Wow, that’s awful

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Meh., paleo, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 272023
 

YouTube decided that I needed to see a scathing review of “Dinosaur with Stephen Fry.” So, what the H, I watched it. Not having seen “Dinosaur with Stephen Fry,” I had no opinion of it going in, but I’m always interested in a good dinosaur show. “Walking With Dinosaurs” and “Planet Dinosaur” and “Sea Monsters” and “Prehistoric Park…” the facts may sometimes be dubious, but the shows were always awesome. But there have been a *lot* of these CGI dino docu-dramas over the years, and I’ve certainly not watched them all. I hadn’t heard of “D with SF” before; as I watched clips of the CGI dinosaurs and their “interactions” with green-screened humans, I quickly concluded that this was a show made by the BBC or some such twenty or so years ago. The CGI was dodgy at best; it looked like something that was quickly cobbled together in the wake of “Walking With Dinosaurs” as a cash-grab. But the quick glimpses of Stephen Fry looked… *not* twenty years ago. So I looked the show up.

It came out in February… of this year. 2023.

Yikes.

 Posted by at 11:53 pm

Well, this is going to make for some interesting spin…

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 272023
 

So earlier today there was a mass shooting at a Christian grade school in Nashville, with six people murdered and the shooter killed by the police. That’s bad (well, except that last bit). Then it came out that the shooter was a 8woman,* which is unusual to say the least. Now it has turned out that she’s transgender. She was a biological female who “identified” as male, but all the reporting so far has referred to her as “her,” which is a novel development. One wonders if she was on testosterone, which can make some act kinda rash if they’re new to it. Of course, garden variety “bugnuts” is also a perfectly cromulent explanation for this sort of thing.

One wonders what Jane Fonda might have to say on this. The same “logic” that would hold Trump responsible for January 6 would seem to apply here.

And of course…

Society is going… silly.

 Posted by at 5:28 pm

Test for USVP03

 aircraft, art, blather, CAD diagrams, drawings, Hmm..., projects, US VTOL Projects  No Responses »
Mar 252023
 

After a delay of several years, I’m back to working on my own little publications. Since the delay was caused by working on actual published *books,* I like to think that I’ve gotten a bit better. Thus the next issue of US VTOL projects has about twice the text of the prior issue, and the diagrams are a bit better. To get best use of the diagrams, I’m reviewing how they are being incorporated into the final text. The link below is a test PDF with four pages… each page has the same illustration, but with variations in resolution, line weight, etc. I’m interested in what looks “best.” So take a look and let me know which page – if any – looks best on screen, and if possible printed out.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jy8tbvrgje464v7/test.pdf?dl=0

 Posted by at 6:13 pm

I’m of a couple minds here

 blather, Crazy, Hmm..., news  No Responses »
Mar 252023
 

The story:

North Carolina English teacher resigns after ‘covering mouth of boy, 11, with heavy duty TAPE to stop him talking in class’

First up, the flaw in the headline: the tape isn’t “heavy duty.” It’s not Gorilla Tape… it’s blue painters tape. Which means it’s not especially sticky. It’s masking tape with less tack, really easy to pull off.

But as to the issue: taping a talkative kids mouth shut. On the one hand, kids are supposed to shut he hell up in class. Constantly yammering on is not only bad for class discipline, it damages the other kids in class by impairing their ability to concentrate on the lesson. On the other hand, boys this age are full of energy (or at least they should be). This is not a “problem,” this is not “wrong,” this is basic biology. So physical punishment for something as relatively inoffensive as talking – as opposed to throwing things, fighting, stealing, assaults, etc. – may seem excessive.

What say y’all?

I do know one thing: teacher was a moron. How do I know this? She was a foreigner, here on a visa. She lost her job *and* her visa over this. Whatever plans she may have had for the future have been shot to hell. And this was an unforced error on her part. You don’t go to another land and screw with their kids if you want a better life. Unless you go to Britain. They seem to be cool with foreigners screwing with their kids. But the US/ We still, in general, care for our offspring. For the most part.

– – – – –

Meme unrelated. But I just wanted to share it.

 

 Posted by at 6:01 pm

Begun the food wars have

 AARRRGH, bachelow chow, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 252023
 

Well, here’s a sufficiency of stupid for the day:

 

I honestly can’t tell if the people referenced here are trolling – which is entirely possible – or if they’re really that fookin’ weird. I guess it comes down to this: do people *really* wash their chicken with dish soap and/or Clorox? It’s not something I’ve ever heard of. I would’ve assumed it to be a joke. But I just can’t tell anymore.

 

 Posted by at 5:02 am

“Picard” rejects “Discovery”

 art, awesomeness, blather, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 242023
 

Season three of “Star Trek Picard” has been an astonishing breath of fresh “Star Trek.”  After four dismal years of “Discovery” insulting the fandom and crapping on the legacy, and two hideous seasons of “Picard” that took a steamer on the character of “Picard,” season three, under new management, has really turned things around. And the latest episode  goes so far as to wipe out the Discovery production design aesthetic.

There is a visit to the Star fleet Museum, showing a number of of ships on display. These include the Defiant from Deep Space Nine, Janeway’s Voyager, the NCC-1701-A Enterprise, the HMS Bounty whale hauler… and the USS New Jersey. This is a never before seen, probably never before mentioned ship. Which makes sense; doubtless Star Fleet has lots of ships worthy of keeping that never showed up in any prior episode or movie. But what makes the scene really special: all of these ships are, so far as I can tell, *exactly* what they should be in terms of design. The Bounty looks like a Klingon vessel from Star trek III and IV, not one of those gibberish ships from Discovery. The Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant are all quite correct. And the New Jersey? Take a look:

That’s a *proper* TOS-era Connie-class. Not like the sad spectacle of “Pikes” Enterprise from STD/SNW.

And there’s the fact that Worf looks like a Trek Klingon, not a nuTrek Klingork.

So, yeah. Picard ends with this season. But the powers that be will be *really* missing out if they don’t follow this up with a series that spins off of Picard Season Three… same production crew, same production aesthetic, same writers, same producers. They finally found people to work on Trek who actually *like* Trek.

 Posted by at 12:58 am

Is Paris burning?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 232023
 

Yes.

 

 

On the one hand, Macron is operating by decree, which should never be allowed. On the other hand, what he’s doing is actually necessary… he’s raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. And even 64 seems kinda ridiculously low. France, like everywhere else in the West, has a birth rate that is less than replacement (1.83, better than pretty much everywhere else in Europe); their population numbers seem to be buttressed  by importing Algerians, Moroccans and other North Africans. The result of that is relatively few young people for lots of old people, especially going forward. Keeping the retirement – and thus pension payout – age low is going to be economically infeasible. So the French people are rightly pissed at a tyrannical government… that’s using tyranny to do what needs to happen. So… France seems kinda screwed.

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:56 pm
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