Put in an appearance over Thatcher, Utah, this evening:
May 102018
May 102018
Fingers came into this house as an adult semi-wild rural farm cat, and as a result has never been what you’d call domesticated. She tolerates me well enough; on occasion she rubs up against me and even hops into my lap for *brief* scratchings, but she cannot abide any other human. She promptly hides if there’s a visitor or even a package left at the door, and when taken to the vet goes into a panicky frenzy. What she *did* like was Raedthinn.
I think I’ve made it pretty plain over the years that my cat Fingers *really* had a thing for Raedthinn. She was quite pushy with her physical affection for him… she wasn’t satisfied with laying next to him, she wanted to be on him, often kneading him. Many’s the time I was in the living room writing or CAD’ing when something would intrude into my consiousness and I’d come to and wonder “WTF is *that,*” then realize that it was the sound of Fingers purring at *extreme* volume several rooms away as Raedthinn deigned to give her attention, sometimes even licking her head. In those moments, she was joy personified. Something Fingers has never done is purr away from Raedthinn, except for a few rare instances when she hopped up on *me* and purred in response to head scratchings.
So I’ve been keeping a close eye on Fingers these past few days. I’ve been wondering just when it’ll hit her that Raethinn is gone, and what she’ll do when she figures out she’ll never see him again. Of course, does a cats mind even work that way? Does she remember him as a human would, or is Raedthinn only a vague concept in her little head? Does she understand the concept of “gone” and “never again?” It is of course impossible to say.
So… last night, it dawned on me that she was curled on on Raedthinns favorite corner of the bed. Purring.
She was in his spot, where he often hung out, which undoubtedly still carries his smell. Was she imagining that he was there? Was she purring in hopes that that would entice him to come back from wherever he’s hiding? Purring is often seen in badly injured cats; it’s thought that the action of purring releases dopamine to help ease pain. So perhaps she was purring as a way to grieve a loss she does not understand.
May 102018
This is the first launch attempt of a Block 5 Falcon 9. Assuming SpaceX gets a few of these safely under their belt, they can use them to launch NASA crews to the ISS, finally putting the US back into the manned space launch business again. This launch is sending up the first Bangladeshi geosynchronous comsat. Launch is current scheduled for 3:47 PM, Mountain time, followed by a planned recovery of the first stage on a barge.
Bangabandhu Satellite-1 Mission
May 102018
The Convair VL-3A was a 1966 concept for a space station logistics spacecraft. It was a sleek, flat-bottomed lifting body featuring a twin tail and flip-out wings that would deploy shortly before landing to reduce the landing speed. It would be fitted with flip-out turbofan engines for range extension, self-ferry and control during landing. General Dynamics released sizable “educational” cards with information and photos of models of the spaceplane showing how the wings would deploy from within the lower fuselage.
I have uploaded righ-rez scans of both sides of this poster-sized card to the 2018-05 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up.
I also wrote about and illustrated the VL-3A in US Spacecraft Projects #2, showing the general arrangement of the design along with the disposable propulsion stage and the launch configuration atop the Titan III.
USSP #02 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $6:
If you are interested in thes VL-3A model images and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on?
May 092018
Sometimes the jokes write themselves. And sometimes the thing itself is a joke, and no further commentary is necessary.
Practical Female Separatism for the Everywomon, in Easy Steps
Now, after saying that no commentary was necessary, I still wish to comment, because there are several obvious conclusions to draw from this… assuming that this nuttery gains *any* sort of traction and doesn’t remain the province of a wacky, irrelevant few:
- It would seem to be necessarily self-limited. It self-edits out of the gene pool; I don’t know how much of the nuttery involved here is genetic, but assuredly it has *some* basis, even if only tenuously. Do this long enough, and they will make themselves extinct along with the Angry Incels. Additionally, by separating out the wackos, those who remain in society will necessarily be those who *want* to remain in society, and they will reproduce more. Thus by both eugenics and culture, the non-nuts will outbreed the nuts.
