People of WalMart

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., humor, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Jun 092015
 

These vids of two women and a six-year-old incompetently fighting in a WalMart are making the rounds online today, so I figured I’d get on the bandwagon. You have a choice between being saddened by the clear awful Idiocracy on display, or laughing your posterior off. Me, I chose the latter. Especially the comments from the spectators; the cameraman suggests that someone should break them up, but that that someone should be another woman. A woman nearby agrees with him, pointing out that if he got involved he’d be opening himself up to a lawsuit.

 

 Posted by at 9:59 am

Plasma rifle in the 40-watt range

 art, awesomeness, Crazy, science, science fiction, weapons, youtube  8 Responses »
Jun 082015
 

Just what you see on the wall, pal.

 

Practical applications are few, but, dayum. Now if he could get the individual lasers truly focused on a single spot, the ability to burninate things would go through the roof, but it’s still not quite a functional weapon (apart from blinding). But something that becomes obvious is the need for heat rejection. A true laser weapon would probably have to be water cooled. Interestingly, you’d probably end up with a crew served weapon hearkening back to World War One era water-cooled machine guns.

Browning and his 1917

 Posted by at 9:11 am

Turn the volume down and just watch

 art, awesomeness, science, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  3 Responses »
Jun 062015
 

This is a beautiful, sedate video showing the gradual terraforming of Mars. It is not aided in the slightest by the wholly incongruous music tacked onto it. With luck, someone good at such things will either produce new music to go with it, or find something that fits. If so… this could *almost* fit up there with Wanderers. Note: this is made possible due to the fact that the video was directed by Erik Wernquist… who also directed Wanderers.

 Posted by at 9:18 am

“Hot Flight” NB-36 film

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., nukes, science, youtube  2 Responses »
Jun 052015
 

A Convair film about the NB-36H, a heavily modified B-36 bomber equipped with a nuclear reactor. The reactor was not hooked up to anything but instruments; all it did was sit there and give off radiation. Which was in fact the point of the exercise; the plane was an experiment in support of atomic powered aircraft, but the experiments were to see how crew, structure and instruments would stand up to the radiation environment produced by an airborne reactor.

 Posted by at 7:59 am

Remake Theater Presents…

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., news  11 Responses »
Jun 042015
 

After years of remakes that make you go “…but *why*?” here’s one that actually, for some reason, appeals to me:

Disney Planning Live-Action Film Based on NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN

Not much info other than it’s being scripted by the same folks what done brung us “Dracula Untold Meh.” Still, the source material was pure awesomeness, and the idea of it somehow getting some sort of actual plot and being realized in modern technical glory gives me the giggities. Of course, Disney previously released “Sorcerers Apprentice,” which didn’t exactly wow the world, so who knows. And of course there was “Malificent,” which turned a properly evil character sympathetic. So long as the writers remember that the demon Chernabog is *supposed* to be evil and downright terrifying, basically a bignormous Balrog, the movie has a chance.

 

 

 Posted by at 11:10 pm

There’s something I don’t see every day

 blather, news  24 Responses »
Jun 042015
 

A dead guy in the road.

A whole mess of emergency vehicles went tear-assing past the house a while back so, having no reason not to, I hopped in the car and followed. A ways down the road there was a Honda crotch-rocket on its side kinda tucked under a van at the side of the road, with a blanket tossed over it… and two boots sticking out underneath. Difficult to tell what happened, but there were a whole lot of EMTs and police standing around in no big hurry, and a few cars stopped at the side of the road with people milling about. Presumably the bike hit a car (or vice versa) and that, as they say, was that.

Update: A news report on the incident: A south-bound van had slowed and was turning left; the bike was northbound and ran into it. Bike rider wasn’t wearing a helmet and his head hit the vans wheel. Yikes.

 

 Posted by at 3:56 pm

“Earth”

 art, awesomeness, science fiction, youtube  1 Response »
Jun 042015
 

The music video for Dream Koala’s “Earth” presents some pretty spectacular footage of an apparently post-humanity (or at least “post something really bad”) Earth. There’s no real plot to it, but it is gorgeous to look at. Sounds a lot like old-school Sade.

 Posted by at 3:48 pm

Bringing back extinct species

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news  7 Responses »
Jun 032015
 

Sure, we all want to bring back the mammoth, the saber-toothed cat, the dodo and the T-Rex. But actually accomplishing the goal of returning species that have vanished is not an easy task. Well… a group has managed to do it!

Small problem: the species is diphtheria, and the group that pulled it off is Spanish anti-vaccinators.

Six-year-old diagnosed with first case of diphtheria in Spain since 1986

The kid was not vaccinated, even though diphtheria vaccinations are free in Spain. The Spanish authorities had to search the entire world for meds to treat this… because it’s a disease that people just don’t get anymore, since the vaccination for it is so effective. The Russian ambassador flew in a supply of the meds from Moscow. So… good on the Russians here.

 Posted by at 10:05 pm

Gotta agree with Wikileaks on this one

 blather, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Jun 032015
 

WikiLeaks offers $100,000 bounty for the secret chapters of Obama’s landmark Pacific trade deal

In general I’m opposed to the notion of paying people to break their security clearances to hustle out secret reports. But some things probably *shouldn’t* be secret… such as international governmental trade deals. But the Trans Pacific Partnership is *bizarrely* secretive:

Australian MPs allowed to see top-secret trade deal text but can’t reveal contents for four years

Anything like a treaty should be debated in Congress. But it *can’t* be debated if it can’t be read by those who would be debating it.

(I’ve said it before: when I gain dictatorial power, one of the changes I will institute is that a lawmaker cannot vote “yes” on a bill unless they have read it. And *all* bills will be read on the floor of the House & Senate, in their entirety, by the Senators & Reps who have written them. This’ll put an end to those 2,000 page tomes that “we have to vote for before we see what’s in it.”)

But more confusion: Wikileaks is trying to raise the $100K via a Kickstarter campaign. That’s clever. But… they’re soliciting the funds in order to incentivize someone to do an illegal thing. I’d think Kickstarter would be leery of that, to say the least.

 Posted by at 2:45 pm
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