An interesting day for ballistics

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, politics, religion, rockets, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
May 092018
 

HVO/USGS Volcanic Activity Notice

Volcano: Kilauea (VNUM #332010)

Current Volcano Alert Level: WARNING

Current Aviation Color Code: ORANGE

Issued: Wednesday, May 9, 2018, 8:02 AM HST
Source: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
Notice Number:
Location: N 19 deg 25 min W 155 deg 17 min
Elevation: 4091 ft (1247 m)
Area: Hawaii

Volcanic Activity Summary: The steady lowering of the lava lake in “Overlook crater” within Halemaʻumaʻu at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano has raised the potential for explosive eruptions in the coming weeks. If the lava column drops to the level of groundwater beneath Kīlauea Caldera, influx of water into the conduit could cause steam-driven explosions. Debris expelled during such explosions could impact the area surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu and the Kīlauea summit. At this time, we cannot say with certainty that explosive activity will occur, how large the explosions could be, or how long such explosive activity could continue….

BALLISTIC PROJECTILES
During steam-driven explosions, ballistic blocks up to 2 m (yards) across could be thrown in all directions to a distance of 1 km (0.6 miles) or more. These blocks could weigh a few kilograms (pounds) to several tons.

Smaller (pebble-size) rocks could be sent several kilometers (miles) from Halemaʻumaʻu, mostly in a downwind direction.

Yow. If’n yer on the big island… heads up. Also watch out for ash, which should do a dandy job of trashing aviation downwind of the volcano.

But wait! There’s more!

Iranian forces fire rockets at Israeli military in first direct attack ever, Israel’s army says

The Russians are backing Assad. The Iranians are backing Assad. If the Iranians keep up this sort of thing, the Israelis might well stomp right on in to Syria. And the Russian forces on the ground would be *really* well advised to tell Assad that he dun goofed, and to discretely back out the door.

I’ve long supposed that a century from now, Damascus might be one of the bigger cities in Greater Israel.

 Posted by at 7:23 pm

Jane, you ignorant…

 art, Forward!, history, humor, politics, wisdom, youtube  8 Responses »
May 092018
 

This sort of thing would likely not fly today. The SJWs would flips their lids and the following day there’d be apologies galore from all involved and *still* the social justice parasites would move in the suck the life out of every scrap of humor and *career* involved. But if this was from before your time – it aired in 1979 – give it a watch and consider using, if not the argument that Dan Aykroyd employs, at least his take no prisoners attitude when dealing with the screeching harpies of of humorless singlethought.

 Posted by at 3:36 pm

What movie do you “special edition?”

 art, blather, history, science fiction  31 Responses »
May 092018
 

OK, folks, discussion time, something less heartbreaking than recent topics. Let’s say some bagrillionaire comes along and says he has ten million dollars and the legal ability to make a “special edition” of any movie ever. This means that the best available print will be scanned and cleaned and color corrected, and flubs in the sound fixed. More importantly, special effects can be touched up or outright replaced. A few additional scenes can be added, by whatever means necessary. You want to add Humphrey Bogart to Star Wars? It’s possible, though sufficiently dumb that everyone will laugh at you. But let’s say your favorite movie has scenes that were written but never filmed, or filmed, cut and lost… scenes that would fix plot holes or make the film just a whole lot better. You can add five, maybe ten minutes of new stuff, but you can replace as much of the existing special effects as you like. So… what movie(s) do you tackle?

Here are a few off the top of my head:

  1. “Firefox.” The movie is overall pretty good, and the MiG 31 Firefox full-scale mockup is *awesome.* But if you watch the in-flight scenes shot with models…. yeesh. To the modern eye, wow, they stink. Replace the flight scenes and add to them.
  2. “The Last Starfighter.” Very much a product of its time. I’m torn about replacing the mid-80’s CG with modern CGI… but, fark it, I wanna see the Gunstar doing it’s thing. Of course a sequel with as much of the original cast as possible is preferred… but so long as they’re doing that, spare a few percent to update the original to go with it.
  3. “2001.” Yeah, I know, sacrilege. But *some* of the shots of spacecraft are painfully obvious to be simple still images of ships drifting across the screen. I’d be interested in the seeing the Orion III spaceplane done right, with only a few more seconds showing docking operations. Additionally, replace *Earth.* Compare the flat matte paintings of Earth in “2001” with what is on display in “Gravity.” Space Station V orbiting serenely over a modern Earth? Giggity.

