Feb 272021
 

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?

Five Oregon counties to vote on leaving state, escaping to ‘Greater Idaho’

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?

 Posted by at 5:27 pm
Feb 272021
 

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:

 

 

 Posted by at 2:32 pm
Feb 272021
 

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.

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.

BONUS ROUND:

 Posted by at 1:23 pm
Feb 272021
 

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.

 

 Posted by at 8:29 am
Feb 262021
 

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:

Star Wars (16mm Preservation)

If you want a direct download of the 750 megabyte file, it’s here.

 Posted by at 8:43 pm
Feb 262021
 

First the good news: I watched the pilot episode of “Superman & Lois” and… it was *actually* *good.* It is not the usual Superman storyline; Clark Kent and Lois Lane have been married for near on to two decades at this point and have to teenage sons. The sons are of course non-canonical, but it works and is a perfectly cromulent extrapolation of the characters. The plot, acting and dialog were pretty good; the VFX were top notch. One scene that I thought was particularly well done was when Clark Kent gets a devastating phone call that causes him to dash across the continent in seconds. It was simple, but it worked.

I will continue to watch the show with interest, which is far more than any of the other CW shows can boast.

BUT THEN…

A Superman Solo Film Is on the Way From Ta-Nehisi Coates and J.J. Abrams

Oh, goodie. A race hustler and the guy who almost single-handedly set both Star Wars and Star Trek on the roads to ruin joining forces to turn one of the oldest American sci-fi IP’s into hot garbage.

I have a plot idea. Feel free to run with it. Hollywood: feel free to steal this plot and spend $200 million making it.

So, it turns out that Lex Luthor is the bagrillionaire behind the scenes puppetmastering various nefarious schemes, a process decades old. One of his leading efforts: manipulation of the press. Specifically: whenever a cop is involved in any tenuous way with the death of a black suspect, the press – under Luthors hidden influence – runs inaccurate stories calculated to drive up rage and violence. The BLM/Antifa riots and insurrections are being driven by Luthors schemes; aiming to sow as much chaos as possible in order to destroy faith in the government, police, institutions and America as a whole. Part of this is seeing to it that major political parties nominate senile old kiddie-sniffers and incompetent diversity hires for major offices. Part of it is manipulation of the tax code to make sure that major corporations offshore their operations; this not only unemploys millions of Americans but empowers the Chinese Communist government, further driving down the American publics faith in the government. Part of this is funding crackpots to infiltrate colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, pre-schools and HR departments, filling them with anti-science, anti-engineering rigor, anti-objectivity nonsense so that STAR Labs and WayneTech and the like are starved of competent talent.

Superman, aided by a dark detective from Gotham City, finds all this out. But what Luthor is doing isn’t strictly illegal. So Superman goes to the public with what he’s learned… and he is promptly cancelled by the woke mob. Twitter and Facebook deplatform Superman for spreading politically incorrect “disinformation.” He is declared a Nazi and a white supremacist after he puts out a fire at a science fiction bookstore at the latest arsonriot.

Movie ends as Superman sadly says “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore” and flies off into the sky to find somewhere less insane and stupid. Post-credit scene: Luthor is now President of the US. The woke mob celebrates… for about five minutes, and then Luthor turns on them.

 Posted by at 8:13 pm
Feb 262021
 

The abuses of Popper

A powerful cadre of scientists and economists sold Karl Popper’s ‘falsification’ idea to the world. They have much to answer for

This long, rambling screed tries to make the argument that “falsification” is bad science.

I defy anyone who actually has done science to explain how science can be done *without* a focus on falsification. Note that the author here is not a scientist, but “is professor of science humanities and honorary professor in history.” Her arguments against falsification in science come from *philosophers,” not actual scientists. She seems to take issue with the whole notion of skepticism in science.

Bah.

 Posted by at 4:34 pm
Feb 262021
 

First up: a writer for Gizmodo flips her lid over the terrifying prospect of the Defense Department generating ten whole watts of electrical power in space with a solar panel:

The Pentagon Sent a Pizza Box-Sized Solar Panel Into Space, But I’m Sure Everything Is Fine

This solar panel is officially called the Photovoltaic Radiofrequency Antenna Module (PRAM), and it’s designed to capture the powerful blue light in space that doesn’t pass through the atmosphere. Navy scientists launched it last May using a mysterious drone called the X-37B, and it’s currently circling the Earth every 90 minutes. So right now, as I’m typing, there is a little solar panel looping the planet because the Department of Defense wanted to put it there. Somehow, this is not an episode of the X-Files, it is real life. …

The scientists want to send dozens of these panels to orbit the Earth, and they say if they scale up the project, it could produce enough electricity to fuel a whole city. But as far as I can tell, no one has been clamoring for space power. Myself and the other 99.9% of humanity would be perfectly happy with solar, wind, and other clean energy generated right here on Earth.

If these Defense Department scientists successfully get more of these panels into orbit, there’s no telling what horrors the nation will use them for.

Nobody wants space-based solar power according to this genetic defective.

Huh.

Bonus round, from the color-value reversed version of “Stormfront,” The Root:

‘Be Less White’: Coca-Cola Faces Backlash for Giving Wypipo Wonderful Advice in Diversity Training Program

“Be less white.”

If it were up to me, this would be America’s motto. Instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, children in school should stand up before class, put their hands over their hearts and shout “BE LESS WHITE” at the flag for five minutes before beginning the day’s lessons. (I’m old AF and I have no idea if students even have to say the pledge before school anymore, but still.) “Be less white” should be printed on t-shirts, bumper stickers, white people’s birth certificates, white people’s tombstones and it should replace “In God We Trust” on the back of U.S. currency.

Uh-huh. Read the comments for an extra dose of “my god humans are stupid.”

 Posted by at 2:12 am