Every one of those was proposed for alternate roles, from truck-towed and truck-launched land based strike missiles to air-launched and ground-launched satellite boosting systems. And they very likely *could* have done that. But they are just not really well suited for any role but sea launched ballistic missile due to the somewhat tricky propellants they use… high energy propellants so they can function adequately while still being able to fit in a small submarine. But for above-ground systems, they’d be somewhat dubious. The environment within a submarine is pretty consistent. For a missile stored in a warehouse and then hauled aloft by an airplane? The thermal and vibration environments will be highly variable.
It should prove interesting to see how this plays out given that there are multiple narratives at play here. In short, a Hasidic family was booted off of a Frontier Airlines flight due to Commie Cough Mask Requirements. According to the family, it was because their 18-month-old baby wouldn’t wear a mask (and those under two are not legally required to do so). According to Frontier, it’s because multiple adults refused to wear their masks (and they *are* legally required to do so). Were the people involved pretty much any other minority religious or ethnic group, the pile-on onto Frontier would be overpowering; the airline would most likely have used a firehose to spray out termination notices.
As we’ve seen over the past few years, people are seemingly incapable of waiting for the facts to come out before leaping on one side or the other. But in this case, I think we might not see the usual firestorm of the kind normally applied to situations such as this given that the “minorities” involved here are not politically advantageous minorities. Ilhan Omar, for example, seems unlikely to pop out of the woodwork to defend the family and demand that Frontier apologize.
A lot of people have a lot of problems with “Star Trek: the Motion Picture.” The plot is a retread of “The Changeling.” It’s glacially slow. They’re wearing pajamas. Some of the effects are dodgy (especially some of the background matte paintings). While these are true, there are some aspects of the movie that are simply spectacular. The new Enterprise is a masterpiece of both design and model making. The intro with the Klingon ships was, for the time, spectacular cinematography. A lot of the visual effects remain beautiful. And unquestionably, the score by Jerry Goldsmith is not only the best in all of Star Trek, but is among the best movie scores ever. A lot of that may be due to the protracted development of the movie, which gave Goldsmith a lot more time to get it right. For example, here is his first take on music for the “beauty pass” scene where Kirk and Scotty fly around the Enterprise, giving six minutes worth of fan service to Enterprise aficionados. The first version… just doesn’t work. Had there not been more time, it’s what might have been included and the scene would have been lesser for it.
And here’s the first stab at recording the main theme for the movie. Interesting to hear the false start.
Ragical the Unhallowed Knight is a Dutch YouTuber who presents videos created by others, with a bit of his own commentary. In this case, what makes the videos worth watching isn’t so much his contribution, but the videos themselves… recently he has focused on interactions between “Sovereign Citizens” and the police. “Sovereign Citizens” are a particular brand of goofy who think that somehow they are outside the jurisdiction of the local law; that they can drive cars on public roads without having drivers licenses, insurance or even license plates; that they can invade and occupy someone else’s property and declare it their own; that, in short, the laws don’t apply to them Because Reasons. They think that bloviation will cause police to back away in shame and confusion and let them get away with their foolishness. Nearly inevitably, of course, they find out otherwise, typically after escalating a minor interaction into a full-blown crime.
On one hand, such videos are sad because they depict the marriage of arrogance and stupidity, some of the worst examples that mankind has to offer. on the other hand, such videos are a hoot for exactly the same reason.
This one is a dumbass American trying to claim that he is immune to Mexican laws while in Mexico. Guess how it turns out for him (note: sometimes these doofii get away with it):
“Yankee Doodle” is a song that has a line that, as a kid, always stumped me:
“Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.”
Why would someone call a cap with a feather in it a kind of pasta? Because the “macaroni” being referenced is *not* a pasta, but a type of fashion. A fashion we’ve all seen in period movies and old illustrations; a fashion that I suspect most readers of this blog looked at with some combination of confusion and disdainful amusement. Behold, then, this helpful video about the rise and fall of this ridiculous, mostly-English, fashion trend:
In short, it started as a way for the super-rich and “social betters” of the time to visually distinguish themselves from the plebs who could not hope to afford this sort of extravagant garb. It started off goofy enough, but eventually morphed into full-blown ridiculousness before disappearing into a cloud of universal mockery, replaced with much more modest fashions. During its life it saw the male practitioners make themselves look more and more feminine… until they were replaced with a vastly more masculine and respectable look.
As has been said, history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. So *perhaps* the history of macaroni fashion might be a useful guide to our own time. The fashion then was for ridiculous self-absorbed jerks to wear ridiculous over-blown and de-masculinizing fashions… until society simply had enough and laughed them out of existence. Today? Hmmm. Sound familiar at all? Difficulty: back then, practitioners of macaroni could scrape the makeup off their faces, take off the silly wigs and stupid outfits, and put on a practical wool coat and a simple tricorn hat. Today, they’d have to do more than wash the blues and pinks out of their mental-illness haircuts and take off the cringey woke T-shirts and the fifty pounds of drag makeup and dresses, they’d have to reverse various body modifications. Good luck with *that.*
In a way, though, this sort of goofy fashion trend is useful for sane people: you see someone done up in duds like this, you know that that person is not someone to take at all seriously except as a vague threat.
Will this happen? Naw. As memory serves, breaking states apart requires as much support by Congress and the states as passing a new Amendment. Still, fun to think about. And… let’s say the counties vote to leave Oregon and join Idaho. Let’s say the vote isn’t even close; it’s a landslide. If the people and county government just simply start *acting* like they’re part of Idaho, refusing to listen to the Oregon state government, keeping their own tax dollars, etc., what can the state of Oregon actually do?
Note that the map also shows parts of California as part of Greater Idaho. Personally, if this sort of thing was even vaguely possible I’d recommend the relevant Oregon/California counties break off and form their own *new* state, and score themselves two shiny new Senators in the process. Then eastern California can break off from the coast; Illinois could secede from Cook County; New York State could break away from New York City.
Being too lazy to look it up, I don’t know offhand if it would be Constitutionally easier for a chunk of one state to join up with another than it would be for a state to break up into several new ones. If it is, then, yes, joining with Idaho makes sense: who in their right mind would want to be run by the same government that runs Portland?
The subject of this video is one of the most cringe-inducing people I’ve yet seen. His appearance, mannerism, attire… sure, cringey. But what pushes it over the edge is his proclamation that pagan white people should not add into their practices deities and whatnot from non-white religious traditions. Hey, screw you, buddy. If I want to worship Odin *and* take on Aztec practices of sacrificing my neighbors to chop out their beating hearts and build towers of human skulls, who are you to tell me I’m wrong?
But as the title of the post says, it’s the comments that makes it all worth while:
Oy. Another school board Zoom meeting that catches a monumental case of stupidity for all the world to hear. In this case, the drive to open schools is “white supremacy” according to the school board vice president, La Mesa-Spring valley board of education in California. Because education is only for white supremacists, I guess? One would hope that this would be another one of those instances where those involved resign in shame, but this time it seems to be not the whole group but just one person, tragically afflicted with a case of stage 4 wokitis.
Oh, but it gets better: she points out that these meetings *are* *not* being recorded, then gets snippy when someone contradicts here. Guess who turned out to be correct. Go on, I dare ya.
Similar to the Oakley school situation, she's seems unaware that the meeting is being recorded. "If our meeting were actually recorded for the public, we would know that." pic.twitter.com/bFWjaYlLfp
All these people screeching about racism: does it ever occur to them that if there was some shadowy cabal of Klansmen out there pulling the strings to ruin the future of non-white children, they’d choose the same strategies the woke do? Go ahead, declare science and skepticism and objective facts and falsification and western civilization and a work ethic and 2+2=4 to be “white supremacist concepts.” How well do your think kids will do when raised *without* those ideals?
Plus: ever notice that as awful as the people who seek high public office are (I’m looking at you, Beto and Pelosi and Swalwell and AOC and Cuomo and Jackson-Lee and Hillary and Schumer and …), if you want true balls-to-the-wall power mad nuttery, ya gotta look to low-end politics like school boards and neighborhood councils and the like? The people there are just as power-mad, but haven’t had to restrain their public insanity any.
This photo has popped up online before, but usually in pretty crummy resolution. It’s taken from “Aerojet – The Creative Company” and shows a mockup for a Titan-derived first stage booster rocket. It has double the engines of the standard Titan core stage, either two or four engines depending on how you want to count the LR-87 engines (one set of turbopumps, two combustion chambers) married to a 15-foot diameter core. This is described as a booster designed to loft the Zenith Star space-based laser weapon test system (the ZS was described and illustrated in US Spacecraft Projects #1). Documentation on this specific booster has always been somewhat lacking, though there have been quite a number of Large Diameter Core Titans designed by Aerojet and Martin over the years.
Higher rez scan in the 2021-02 APR Extras Dropbox folder for patrons/subscribers.
Are you, like me, old enough to remember when “Star Wars ” was just… “Star Wars” and not “Episode IV, A New Hope?” If so… sorry, you’re old.
If you want to watch Star Wars the way you probably did back in the day… good news! Someone discovered a 16mm print of the original release, scanned it in – scratches and all – and uploaded it to archive.org:
