Lots of people think we’re on the cusp of ditching fossil fuels in favor of an all-electric “renewable” and “green” world. There are of course a vast number of problems with this… when they say “all electric” they almost never mean “all nuclear,” but instead want to pave over the fields with a million acres…
Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven home the usefulness of dropping things from quadcopters. They can carry surprising payloads a good distance and place them with some fair accuracy; in war, payloads such as grenade, mortar shells, RPG warheads are obvious and useful choices. But then there’s this: It’s not immediately obvious why the owner…
It sure seems like the era of “superhero movies” being a license to print money is over. Granted the DCEU flicks have not had a great track record, but the latest outing, “Blue Beetle,” seems to be shaping up to be a *disaster.* The production budget was $104 million. The marketing was probably the same,…
Airline pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65. But the people holding the reigns of power in the US can be old enough to have witnessed the rise of multicellular life. Sure, many very elderly people are perfectly functional. But many… aren’t. Having a position in the government is not a right.…
Methane levels in the atmosphere seem to be rising steeply. Since methane is a much more potent “greenhouse gas” than CO2, this could, perhaps, maybe, result in the end of the ice age that we’re currently in… within a few decades. The one good thing is that methane does not have a long lifespan, getting…
A sad percentage of my cyanotypes fail… faded, blurry or spotty. Sometimes these failure are due to bad craftsmanship; sometimes to material deficiencies, and surprisingly often, environmental factors (humidity has wreaked havoc, see the “spots”). Mostly these get simply tossed, meaning a lot of material, time and effort are wasted. But it occurred to me…
It’s well known that a lot of cops are not great people. Ill tempered, quick to anger and violence, ready to smack someone around, break rules, break laws, corrupt, willing to enforce unjust and unconstitutional laws. Why are they like this? Well, part of it is doubtless due to some of them having been not…
A few days ago while roaming about, the radio in the car was tuned to NPR and I got to listen to some confusing ramble about modern fashion. Normally this would result in “lets change the channel to static to listen to what the cosmic background radiation has to say today,” but it was so…
Who destroyed Star Trek? Hmmm… I recently re-watched Star Trek: Enterprise, after perhaps a decade. I’d seen it twice before: when it originally aired, and then once I got all 4 seasons on cheap DVDs. And my memory of the show was: Season 1: Bah. Season 2: Bah. Season 3: Meh. Season 4: Woo!…
US Justice Dept sues SpaceX over hiring practices “Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said. How about…
