And yet, surprisingly entertaining. So long as the attack lawyers can be held at bay, I suspect we’re entering a golden age of fan films.
Jan 042019
Jan 032019
Two pieces of NASA-marked (but likely not NASA-produced) concept art from the 1960’s depicted artificial-G space stations.
The first station (previously presented here in black and white not so long ago) depicts a substantial three-armed station witha multi-segment spine and three habitats. At one end of the spine is a nuclear reactor and its radiator; at the other end is a presumably rotationally0decoupled docking section. There is also an external “track” with two cars seemingly to provide transport from one habitat to another; it doesn’t really seem like this would provide a substantial improvement in transport over simply taking an elevator from one hab up to the spine and then down another elevator to the destination hab.
This space station, which appears from the art style to be a Grumman design, is a single-launch space station to be launched atop a Saturn V. The two arms would fold back for storage on the launch vehicle and would deploy once in orbit. An Apollo CSM is shown approaching for docking along the centerline; it’s not clear if the docking cone was rotationally decoupled. if it was not, the two Apollo-like capsules hanging off the sides of the cone are a bit of a head scratcher.
Both renderings have been uploaded in their full resolution to the 2019-01 APR Extras dropbox folder. This folder is available to APR Patreon Patrons and APR Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers at the $4 per month level and above.
Jan 032019
Honestly, I thought the season premiere, “Ja’loja,” was pretty lackluster (caveat: saw that during my so-sick-I’m-an-NPC phase). But the second episode, “Primal Urges,” shows a vast improvement. There was a whole lot of cringeworthy squidginess – I could’ve gone my whole life without all that hot Moclan-on-Moclan action – but even that served the story. And there were some great lines that are exactly the sort of thing you’ve never hear on *any* version of Trek… “Hi, I’m Dan” and “Aw, neat, what is it” don’t sound like much out of context, but they made me laugh uproariously *in* context. Plus, the episode just *looked* downright great: TNG *wishes* they could have done half as well back in the day. Interestingly, this second episode of season 2 was originally supposed to be the final episode of season 1, but for whatever reason it got slotted in here.
I have high hopes for the rest of the season. I do miss Yaphit, and hope he’s in this season.
Jan 032019
I saw this on the nightly news a few days back, during the peak of my little bout with the plague. Only just remembered it moments ago.
Police investigate incident in Ogden where man attempted to crawl into woman’s window
Police in Ogden are investigating a case where a teen says an individual tried to pop out a window screen and enter her room at a home near Weber State University. … The victim posted a photo of the man, who appears to be looking up at her window and trying to climb up the home’s exterior.
And… here’s the nopetastic nightmare fuel of a photo:
Jan 032019
Where the Debunkers take on what is surely one of the most intellectually bereft civilian enfeeblement propaganda videos that the far left has ever excreted.
I looked up the original anti-rights video that they are debunking. The comments section – which surprising hasn’t been closed – appears to be almost all negative. The video right now has a total of 72 likes… and six THOUSAND dislikes. More importantly, it’s been up since March and has only been viewed 28,000 times; the Debunkers video went up today and currently has 13,000 views.
As with many areas of life, the numbers certainly indicate that the people behind the original video are the fringe extremists, out of touch with the public at large. But that particular fringe is *very* good at screaming and yelling and making the media think that the issues they’re throwing tantrums over are real issues.
Jan 032019
…but here is the time when you *should* read the comments.
“It takes a brave person to walk into a suicidal elevator.”
“This elevator is dead inside.”
“People always ask “Where’s the elevator?” and never “How’s the elevator?””
“When you stub your toe but you’re keeping all the pain and crying inside you“
“You know its the 21st century when even elevators are screaming in agony”
“It sounds like an elder chicken running for life from a car being controlled by a super intelligent dog named Steve who has a passionate hate for chickens.”
“Same energy as the suicidal doorbell“
“Sounds like the voice of feminism to me.”
This is the first day in a while that I’ve been physically capable of laughter. Good timing.
Jan 032019
Kudos to China for doing what the US *should* have done 40 years ago but refused to do.
China’s Chang’e-4 makes historic landing on Moon’s far side
Jan 032019
This headline is a little… “generous.”
Brains of 3 People Have Been Successfully Connected, Enabling Them to Share Thoughts
In short:
It works through a combination of electroencephalograms (EEGs), for recording the electrical impulses that indicate brain activity, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), where neurons are stimulated using magnetic fields.
All well and good. What the researchers were actually able to transmit from brain to brain was a flashing light: one person saw an LED flash at a particular rate, and another “saw” the flashing light in their mind. Which is interesting, of course, but it’s hardly the same as transmitting thought. If what the first brain transmitted wasn’t the brains response to actually seeing a real light, but instead the first brain was told to *think* of a flashing light (or a symbol, a concept, a color), and the second brain picked up on that… THAT would be thought transmission of a limited kind.
But give it a few years work. I’m sure that soon enough this will lead to a new form of social media where people will be able to get offended at unheard-of speeds.
Jan 022019
This… this… ugh.
Activist Slams Curing Genetic Diseases as Threat to Disabled Identity: It’s ‘Actually Genocide’
If you think that it would be morally wrong to correct genetic disorders in vitro/in utero, I invite you to behold one of Gods greatest gifts to babies: Harlequin-type Ichthyosis.
Jan 022019
NASA’s New Horizons Mission Reveals Entirely New Kind of World
This image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the most detailed of Ultima Thule returned so far by the New Horizons spacecraft. It was taken at 5:01 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, just 30 minutes before closest approach from a range of 18,000 miles (28,000 kilometers), with an original scale of 459 feet (140 meters) per pixel.
This indicates that higher-rez images are possible in the coming days… assuming the camera was pointed in the right direction. Unlikely that it wasn’t, but you never know.
The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. At left is an enhanced color image taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), produced by combining the near infrared, red and blue channels. The center image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has a higher spatial resolution than MVIC by approximately a factor of five. At right, the color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image to show the color uniformity of the Ultima and Thule lobes. Note the reduced red coloring at the neck of the object.
And because this is 2019 and we can’t have anything nice, the Twitter maniacs and SJW scolds are at it again: