Took this shot in the Rocky Mountain foothills region just south of Estes Park a bit over a week ago.
Oct 192015
Oct 182015
We’ve all heard the Cinderella stories… someone with stars in their eyes goes to Hollywood and makes it big. Someone in Hollywood has a kid who makes it big. Someone in Hollywood uses their vast knowledge of make believe to try to influence politics.
Well, here ya go:
British son of Hollywood movie director, 26, is revealed as bloodthirsty star of al-Qaeda propaganda videos after converting from Catholicism and smuggling himself to Syria
Way to go, Hollywood dad! Your kid may soon be the star of a new “Look at the birdy” drone video.
He’s starred in several Al Qaeda propaganda videos exhorting other Brits to go to Syria and join up. This is illegal for Brits, but I would suggest that Britain would be better off to decriminalize leaving the UK to go join al Qaeda. This would help get the scumbags out of the country and into position to get bombed into oblivion by any of a number of forces.
Oct 182015
If you find yourself near Ashland, Nebraska, you could do far, far worse than giving this museum a visit.
It’s a shame that New York City got a Space Shuttle but this museum – or the USAF museum in Dayton – did not. Heck, Hill Aerospace Museum or Wings Over the Rockies would have been good locations. Why not locate such things closer to the *middle* of the country, on well traveled paths? New York City hardly needs new attractions, nor is it an important waypoint on the road from one side of the country to the other (while it might be between, say, Washington D.C. and Boston, I suspect few sane people are going to go *through*Manhattan to get from D. C. to Boston).
Oct 162015
I went up to Logan today and briefly visited the one shopping mall in town. It has been some months since I was last there; in the intervening time, one of the generic mall-stores (I think it was a “Dillards”) closed up shop. But rather than being left empty, or replaced by another generic mall store (like a Nordstroms or some such), the Cal Ranch store that used to be situated across the parking lot moved in. So now, at long last, there is a shopping mall with a store that will sell you ammunition, pistols, shotguns and AR-15s. Ha!
And in other news sure to instill rage and fear into the civilian disarmament proponents:
Concealed-gun law takes effect in Maine
Mainers no longer need permit to carry concealed handguns
Oct 162015
Someone put together a trailer for Jurassic World… but a Jurassic World that was released in 1978. It’s pretty much spot-on!
Kids these days have no idea how good they have it with their CGI and halfway decent acting…
Oct 152015
Not strictly Project Orion, since it seems to date from the 1980’s, but it certainly represents an Orion-style vehicle. But was it attached to an actual program?
Oct 152015
A Convair illustration of the Model 54, a proposed operational version of the NX-2 nuclear powered aircraft. The Model 54 was a missile carrier, but with an internal bomb bay. It was also strictly subsonic, so its survivability over Soviet territory would undoubtedly have been seen as minimal in the supersonic-obsessed 1950’s. By carrying long-range cruise missiles (type unclear), the Model 54 could spend days orbiting outside Soviet controlled airspace and, when war breaks out, dash in at low altitude, unleash its missiles hundreds of miles from the target (and from the air defenses), and then run home. Of course, the Model 54 was never built.
A full-rez version of this has been made available to $4+ Patrons of the APR Patreon, in the 2015-10 Extras Dropbox folder. If you’re interested in obtaining this, and/or helping the cause of preserving aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.
Oct 152015
Do you have a deficiency of being told how to live your life, even unto Halloween? Appalachian State University has you covered!
What Not to Wear: Culture vs. Costume
This coming Monday, come and:
Join us in visualizing the concept of cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation at our high fashion runway show. The concept of this event is to stimulate self-reflection, raise awareness to the topic of cultural appropriation, and also be educational.
“Cultural appropriation” is the new obsession among the PC crowd; the idea being that you are not supposed to “appropriate” fashion or symbols or idiom or whatever from another racial, ethnic or national group. You know, like white people talking “street.” Or, one would imagine, Japanese people wearing blue jeans. Or Italians eating haggis, black people playing basketball, Australian aborigines using Ipads, Chinese people eating fortune cookies, or anyone not Celtic celebrating Halloween. It is, of course, ridiculous nonsense, merely another way for wannabe totalitarians to try to control the lives of others.
Related… that vital periodical of modern rationality, “Cosmo,” has this:
10 Offensive Halloween Costumes That Shouldn’t Exist
Where we are told that costumes of Caitlyn Jenner are offensive. As are costumes of Bruce Jenner. Or anything that makes light of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Or dressing up as an ethnic group or gender that you ain’t.
So, this Halloween make sure to remember that there are people out there who really, really want to control you, your actions and your thoughts. Behave accordingly.
Oct 152015
CNN needlessly asks:
Is it ethical to colonize Mars?
The writer trades the value of having a “backup Earth” over the rights of any possible native Martian life (assumed to be bacterial at best) and comes down on the side of colonization. This is of course the correct answer, but the discussion leaves out the important detail that terraforming Mars might well be *better* for Martian life.
If there is any life on Mars today, it seems almost certain that that life is the tenacious last remnants of life that evolved a billion or more years ago when the planet was warmer and wetter. While life could well continue to survive in such a dried out frigid environment – just as life survives today in Antarctica – it has little future to evolve added complexity there. In short, life on Mars has gone as far as it’s going to. From here on out it’s a long slow fade to darkness.
But if mankind comes, sets up shop, parks some mirrors over the poles and starts dropping teratons of iceteroids, any existing Martian biota will see conditions that can only be considered “better.” And even if terraforming turns out to be bad for the Marsbugs, humanity will almost certainly preserve them in some way, and perhaps seed them somewhere else. If the bugs can survive on Mars, perhaps they could survive on Ganymede or Callisto and begin the terraforming process *there.* But regardless, the current crop of Marsbugs are going nowhere. They are more doomed than Earthly bunnies (who will not spread to the stars without the assistance of mankind).
Oct 142015
Nickelodeon to Bring ‘H.R. Pufnstuf’ Back to TV After 45 Years
“H.R. Pufnstuff” aired in 1969, slightly before I was born. But reruns ran for several years, well into my childhood. It has nevertheless been 40 or so years since I’ve seen any of this; I was too young for it to have made a meaningful impression regarding the plots or characters or dialogue, but I’ve got these weird impressions of snippets, like ill-remembered bits of ancient dreams. And those impressions make me feel sullied and unusual.