I thought *sure* that some years ago I posted something about theiPad-like “newspad” from “2001,” describing how it very clearly predicted not only the pad itself but also the internet as a whole. But a search of the blog did not turn up what I thought it would; the closest was this bit from 2015 describing an article displayed on a Newspad.

Some more archive finds have provided more insight into the world of “2001:”

Did Stanley Kubrick invent the iPad?

The subject of the articles headline has been bandied about since 2011. But what’s of interest right here are the headlines that were written for the Newspad, specifically for the New York Times. Of course they didn’t appear on screen, so they are of arguably “canonicity,” but they’re interesting nonetheless:

1000TH BABY BORN AT SOUTH POLE CITY
LAST WORLD WAR I VETERAN DIES IN LONDON
AIRLINER FEARED LOST OVER ATLANTIC; 2304 ON BOARD
WORLD POPULATION PASSES 6 BILLION MARK: EVEN SPLIT NORTH AND SOUTH OF EQUATOR
LAST GRIZZLY BEAR DIES IN CINCINNATI ZOO: SPECIES NOW EXTINCT – TENTH THIS YEAR
DEEP-SPACE SURVEY ENROUTE: FLIGHT REPORTED NORMAL IN ALL RESPECTS
AQUANAUT RECORD NOW HELD BY BRAZIL: SUBMARINE SURVEY TEAM DOWN FOUR YEARS
FUNCTIONING EARTH SATELLITES NOW NUMBER 3700: MAJORITY LINK WEATH AND COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS
MOVE GAINS MOMENTUM IN WESTERN STATES FOR RETURN TO 4-PARTY SYSTEM
GARZANTI DIES IN ROME: FAMOUS DETECTIVE CREDITED WITH FINAL DESTRUCTION OF MAFIA IN 1971
DAWN OF MAN PUSHED BACK TO 5,000,000 YEAR MARK
GRAND CANYON BRIDGE OPENED BY PRESIDENT: LAST LINK IN ARGENTINA-ALASKA ELECTRONIC HIGHWAY SYSTEM
LANGUAGE BARRIER NOW NIL FOR 75% OF EARTH’S PEOPLES
FOURTEEN WESTERNS UP FOR NEXT TV LINE-UP
RESEARCH EXPENDITURES GREATER THAN PRODUCTION COSTS FOR SIX KEY INDUSTRIES
TRIPLE ALLOCATION ANTICIPATION FOR GRAVITY-CONTROL PROJECT AT USC
MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN ESP RESEARCH AT DUKE. PLANS FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATION LIKELY TO BE IMPLEMENTED WITHIN DECADE
BOOK REVIEW: “THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: RISE AND FALL OF A DRAGON: BY KEITH ROGERS
ART: PABLO PICASSO, PAINTING’S MOST INCREDIBLE SUCCESS STORY
THEATER: THE BARRYMORES, FORGOTTEN LEGEND
MEDICINE: HOW MUCH FURTHER THE AGE LIMIT? ARE 125 YEARS ENOUGH?
GARDENING: WATCH THE PH FACTOR. ACIDITY MORE CRITICAL IN HYDROPONICS THAN IN SOIL
NEW TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER FOR NEW YORK CITY. MAYOR PROMISES RESULTS. CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE REPORTEDLY PESSIMISTIC
FINANCIAL: BUYING POWER OF DOLLAR UP. FIRST IMPROVEMENT IN SEVENTEEN MONTHS. EASING ON CREDIT SEEN.
SPORTS: AUSTRALIANS LIKELY VICTORS TENNIS

Some comments:

1: South Pole City is clearly a well-established facility in 2001.

2: This means the last WWI veterans were probably under 100 years of age when they died.

3: Previously discussed.

4: Population reached 6 billion in 1999, but it was nowhere near an even split between north & south hemispheres. Something must have happened to drive a whole lot of people south without actually killing a whole lot of people.

5: Apparently the environment of 2001 has gone to hell such that the grizzlies have died out. Perhaps that’s why so many people have fled the northern hemisphere? From the viewpoint of the mid-sixties when these were written, the environment sucked, and would continue to suck for quite a number more years.

8: Way more satellites than real 2001. Not surprising.

9: Huh. One wonders what those 4 parties are, and whether they want a return to 4 from, say, 2 or from 6.

12: What’s an “electronic highway?” In real-world usage it might refer to the internet, but here it’s clearly an actual highway. Perhaps an electrified roadway for long-range self-driving electric cars?

