Werner Herzog just lost my vote

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Meh., news, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 212020
 

Documentary film maker Werner Herzog has this to say about mankind trying to become an interplanetary species:

“The thought alone is an obscenity.”

Turns out he’s one of those misanthropes who compares humanity to locusts, who thinks we need to solve all the problems Here before moving There (one wonders if he thinks hominids should have stayed in Tanzania, or if he’s upset that amphibians left the ocean), and who somehow compares Nazism and Communism (ideologies that were all about limiting human options) to interplanetary expansion (which is all about expanding options).

 

One wonders if Herzog is at the top of BidenHarris’s list of people to run NASA.

 Posted by at 1:55 pm

Vinyl issue. WT actual F?

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., Hmm..., models, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 202020
 

UPDATE: “Good” news: a link in the comments section explains what happened here. Bleah.

I recent bought a model kit of a tank (a 1/35 Dragon T28). it has been *decades* since I’ve built a tank model, and right now with the Book projects building models is not a high priority, but what the heck. So I popped open the box, started looking at the parts and realized there was a problem.

The tracks are supposed to be flexible bands of molded vinyl. Fairly standard for a model kit… the two general approaches are either bands of flexible vinyl, or individual tracks and links. The tracks and links approach can produce the best looking model, but it can be a time and brain consuming nightmare to link hundreds of parts.

But there was a problem with the tracks. Instead of being flexible vinyl… they’re more like brittle cast resin. They actually shatter and crumble in the packaging:

As best as I can determine, this is the legit actual part. Based on YouTube videos of other people doing reviews and assemblies, the color is spot on, the vacuum-packed plastic sealed bag is right. The molding is crisp and clear, far better than would be expected if I somehow got someone’s resin recast of the vinyl tracks. But as you can see, the tracks are extraordinarily brittle… and they’re wet. They’re soaking in what seems to be some sort of oil.

So what am I looking at here? Is this some sort of weird manufacturing mistake… a set of resin tracks instead of vinyl? Or could this be vinyl that has degraded to a phenomenal degree? Is the oil the cause of the brittleness… or did the vinyl exude the oil and become brittle?

I’ve contacted the manufacturer and *might* get a set of replacement tracks in a couple  months. That would be nice. But I am really curious about what the problem really is here. Anybody know of a series of reasonably safe tests that could determine what the oil is (silicone? hydrocarbon?) and whether the tracks are vinyl or resin. The easiest test I can think of: burn some resin, burn some vinyl. Then burn the tracks, which does it smell like? Simple, straightforward likely toxic as all get-out, so, yeah, no.

 Posted by at 10:56 pm

Magical thinking results in a knockout

 Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., religion, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 202020
 

If’n you’re looking for a few minutes of nothing much punctuated by someone getting the nonsense knocked out of ’em, this video’s for you:

An explanation:

Disgraced master ‘walks away from kung fu’ after fresh online mockery

In short: a Chinese “martial arts master” got his ass handily handed to him by an amateur boxer. Why? Because a *lot* of martial arts is more akin to dance and ritual than actual fighting. The more “spiritual” you are with it, the more reality is likely to come up and knock you upside the head. And with the bonus that a lot of these “masters” are just schmucks who *claim* to be masters based on… well, nothing much. Sometimes they are charlatans. But often they seem more like cult leaders who have bought into their own BS. And thus they willingly get into a ring with someone with ACTUAL beatyerass skills and get their ass beat. They actually think their nonsense about “energy” and “chi” and assorted babble will actually protect them from someone who knows how to throw a punch or deliver a kick.

History has shown that reliance on spiritualism, the supernatural, God, angels, whatever, doesn’t do diddly to protect you against kinetic energy. As the saying goes, “God helps those who shoot first at extreme range with good large-caliber rifles with excellent well-calibrated optics.” Or something like that.

 Posted by at 8:23 pm

Time for the popcorn

 Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 202020
 

Or perhaps the Corn Pop.

According to Rasmussen polling:

Nearly a Third of Democrats Believe the Election Was Stolen From Trump

75 percent of Republicans believe it is very likely (61 percent) or somewhat likely (14 percent) that the election was stolen from Trump. But, according to the poll, while 69 percent of Democrats say it is not at all likely (61 percent) or not very likely (8 percent) that the election was stolen from Trump, 30 percent of Democrats believe it is very likely (20 percent) or somewhat likely (10 percent) that it was.

Gonna be an entertaining few years, especially when Pelosi 25ths Biden out to Shady Pines and the Democrat the Democrats *least* wanted takes over.

