Russia ejected from the game

 Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire  6 Responses »
Nov 162015
 

This will go over well…

IAAF Suspends Russia From International Competitions

Competitive athletics: could I give a damn? If someone paid me to, I’m sure I could gin up some enthusiasm for a game of sportsball or whatever. But in general, watching millionaires run around playing kids games… meh. Still, the politics of sports can get entertaining. I actually used to watch the Olympics, back when it was a Titanic Struggles Against The Soviets. Looks like politics might come into sports again, now that the Russians have been booted out of things like track-and-field Olympic events because of their doping up their athletes.

Personally I think this is the wrong decision. I say: rather than booting out doped-up athletes… segregate them. Instead of holding back scientific experimentation… go with it! Divvy up, say, a marathon into *four* categories:

  1. Unaltered humans
  2. Humans on the latest pharmaceuticals
  3. Humans genetically modified
  4. Anything goes (mixes of drugs and genetics and cybernetics and magic and brainwashing and whatever)

Transhumanism *is* coming, in perhaps a whole range of ways. Might as well accept it and see what we can get. A lot of the tinkering, especially with genetics, will have problematic side effects… might as well test them out of athletes first. They will be well compensated for the risk, unlike regular schmoes who’ll get upgrades because they *need* them for medical reasons.

That would certainly make the Olympics more interesting. Not only for the pure spectacle, but because, at last, average people could watch Olympians and *honestly* think that, just maybe, *they* might be able to do that too.

 Posted by at 10:38 am

Guess who ain’t evil…

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, politics, ಠ_ಠ  15 Responses »
Nov 152015
 

Some religions are quite clear that “evil” is a Real Thing. Other religions are vaguer. A lot of secular worldviews hold that evil is not an objectively real thing. But even the athiest of atheists generally accept that “evil” is often a useful way the sum up a value judgement. And then there’s this guy:

Candidate for Minnesota House Ends Campaign After Tweeting That “ISIS Isn’t Necessarily Evil”

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Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

 Posted by at 5:56 pm

Horseshoe Magazine

 art, awesomeness, history, weapons, youtube  2 Responses »
Nov 152015
 

Here’s a firearm I’ve never seen before: the French “Union” pistol dating from the 1930’s. The pistol itself is fairly conventional; where it’s different is the 35-round magazine, bent into a horseshoe shape. The far end of the magazine simply fits up against the underside of the pistol frame. Manufacturing quality is apparently high. This was a select-fire .32, justifying the large magazine capacity. Not explained: how you holster the thing.

 Posted by at 11:25 am

Feline Updates

 cats, news, photography  2 Responses »
Nov 152015
 

First up: finally got a very, very brief look inside Raedthinns mouth by way of gettign lucky filming him when he yawned. This happened earlier today, and was the first time I’ve seen him yawn since the initial injury almost a week ago. This would seem to indicate progress… it doesn’t hurt to stretch out his mouth. You can clearly see the lack of the lower right fang, the broken nature of the upper right fang, and the lack of lower incisors. I *think* he still has one or two tiny little incisors near the left lower fang.

yawn

Second: Bruce remains in quarantine. So long as he has a disease that’s fatal to felines, that’s the way it’s gonna stay. But I’ll take him to a different vet clinic in a month or so and get him re-tested. If he comes up negative for FLV, I’ll take him back to the first and retest *again.* If he’s clear twice at two different places, I’ll give him the run of the house and start looking into options for re-homing him.

He spends a distressing amount of his day all alone. Sad, but unfortunately it can’t be helped. One result of that is that he has gone slightly out of focus.

WP_20151113_048 WP_20151113_045

Once again, thanks to everyone who helped out.

 Posted by at 2:59 am

Oh boy! Le mayhem!

 Crazy, Gah., news, politics, religion, ಠ_ಠ  71 Responses »
Nov 132015
 

Well, hell.

Paris shootings: 18 reported killed

A little vague and lean on the details. Hostage situations, AK-47s and explosions.

At Least 18 People Reported Dead After Explosions, Shootings Rock Paris

Shootings at at least three restaurants and explosions at a stadium.

UPDATE:

At least 35 dead after shooting, explosions, hostage-taking in Paris

Additionally, at least 100 hostages in a theater.

UPDATE: Now it’s 60 dead.

UPDATE: Deputy mayor of Paris announced at least 118 dead. France has closed its borders, something I would’ve thought problematic in the European Union with the whole freedom-of-movement thing.

 Posted by at 3:13 pm

PDF Review: Airbus Almost-Hypersonic Transport Patent

 aircraft, drawings, Hmm..., Patreon, projects, rockets, youtube  5 Responses »
Nov 132015
 

A few months ago, Airbus Defence and Space Sas received a US patent for a nearly hypersonic passenger transport. The vehicle has a number of different engines… rocket engines for vertical boost and acceleration, ramjets for hypersonic cruise, turbojets for subsonic flight including takeoff and landing. It would take off conventionally with turbojets, fire the rocket to shoot almost vertically to about 35 kilometers altitude (going supersonic in the process), then level off and cruise under ramjet power at Mach 4.5. The extreme altitude, about 3 times higher than normal jetliner traffic, would mean that the sonic boom should be greatly attenuated by the time it got to the surface.

The wingtip fins would rotate through 90 degrees to maintain center of pressure from subsonic through supersonic.

Unusually for a patent, this one provides dimensions. Fuselage length (dimension 11 in Figure 1) is 52.995 meters; overall length (dimension 110, Figure 3) is 57.63 meters; maximum span (dimension 126, Figure 5) is 27.188 meters.

Interestingly, the design looks like a mishmash of WWII-era designs… the “gothic wing” designed by Michael Gluhareff of Sikorsky merged with the wingtips of the Blohm & Voss P.208-2 or Skoda-Kauba SL-6.

This is US Patent 907661B2. At the moment the Google page for this patent seems a little non-functional; the PDF of the patent won’t download for me. Fortunately, the page for the patent application is functioning just fine. You can download the PDF file of the patent application directly from THIS LINK RIGHT HERE.

Some pages of diagrams:

Pages from US20120325957_Page_1Pages from US20120325957_Page_2 Pages from US20120325957_Page_3

Here is a video description of the design.

The interior views of the vehicle show one of the problems with rocket-boosted transport aircraft: The majority of the interior volume isn’t people and cargo, but propellant.

Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.

patreon-200

 Posted by at 11:53 am
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