Unicron: Desktop-sized

 art, awesomeness, Crazy, reshaping the world, science fiction  No Responses »
Jul 162019
 

A year ago Hasbro launched their “Haslab” crowdfunding project. This is for developing – or not – toys of unusual size and cost that would be financially dangerously risky to develop without crowdfunding. Their first project was the ginormous Jabba’s Sail Barge from “Return of the Jedi;” it was successfully developed and sold to the nearly 6,000 backers for $500 a pop. They’ve come out with a new project: a 27-inch-tall Unicron from “Transformers: The Movie.” A 27-inch-tall figure toy is not that unusual; before Disney screwed the pooch on Star Wars, they were selling Darth Vader and stormtrooper toys bigger than that. But what Hasbro is doing with their Unicron figure it to make it as mind-bogglingly complex as possible. And consequently, the price is a bit much… $574.99. But if you just have to have a giant Unicron that somehow transforms between robot and planet forms, or you want to speculate on what the ebay resale value on these might be (there are a number of Sail Barges on ebay now all with Buy It Now prices of a grand and up), then here ya go. With 46 days left in the crowdfunding campaign, there are currently 920 out of 8,000 backers. Maybe you could buy two and sell one on ebay for twice the price, thus you end up with a free Unicron. Better still, buy three, sell one, send one to me.

Transformers: War For Cybertron Unicron

 

 

 Posted by at 2:02 am

Well that escalated quickly

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Gah., Hmm..., news, photography, Utah  No Responses »
Jul 152019
 

As previously illustrated, late Sunday night an electrically interesting cloud floated by leaving a few wildfires in its wake. I stayed up excessively late photographing it and processing photos; by 4:30 AM or so I’d had about enough and went to bed. Before that I checked the progress of the fires and it seemed like the firefighters seemed like they might have had a handle on it. It looked like nothing of much more interest was going to happen.

I wonder how that prediction panned out…

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 10:11 pm

Need ship diagrams

 drawings, ships  No Responses »
Jul 142019
 

When it comes to aircraft diagrams, I’m all set. But ships are outside of my, ahem, wheelhouse. Nevertheless, I’m looking for accurate side-view diagrams of *big*ships, such as the Nimitz-class carrier and the largest oil tankers and container ships. Who can hook a brother up?

UPDATE:

Not perfect, but “shipbucket.com” falls securely into the “good enough” category for what I need for most of what I’m looking for.

 Posted by at 1:43 pm

On Being WEIRD

 blather, Hmm..., politics, science  No Responses »
Jul 122019
 

A blog reader called my attention to this:

Challenges to capture the big five personality traits in non-WEIRD populations

Abstract

Can personality traits be measured and interpreted reliably across the world? While the use of Big Five personality measures is increasingly common across social sciences, their validity outside of western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) populations is unclear.

And so on and so forth. The point of contention was this:

western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD)

It was pointed out that this could just as easily have been “WIRED” or indeed any of a whole range of other descriptors such as “1st world” or “non-sh!tholes,” etc. But with the current fetish for denigrating western civilization, it’s perhaps unsurprising that less than subtle insults are being inserted even into scientific papers.

But a thought occurs. Rather than being an offenditarian and getting tweaked, I say we run with it. Consider:

1: “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD)” is indeed a rarity on the world stage. Thus technically being a civilized westerner is indeed “weird” compared to the rest of the world which would happily enslave and slaughter their neighbors while worshipping rocks and disdaining science in favor of witch doctory.

2: Anyone devoted to diversity had damned well better accept and celebrate the weird minorities. Therefore anyone who is opposed to western civilization is anti-weird, and thus a fascist and deserves to be punched, milkshaked, deplatformed, debanked, depersoned, driven from society.

The slogans write themselves:

Keep America WEIRD

Make America WEIRD Again

America: WEIRD It Or Leave It

Build the WEIRD

…

I *might* suggest a minor modification: “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic and scientific (WEIRD AS).”

 Posted by at 5:01 pm

Manhattan vs San Francisco vs SPS

 art, drawings, Hmm..., projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 122019
 

Three possibilities, comparing the initial relatively dinky (dainty at less than 12 km in length) initial NASA SPS concept to Manhattan island (in a simple line drawing),  to San Francisco and to the the regions around Manhattan. What looks best?

UPDATE: pretty universally the far right option was the most popular one (insert political joke HERE). A suggestion was made to rotate the SPS to align it with the island, which I’ve done below and… meh. It doesn’t really do it for me. I’ve blown up the thickness of the dimension lines.  The somewhat faint ellipse at far right in the new image below is the receiver array at 45 degrees latitude. Clearly it is just about as big as the SPS itself, which at first blush might make one wonder “why go to the bother, then?” But there are a few points:

1) Size is determined by the dispersion of the microwave beam coming from a 1-km diameter emitter array in geosynchronous, *not* on the max power density it could handle. So you could potentially have a couple SPS’s beaming down to a single array.

2) Unlike a PV array the microwave receiver lets the bulk of regular light come through. it could be roughly as dense as chickenwire, meaning that you could suspend the net-like receiver over crop land, park land or water.

3) The receiver, like the SPS, works 24 hours, day and night, good weather and bad, with no need to track the sun. A ground-based PV array with the same footprint would cost a lot more than the receiver and produce much less total energy averaged out over the year.

 Posted by at 12:38 am

I can’t wait to see the character designs for this

 art, blather, Hmm..., news, religion  No Responses »
Jul 112019
 

Norse Mythology? Zack Snyder? Anime? Netflix? Sure, Why Not?

Not a whole lot of detail here, but the story is that Netflix will in a few years have an anime-style show set in the “world of Norse mythology.” That *could* be incredibly awesome, but this being Hollywood, I can already feel the cringe.

It’s unknown whether the main characters will be the Norse gods or, potentially, just regular schmoes. It could even be set in any time period from “ancient” to “far future,” because “world of the Norse gods” could just as easily be “today.” Heck, it could be a “Seinfeld” style sitcom where every now and then someone drops a reference to  some god or other. Other possibilities:

1) Set more or less today, featuring a military/X-files type organization dealing with a rising tide of weirdness that they slowly come to realize is the forthcoming of Ragnarok.

2) Set more or less today, starring a US Army soldier killed in Afghanistan fighting Surt worshipers who is modestly surprised to find himself waking up in Asgard assigned to Valhalla with the Einherjar to fight and train and die every day, resurrect at evening and partying every night (could be an adjunct to #1)

3) Vikings in the Viking age, out doing Viking stuff, with semi-random supernatural weirdness

4) Tales of the Norse gods themselves, in ancient times

5) Tales of the Norse gods *since* ancient times. Thor in the Old West. Loki at the Stonewall riots

6) Space adventurers in the future, occasionally interacting with beings of Norse myths out among the stars

Many possibilities. But this being Hollywood, one thing seems likely: Thor, who was described quite explicitly as being a redhead, will be a victim of the Gingeradication (Redheadmageddon? Gingenocide? Gingereplacement?).

 Posted by at 5:10 pm
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