 

 Posted by at 6:47 pm

Rocket Lab returned a rocket

 awesomeness, news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 192020
 

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket successfully launched  from New Zealand and put 30 small satellites into orbit. Additionally, the first stage seems to have come down under parachutes for a splashdown in the ocean; it seems recovery operations are planned and/or underway. The eventual goal is to air snatch the booster with a helicopter; not as elegant as SpaceX’s hoverslam recovery, but, hey, better than anything Soyuz or Atlas or Delta does.

 Posted by at 8:28 pm

Aricebo: 2020 strikes again

 AARRRGH, Gah., history, news, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 192020
 

Sigh.

Arecibo radio telescope, an icon of astronomy, is lost

It’s 57 years old. Which is probably a good long run for a radio telescope, but it’s still sad to see it go.

That said, this here *could* be an opportunity, not just another in 2020’s seemingly unending stream of fails and disasters. Build another radio telescope. A bigger, better, more modern one. Of course, you need to find just the right place for such a thing. A place with consistent weather, proper dish-like geography, minimal radio noise. Now I wonder where we could find a place like that:

 Posted by at 8:11 pm

Well, let’s see how this goes

 art, blather, Hmm..., news, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 182020
 

“Wonder Woman 1984” was supposed to be released *months* ago.  But that was before China sprang a pandemic on the world and utterly borked the whole concept of going into a confined space with a whole lot of strangers for a few hours. The few attempts that have been made to release a movie into theaters in the last few months have been pretty disastrous, and there’s no obvious end in sight. so what’s a major movie studio supposed to do when they’ve already thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at a movie that that might not be able to properly release to movie theaters for perhaps another year? Well, they could just sit on the movie for that extra year and hope beyond the grasp of reason that movie theaters will actually still be a profitable thing in the future, rather than just empty shells sold off to condo developers. Or they could do what Warner Brothers/DC is doing and just say “Ta hell wit it” and release it onto a streaming service. In this case, HBO Max on December 20. They’re also releasing it in theaters on the same day, but I have a suspicion that box office returns are gonna be pretty damn meager.

So, what’s everyone think? Moviegoing now a thing of the past? Streaming the way of the future?

Bonus round: pretty much everyone either hates or has forgotten “Justice League” That there movie was a mess. But Warner/DC are releasing the “Snyder cut” in 2021, again on HBO Max. My understanding is that this will be a fundamentally different movie:

  1. Warner only used something like 15% of what Snyder shot (director Zack Snyder had to leave the production due to a family tragedy; the movie was taken over by Joss Whedon who decided to do something completely different with it)
  2. Something like 75% of the Snyder cut is stuff he shot but which was cut from the original release. And around 5% of it will be all new stuff shot specifically for the Snyder cut.
  3. The Snyder cut is supposed to be four one-hour episodes, so a whole lot more of a movie.

So it *could* end up being a wholly different movie. Of course, some of that “stuff shot but not used” could simply be Take 14 of a shot, when Whedon used Take 15. Or it could be from a completely different script. I have doubts that this will truly fix Justice League. The Marvel movies worked as well as they did, for as long as they did, because they set up most of the important characters before dumping them into a single bloated ensemble flick. Warner brothers, though, said “forget that character development nonsense, let’s get straight to the lame CGI eyecandy.” So… we’ll see, I suppose.

The Snyder cut will likely come out after the inauguration, so it’s not a sure thing that it will actually come out at all. The ChiComs  might just march straight into Taiwan and pop off a few tactical nukes over CONUS to make sure we sit down and shut up.

 

 Posted by at 7:24 pm

Math bigger than the universe

 AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, Crazy, Hmm..., science, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 182020
 

A day or two ago I posted about the Mandelbrot Set, because why not. Here is a “Mandelbrot zoom” with a zoom factor of 101091.

10E1091 is a big number. How big? Here are some facts generally useless in day to day life:

How many planck lengths fit in the universe?

Assuming the observable universe is 93 billion light years across, 5.4×1061 Planck lengths would stretch from side to side. Why is this important? Because a Planck length, or 1.6 x 10–35 meters, is the smallest size there is. It’s essentially the “pixel” of reality. You can’t zoom down below it. So something with a scale factor of 101091 can fit a *lot* of universes 5.4×1061 pixels wide in it. In fact, on the order of 101030 universes could fit side-by-side within that full animation, if you assume that at the deepest part of the zoom factor, one pixel on screen equals one Planck unit.

And you think it’s a long way down the road to the chemists.

 

 

 Posted by at 3:12 pm
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