The Trump Effect?

 Hmm..., humor, news, politics  No Responses »
Oct 162018
 

Say what you will about Trump being a cartoonish clown, he does seem to have had an effect on the GOP. Specifically, they seem to be rediscovering not only that they were born with spines but also senses of humor. Take Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. Today the Big Big News was that Senator Elizabeth Warren, who Trump has mocked for years for her claim of being a Native American (a claim she used to boost her career at Harvard as a “woman of color”), released results of a genetic test which showed that she is somewhere between 1/64 and 1/1024 native American.  In fact, due to native American DNA not being terribly well catalogued, she actually is 1/64 to 1/1024 latin American. For someone whose career was basically made by dint of affirmative action based on the hypothesized existence of a far-distant ancestor9or at least that was what she tried to do), she spent much of the day declaring victory. But Orrin Hatch responded with a single simple tweet:

Ha. And indeed, ha.

Republicans would do well to keep both their spines and their humor. In 1996, Clinton Soundly trounced Bob Dole. Dole was, seemingly, dry and humorless, traits that did not serve him well against the charismatic Clinton. And as soon as Dole had lost and the pressure was off, he went onto shows like Letterman, where he showed himself to be a naturally humorous guy. *That* Dole might have beaten Clinton.

But here’s the interesting thing:

White Americans

White Americans (European Americans) on average are: 98.6 percent European, 0.19 percent African and 0.18 percent Native American.

Ummm. 1/1024 ~ 0.1 percent. So the average Whitey McWhiteAmericanGuy may well be more native American than Elizabeth Warren.

 Posted by at 12:06 am

$5 Billion vs $5 Billion

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, projects, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 152018
 

Elon Musk pegs SpaceX BFR program at $5B as NASA’s rocket booster nears $5B in cost overruns

Chances are good that the SLS first launch, currently officially slated to slip to June 2020, will probably actually slip to 2021 some time. More good news: it’s fantastically over budget.

In other words, compared to Boeing’s first serious 2014 contract for the SLS Core Stages – $4.2B to complete Core Stages 1 and 2 and launch EM-1 in Nov. 2017 – the company will ultimately end up 215% over-budget ($4.2B to $8.9B) and ~40 months behind schedule (42 months to 80+ months from contract award to completion).

Ye gods.

By the time SLS actually flies, chances are pretty good that BFR will have already gone to orbit, if not the Moon or Mars. The upper stage is slated to fly in some form in 2019; and while I won’t be the slightest bit surprised if BFRs schedule slips, I’d be beyond astonished if it slips anything like SLS’s. For a company like Boeing, the SLS core should have been a snap. The engines are decades old designs, the core tankage is based on the ET, which is decades old; they’re not recovering it, it’s literally nothing special or new. It should have *easily* flown by now.

 Posted by at 3:48 pm

Free Local Pickup

 art, eBay, history, Hmm...  No Responses »
Oct 152018
 

Not really sure why eBay thought it should show this one to me, but what the heck, y’all might be interested:

British Centurion MK1 Main Battle Tank, Military Vehicle, Army Tank, M1 Abarms

It seems to be a British tank with a lot of sheet metal tacked onto it to make it resemble an M1 Abrams. Not explained is *why,* I’d guess perhaps as a movie prop. A $100,000 Buy It Now price, so start digging through your sofa cushions for some spare change.

It has very clearly seen better days. It’s located in Zion, Illinois. From the background in the photos, it looks like it comes from a private collection of military equipment.

As that movie came out in 1996, this tank

{A bit of Googling later}: Ooops, here we go:

http://www.shopmilitarystuff.com/home/37-mk1-centurion-tank.html

Same tank for sale, different website… for way cheaper; $75,000. It was indeed for a movie, “Courage Under Fire.” As that movie came out in 1996, it’s a safe bet that the tank has been outside for twenty years. It seems to be at the Russell Military Museum, near the Wisconsin border.

Wheee! You can see the tank from space. The Museum is a tightly-packed facility, that’s for sure…

 

 Posted by at 10:24 am

Maintenance Station in Space

 art, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 142018
 

A piece of art from 1962 depicting a Westinghouse Electric Corp. concept for a space station meant to provide servicing for nuclear powered spacecraft. it appears to be more of a space craft than a space station, since it is equipped with a substantial nuclear propulsion system of its own. It’s unclear what the set of rings at the “front” of the space station are meant to do.

 Posted by at 8:43 pm

I don’t know his politics, but I like his ad

 art, awesomeness, humor, politics, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 132018
 

Dr. Steve Ferrara is running for Congress in Arizona. Here’s an ad fr him from nearly a year ago. I’d like to know if this is actually ran on TV, but I suspect not. Most likely this is a “fan ad” (there’s no “I’m Steve Ferrara and I endorse this ad”) but even if so, this would be more persuasive than most professional, officially endorsed ads.

 Posted by at 8:44 pm

Unhinged Mob

 Crazy, Forward!, news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 132018
 

The GOP is finally starting to figure out that their best spokespeople are their political opponents.

The GOP would be well advised to run ads such as these in contested districts. It’s not like there’s a dearth of such videos.. And let’s face it: the clips shown here are the *tame* ones compared to what they could have used.

 Posted by at 1:56 pm

The Cylon and his pooch

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, science, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 122018
 

Well, this is just impressive. Let’s see YOU do this…

And the “Spot” robot going through a construction site in Japan carrying out inspections:

Note that both videos are composed of relatively short segments. The Spot video edits a number of shots together to create a narrative of the robot going about its business, but note that the robotic arm comes and goes. So that video was clearly pieced together from various separate exercises. It’s not clear just how long either robot can do what it’s doing before it either gets confused or its batteries run down (or, for that matter, how much time had to be spent “teaching” each robot how to do they tasks they are shown doing, or if they were given simple directions and the robots figured the details out for themselves). Power remains an issue with systems like these: batteries suck for energy density, but they are quiet; standard fossil-fuel powered generators have fantastic energy density, but they are louder than an SJW NPC programmed to seem enraged. Some sort of chemically-fueled fuel cell technology might be the best approach, especially if the robots are capable of recharging themselves safely and reliably.

An idea: a series of Atlas robots, wrapped in adequate armor sheathing to protect them from basic harm, equipped with loudspeakers and programmed to march into groups of protestors and simply scream back at them the things they themselves are screaming. Just louder.

Here’s something I don’t like about Boston Dynamics:

On 13 December 2013, the company was acquired by Google X (later X, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.) for an unknown price,[8] where it was managed by Andy Rubin until his departure from Google in 2014.[9] Immediately before the acquisition, Boston Dynamics transferred their DI-Guy software product line to VT MÄK, a simulation software vendor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[10] On 8 June 2017, Alphabet Inc. announced the sale of the company to Japan’s SoftBank Group for an undisclosed sum.[11]

It’s an American company on the leading edge of technological development, creating robots with a clear military application. And the company is foreign-owned. Eehhhhhhhhch…

 

 Posted by at 9:33 pm

Early Martin Co. Satellite Art

 art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 122018
 

An illustration from circa 1960 showing the launch of a communications satellite. Note the booster falling away in the background… unlike pretty much every booster the US actually built, this one is a slim cone. The caption very likely does not accurately describe this; it is unlikely to be a geosynchronous satellite given not only the low altitude depicted but also the fins on the booster stage.

 

 Posted by at 6:45 pm
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