Bruce Lee as a Jedi? Nah. He wouldn’t need that forcey-magicky bullcrap to kick Mace Windu’s keister.
Jan 172018
Jan 162018
Just stumbled across some *terrible* quality photos from circa 1967 showing a B-52 with its bomb bay doors removed and a bomb stuffed in and partly protruding since it was too big to actually fit within. This was the “Flashback,” best as I can tell, and seems to have been designed as an actual nuke, and perhaps built as an actual nuke. It was apparently tested somewhere near Oahu without the nuclear bits. The reports I have are stunningly unenlightening, but this seems to have been a full-up weight & aerodynamics & instruments/electronics test for a bomb that was just way too damn big. Currently working on putting together diagrams, because why wouldn’t I.
This seems new to me. But is it just something I seem to have missed in my reading, something everybody always knew about?
Jan 162018
The US launches itsspace rockets out over the ocean so that the spent stages fall on, presumably, nobody. The russins launch their rockets from the middle of nowhere, so that the spent stages fall on probably nobody. China? Meh. Wherever.
Jan 162018
The richest, most taxy-spendy state in the Union turns out to be the poorest. Surprise, surprise.
Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?
California, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients.
I moved to California in 2000, and out of California in 2004. When I moved in, I had to live an hour and a half away from work (each way), because I couldn’t afford anything closer. When I left, the housing prices had skyrocketed to a stupid degree… there was no way I could have afforded my own 1,200 square-foot dinky domicile. The weird thing was… when I moved into that neighborhood, I was one of many homeowners who lived there; when I left, I was the *last* homeowner who actually lived there. Instead, every house had been bought by landlords who rented out the houses to low income people. Shortly before I left I spoke with the new neighbor, who was paying about 1/4 what I was per month to rent a clone of my house, which the new property owner had paid much more for than I had for mine. The reason why this insane system could possibly make sense for the landowner was because the state shelled out vast sums to people who rent out “low income” housing, making up the difference paid by the renters and allowing the owners to make a profit. Where did that money come from? Local property tax payers.
Insane.
The war on booze led to… lots of booze. The war on drugs led to rampant drug use. The war on poverty? Led to poverty. California is leading the charge to the victory of poverty. It’s racing towards turning into a real Haiti-hole.
Jan 152018
Whackadoo convicted traitor Bradley/Chelsea Manning is running for a Senate seat in Maryland. Because of course he/she/it/they/zer/zim/zam is/are. Oddly, Manning doesn’t seem to be running on a libertarian platform. More of a “look at me, I’m special” platform.
Jan 152018
A 1966 Aerojet concept for a space probe with a nuclear reactor and ion engines. Note the largish thermal radiator “wings;” such things are usually left off spacecraft in science fiction, but they are a vital part of any nuclear spacecraft. Nukes, after all, are simply heat sources; in order to get useful electrical power out of them, the heat must be used to boil a working fluid which runs a turbogenerator; and the hot gas then needs to be condensed back to a liquid by radiating the heat way to space. And thermal radiation is a terribly slow and weak process, necessitating large radiators. Electricity can also be created with thermionic systems, which generate electricity across a thermal differential… hot on one side, cold on the other. But unless the cold side it attached to some radiators, the cold side will soon be just as hot as the hot side, and then… no thermal differential, no power generation.
Note also that even with a substantial powerplant and the sizable bank of ion engines, acceleration is going to be creakingly slow. Thus you can get away with spindly structures. The reactor itself is the tiny little tin can-looking thing, top and centerline; the U-shaped structure around it is a radiation shield protecting the electronics, structure and radiators from the radiation spat out by the reactor.
Jan 132018
Stumbled across this ad, found it oddly charming. We take artificial light so for granted now that it’s a little difficult to imagine a time when glow-in-the-dark paint was virtually magical. The fact that it was radioactive and toxic… shrug.
Jan 132018
The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency just sent out a helpful text message:
There is a small issue with the message. Guess what it might be. Go on, guess.
Jan 132018
As memory serves, this shocked the bejeebers out of the TV-watching public back in 1985. Yul Brynner had only been dead a few days when this PSA hit the air.
Jan 132018
We know what Tricky Dick Durbin said that Trump called Haiti. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Assume he did. If he did and he was wrong to do so… what exactly would be a better descriptor? If it doesn’t apply to Haiti, is there anywhere on earth where it does?
Port-Au-Prince: A City Of Millions, With No Sewer System
Port-au-Prince is about the size of Chicago. But it doesn’t have a sewer system. It’s one of the largest cities in the world without one. …
The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches. It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage. Each night, an all-but-invisible army of workers called bayakou descend into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines, then dump it into the canals that cut through the city.
Yikes.