Whenever a lunatic who worships some imaginary demon from the desert goes on a shooting or bombing rampage – and often enough when there are two such whackos working together – the media refers to him as a “lone wolf.” I find this annoying for the simple fact that wolves are reasonably respectable critters, and associating a lone wolf with a Surt worshipper working by himself is a grave insult to our canine friends. I just can’t bring myself to compare some dork with a pipe bomb with Fenris.
So… what else we got? When a lone nut undergoes Spontaneous Jihad Syndrome, what can we refer to him as that gets the idea across, doesn’t insult wolves, doesn’t connote any sort of dignity and, preferably, is not an expletive? “Lone Nut” does the job, but sounds pretty “meh” to my ears. “Lone Lamprey?” Naw. “Lone Maggot?” Yech. “Lone Loonie?” “Lone Whackadoodle?” “Lone Scumbag?”
After the Chelyabinsk bolide, a number of small pebble-sized chunks were found in the snow. These hit at whatever the terminal velocity of a pebble would be… probably safely subsonic, the smaller, the slower. The region was blanketed with a thick layer of snow at the time. When the chunk hit the snow, they created unusual formations of denser, more structurally-solid snow dubbed “snow carrots.” Nobody had seen this before, and nobody knew how it was done, so, as was the style of the time, detailed computer simulations were performed to replicate the process. Me, I woulda just shot pebbles into snow, but I’m old-school that way.
A friend of mine has had an idea for a smart phone app that I think has merit. However, neither of us have clue one how to program such a thing. We’ve worked through the idea of the app, what the user would see and do, and what the app itself would have to do, but the coding is beyond us. Is there anyone reading along who has had experience developing an app? I’ve found some apps that are similar, but are missing major and vital parts of what we want this to do. So it seems to be unique.
If anyone can provide assistance or direction, please advise.
A number of vehicles there that I don’t recall from the movie… not just flying cars, but just about the funkiest cargo truck concept I’ve seen in a while.
A short film serving as a teaser for a potential much longer one. While the logic and science behind this seem dubious at best, the visual effects are pretty astounding.
An apparently vintage 1/96 scale Saturn V display model on ebay, apparently built at the NASA-MSFC model shop back in the day. Just a smidge above my pay grade at a Buy It Now price of 20 large. I’ve seen thespiffy, to say the least.se in museums…
Couple this with Putins recent vanishing act, and ya really gotta wonder what the hell’s going on over there. It’s getting harder and harder to *not* see Putin as an old-school Bond villain. Well, at least maybe the nuclear winter will counter the global warming. Glad to know we have such spectacular leadership in the US government these days to stand up to these shenanigans and rally the nation in a potential time of crisis.
Another ebay auction presents a display model of a transport version of the McD Model 260 VTOL from the 1970’s:
A great many Model 260 variants were designed, all based on the same basic concept: an aircraft shaped much like a corporate jet, featuring a pair of turbofan engines of very high bypass ratio located in shrouds which could unfold to direct the thrust downward for vertical lift and hover. Unlike the Rockwell XFV-12, the Model 260 could probably have worked, but it was never built.
Unless the celebrity or politician you hate most gets told “no” in a public forum and his/her head explodes, this photo from Defense Research and Development Canada will have to do:
The rules of flying on a jetliner are generally pretty simple. You’re stuck in a small space with a bunch of other people, with minimal room to move around for *hours.* So what should you do? Be quiet, try not to stink, behave yourself. Just spend a few hours trying to get along with the strangers stuck there with you.
Or… screw it. Do like this woman:
Go on a bizarre loud political rant and light up a cigarette. That’ll win you friends among those seated near you. Even better… when the flight attendants come along to tell you to stop smoking, blame it on the poor schmoe sitting next to you:
According to this purported eye witness, the rant went on for half an hour or so. And, shockingly, there was booze involved. This was even *before* the plane took off, so the police had the opportunity to come aboard and hustler her off.
And finally a mugshot:
She is *reportedly* a sociology professor at a Pennsylvania university.
UPDATE: She is Dr. Karen Bettez Halnon, Associate Professor of Sociology, Penn State, Abington. You want some irony? Well, I got ya covered:
Halnon, K. B. (1995). Women’s agency in Hysteria and its Treatment. Boston College Dissertations and Theses, AAI9613827.
And here is the entirely unsurprising areas of her expertise:
Research and Teaching Areas: racial and ethnic inequality; capitalism and class; White and Black poverty; empire and imperialism; Central or Latin American studies; consumption; music scenes and subcultures; liberation theology; revolution; stigma; symbolic interaction; women and madness; marijuana; sociology of deviance; Marxist theory; postmodernist criticism; ideology
This is why a STEM education is important:
1) If a math or engineering professor gets likkered up before a flight, he/she is very unlikely to go on a rant on the plane about the importance of Poisson’s Ratio or the transcendental nature of Pi.
2) If a physics or electronics professor holds whackadoodle leftist garbage beliefs like this sociology professor… they are unlikely to form a major portion of the classroom curriculum.
It seems to be the libarts where exterior crazy becomes syllabus-mandatory.
Additionally: this is one of those cases where a little bit of room to stretch out might have been handy. When you add booze, cramped conditions and progressive professorial privilege to the reduced oxygen environment of an aircraft, wacky things like this are not unlikely. Perhaps the problem would be lessened by using aircraft with a lower passenger density. For US Transport Projects #3, one of the aircraft described would have been somewhat slower than a standard jetliner, but it would also have provided several square meters of floorspace per passenger. (It was also wholly insane as an operational concept…) With room to stretch out or even sack out, perhaps Crazy Lady here could have simply slept off her issues.
