Apr 222020
 

These old Aurora and Revell model kits are back in production under the Atlantis Models brand, for the first time in half a century in some cases. Click the images to go to the relevant Amazon page (the usual Amazon type of ad isn’t inserting correctly for some reason).

But wait! There’s more!

Sure, these kits are simple, not terribly accurate, in many ways kinda crummy in their terribly outdated way. But that is kinda what makes them interesting and fun to build. They are *cheap* and you don’t need to worry about a billion parts and photoetched bits and so much effort required that you are assured of giving up a quarter of the way through. Probably good kits to get kids working on.

 

 

 Posted by at 5:32 pm
Apr 222020
 

Hmmm.

World at Risk of ‘Multiple Famines of Biblical Proportions’ Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Top UN Official Says

The logic here is that as global commerce grinds to a halt due to China’s little bio-surprise, places where warfare and cultural stupidity are *already* leaving people in a precarious nutritional position will only get much, much worse. People as a general rule don’t just lay down and die when times get tough… when they can, they pull up stakes and go where things are better. And where are these people going *today?* War-torn regions of Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia are not going to flood into China, because the Chinese will merrily mow them all down. Same with Russia. But Europe has spent a few generations saying “come on in and get a bunch of free stuff at the indigenous taxpaying populations uncomplaining expense” and has only recently started to understand that this might not have been an unalloyed good thing. And now, as new famines may well loom – or even just the fear of some near-future famine – that shining beacon of free bennies that is Europe might find itself the destination of choice for hundreds of millions of plague-riddled starving hordes.

Good luck with that.

 Posted by at 2:55 pm
Apr 212020
 

Published in the German “Der Flieger” magazine in 1967, this diagram depicts a strategic bomber seemingly of the AMSA variety. But the minimal text accompanying the diagram gives no indication *who* designed it. Boeing? Lockheed? Tupolev? Volkswagen? If anyone recognizes it, I’d appreciate any info.

 Posted by at 12:43 am
Apr 212020
 

Here’s a ponderable: apart from theatrical uses, what practical function can a set of “finger extensions” such as these be put to? They look cool, but I suspect that, at least as built, they’re neither strong nor rugged. But made from titanium alloy and carbon fiber, maybe they could be really quite something. But *what?*

 Posted by at 12:35 am
Apr 182020
 

Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the, you know, the place where FDR had the whatchamacallit with Corn Pop and the sniffing little girls hair and I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, they didn’t have white onions because of the war, the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones oh look a butterfly, United States:

What’s really interesting is watching the XiNN talking heads doing their best to not react to BidenBot suddenly slipping a gear and engaging his Gibberish Generator. When Trump says something goofy, the press is all over it like white on rice. Hell, Trump made an obvious joke during the  2016 campaign and the Dems and the media (but then, I repeat myself) spent *years* in a vain attempt to impeach him over it.

 Posted by at 4:16 pm
Apr 182020
 

A date has apparently been set to put US astronauts on a US launch vehicle to send them to the ISS.

More about the mission HERE:

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/dm2/

 

Seems a safe bet those fellers are taking quarantining *real* serious.

 Posted by at 11:39 am