How's the revolution going, Barry?

Glen Reynolds has a very good piece on the crybabies Occupiers demonstrating that Mr Barack Hussein Obama is a phenomenal lightweight as a politician.  He threatened to set the mob on Wall Street unless they did what he said.  Three years later, Wall Street made it clear that they were sick of him, so Mr Soetoro unleashed the mob, which turned out to be a load of goalless hippies without an endgame.

Never bring a nappy to a gun fight.

Microbial Home

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) rolls out another of its world-beater ideas with the Microbial Home.  Unlike the usual Yanko line, which usually consists of one-offs of oddity, this one is an entire suite.  More like usually, it is "green", which means that they were so fixated on the concept that they never bothered to consider such minor factors as practicality or feasibility.  Their motto: Why bother to reach for the slide rule when you're too busy Saving the Planet^TM while looking chic.

Billed as "a cyclical biological machine where wastes like sewage, effluent, garbage, wastewater are filtered, processed and recycled to be used as inputs for the various home functions", the Microbial Home boasts a neat set of prep island and larder/dining room table where the former takes your kitchen scraps and digests them into methane (the "good" Gaia worshipping kind) and the latter, which boasts terracotta evaporation cooling pots that keep your food "alive" rather than "dead" like in your fridge.  How is never explained.  But what both bits of the ensemble have in common is that they are much too small for their tasks and will almost certainly stink of rotten eggs inside a week.  Just the thing to complement your trendy loft flat.

But my personal favourite is the Urban Beehive, which is supposed to allow you to keep bees in the centre of a busy metropolis.  This isn't that daft an idea.  In fact, there are quite a few bee keepers in places like New York and London, but they restrict themselves to traditional hives on rooftops.  I don't know what they'd think of this fragile glass egg thing that ignores the practical reasons why an apiary is the shape it is and that apparently requires having a custom hole cut in your picture window to mount the heavy object.  Don't think about either shattering.  It's a toss up whether they'd be more perplexed by a) how do you get inside the thing to harvest and clean, b) why there isn't a proper landing platform for the bees, c) how you are supposed to water the flower pot when it's four stories up with no way to reach it from the inside or d) what the blazes that little string is for.

Submarine

Manned version of X-37 space plane in the works?

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down for the final time on July 21, 2011, it looked as if the notion of a manned spacecraft capable of going into orbit and then landing like a conventional airplane had been abandoned. The US government appears to be in favor of returning to Apollo-style space capsules with anything like the Shuttles being relegated to the private sector. But at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' (AIAA) recent Space 2011 conference, Arthur Grantz, chief engineer of Space and Intelligence Systems' Experimental Systems Group at Boeing, delivered a paper indicating that the U.S. Air Force and Boeing are already on the way toward developing a manned Shuttle replacement based on the X-37Brobot space plane. Read More

Earthsearch Part 9

Follow Me

BAe Systems to provide new helmet display for F-35 pilots

When it enters service, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter will lay claim to the title of the most advanced warplane in the world. Its pilots will have the most advanced helmets as well ... and there's more to it than protecting the pilot's head against knocks. Unfortunately, the gap between designing the helmet and building it has proven wider than originally thought and issues such as poor image quality are so severe that the F35's testing program faces serious delays, so F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin brought in BAE Systems to provide a substitute. Read More

Marching to the Dark Ages

How's that carbon restriction working for you?

How much is the European Empire's EU's energy policy costing their serfs citizens?  Try double (emphasis added):

Average electricity prices for households and businesses would rise “strongly up to 2020-2030” under all scenarios, the document says, and the highest prices would occur after 2030 if renewable sources of power, such as wind and solar, make up a large share of energy production. For example, average prices for households could jump by more than 100 per cent by 2050 if this were the case but only by 43 per cent under a scenario that assumed more nuclear power and carbon capture and storage were used.

The governments of Europe and Britain have a clear choice:

a) Drop this insane "green" fantasy, recognise that cheap energy is the fuel of civilisation and start a proper programme of encouraging private investment in shale gas and nuclear power.

b) Step out into the street so the mob won't have to break down the door to tar and feather you.

Vive la révolution!

Occupy Baltimore Security Committee at work.

Violence in Boston, threats and racial slurs in Oakland, theft in New York, perverts in Seattle and rape in Cleveland.  

Good thing these smelly hippies Occupiers weren't in Baltimore or the "Security Committee" would have told them not to tell the police.

Is it just me or does Security Committee sound a bit too much like Comité de salut public?

Baseball... of the FUTURE!

Paleofuture looks at a 1912 vision of the future World Series.

If only there was some electronic medium for broadcasting sporting events.

The Body in Question: Part 5

Misfortune cookie

Demonstrating how valuable the European Empire is, the German finance minister recently doled out 16,000 fortune cookies containing stirring pro-EU slogans that would have made a Soviet Commissar proud.

