Raedthinn seems to have fully recovered from his dental ordeal. There are differences… his tongue now sticks out the side of his mouth and, oddly, seems to project further. But otherwise, he seems fine.
Nov 302015
Nov 302015
Errrrmmmm…
BRITAIN’S boobs are getting bigger, with the “average” bust size bursting from the C-cup to a massive 34G, according to a new survey.
G? That’s… kinda big, ain’t it?
A couple options occur to me:
- Another journalism success story… i.e. they’re flat-out wrong.
- The survey, which was done by a manufacturer of “plus size” bras, was less than entirely scientific. Such as possibly only talking to their own customers.
- Britain has become drenched in growth hormones in recent years.
- Britain has gotten as fat as the American “People of WalMart” stereotype.
It found Scotland is home to the biggest breasts in the UK, where the average lady has a staggering 34HH bra size.
Uh.
Nov 302015
In the last few years a particular talking point has become as inevitable after a domestic mass killing as a sunrise after night: “is this a crazy person or a terrorist.” This becomes increasingly obvious when the mass killing is carried out by a White Non-Muslim Male, such as the “Planned Parenthood” shootings a few days ago. The argument goes, since it’s a White Non-Muslim Male, it will be declared an act of mental disorder, not terrorism; but if the perpetrator is Non-White or, better, Muslim, it’ll be declared terrorism, because, you know, racism.
In a Venn diagram of “nutjobbery” and “terrorism,” there is of course a whole lot of overlap. Consequently, taking an incident and confidently parking it under one descriptor but not the other is often dubious. But I do have a simple test that would work at least sometimes to parse out those acts that are best described as “terrorism:” How many people were involved?
If it’s one person working alone, such as, say, Sulejman Talović (a Muslim immigrant who killed five people at a mall in Salt Lake City some years ago, an act I’d bet most people have either forgotten about or perhaps never heard of in the first place), or the Unabomber (a white leftist with a hate-on for modern technology), or Christopher Dorner (the black anti-gun-nut who led the LAPD on a merry chase a few years ago) it could go either way. But if two or more are working together? Like the Beltway sniper case from years ago, or the Boston bombings, Charlie Hebdo, the more recent Paris attacks, 9/11 and so on? Well… that would seem rather harder to blame on nuttery rather than terrorism.
People with similar political and/or religious ideologies finding each other and working together? Sure, I can see that happening, easy. Complete whackos finding each other and finding that their whackoism just happens to align, so they work together to do whacko things? Hmmm… that’s less likely. And when the number of perpetrators gets to three or higher, the statistical likelihood of it being just nutjobbery, as opposed to terrorism, seems to drop vanishingly low.
So. One guy? Nut. Two guys? Probably terrorist. Three guys? Definitely terrorist.
Nov 292015
An interesting opinion piece:
The New Atomic Age We Need
The author suggests the crazy notion that maybe we aught to build us some reactors.
Nov 292015
A drawing from a Titan/Centaur report.
Nov 282015
This would appear to be a rare bit of good news:
National Space Society Applauds Presidential Signing of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act
U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act does a number of things, including limiting US Government regulations meddling and recognizing that materials mined from asteroids and comets are the property of the companies that mined them (although not going to far as recognizing the private ownership of said comets or asteroids).
So I’m considering how to game the system. You can’t own the rock, but you can own the stuff you dig out of the rock. So, how to use this to own the rock? Well, presumably “stuff mined from the rock” means anything that’s a minority of the rock that you remove from the rock. So… break the rock into two halves of about 49%, and a handful of gravel. Now, the entire mass of the rock is somethign you’ve mined from the rock.
For a rock a few meters in diameter, this would be easy enough. But how about something like Vesta? Breaking apart a rock miles wide is impractical. But there’s this: grind up a portion of the rock into dust. Scatter the dust across the entire surface of the rock, anything from a light dusting to a few cm thick, blanketing the entire surface. Now… you don’t own the rock, but you own a shell that entirely encompasses the rock. For someone else to attempt to access the rock, they would have to breach your property.
A lot of this won’t matter for a good long while, of course. For this to be relevant, you’ll need to have both Space Cops *and* Space Robbers. If next year Disney-SpaceX announced that they had taken possession of Eros and were busy turning it into ErosWorld, The Happiest Place In Heliocentric Space, it’s not like there’s a whole lot that the Russians or the UN could do to stop it except to complain and push for economic sanctions. At some point, the Russians or Chinese or somebody might be able to mount an armed expedition to go take Eros fro Disney-SpaceX; and at *that* point some definition of private property rights in space would be handy to have.
Nov 272015
Suspicious boats with decomposed bodies found drifting off Japan
In short: during October and November, at least 11 boats have been found floating off the cost of Japan with only dead folk for crew. The thinking is that these are North Korean fishing boats. What with ongoing famine, coupled with a lack of modern navigational equipment, I guess it makes sense that Nork fishermen would set out on voyages they’re simply not going to come back from, but, dayum. What’s next? Ghost pirates? Pirate ghosts?
Nov 272015
Nov 272015
Just under the wire, rewards for November have been made available to APR patrons. Three documents and one large-format diagram, and one all-new CAD diagram, have been posted:
- NASA diagram (on two sheets) of a NERVA nuclear rocket engine display model, presenting the configuration with detail and clarity
- An article on a orbiting nuclear power station
- A full-color brochure (via photographs) on the Convair Model 36, their entry for what became the B-36
- A North American Aviation presentation on delta wings for the X-15, presenting a few different configurations
- An all-new layout CAD diagram of the Bernal Sphere space colony concept
If you’d like to help out and gain access to these and past and future rewards, please check out the APR Patreon.
Nov 262015
See, now *this* is art (as opposed to this, which is simply insipid).
The Crusades and Lovecraft’s Monsters
This is a series of illustrations that imitates the style of old medieval paintings and adds a macabre flavour by incorporating some of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous monsters. The text is mostly medieval Middle High German.
More and embiggened images at the link.
