Someone clearly had a bit of an oil spill in this parking lot I stopped at today.
Well, *I* thought the results were kinda appealing…
Jan 222017
Jan 192017
H.P. Lovecraft is one of the more important authors in the history of horror fiction, yet there have been relatively few attempts made to film his works with anything resembling a “big budget.”Still, there have been a few times where Lovecraftian ideas or themes have been incorporated into original movies; “Hellboy” is one of the more obvious examples. Another example, perhaps less well known, is the 1991 HBO TV-movie “Cast a Deadly Spell.” This is not based on a Lovecraft story, but instead is sort of an “homage” to Lovecraft. The main character, Harry Phillip Lovecraft (played by Fred Ward), is a private eye in 1948 Los Angeles… a Los Angeles where magic is an every day, commonly used tool. “Cast” is, in a word, damned entertaining, in much the same way that “Deep Rising” was. And it’s a friggen’ crime that HBO has never released this on DVD or Blu Ray.
“How long is that in dog years?” still gets me laughing a quarter century later.
Jan 192017
Is your main problem that you are just too cheerful? Is an overwhelming sense of optimism ruining your worldview? Well, boy howdy do I have the cure for you!
Back when I was a kid in the 80’s, it seems to my dim and rusty memory that the airwaves were *filled* with doom-and-gloom. Initially we were all going to die in nuclear fire, but soon enough AIDS was also going to do us in (I have particularly strong vague memories of people freaking the hell out when rumors began to spread that skeeters could spread AIDS). And then there was the crack cocaine and crime in general. It’s kind of a wonder than *any* Gen X’er ever managed to intentionally reproduce.
All y’all too young to remember the 80’s can’t really grasp just how shocking it was when the wall came down and the Soviet Union fell away *without* the world going up in nuclear fire.
Jan 182017
Currently for sale on EBay is a presumably-vintage model of a Lockheed C-141 in civilian livery. While the C-141 wound up solely a military transport, it would not be surprising that Lockheed would try to sell it on the civilian market. The model doesn’t depict passenger windows, so this was, presumably, still a cargo carrier.
Jan 182017
Here’s your new productivity-buster:
From UFOs to its psychic Stargate tests, the CIA just dumped 13 million declassified pages online
They are available at the CIAs online reading room. Forget the rubbish about psychics and aliens… I’m’a be lookin’ up keywords such as “suntan” and “gusto” and “skunk works.” Find anything good, post a link in the comments.
Jan 182017
Nobody could have seen this coming:
WARN Details
Reason Stated for Filing: Plant Layoff
Company:
The Clinton Foundation
1271 Avenue of the Americas, 42nd Floor
New York, NY 10020
Business Type: Social Advocacy Organization – Clinton Global Initiative
Number Affected: 22
Reason for Dislocation: Discontinutation of the Clinton Global Initative
Huh. I wonder why the Clintons might be shutting down their “Global Initiative?” It would of course be silly to suspect that since Hillary didn’t win the Presidency, her ability to influence foreign policy is diminished to approximately nothing, and thus donations from foreign governments have stopped. The Clinton Global Initiative was supposed to be a charitable organization working to help out the poor people of the world. Did all the po foke suddenly vanish like a fart in a hurricane after the election? Are the claimed goals of the CGI now met?
This does say something interesting about the future. As has been noted ad nauseum, Hillary won the popular vote, and by a substantial margin. Had her campaign been less insulting, she *should* have easily won. And given the likely wacky nature of th next four years, you’d think that she should be thinking that she could successfully run in 2020. But by shuttering her cash cow, it *seems* like she might be throwing in the towel on future ambitions.
Jan 172017
Hmmm…
Betting website gives Trump 4-1 odds of being impeached within six months
Note: it’s the Irish betting website “Paddy Power.” They lost a bucket of money by assuming that Hillary was going to win, so they had to shell out winnings to those who bet on Trump.
I suspect that betting websites might be taking bets on what level of “disruption” will appear at the inauguration. People holding up signs and shouting? Virtual certainty. Beating the tar out of Trump supporters, starting riots, overturning cars, trashing storefronts, burning convenience stores? Not at all unlikely. Low-level terrorist acts, such as butyric acid attacks on the Deloraball? Less likely, but not improbable. Truly dangerous terrorist acts? Hard to say.
Jan 162017
Eugene Cernan has died, age 82. In December of 1972, as commander of Apollo 17, Cernan was the last person to leave a footprint on the moon as he was the last man to step back into the lunar module. Consider that: someone born just after Cernan stood on the moon would now be well along in his or her career. And if this hypothetical person joined the NASA astronaut corps in order to go to the moon, *that* person is now pushing age limits. And by the time NASA *might* get back to the moon in the mid to late 2020’s, that person would be well into their fifties.
Jan 152017
Hidden behind SpaceX’s successful Falcon 9 launch and landing was the unfortunate failure of the Japanese SS-520-4. This is a three-stage derivative of the SS-520 two-stage sounding rocket; it was hoped that it would put a 4-kilogram satellite into a 180X1500 km orbit. Sadly, somethign went wrong and the second stage did not ignite. If the SS-520-4 can be made to work, it’ll be one of the smallest space launch systems developed… 31 feet long, 20 inches diameter, 2.9 tons at liftoff.
The NOTS-EV-1 “NOTSNIK” was a substantially smaller & lighter space launcher, but:
- Of ten launch attempts, none are confirmed to have succeeded (two *may* have)
- It was small, but it had to be hauled to altitude by an F4D-1 Skyray, which was substantially bigger than the SS-520-4.
Jan 152017
First there’s this…
First female ringmaster takes reins at Ringling Bros. circus
But then, on the same day…
APNewsBreak: Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years
Huh.
Let me guess: that first female ringmaster was Counselor Deanna Troi. They put her behind the wheel and she promptly crashed the circus.
Seriously: I was almost surprised to find out that Ringling Brothers Circus was still a thing. Don’t they have an app for that?