Aug 312018
 

Republican candidate for Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis has been accused of racism for using the phrase “monkey this up by enacting a socialist agenda with huge tax increases.” Because of course why not. When in doubt, scream “racist.” But…

Remember when all these Democrats said “Monkeying Around” and it wasn’t racist?

This clip includes:
Dick Durbin
Jay Carney
Josh Ernest
Angus King
Chuck Schumer
Mike McCurry
John Kerry
Robert Byrd
Bernie Sanders
Adam Schiff
Brian Roberts
Barack Obama

 Posted by at 9:09 pm
Aug 312018
 

Well, this election should be nothing if not entertaining:

In Hilton Head mayor race, 1 candidate a ‘Holocaust revisionist.’ Another admires Hitler.

The Holocaust Revisionist:

[Michael] Santomauro describes his political affiliation as a Libertarian-Republican and said he voted for Donald Trump in 2016, though he might have voted for Bernie Sanders if he had made it to the general election. 

The Hitler Admirer:

She [Rochelle Willims] offered that she thought Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was successful in uniting people.

“He did what he had to do,” Williams said. “He got that many people to follow him. He must have been doing something right.”

Williams said what she admired primarily about Hitler was his ability to control people.

“I like the power part, I guess, the control part,” she said.

Here’s where it goes from “ugh” to “huh:” here’s a photo of Ms. Williams:

Ayup.

 Posted by at 8:48 pm
Aug 312018
 

NASA needs to get on the horn to Elon Musk and start playing nice.

Russia Cuts Off U.S. Access to ISS, Pledges to Stop Ferrying American Astronauts in 2019

Short form: Russia has a contract with NASA to launch astronauts, and the contract ends in April, 2019. This is nothing particularly startling, and it’s entirely possible (probably probable) that NASA and Russia will sign a new contract and flights will continue uninterrupted. That said… BRING ON THE DRAGONS. It’s *long* past time that the US was back in the business of launching our own people into space. SpaceX is supposed to fly an unmanned-but-man-rated Dragon in November and an actually manned capsule in April of next year. Boeing is supposed to fly their capsule a few months later.

 Posted by at 8:15 pm
Aug 302018
 

I’m sure there’s a word for this: political ideologues turning on one of their own who does not show sufficient zealotry in all the right fields of popular fanaticism.

Wil Wheaton Has a Listening Problem

Wil Weaton, actor, nerd, far left fanatic, has suddenly become a target of the SJWs. He has committed at least two sins, by the article linked above:

1) He was on Twitter but bailed a month ago because he couldn’t stand that Twitter had not yet censored Alex Jones (there are lots of good reason to avoid Twitter, but the fact that they allow offensive goofballs to say their piece seems an odd one). So he was also on Mastodon (full disclosure: I’ve no idea what that is, but assume it’s akin to Twitter) and, like a good little Leftist, could not bear to be exposed to opposing views, specifically in the realm of “Gamergate.” So he signed up for a list that would block certain addresses. The problem here is that while the list was originally ideologically pure, over time the woman controlling the list has added a lot of “trans” people. Why? because she’s a “TERF,” a “Trans Exclusionary Reactionary Feminist.” If you have not heard of TERFs, they are sort of the Final Boss of  Intersectionality… they are the feminists so hateful of anyone not what they consider women, they can’t stand “trans women.” So it turned out that Wil Wheaton had (unknowingly) blocked a lot of trans women… a damnable mortal sin by the measure of most non-TERF SJWs.

2) He was a friend of Chris Hardwick. Simply having once been Hardwicks friend was doubtless enough to get him on The List of many an SJW once Hardwick was accused of bad behavior by a woman he had dated. But Wheaton ratcheted up the Pure Evil by not immediately throwing Hardwick under the bus and disavowing him. The fact that AMCs investigation of Hardwick apparently turned up nothing, and that no evidence against Hardwick seems to have come to light and a lot of evidence in his favor, and a number of his former girlfriends/wives, have come out in support of him, is not enough to get Wheaton off the hook. He did not instantly turn on a guy who was accused of something, so Wheaton is by SJW logic a villain.

Keep it up, SJWs! Keep purging the impure. Good luck, we’re all counting on you!

 Posted by at 9:20 pm
Aug 302018
 

For reasons which seem good to me I find myself in need of a good simulator of real-world planetary and stellar orbits ( this solar system along with the likes of Alpha Centauri A&B). “Universe Sandbox” seemed a good choice, so I paid my money, spent an hour trying to figure out hour to download the damn thing (do they just send you a link to a ZIP file with the packaged program? Oh, hell no, you’ve got to download and install “Steam” and sign up for a number of things… bah), and in the end it auto-installs onto the computer that downloads it… in this case, the dinky netbook, not my actual reasonably powerful useful computer. So it’s not only taking up multiple gigabytes of space on a small computer that didn’t have that many gigabytes free in the first place, it don’t run too gud what since it’s not on the best of computers. Sigh.

So, a few questions:

  1. Anybody know how to download Universe Sandbox so that it can be transferred to another computer and run offline?
  2. Anybody know of another program that will do the job of accurately showing me where planets and asteroids will be at such-and-such a date, along with where Alpha Centauri A&B will be with respect to each other at such and such a date? Obviously, something downloadable and transferable to an offline computer.
 Posted by at 6:06 pm
Aug 302018
 

So, how many school shootings are there in a year? The government says 240. NPR, of all organizations, says the number is *slightly* lower: 11.

