Filming pistol rounds hitting a steel plate at 250,000 frames per second. Interesting detail: almost all impacts generate a flash. Since the bullets are lead or lead and copper and the steel plate is almost undamaged, it seems the flash is probably air being compressed to incandescence between hammer and anvil rather than superheated bits…
Below, a twitter thread discussing a recent increase in the appearance of air defense systems in and around Moscow, including Vlad Putin;s digs. The optimistic way of looking at this: every missile placed near Russia is a missile not placed near Ukraine. The pessimistic outlook: you generally don;t go to this kind of bother and…
Los Angeles hit-and-run driver who plowed into mom and baby in stolen car is murdered after light sentence In August 2021, then-15-year-old Kristopher Baca stole a car, ran into a mother and her baby in a stroller, then drive away and struck a truck. Baca was, at the time, out on parole for *poisoning* a…
I just sent files to the print shop to get transparencies of two new cyantypes. One will be a pair of 18X24 SR-71 CAD drawings by yours truly, and one will be a 12X38 vintage USS Monitor diagram. I kinda plan on doing a range of ships and submarines, based on vintage blueprints and Booklets…
There is a fan-built replica of the original USS Enterprise set – the whole ship, at least as built in the 1960’s – in Georgia. These sets were used for the filming of the “Star Trek Continues” fan films, and they look convincingly like the originals. There are two such complete sets… this one,…
I recently had a disturbing online conversation with a Russian aeronautical expert on the subject of Ukraine. One can reasonably expect a Russian will have a different point of view on the subject than a westerner would… but this was an *experience.* In short: It’s good and proper that Russia exterminate the Ukrainian people, because…
Couldn’t happen to a nicer fella: Alec Baldwin to be charged with involuntary manslaughter in ‘Rust’ film shooting The argument seems to be that Baldwin was screwing around and negligently fired the weapon. However, it also seems to be the case that he was given a gun and told by the armorer that it was…
World’s oldest rune stone found in Norway, archaeologists believe Believed to be somewhere in the range of 1800 to 2000 years old, this means that runic writing has been around for a good long time. Doubtless there’s a link between the runes and Greek writing, but the currently popular theory that runes derived from Roman…
This new Apple+ show looks like it *could* have truckloads of potential… and I can see where it could torpedo itself. Behold “Hello Tomorrow!” Some sort of alternate history where the 1950’s never ended yet technology continued, so there are hover-cars, robots and spaceships that all look like they belong in the 50’s. This *could*…
The Fairey Rotodyne was a valiant but doomed attempt to develop a high speed civilian passenger VTOL. Decades ago, the British Airfix plastic model kit company released a decent model of it, but it has been unavailable for a good long while. They’re bringing it back out.
