National reciprocity

 news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Oct 172020
 

Our basic civil rights are up for vote again.

Donald Trump: I’ll Sign National Reciprocity if It Reaches My Desk

In order for the 2nd Amendment to be truly incorporated nation wide, concealed carry reciprocity would need to be federally mandated. Just as your divers license and marriage are recognized in all fifty states, so should your ability to carry. There are, unfortunately currently no such bills before Congress; but if Biden/Harris win, the Republicans would need to take over both houses of Congress with veto-proof majorities. And given the Harris-Biden teams obvious intention to pack the Supreme Court with political appointees, even if Congress passed such a bill and got it past a Harris veto, her lackeys in the 15-member USSC would simply shut it down.

 Posted by at 3:35 pm

Compare and contrast: Town Halls

 blather, Meh., news, politics  No Responses »
Oct 162020
 

I watched the two Presidential “Town Hall” broadcasts last night. There were very VERY clear distinctions between the two:

1A) Trump: The moderator spent a good chunk of the time (seemingly the majority) interviewing Trump, not letting the audience ask questions

1B) Biden: The moderator let the audience do almost all the asking

2A) Trump: the moderator was adversarial in the extreme

2B) Biden: The moderator was friendly

Each approach seemed fine in its way… on one hand, it’s the job of the press to grill the candidate; on the other the “town hall” format is supposed to be for regular people to ask questions. Just interesting to note the stark difference. Also noted: somehow, *nobody* seemed to ask Biden the important and obvious questions, such as “how do you think history will remember you if you try to enact your claimed policies and you incite a wholly unnecessary civil war (with the gun grab) and/or destroy the US economy (Green New Deal)?” or “so just how much money did Hunter make from selling influence to the Chinese, Ukrainians, Russians and who all else?” Every question was a softball.

 

 Posted by at 9:09 am

Downgrading Betelgeuse

 Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Oct 162020
 

According to a new study, Betelgeuse is both smaller and closer than thought…

“Our results say Betelgeuse only extends out to … a radius 750 times the radius of the sun… Our results show it’s a mere 530 light years from us—25 percent closer than previous thought.” 

I would have thought that the distance to Betelgeuse would have been determined via parallax. In fact, it was... and the precision that approach gives is pretty fluffy.

 Posted by at 3:33 am

RIP Old Reliable

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, Gah., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 152020
 

So… working away on Terribly Important Aerospace History Book Project Number Two today on my ~15-year-old Windows XP laptop when it decided that it needed to take a nap. When I tried to rouse it back to functionality, all it was able to tell me was that some Windows file or other was missing or corrupt, and to fix the problem I needed to reboot Windows using the original CD-ROMs. Which have been missing for at least two states.

This has been my main work computer for many years… all of my Aerospace Project Reviews and USxP’s were written and illustrated on it, most of the CAD models I’ve created were done on it. Most of that work has of course been backed up… but, irritatingly, not the most recent. The two latest as-yet unfinished USxPs, previewed HERE and HERE, don’t seem to have been externally backed up because apparently I’m kind of an idjit.

Fortunately, a local mom-and-pop computer repair place was *apparently* able to convince the computer to open in some minimally functional Windows mode, and is – hopefully – in the process of copying over some 47 gigabytes of data to an external data storage device. With luck tomorrow morning I’ll get a message that it’s done and I’ll have everything back. But even then the computer will be a doorstop; the cost and bother of repairing it would exceed its usefulness.

2020 continues to be a stellar year.

 Posted by at 6:38 pm

Another exoplanet discovered… 23 MILLION light years away

 awesomeness, news, science  No Responses »
Oct 152020
 

STEM and engineering rigor and 2+2=4 pull out another amazing achievement:

X-ray data reveal 1st-ever planet orbiting stars in another galaxy

M51-ULS-1b is a Saturn-sized planet in the M51 galaxy. Amazing enough, but the system it’s in is even more amazing. The planet is in a binary star system, one star being a conventional massive star, the other being either a black hole or a neutron star. The small dark object is pulling the larger star apart, and as the gas spirals it friction heats it up enough that it emits X-rays… enough to be one of the brightest Xray sources in M-51. The planet then transits in front of the object now and then, blocking the Xrays and making it seem to shut off for a few hours.

 Posted by at 11:46 am

Those darn hard drives

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 142020
 

If this story is true, it *should* end not only Biden’s Presidential run, but perhaps also his time as a man not in federal prison. But it seems almost too good to be true… a hard drive filled with incriminating emails and such just left at a computer repair shop. But then, if the kid involved is some drug addled moron… well, stranger things have happened.

Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad

Strangely, Gropey Joe isn’t tackling this revelation head-on, but for some reason seems to be ducking it:

BREAKING: Joe Biden Calls a Lid and Hides in His Basement After Explosive Revelations From Hunter Biden’s Recovered Hard Drive

 Posted by at 6:02 pm
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