13: Presumably HAL-1000 translation programs?

14: 14 westerns on American TV in 2001 would indicate a major shift in cultural priorities. In the real world westerns had pretty much vanished by the end of the 70’s. Perhaps there’s a link between the “cowboy ethic” and “frontier stories” with having an *actual* frontier…

15: And that’s why technology has advanced so far.

16: Umm… wha-what? Gravity control?

17: Clarke was obsessed with ESP. It has of course turned out to be rubbish. One wonders if a later article would be about how Duke got scammed.

18: This might indicate that China got real big and powerful in the late 20th century, but then collapsed. Perhaps that’s where much of the southern hemisphere population boom came from… hundreds of millions of Chinese immigrants into, say, sub-Saharan Africa. That would be fun to explore.

20: Apparently Drew went nowhere.

22: Hydroponic gardening is a big deal. Again, the environment seems to have gone down the crapper.

Discuss!

It’s time to play “compare the headline with the content!”

Headline:

NASA asteroid DANGER: A 2,700 MEGATON asteroid might hit Earth this October

Content:

There is a small chance – about one in 11,000,000 – Asteroid FT3 will crash into us in the next three months.

The odds of impact translate into a 0.0000092% chance of cataclysm or a 99.9999908% chance the asteroid will miss Earth.

This merits “DANGER” I guess. By that measure, I guess I’m at risk of my books getting picked up by a publisher AND of becoming every bits as popular and rich as J.K. Rowling. Which I guess means I’m also at risk of eventually posting tweets like “No, really, Nyarlathotep was gay the whole time!”

All that said, asteroid 2007 FT₃ seems an interesting prospect. Obviously an Earth-crosser, it is a not inconsiderable chunk of stuff at 340 meters in diameter with a mass of 5.5e+10 kg. There are several very good reasons to go pay it a visit:

Pure science
Mining, either for preliminary experiments or actual practice
Nuke it. Use it as a testing ground for Orion-style propulsive pulse units. This could be for pure science, to test the pulse units, to see how asteroids structurally respond, to see how efficiently the pulse mechanically couples to the target, to actually blast it into flinders for further science. Or it could be for practical purpose, for diverting the asteroid into high Earth or Lunar orbit, or perhaps for plowing it directly into a lunar impact. Why would anyone do the latter? Because it’s awesome, that’s why.

Date (yyyy-mm-dd.dd)	Distance (r_Earth)	Width (r_Earth)	Sigma Impact	Sigma LOV	Stretch LOV (r_Earth)	Impact Probability	Impact Energy (Mt)	Palermo Scale
2019-10-03.93	65.92	4.67e+1	1.390	-0.52688	3.75e+4	9.2e-8	2.670e+03	-3.17
2024-10-02.85	52.12	4.74e+1	1.079	-0.82761	5.48e+4	7.5e-8	2.724e+03	-3.73
2025-10-03.64	134.19	4.71e+1	2.826	-0.34668	5.39e+4	3.2e-9	2.637e+03	-5.16
2029-10-02.90	125.36	4.56e+1	2.727	-1.03451	1.21e+6	1.2e-10	2.762e+03	-6.74
2030-10-03.62	36.39	4.77e+1	0.742	-0.60895	6.54e+4	9.9e-8	2.685e+03	-3.87
2030-10-03.69	65.61	4.61e+1	1.403	-0.52780	3.66e+6	9.4e-10	2.670e+03	-5.89
2030-10-03.69	64.55	4.74e+1	1.341	-0.53047	9.10e+5	4.0e-9	2.671e+03	-5.27
2031-10-04.25	166.23	4.73e+1	3.491	-0.25267	6.72e+4	3.2e-10	2.618e+03	-6.40
2034-10-03.10	143.27	5.24e+1	2.715	-1.07823	2.94e+4	4.3e-9	2.768e+03	-5.33
2034-10-03.12	136.19	4.12e+1	3.279	-1.05902	4.80e+4	6.2e-10	2.766e+03	-6.18

Eleventh in the series. Read after the break…

Stepped out this evening to go for a walk and found this feller next to my shop. A juvenile hawk, it didn’t seem to be in a hurry to wander off. Some neighbors and I stood around looking at it like… well, like people standing around looking at a hawk. As this was well after the Department of Wildlife had closed for the night (and the weekend), we got lucky in waving down a passing state trooper. Who, as it turns out, was a former wildlife warden and was about as nonchalant as you could hope. He simply and easily bundled it in a thick blanket and took it off to a bird rehab place, as it was too young to fly back up to where it should have been.

