Well, that was quick

 blather, Crazy, Forward!, news, Obamazombies, politics, religion, ಠ_ಠ  11 Responses »
Dec 032015
 

A few days ago I pontificated on the difference between “nuts” and “terrorists,” and lo and behold, today one “Syed Farook” and one “Tashfeen Malik”  go ahead and give me the perfect test case. Since there are two, “terrorism” would seem to be the most likely explanation; but since the guy (apparently) shot up his own co-workers, it would seem to be a “workplace violence thing.” The two apparently put some thought into the project ahead of time, which decreases the likelihood of “nutjobs” and pushes it towards “terrorism.” However the facts shake out, you can bet that there will be a great many trying to downplay any religious motivation (while playing it up for the Planned Parenthood shooting).

Of course, before much of anything about the shooters was known, Blatherer In Chief Obama bloviated thusly: “For those concerned about terrorism, some might be aware of the fact that we have a no-fly list where people can’t get on planes, bu those same people who we don’t allow to fly, can go into a store right now in the U.S. and there is nothing we can do to stop them. That is a law that needs to be changed.”

Neat. So those who are on the no-fly list should have their Second Amendment rights withdrawn. OK, sure. Why not. But then you have to ask: if these people have been adjudicated to be so much of a risk that they should not only not be allowed to buy a gun (legally), they should also not be allowed to fly… why are they being allowed to roam the streets? Shouldn’t they be locked up? If with the stroke of a pen one of their Constitutional rights can be wiped away, why not others?

And of course, once you determine that Constitutional rights are negotiable for those who have not committed a crime and been tried by their peers, ya gotta wonder whether Trumps hypothetical Muslim Registry would be equally popular.

So far I’ve heard nobody suggest that Syed or Tashmeen were on the no-fly list. So far I’ve heard that at least one of the guns they used was purchased legally, which in California certainly means both Federal and State background checks and registration. So once again… what new gun laws would have prevented this?

 

 Posted by at 1:09 am

Superstition vs. Science: Score 1 for Superstition

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., news, politics, religion, science, wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  14 Responses »
Dec 022015
 

Hawaii Supreme Court ruling invalidates permit for construction of telescope on volcano

Not just any telescope, but the Thirty Meter Telescope, which would have been ground breaking in its capabilities. The construction permit has been yanked because Mauna Kea is “sacred land.”

Bah.

You know, if I had me some “sacred land,” you know what I’d do with it? I’d put a freakin’ telescope on it. What sort of religion holds that exploring the universe *isn’t* just about the most important thing you could do? Even if you were very, very religious… wouldn’t you think that Understanding God’s Creation (or words to that effect, translated into your religions terminology) would be just what your god would want you to be doing?

Bah.

—

A number of years ago (15?) I saw some “true video” TV show that had hikers in Hawaii, either in a canyon or next to a cliff, being showered with rocks from way above. The realistic explanation? The rock walls are made out of structurally crappy lava rock, and it falls apart from time to time. Basically, Gravity Happens. But the *local* explanation was, IIRC, that some local pig-like deity didn’t like intruders and was chucking rocks at people. So the advice was Don’t Go There, and Appease The God.

I sat there and thought to myself… “Huh. That’s not what I’d suggest.”

If there was *truly* a local pig-god attempting to injure people… it’s time to grab a spear and a .50 Beowulf and go boar hunting. Sounds like the makings of one *hell* of a luau. Also sounds like Sæhrímnir escaped from Valhalla, so not only would you have one heck of a cookout, you’d have one heck of a cookout *every* *day* from here on out.

 Posted by at 9:11 pm

How to go to space

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., rockets, spacecraft, youtube  2 Responses »
Dec 022015
 

Using the ten hundred most used words.

This is derived from Randall Munroe’s new book, “Thing Explainer.”
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

“Thing Explainer” is derived from Munroe’s cartoon “Up-Goer Five,” which describes the Saturn V using the thousand most common words in English. And the Up-Goer Five schematic was derived from the Saturn V diagram that you can get for your own self from yours truly, in three formats:

Saturn V electronic format blueprints are available HERE
Saturn V cyanotype (old-school hand-made) blueprints are available HERE
Saturn V digitally printed blueprints are available HERE

Update: I saw a copy of “Thing Explainer” today. Looks like a great book. A sad note, though: the original illustration of the Up-Goer Five had a small reference to up-ship.com on it; the book version does not. Well, poop. I was hoping for a flood of new customers…

 Posted by at 1:37 pm

Oh boy! Mayhem! California Style.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Dec 022015
 

CNN is having a grand ol’ time reporting on an “active shooter” situation in San Bernardino.Wholly unsupported reports are twenty shooting victims and up to three shooters (which, given the Fog Of Journalism, may mean two victims and one shooter). If the higher numbers are accurate, that would seem likely to point towards terrorism.

