The local fire department burned down a small empty house this afternoon.
May 042018
May 042018
Muslims Recoil at a French Proposal to Change the Quran
A manifesto published in the French daily Le Parisien on April 21—signed by some 300 prominent intellectuals and politicians, including former President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls—made a shocking demand. Arguing that the Quran incites violence, it insisted that “the verses of the Quran calling for murder and punishment of Jews, Christians, and nonbelievers be struck to obsolescence by religious authorities,” so that “no believer can refer to a sacred text to commit a crime.”
The basic notion of a government telling a religion what to believe? Ha. The idea of a western government successfully petitioning Muslim leaders to change the book that they think is the actual unalterable word of what they think of as a god?
Best o’luck, France.
May 032018
With recent hair-pulling issues, other things have fallen by the wayside of have been forgotten, ignored, etc. But this morning I noticed something vaguely interesting, if not terribly exciting.
A week-ish ago I bought a document off of eBay. Normally I wouldn’t have bought this *specific* document, because it’s available on the NASA tech report server. No point in spending money on something that’s available for free. But I bought it because the NASA PDF is, like a lot of them, scanned rather poorly, especially the art and diagrams. The intent is to scan the graphics from this and make it available to APR Patrons. The document is a 1980 DOE/NASA conference proceedings on the solar power satellite program.
The document is in fairly good shape except for a torn-off corner on the aft cover:
I saw the mailing label on the aft cover. The conference proceedings were originally mailed to one Peter Glaser of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Something about the name seemed familiar, so off to Wikipedia. Turns out he has his own entry:
Peter Edward Glaser (September 5, 1923 – May 29, 2014) was a Czechoslovakian-born American scientist and aerospace engineer. He served as Vice President, Advanced Technology (1985–94), was employed at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, MA (1955–94); subsequently he served as a consultant to the company (1994–2005). He was president of Power from Space Consultants (1994–2005). Glaser retired in 2005.[1]
OK, not too surprisng that the guy who originally owned this conference proceedings on the Solar Power Satellite program back in 1980 would ahve been an aerospace engineer. but here’s the one kinda interesting bit:
In 1968 he presented the concept for,[6] and in 1973 was granted the US patent on,[7] the Solar Power Satellite to supply power from space for use on the Earth.
Huh. Turns out the SPS document I just bought was originally owned by the guy who patented the SPS.
Not world shatteringly important, just kinda spiffy.
May 032018
Artwork was created for USBP 21 by Rob Parthoens depicting the Convair Submersible Nuclear Ramjet launching vertically from the ocean. This is approximately the craziest design for a manned aircraft I’ve seen from the post-war period.
Be sure to check out US Bomber Projects issue 21 to read more about this design.
May 022018
Republicans fought to free the slaves, Democrats fought to preserve slavery. Since the 1970s or so, though,it has become Received Wisdom that the parties switched… all the racists switch to the Republicans, nowthe Democrats are the party of tolerance and caring for black folk. But is that true?
Well… no. Not at all.
May 022018
May 012018
Believe me when I say: this sucks.
Raedthinn, constant companion of mine since 2005 or so, is most likely within a week or two of the end. Lately I’ve noticed that his voice had faded away, so I took him to the vet yesterday. It was discovered that his chest cavity was full of fluid, compressing his lungs. The vet drained the fluid, consulted Xrays and experts and decided that there were two options:
- A $10,000 operation which stood minimal chance (at his age) of doing much good
- Patching him up, giving him some low fat food and antibiotics and hoping for the best, for that one in a bagrillion shot where the leaky duct fixes itself.
Not having a spare $10K, nor wanting to put the old boy through the stress of a serious surgery for no statistically good purpose… he’s home now. Doc suggests that he has between a few days and a few weeks. So at some point soon I’ll have to make a necessary but unpleasant decision. Until that time, I’m going to give him the most comfort I can.
Note: his whole torso is shaved up to his spine.
May 012018
There exist in the world idiots who *still* believe that 9/11 was a hoax, that it was pre-placed demolition devices that brought down the towers and not jetliners piloted by Cultural Enrichment Specialists and the subsequent fires. And yet, yesterday a 26 story office building in Sao Paulo, Brazil, collapsed after a fire that burned without even the benefit of getting smashed by a jetliner going 300 miles per hour and adding hundreds of tons of kerosene to the mix.