- Where does this sort of thing come from? As recently mentioned in the comments hereabouts, there have long been stories about Devious Foreigners and Scary Space Aliens who wish to colonize America and/or Earth, but don’t want to got to the bother of wiping out the natives. So instead, the convince the natives – through propaganda, Social Justice screeching, chemicals in the air, water or food, or genetically modified retroviruses and the like – to stop breeding. Wait a few generations, and whoever is left will be few in numbers and old and infirm, easily toppled, while their infrastructure will remain in place. Are the Wimmin Separatists a truly modern creation? Are they the result of a long-dead Soviet effort? Some holdover from the Nazi era? Perhaps a devious scheme from the Han Dynasty?
- Don’t Date Robots!
- Who else gets the feeling that if you got a look at these “womon,” you wouldn’t *want* them to breed, particularly not with you?
Pointing and laughing at wackos like these does not erase the grief of losing Raedthinn. But at least it covers it up for a bit. He was a better human that any of these nutjobs, and was assuredly a better companion and conversationalist than any of them.
May 092018
My suggestion:
Step 1: Follow behind patiently for twenty seconds or so
Step 2: A polite couple of beeps on the horn
Step 3: Lean on the horn
Step 4: Break out the ridiculously overpowered directional air horn or LRAD, something in the 160-180 dB range (also handy for road-blocking political protests)
May 092018
HVO/USGS Volcanic Activity Notice
Volcano: Kilauea (VNUM #332010)
Current Volcano Alert Level: WARNING
Current Aviation Color Code: ORANGE
Issued: Wednesday, May 9, 2018, 8:02 AM HST
Source: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
Notice Number:
Location: N 19 deg 25 min W 155 deg 17 min
Elevation: 4091 ft (1247 m)
Area: Hawaii
Volcanic Activity Summary: The steady lowering of the lava lake in “Overlook crater” within Halemaʻumaʻu at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano has raised the potential for explosive eruptions in the coming weeks. If the lava column drops to the level of groundwater beneath Kīlauea Caldera, influx of water into the conduit could cause steam-driven explosions. Debris expelled during such explosions could impact the area surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu and the Kīlauea summit. At this time, we cannot say with certainty that explosive activity will occur, how large the explosions could be, or how long such explosive activity could continue….
BALLISTIC PROJECTILES
During steam-driven explosions, ballistic blocks up to 2 m (yards) across could be thrown in all directions to a distance of 1 km (0.6 miles) or more. These blocks could weigh a few kilograms (pounds) to several tons.
Smaller (pebble-size) rocks could be sent several kilometers (miles) from Halemaʻumaʻu, mostly in a downwind direction.
Yow. If’n yer on the big island… heads up. Also watch out for ash, which should do a dandy job of trashing aviation downwind of the volcano.
But wait! There’s more!
Iranian forces fire rockets at Israeli military in first direct attack ever, Israel’s army says
The Russians are backing Assad. The Iranians are backing Assad. If the Iranians keep up this sort of thing, the Israelis might well stomp right on in to Syria. And the Russian forces on the ground would be *really* well advised to tell Assad that he dun goofed, and to discretely back out the door.
I’ve long supposed that a century from now, Damascus might be one of the bigger cities in Greater Israel.
May 092018
This sort of thing would likely not fly today. The SJWs would flips their lids and the following day there’d be apologies galore from all involved and *still* the social justice parasites would move in the suck the life out of every scrap of humor and *career* involved. But if this was from before your time – it aired in 1979 – give it a watch and consider using, if not the argument that Dan Aykroyd employs, at least his take no prisoners attitude when dealing with the screeching harpies of of humorless singlethought.
May 092018
OK, folks, discussion time, something less heartbreaking than recent topics. Let’s say some bagrillionaire comes along and says he has ten million dollars and the legal ability to make a “special edition” of any movie ever. This means that the best available print will be scanned and cleaned and color corrected, and flubs in the sound fixed. More importantly, special effects can be touched up or outright replaced. A few additional scenes can be added, by whatever means necessary. You want to add Humphrey Bogart to Star Wars? It’s possible, though sufficiently dumb that everyone will laugh at you. But let’s say your favorite movie has scenes that were written but never filmed, or filmed, cut and lost… scenes that would fix plot holes or make the film just a whole lot better. You can add five, maybe ten minutes of new stuff, but you can replace as much of the existing special effects as you like. So… what movie(s) do you tackle?
