects, USTP will cover flying vehicles designed to transport cargo, passengers and troops. Issue 02 includes:
USTP #02 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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Also available: issue #01 of US Spacecraft Projects. This series will present some of the wide range of manned and unmanned probes, stations, landers, spaceplanes and so on that have been designed over the decades. Issue #01 includes:
USSP #01 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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Dogs are useful because they can be brainwashed into doing what we want them to do. This can include ignoring toys and treats while under orders.
But sometimes a dog will transcend that nonsense and display a praiseworthy disdain for Doing What You’re Told.
[youtube 5iTTNRE-njM]
It’s from RT, which has all the reliability of Pravda, but still…
[youtube 4C_7FuJVG0c]
Could be a Mighty Blast from something dun blowed up real good, though it could also be a Space Chunk.
OK, now this is interesting:
As it turns out, there are statistically important differences in how male and female bodies fall apart due to the negative effects of long-term zero gravity and radiation. Men get eye and ear troubles; women get cancer. Men’s immune systems suffer; women get more urinary tract infections.
One more reason to finally quite with the long term zero G stations and transition to useful artificial gravity systems.
Former porn star: check
Wearing a colander as religious headwear in a drivers license photo: check
Utah just sorta shrugging the whole thing: check