Suggestions?

 Posted by at 2:22 pm

Thanks, everyone

 blather, cats, photography  11 Responses »
May 082018
 

Losing Raedthinn has been rough, to say the least. Thirteen years is from one point of view a fairly good run for a cat; out in the world, they might only last a few years. But housecats have been known to exceed 30 years, with 20 not being unusual. And Raedthinn had a lot of life left in him. Were it not for this *one* thing, he should’ve gone the distance. But there was that one thing.

Anyway, yesterday morning it was obvious that things were going wrong, so I called to set up a vet appointment. The *hope* was that I was setting up an appointment for the vet to look at him and say “oh, that’s not a problem, easy to remedy,” but the full expectation was that I was setting up an appointment to put him to sleep. AAARGHingly, the earliest appointment was some hours off, so there were hours of waiting. The first instinct was of course to spend those hours doing things with him, but I decided it was best to spend those hours letting him do what he liked. Mostly that meant laying in one window or another, and eating all the food that was suddenly made available to him in portions unheard of. When the time came, the vet Xrayed him again and found that, rather than improving, he was substantially *worse* than when they’d seen him a week earlier. The vet offered only the one way forward. Fortunately, that shot of whatever it is is *amazingly* fast and apparently entirely painless, and he was gone in seconds. The other vets working on horses and cows at the other end of the clinic could hear me give vent to my feelings. I wish I could say it was a manly Viking roar to warn those in Valhalla that a new warrior was coming and to get the hell out of the way, but it wasn’t quite that.

Anyway, had to spend some time after that processing. If I was a drinking man I likely would have spent a good chunk of the day blackout drunk, so perhaps it’s best I’m not a drinking man. One odd thing: he was, as is well known, a giant of a cat. But carrying him out of the vet… it felt like I was carry a hundred pounds. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my cat” transformed into “why is this so hard?”

Yesterday in those last hours, I took many photos of the old boy. I didn’t take any of him at the clinic, nor did I video his last moments. I’ve seen a number of YouTube vids where people did just that, and I gotta say I don’t freakin’ get it. If there’s something I’d never want to see again, nor share with the world, it’s the last moments of a beloved pet and my subsequent breakdown. But people do seem to love liveinstafacestreaming every damn thing these days so… shrug.

He spent a good deal of the day in the front window, and Fingers spent a good deal of that time next to him. She was not as pushy as she often was, and he did not push her away as he often did. It seemed good to let them have their time together.

Below is the very last photo I took of Raedthinn. Somehow it seems appropriate, him looking out onto the wide world.

So, thanks everyone for your kind words. Raedthinn was one hell of a cat and the world is that much less for his absence. Discussion of an afterlife normally leaves me cold and unmoved, but the notion of a heaven for cats simply seems *just.*

 Posted by at 9:50 pm

R.I.P. Raedthinn, 2005-2018

 AARRRGH, cats, news, ಠ_ಠ  40 Responses »
May 072018
 

Hope failed. At about 4:15 this afternoon, Raedthinn died in my arms, peacefully, swiftly and painlessly. About half an hour later I buried him out back near Koshka, who was *his* favorite cat.

Raedthinn was the best of cats. He was a better person than most people. He was just about my favorite people.

I have exhausted my supply of rationality for now.

 Posted by at 5:05 pm

Cat updates

 cats, Gah., news, photography  1 Response »
May 072018
 

Buttons: seems to be back to normal. I think his problem was a bit wider-spread than just him… for several days Buttons, Fingers and Speedbump all refused to eat. When food came out they’d come running, but when they got to it they just wouldn’t eat. Finally this evening they all decided that they were in fact actually hungry and began eating again. Did thy have some sort of flu? A reaction to pollen or the smoke in the area (it’s “burn the farms to the ground” time of year out here)? Some other environmental problem? Dunno. But it seems to be over, at last.

