Jun 182022
 

The Babylon Bee is at its best when you read one of their satirical articles and realize that if you didn’t know it was satire, you’d accept that it was a real, if perhaps disturbing and/or insane, article. Well… here’s a website that doesn’t seem to say anywhere that it’s satire, and I can’t tell if it’s satire or complete insanity:

https://iqfy.com/

There are a hundred pages of content, with about ten articles per page. A thousand articles of satire is a hell of a commitment to cause… but then, so is a thousand articles of utter nuttery.  There are articles such as:

We need to talk about “mental hospitals”—or internment camps for the neurodiverse

Body positivity is for women, not lazy white guys with dad bods

Is coffee racist? How drinking coffee perpetuates white supremacy

Mass shootings have a race—and political party

This dog is the new face of online homophobia

Elon bros are killing us with free speech

Encourage women to smell their poop to be more inclusive to Trans women

And so on

The site seems to just take whatever “articles” get written and submitted to it. So it may be a fully serious site (a lot of the articles seem fairly normal) that is either:

1) Being bombarded by articles written by loons

2) Being bombarded by articles written by trolls pretending to be loons

3) Being bombarded by both trolls and loons

 

Either way… I’m all for people paying attention. A bunch of leftwing lunatics who want to tear down civilization? That sort of thing should be noted. Insane trolling proves indistinguishable from honest insanity? That should also be noted.

 Posted by at 4:11 pm
Jun 182022
 

Recently sold on eBay was a display model for a vehicle labeled “SIPS.” No other data was available. However, this appears to be an upper stage modification for the LIM-49 Spartan surface-to-air anti-missile missile. Which suggests that the first “S” in “SIPS” standard for “Spartan.” Perhaps something like “Spartan Integral Propulsion System” or some such. However, this seems to appear to be a complete vehicle…. the very large first and second stage motors, as well as the warhead section, *appear* to have been replaced with a new, small booster with fins. Perhaps this was meant to test the third stage of the Spartan… or perhaps it was meant to be a way to find some use for the Spartan third stage after program cancellation, as some sort of scientific test vehicle.

The other photos from the ebay auction have been uploaded to the 2022-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for Patrons and Subscribers.

The diagram below shows the complete Spartan missile.

 Posted by at 1:48 pm
Jun 172022
 

Trump had a tenuous relationship with hard facts. When he told the American public things that were untrue, it *tended* to be in the form of “I will make everything awesome.”  Exaggerations, self-promotion and feel-good propaganda, that sort of thing. But Trump was a piker compared to the Biden administration when it came to bald-faced lying directly to the American public. Biden and his lackeys will look you in the face as your house burns down around you and tell you that your house has never been in better shape.

Keep it up, Joe. November can’t get here soon enough.

 Posted by at 2:04 pm
Jun 162022
 

For half a billion years *something* has been making more or less the same fossil, largely unchanged. Hexagonal net-like patterns in soft underwater sediment have been appearing since the Precambrian… on up to and including the present day. Whatever these things are, they’re still alive and we don’t yet know what they are.

 Posted by at 4:59 pm
Jun 162022
 

As part of the ongoing “January 6” dog and pony show, Senator Cruz got the opportunity to quiz the FBI on their participation in the events. It would have been *really* easy for the FBI rep to simply say “no” (or “not to my knowledge” or “not in any official capacity”) when asked if the FBI was involved, if the FBI encouraged criminality, if the FBI committed criminality. The actual answers are simultaneously uninformative and say everything.

 Posted by at 4:48 pm
Jun 162022
 

All the sci-fi tends to have the aliens land in D.C. or New York outside the UN. Having the Galactic Federation contact the ChiComs first? That’s a recipe for disaster.

China Says It May Have Detected Signals From Alien Civilizations

Given how reliable Chinese technology and manufacturing are, though, I’m not exactly ready to automatically assume they didn’t just pick up a transmission of “The Three Stooges” reflected off the Moon.

 Posted by at 2:22 am
Jun 162022
 

HOTOL (HOrizontal Take Off and Landing) was a British Aerospace concept for a single stage to orbit airbreathing launch vehicle, originating in the mid 1980’s. It was a stellar example of aerospace optimism; like its contemporary the X-30 National Aerospace Plane, it relied on a propulsion system of spectacular complexity and stunning lack-of-actual-existence to function. As originally conceived it was supposed to have an RB545 engine; unlike the X-30’s scramjet engine, the RB545 was an air breathing rocket engine. Liquid hydrogen would be used to liquify incoming air, a portion of which would be turbine-fed into rocket engines to burn with the hydrogen. Due to some amazing bureaucracy, the engine was slapped with the “Official Secrets Act” which meant that it was so amazing that it had to be classified… so classified that it basically couldn’t be worked on. Genius! Whether it would have actually worked any better than NASP’s scramjet is anyone’s guess. In the going on forty years since the RB545 was dreamed up, it obviously hasn’t driven an aircraft to orbit. Or, it seems, off a runway. Like the scramjet, it *might* work, if only the development effort was properly funded and allowed to work through issues, rather than starved and throttled.

The early HOTOL configuration shown here would have taken off using a ground trolley in order to save on landing gear mass. The vehicle was nominally unmanned, though crew and passengers could be installed in a module in the cargo bay, located well aft. One problem the configuration had was substantial center of gravity and center of pressure issues, driven by the long, slim fuselage filled with sloshing and emptying hydrogen tanks. As memory serves, this remained a problem throughout the design lifetime of HOTOL.

The full rez scan of this artwork has been uploaded to the 2022-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons and Subscribers.

 Posted by at 12:43 am
Jun 142022
 

Welcome to New York.

Chilling video shows knockout punch that killed man, 61, in Brooklyn

A single sucker punch killed a man. Took him five days to die.

What do you want to bet: they find the murderers (second guy might not have hit the victim, but he joined in the post-assault thievery, which to me sounds like Felony Murder), and the DA either finds a way to not charge them or to charge them minimally.

I have a suggestion for those wanting New And Improved gun laws: let’s institute a 90-90-90-90 rule first. Before a new criminal law is permitted to be enacted, 90% of violent crimes must result in an arrest, 90% of those arrested must be charged, 90% of those charged and convicted must be sentenced to 90% or more of the maximum. If you as a DA are not wiling to do even that much, then what’s the point of adding more laws to the books that you’re not going to fully prosecute?

 Posted by at 11:34 pm
Jun 142022
 

“Red Flag Laws” are *supposed* to be a way to temporarily disarm people who are a danger to themselves or others. Who could argue against them? Well… anyone who has ever noticed that they are not based on due process. They are not based on sober judgement of people who understand the gravity of depriving a person of their Constitutional and human rights. They are, sadly, based on the whims of people who have, and like to exercise, power. Witness:

Remember, Eric Swalwell is the Representative who not only bedded a Chinese Communist spy and did untold damage to the US (with no repercussions as far as I can tell), he’s also the guy who thought it would be a good idea to threat American citizens who do not wish to give up their rights. Threatening to use *nuclear* *weapons* on these citizens. Do you think it would be a good idea to turn over the power to deprive a citizen of their rights to a man with judgement like that?

 Posted by at 9:19 pm