Letting go is hard to do

 AARRRGH, cats, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  28 Responses »
May 012018
 

Believe me when I say: this sucks.

Raedthinn, constant companion of mine since 2005 or so, is most likely within a week or two of the end. Lately I’ve noticed that his voice had faded away, so I took him to the vet yesterday. It was discovered that his chest cavity was full of fluid, compressing his lungs. The vet drained the fluid, consulted Xrays and experts and decided that there were two options:

  1. A $10,000 operation which stood minimal chance (at his age) of doing much good
  2. Patching him up, giving him some low fat food and antibiotics and hoping for the best, for that one in a bagrillion shot where the leaky duct fixes itself.

Not having a spare $10K, nor wanting to put the old boy through the stress of a serious surgery for no statistically good purpose… he’s home now. Doc suggests that he has between a few days and a few weeks. So at some point soon I’ll have to make a necessary but unpleasant decision. Until that time, I’m going to give him the most comfort I can.

Note: his whole torso is shaved up to his spine.

 Posted by at 5:13 pm

“Jet fuel can’t melt steel”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., history, Hmm..., news, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  1 Response »
May 012018
 

There exist in the world idiots who *still* believe that 9/11 was a hoax, that it was pre-placed demolition devices that brought down the towers and not jetliners piloted by Cultural Enrichment Specialists and the subsequent fires. And yet, yesterday a 26 story office building in Sao Paulo, Brazil, collapsed after a fire that burned without even the benefit of getting smashed by a jetliner going 300 miles per hour and adding hundreds of tons of kerosene to the mix.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 10:34 am

Submersible Nuclear Ramjet art: Downtown Moscow

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., new products, nukes, projects, rockets, weapons  15 Responses »
Apr 292018
 

Artwork was created for USBP 21 by Rob Parthoens depicting the Convair Submersible Nuclear Ramjet paying a visit to 1970’s-era Moscow. If you think that this looks like Project Pluto, you’re not far off; this was also a Mach 4, treetop-level nuclear ramjet powered bomber. But there were a few minor differences. Notice that little bump above the nose? That’s the cockpit, a necessary addition because this design was manned. It was also designed to operate as a submarine, cruising the oceans of the world faster than 100 knots before launching upwards and taking flight. Because the 1950’s were rather more optimistic when it came to technological advancement.

Be sure to check out US Bomber Projects issue 21 to read more about this design.

 Posted by at 8:18 pm

APR Patreon April 2018 rewards issued

 aircraft, drawings, history, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  1 Response »
Apr 292018
 

Rewards have been issued to APR Patreon patrons for April, 2018. This month, the “Diagram” is a Sikorsky lithograph of a Heavy Lift Helicopter concept. The Documents include a US Army catalog of airborne weaponry; a paper describing possible additional missions for the Saturn launch vehicles, and BOAC brochure extolling the virtues of the Comet 4 jetliner. The CAD diagram is of the British Interplanetary Society’s “Deadalus” starship design.

 

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

 

patreon-200

 Posted by at 3:06 pm

BBC: a new “War of the Worlds”

 art, awesomeness, news, science fiction  5 Responses »
Apr 292018
 

Filming begins on BBC One drama The War of the Worlds

Stars some people I’ve never heard of, doesn’t say when it’ll air, but does say it’s set in “Edwardian” England. There is this statement:

this is the first version to be set in London and the Home Counties during the Edwardian period

Which I do not believe is accurate. More than a decade ago there was a low budget independent WotW flick that was Just Terrible. Really, it was entirely awful. But it was set in the right place and the right time.

If the Bbc sticks to the source material, they could have something good on their hands. WotW remains an amazing book with some truly effective moments. I want to see the Thunder Child done right. The 2005 Spielberg version was, in its way, pretty good, and it did include one incredibly creepifyin’ shot: the war machine stands up and howls. In the book the machines talked to each other across the miles with loud hooting voices; this could be incredibly disturbing if handled correctly.