Here are a few off the top of my head:
- “Firefox.” The movie is overall pretty good, and the MiG 31 Firefox full-scale mockup is *awesome.* But if you watch the in-flight scenes shot with models…. yeesh. To the modern eye, wow, they stink. Replace the flight scenes and add to them.
- “The Last Starfighter.” Very much a product of its time. I’m torn about replacing the mid-80’s CG with modern CGI… but, fark it, I wanna see the Gunstar doing it’s thing. Of course a sequel with as much of the original cast as possible is preferred… but so long as they’re doing that, spare a few percent to update the original to go with it.
- “2001.” Yeah, I know, sacrilege. But *some* of the shots of spacecraft are painfully obvious to be simple still images of ships drifting across the screen. I’d be interested in the seeing the Orion III spaceplane done right, with only a few more seconds showing docking operations. Additionally, replace *Earth.* Compare the flat matte paintings of Earth in “2001” with what is on display in “Gravity.” Space Station V orbiting serenely over a modern Earth? Giggity.
Suggestions?
May 082018
Losing Raedthinn has been rough, to say the least. Thirteen years is from one point of view a fairly good run for a cat; out in the world, they might only last a few years. But housecats have been known to exceed 30 years, with 20 not being unusual. And Raedthinn had a lot of life left in him. Were it not for this *one* thing, he should’ve gone the distance. But there was that one thing.
Anyway, yesterday morning it was obvious that things were going wrong, so I called to set up a vet appointment. The *hope* was that I was setting up an appointment for the vet to look at him and say “oh, that’s not a problem, easy to remedy,” but the full expectation was that I was setting up an appointment to put him to sleep. AAARGHingly, the earliest appointment was some hours off, so there were hours of waiting. The first instinct was of course to spend those hours doing things with him, but I decided it was best to spend those hours letting him do what he liked. Mostly that meant laying in one window or another, and eating all the food that was suddenly made available to him in portions unheard of. When the time came, the vet Xrayed him again and found that, rather than improving, he was substantially *worse* than when they’d seen him a week earlier. The vet offered only the one way forward. Fortunately, that shot of whatever it is is *amazingly* fast and apparently entirely painless, and he was gone in seconds. The other vets working on horses and cows at the other end of the clinic could hear me give vent to my feelings. I wish I could say it was a manly Viking roar to warn those in Valhalla that a new warrior was coming and to get the hell out of the way, but it wasn’t quite that.
Anyway, had to spend some time after that processing. If I was a drinking man I likely would have spent a good chunk of the day blackout drunk, so perhaps it’s best I’m not a drinking man. One odd thing: he was, as is well known, a giant of a cat. But carrying him out of the vet… it felt like I was carry a hundred pounds. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my cat” transformed into “why is this so hard?”
Yesterday in those last hours, I took many photos of the old boy. I didn’t take any of him at the clinic, nor did I video his last moments. I’ve seen a number of YouTube vids where people did just that, and I gotta say I don’t freakin’ get it. If there’s something I’d never want to see again, nor share with the world, it’s the last moments of a beloved pet and my subsequent breakdown. But people do seem to love liveinstafacestreaming every damn thing these days so… shrug.
He spent a good deal of the day in the front window, and Fingers spent a good deal of that time next to him. She was not as pushy as she often was, and he did not push her away as he often did. It seemed good to let them have their time together.
Below is the very last photo I took of Raedthinn. Somehow it seems appropriate, him looking out onto the wide world.
So, thanks everyone for your kind words. Raedthinn was one hell of a cat and the world is that much less for his absence. Discussion of an afterlife normally leaves me cold and unmoved, but the notion of a heaven for cats simply seems *just.*