I knew something was up about 20 minutes earlier. There were a bunch of birds chirping their damnfool heads off all day… and they suddenly got *real* quiet. At the same time, Speedbump was in a back window and suddenly went buggo, running from window to window.

For all of the woke yammering about “representation,” Hollywood *loves* to erase redheads from properties that it remakes. But it doesn’t just replace redheads with just random anybodies. There seems to be a pattern. It’s subtle. See if you can find it.

Updated! pic.twitter.com/Z2UlVpmD6u

— PelleCreepy (@PelleCreepy) July 4, 2019

This here Britainlander lives in London and makes his own clothes in the style of a “Regency gentleman.” For those unaware – and honestly, why would anyone be – the “Regency era” was a period of British history roughly between the time King George III (you know, the crazy one who lost the Brits the United States) was booted from power for being a nutjob and the installment of Queen Victoria. It would have been a perfect time for the Brits to boot *all* the “royals” and build themselves a republic modeled along the lines of the US. But it wasn’t to be, and now they get to look forward to installing an elderly King Charles.

Anyway.

Anywhere else, a guy going about dressed in the historic garb of his ethnic group would be of almost no newsworthiness whatsoever. A Japanese person wearing a kimono? A Sikh in a turban? An Arab in a… well whatever they call those robes? Meh, to all. But this guy is in Siddiq Khan’s London, and a white guy dressed like a white guy from 200 years ago is BBC Newsworthy:

I can’t say as I think much of that hat, but otherwise, hey, he looks pretty snazzy. Just so long as he doesn’t wave around one of those “Betsy Ross flags…”

Me, I’m a fashion slob. I choose my clothes based on “does it fit?” and “is it cheap?” I give approximately zero thought to fashion because… well, why would I? But if I did… hmmm.

Make some adjustments (better boots), update some of the materials (titanium mail seems like it aught to be a thing), replace the wood shield with one of kevlar), perhaps replace the axe with a shotgun, and that seems like just the outfit for a modern gentleman about town. Especially if it is a town that is still plagued with Antifa…

The real “ugly truth” is that it brings the lowest form of anti-American scumbag out of the woodwork to spew their ridiculous nonsense.

What’s the lowest form of anti-American? An American anti-American. Behold:

Fourth of July’s ugly truth exposed: The Declaration of Independence is sexist, racist, prejudiced

Summary: pissing and moaning that a document written in 1776 was written using the language and ideas and beliefs of 1776, and, shockingly, not those of Current Year. I’m honestly surprised that this piece doesn’t complain that the declaration didn’t discuss the rights of gays and transsexuals and nonbinaries and furries (hey, 4chan: get to work on getting the leftnuts PO’ed at the author for leaving these marginalized folks out of his article). In the future this same class of reprehensible muttonhead will complain that the DoI didn’t include clones and AI and uplifted chimps and Europan oceanic bacteria and transdimensional entities and imaginary magical unicorns.

Tenth in the series. Read after the break…

Someone is selling a contractors model of an engine for a cruise missile on ebay. The engine is an unducted aft fan design. This type of engine was proposed for use on jetliners; it provides fuel efficiency benefits but in the end the brain-melting noise it put out doomed the concept. Not only did it bother people, it also tended to buzz the bejeebers out of the aircraft structure. In the end very high bypass conventional turbofan engines proved capable of doing the job. Noise, of course, would not have been much of an issue for a cruise missile, but since this design was put forward (circa 1989) the US has not fielded any new major cruise missiles.

Note:”TCAE /GEAE” likely stands for Teledyne Continental Aviation and Engineering / General Electric Aviation Engines. Teledyne CAE was known as such between 1969 and 1999, an unhelpful 30-year span.

Vtg USAF TCAE/GEAE Propfan Engine Cruise Missile App 1/5 Scale Contractor Model

There are lots of pop culture critics on YouTube. Most are, bluntly… meh. Some, like Dictor von Doomcock, are on the mark, funny and insightful… and angry, because what’s being done with modern mythology would make any rational man angry. But then there’s the Critical Drinker, who is on the mark, funny and insightful… and drunk, because what’s being done with modern mythology will drive many a rational man to booze.