 Posted by at 12:49 am

Intersectionality

 Crazy, Forward!, politics, ಠ_ಠ  15 Responses »
Apr 282018
 

As I understand it, “intersectionality” is identity politics *within* identity politics, further dividing groups into finer and finer gradations of hatred. Such as: you can’t be just a feminist… you have to divide that up by your race, your body type, your sexuality, height, socioeconomic status, whether or not you’re blind, what your hair color is, etc. And this isn’t simply for the purposes of accounting, but to apportion virtue. A black feminist is better than a white one, a lesbian feminist better than a straight one, one with mental illness is better than a sane one, etc. And the more of these nuggets you can pile up, the higher you are in the intersectional food chain.

For those of us in the rational world, this sort of thing is at best amusing. Villains are bad, of course, but if the villains start to fall upon each other for slight perceived differences in ideology (Trotsky wasn’t killed by Stalin because Trotsky wasn’t a commie, but because he wasn’t the *right* kind of commie), why that’s just plain entertainin.’ So, for your enjoyment, here’s this:

San Francisco Public Library hosts transgender “art exhibit” featuring weapons intended to kill feminists

A whole lot of this reads like gibberish to me, I suspect because I’m not fluent in Intersectionalism. But it *seems* that this art exhibit was set up by male-to-female transgendered people (could be the other way, I can’t fargin’ tell) who are ticked off at regular feminists because those feminists won’t do the horizontal mambo with transgendered males or something. And as a result, the art exhibit includes nonsense like bats and axes meant to attack feminists who display wrongthink.

Ladies in gentlemen: I present to you not only todays politics, but what passes for “art” these days. Give me old-school art instead.

 Posted by at 7:37 pm

Boy, some people don’t like it when politics doesn’t go their way

 Crazy, critters, Forward!, I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Apr 272018
 

At UC Berkeley, a squirrel ran for student Senate and won — driving some people nuts

So a student ran a joke campaign for student senate and won. This is nothing new; it certainly worked for Trump and Obama. But this guy ran as a squirrel, wearing a squirrel costume, under the moniker “Furry Boi.” Some people are displeased at that, such as the editors of the Daily Californian, the campus newspaper:

Stop voting for unqualified ASUC candidates

It’s a shocking display of privilege to vote for a squirrel over candidates who have actual plans to help students who need it. Instead of electing qualified students who had real, tangible ideas — improving UCPD relations, boosting housing, bolstering sexual violence or mental health awareness — many of you (at least 538 strong) thought it might be a funny joke to have a man dressed up in a squirrel costume with no real platforms represent you at the administrative table.

A “shocking display of privilege.”  Privilege. PRIVILEGE.  The single word that, when used in earnest to disparage the other guy, most quickly says “ignore my opinion.” Anyway, the comments section is more full of sanity than the editorial, with nuggets of sanity such as:

Maybe if the ‘serious” candidates weren’t such insufferable SJW douchebags, the squirrel wouldn’t have won.

 

 Posted by at 5:39 pm

This is the kind of person who seeks political power

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
Apr 272018
 

Rest comfortably knowing that New York county Legislator Jennifer Schwartz Berky (Democrat: do you know who I am???) knew just exactly how to handle a speeding ticket:

And Caren Z. Turner, a Democratic lobbyist from Tenafly and a commissioner from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, uses her position in a responsible manner after her kid gets pulled over:

Three cheers for dashcams. This technology has brought the behavior of these brave souls to the public eye and has allowed them to pursue different career goals.

 Posted by at 5:09 pm

“Artist Depiction”

 art, awesomeness, history, projects, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Apr 272018
 

Artists are forever getting documentaries and biopics and all the rest. The problem is, it’s almost always the *crappy* artists, the ones who think that being “edgy” is more important than any actual artistic talent or skill; that offending people for political purposes is better than creating something that people will actually *like.*

Huzzah! “Artist Depiction” aims to be a series of documentaries about artists who worked for NASA during the heyday of the space colonies. These are the guys – Don Davis, Charles Lindsay, and Rick Guidice – who painted Bernal spheres, the Stanford torus, Gerard O’Neills colonies for NASA. This is being crowdfunded on Indiegogo; as I type this, it’s currently funded at $3,691 of $5,000, with 17 days to go. It certainly seems like a worthy venture.

Artist Depiction

A documentary series about NASA space art and the artists behind the depictions.

 

 Posted by at 4:14 pm
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