The School Shootings That Weren’t

Even that 11 doesn’t mean “mass murders,” or even “one murder,” but just a “shooting at a school. And of course there’s this problem:

The government’s definition included any discharge of a weapon at school-sponsored events or on school buses.

That is *incredibly* vague. Did a rabid Dire Wolf break into the school and start eating the kids and a school guard shot it? School shooting. Did the school have a sanctioned target shooting exercise? School shooting. Did the cops have a running gunbattle with gangbangers through a school parking lot? School shooting. Described in the piece is a Wisconsin school that was confused about whether or not to report students engaged in a paintball battle as an “attack with a weapon” or a “possession of a firearm.”

We are forever being told that “this sort of thing happens in America all the time.” And yet, a school shooting where kids are actually shot makes the news, far and wide. Stuff that happens all the time is, by definition, not newsworthy. If it’s newsworthy, it’s rare.

 Posted by at 8:43 am
Aug 292018
 

I think Foamy The Squirrel is *partially* on to something, in that the issue he raises could, if it continues, lead to substantial population declines. But where he’s ultimately dead wrong: this will only affect part of the population. The “civilized” population will decline and simply be replaced by people from cultures where this issue… isn’t an issue. The end result will be a population *boom* with the civilized lands becoming increasingly uncivilized and simultaneously overcrowded, with ecological catastrophe upon catastrophe following the disappearance of Enlightenment values and populations.

Once again: thank an SJW for destroying not only civilization but the world.

 Posted by at 10:11 pm
Aug 282018
 

An artists concept of a rotating space station circa 1962. It has a NASA ID number but it *may* be North American Aviation, as they designed a space station essentially identical to this, as described and illustrated in an article written by Dennis R. Jenkins for Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N6. This space station was designed to be launched as a single payload atop a two-stage Saturn V; it would unfold once in orbit to form the pseudo-toroidal shape. This piece of art depicts a central docking hub that must have been intended to be rotationally decoupled from the station. The space station must have been non-rotating at the point in time illustrated, or those spacewalking astronauts are going to have an interesting time doing their job.

A high-rez scan of this piece of art has been uploaded to the 2018-08 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

patreon-200

 

 Posted by at 11:17 pm
Aug 282018
 

Where the author of the piece argues that in order for “diverse” people to feel represented, all the white characters need to be recast as some other race. Not by, say, having white Peter Parker as Spiderman be joined by black Miles Morales as *another* Spiderman, but by having Peter Parker be portrayed as a black kid. Or having Idris Elba, black guy, portray James Bond, formerly white guy. Or indeed by having Idris Elba, black guy, portray Heimdall, the Norse god who was described in several sources as the “white As” (i.e. Aesir) and the “whitest of the gods.” Note: Heimdall, as part of the Aesir & Vanir pantheon, is still actively worshipped in the Asatru/Forn Sed religion. Imagine the outrage if Hindu deities were portrayed by Native Americans (hey, they’re all Indians, right?) or Chinese gods portrayed by white or black actors.

Miles Morales Is Not Peter Parker: Why New Characters Don’t Solve the Problem of Diverse Representation

The genius of ethnically appropriating existing white characters and making them something else is that once it’s accomplished, it will be considered racist to switch them back. Up until 2008’s “Iron Man,” Nick Fury was always a gruff one-eyed white guy. Now he’s a gruff one-eyed Sam Jackson, even in many of the the comic books that aren’t directly tied to the movies. If they switch him back and have him played by, say, Jon Hamm, imagine the outrage.

There is a simple reason why the SJWs want to appropriate straight white male characters and make them anything but: because when they create their own distinct characters, they tend to suck. Partially this is because SJWs tend to be so twisted up inside that they have filled their minds with hate and have little room left for creativity. And partially it’s because when you create a character for the specific purpose of ideological propaganda, there’s usually not much left for actual characterization. This is not an SJW-specific concern… create a character for *any* ideology, and chances are the end result will be “who cares.” Look at Ayn Rand: her two best known works of fiction, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” are filled to overflowing with characters…. none of whom are much more than cardboard cutouts.

So *of* *course* the SJWs want to replace not just fictional characters but historical ones with same-named but ideologically/ethnically/whateverly “diverse” alternate reality versions. Because they know that they probably can’t come up with their own successful and interesting characters.

 Posted by at 1:53 pm
Aug 272018
 

A scan of a black and white PR glossy sold on ebay depicting a Boeing concept for a solar power satellite from the 1970’s. Most SPS concept were for Manhattan-sized slabs of aluminum trusswork, holding vast fields of photovoltaic cells. This design, though, was different in that it was a Manhattan-sized collection of vast reflectors concentrating sunlight onto relatively small targets. There a working fluid would be super-heated and the resulting high pressure gas blown through turbogenerators. The gas would be cooled and condensed in the radiators. Note that the artist took some liberties with the orientation: a setup like this would only work if the reflectors were reasonably precisely aligned with the sun. That would only occur when the shadow of the solar collector at the focal point fell onto the center of the concentrating mirror assembly; the radiators would cast almost no shadow, just a razor-thin line bisecting the mirrors.

 Posted by at 10:34 pm