 Posted by at 12:56 pm

DARPA cancels ALASA

 aircraft, news, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  8 Responses »
Dec 012015
 

DARPA Scraps Plan To Launch Small Sats from F-15 Fighter Jet

ALASA (Airborne Launch Assist Space Access) was a program to develop a launch vehicle that could be carried aloft by an F-15, with an orbital payload of around 45 kilograms. The design detail that was supposed to make ALASA work was what killed it: the propellant.

ALASA was to use liquid rocket engines. Nothing new there. The propellant combination was acetylene and nitrous oxide; that’s kinda new. But the Really New part of the design was that the two propellants were to be pre-mixed, meaning that the vehicle required only a single tank and simpler plumbing. Pre-mixing fuel and oxidizer is always a tricky proposition, but it has been successfully demonstrated from time to time. But here, in several tests the propellant simply exploded. This should not be overly surprising… acetylene is one of those unstable chemicals that will on occasion blow itself to bits just because it’s cranky. Mixing it with an oxidizer is just asking for trouble.

DARPA seems to have bailed on the launcher program, but is continuing to try to develop the propellant (called NA-7). Tricky though it may be, if it can be reliably stabilized there are undoubtedly vehicle designs that could effectively utilize it.

ALASA-darpa

The ALASA vehicle made another unusual design choice: the rocket engines were near the front, not at the back. The reason for this: the trailing propellant tank could be dropped as a stage, but leave the engines in place. This would theoretically make the vehicle lighter, at the risk of having hot rocket exhaust scraping down the sides of the tank.

 Posted by at 2:52 pm

Portraits of a cat

 cats, photography  10 Responses »
Nov 302015
 

Raedthinn seems to have fully recovered from his dental ordeal. There are differences… his tongue now sticks out the side of his mouth and, oddly, seems to project further. But otherwise, he seems fine.

WP_20151111_034 WP_20151111_033 WP_20151112_041

 Posted by at 9:51 pm

This seems unlikely

 Hmm..., news  6 Responses »
Nov 302015
 

Errrrmmmm…

BRITAIN’S boobs are getting bigger, with the “average” bust size bursting from the C-cup to a massive 34G, according to a new survey.

G? That’s… kinda big, ain’t it?

A couple options occur to me:

  1. Another journalism success story… i.e. they’re flat-out wrong.
  2. The survey, which was done by a manufacturer of “plus size” bras, was less than entirely scientific. Such as possibly only talking to their own customers.
  3. Britain has become drenched in growth hormones in recent years.
  4. Britain has gotten as fat as the American “People of WalMart” stereotype.

It found Scotland is home to the biggest breasts in the UK, where the average lady has a staggering 34HH bra size.

Uh.

 Posted by at 5:06 pm

Terrorist or Nutjob?

 blather, Crazy, Hmm..., politics, religion, wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  7 Responses »
Nov 302015
 

In the last few years a particular talking point has become as inevitable after a domestic mass killing as a sunrise after night: “is this a crazy person or a terrorist.” This becomes increasingly obvious when the mass killing is carried out by a White Non-Muslim Male, such as the “Planned Parenthood” shootings a few days ago. The argument goes, since it’s a White Non-Muslim Male, it will be declared an act of mental disorder, not terrorism; but if the perpetrator is Non-White or, better, Muslim, it’ll be declared terrorism, because, you know, racism.

In a Venn diagram of “nutjobbery” and “terrorism,” there is of course a whole lot of overlap. Consequently, taking an incident and confidently parking it under one descriptor but not the other is often dubious. But I do have a simple test that would work at least sometimes to parse out those acts that are best described as “terrorism:” How many people were involved?

If it’s one person working alone, such as, say, Sulejman Talović (a Muslim immigrant who killed five people at a mall in Salt Lake City some years ago, an act I’d bet most people have either forgotten about or perhaps never heard of in the first place), or the Unabomber (a white leftist with a hate-on for modern technology), or Christopher Dorner (the black anti-gun-nut who led the LAPD on a merry chase a few years ago) it could go either way. But if two or more are working together? Like the Beltway sniper case from years ago, or the Boston bombings, Charlie Hebdo, the more recent Paris attacks, 9/11 and so on? Well… that would seem rather harder to blame on nuttery rather than terrorism.

People with similar political and/or religious ideologies finding each other and working together? Sure, I can see that happening, easy. Complete whackos finding each other and finding that their whackoism just happens to align, so they work together to do whacko things? Hmmm… that’s less likely. And when the number of perpetrators gets to three or higher, the statistical likelihood of it being just nutjobbery, as opposed to terrorism, seems to drop vanishingly low.

So. One guy? Nut. Two guys? Probably terrorist. Three guys? Definitely terrorist.

 Posted by at 1:03 pm
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