Raedthinn: Mostly seems to be ok so far. Still has a good loud voice, but his breathing sometimes seems a bit more labored. It’s really hard to tell. Fortunately, the loss of his voice seems to be a good indicator that his lungs are getting squished. So, so long as he can complain good and loud, he *should* be ok. When that changes, *if* that changes, I’ll take him back to the vet. If it’s more than a few weeks since the last visit (we’re close to one week… less than 12 hours away from that milestone), then I’ll see if it’s advisable to get his chest cavity tapped and drained off. With any luck the problem will fix itself. I’m not stupidly optimistic about that though.

 Posted by at 4:20 am

A golden age of Trek fandom

 art, awesomeness, blather, history, science fiction  3 Responses »
May 062018
 

Y’all know how I feel that “The Orville” is the Star Trek show we’ve deserved for years. It is made by flat-out fans of Trek, and it shows; yes, Seth Macfarlane did it as something of an ego project, especially by casting himself as the captain… but so what. It works. Anyone who can build up a quality Star Trek show can cast themselves as the captain if they want.

And thus, one James Cawley built himself some Original Series Enterprise sets for use in a series of well-received fan films, “Star Trek: New Voyages.” A number of fan productions have built their own sets of variable quality; almost all of the papier mache and cardboard variety, the kind that end up in the trash or a bonfire when the filming is done. But in this case, the officially licensed sets have been made somewhat permanent and you may go on a tour of them.

That’s cool and all, but here’s where the nerd factor goes through the roof:

Capt. Kirk to the bridge! William Shatner visits ‘Star Trek’ set replica in New York

 

Watching the video, there are a whole lot of the same kind of people who, in the early/mid 1970s, showed up at the early Star Trek conventions in their Starfleet and Vulcan finest. But watching the video, one new thing is also clear: Trekkers, Trekkies, Star Trek fans, denizens of the 21st century… we are a tubby bunch.

 Posted by at 11:34 pm

This guy is everything wrong with modern society

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, critters, dumbassery, Gah., Meh., wisdom, youtube  3 Responses »
May 062018
 

The video below is kinda fall-down funny… but it’s also incredibly sad. What do we have?

  1. A guy on an ocean fishing boat who doesn’t know what a sunfish is. I live in the freakin’ DESERT and I know what a sunfish is.
  2. He sees its fin flapping around… and he thinks it’s dead.
  3. No volume control and stuck at 11.
  4. No control over his emotions.
  5. Extremely limited vocabulary

So, passionate, demanding, unthinkingly profane, incapable of expressing himself beyond a few trite phrases and expletives and IGNORANT. He’s a one-man microcosm of modern political activism.

People are different, and I certainly understand and can even applaud enthusiasm over new experiences. But at some point enthusiasm become cringeworthy self parody. People need to learn to reign it the fark in sometimes.

 Posted by at 2:14 pm

Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater: A proposed strategy

 blather, Forward!, Hmm..., politics, weapons  10 Responses »
May 062018
 

OK, so, this:

VIDEO: Hollywood actress attends anti-gun protest — with armed guards

It’s a little difficult to see (by design), but the bodyguard has a pistol concealed under his coat, on his belt.You can see the firearm “printing” though his jacket starting at about the 1:00 point here:

But even if he was unarmed, the guard is skilled in using his physical size and presence to expel unarmed law-abiding people from a public space, something most people cannot do. In an unarmed group, the big strong guy has an immediate and undeniable advantage over the smaller and weaker members.

A well-known statement on the limits of the First Amendment is something along the lines of “you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” But, in fact, you *can.* *IF* there is an actual fire, then it is perfectly valid to do just that. Being honest and truthful is always a pretty iron-clad defense against things like libel and slander as well. So, here’s my suggestion to those who would attend public speeches by politicians and celebrities who are there to convince the people to give up their rights: find the inevitable armed guard that they are owed and that you, the Little people, are not. Examine them closely. Get them to move, without touching them or threatening them (use a “sacrificial” member of your group kinda like the guy in the video above who asked the guard if he was armed, prompting the guard to hustle the guy away). Then, when you are sure that the armed guard is indeed armed… do like a modern leftie and scream: “This man has a gun!” DON’T scream anything like “he’s gonna kill us all,” but stick *strictly* to the facts. There’s a gun. He’s hiding a gun. Gun. GUN.

It seems perfectly fair to point out at high volume that in an anti-gun gathering that there is someone in attendance concealing a gun.

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:05 am
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