The cookies cost €4,000.  That's €4 a cookie or £3.53 in real money.

The EU: Inventors of the solid-gold life belt.

They're hiding something

The Centre for Disease Control put out a comic book about a zombie outbreak as a way of teaching the public about epidemics and public health.

Or so they claim.

Breaking: Khadaffi dead?

Looks like he went the full Mussolini 

General Mohamar Khadaffi (he of many spellings) is reported dead by the Libyan forces.

If true, it means that Saddam Hussein has a new bunkie in Hell.

Update: Killed by a NATO air strike?

Update: He wasn't dead when they found him.

Update:  According to the New York Times, he is now.

Mornington Crescent 1

Star Cops: This Case to be Opened in a Million Years

Instant fortresses modified for instant demolition

The manufacturer of a quick-assemble system for constructing military fortifications in the field has found a simple solution to the problem of how to deny these fortifications to the enemy once friendly forces have withdrawn. By making a simple modification to the systems design, the dismantling of the fortresses becomes literally as simple as pulling out a pin. Read More

Zombie Safe Homes

It's good to see that someone is finally taking this impending threat seriously.  I've been looking at the 2011 Zombie Safe Home competition and while I do find many of the designs intriguing, I'm disappointed that so many rely on either fortification or escape.

Personally, I prefer defence in depth so that the ranks of shambling ghouls are decimated before they even reach the outer perimeter and then unleashing my counter-attack measures to reclaim lost territory before they can establish themselves.

One question that I've had from watching too many zombie films:  Has everyone forgotten how to combine barbed wire and machine guns?  It always seemed to me that some concertina wire and a Bren gun would do wonders.

It gets worse

HMS Bulwark

On Monday, we reported that HMS Albion is going on "stand by" until 2016–which in MoD speak means her next port of call after will be the scrapyard.  But what we forgot to mention is that she was the Royal Navy's flagship.

It was already embarrassing enough that there isn't a capital ship to carry the flag, so it fell to an assault vessel.  The government had to rub salt into the wound by effectively decommissioning her. How could it get any worse?

Here's how:  The RN announces that her replacement as flagship is HMS Bulwark; another assault craft.

On stand by.

Not surprised

Having decided that his job is too tough, President Barack Hussein Obama quits and hits the road and a snag when his "not really a re-election campaign" campaign bus was burgled and his Teleprompter stolen.

Mr Obama was left speechless.

Update:  Maybe they should look here for the culprits.

Update:  While we're on the topic of those archetypes of civic virtue, Mr Soetoro, maybe before you endorse them, you should see who else is on their side.  I guess our Barry is a uniter after all.

And who are they when the MSM isn't sanitising their image?

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

And, of course, there are gems like this. And this. Not quite the Tea Party.

This is what the Political Class has sunk to supporting.  Is Mr Dunham so desperate and out of touch that he truly believes that he can march to re-election by running out ahead of a load of Marxist hippies and pretending that he's their leader?  While being the biggest recipient of Wall Street donations?  That his backers won't notice?

We are deep into Downfall video territory here.  I give it a month before the first one hits Youtube.

Update It looks like his support isn't appreciated.

Update: Gah!  They got the wretched things back!

Beer Advertising

Poobot

Engineers at at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab finally do something sensible and build a robot that can scoop up dog poo.

They could sell a squadron of these down the local dog park.

Taxing the monarch

The Sovereign Grant Bill replaces the Civil List, which means that those evil, lazy parasitic Royals who live off the public teat will only be taxed at a rate of 85 percent.

How generous.

Coyote cloning

From the BBC:

Disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who fabricated research on human embryos, claims to have cloned coyotes for the first time

Reporters were not impressed when he followed his announcement by cackling manically and shouting "Fools! I'll destroy them all"!

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 10

G-Wiz owners thrilled

Britain's energy secretary Mr Christopher "Chris" Huhne says that only electric vehicles should be allowed to take advantage of the new 80 mph speed limit.

It isn't often that one sees a cabinet minister go stark, staring mad before your very eyes.

Lost at sea

The government is mothballing placing HMS Albion on "standby" until 2016 as a cost-cutting measure.

Why not?  It's not like wars pop up unexpectedly, is it?

Oh, wait...

Sorry

And just keep going until you reach the fork in the road.

The Royal Navy

Earthsearch Part 8

Riders to the Stars

Shale of the century

And now, today's question:  Which would you rather have?

a) An energy technology that is cheap; abundant; environmentally friendly; hides away easily behind a hedgerow; is readily available in the West; drives the Arabs, Russians, and Greens to distraction, and can run our civilisation for so far into the future that finding new sources of energy is no longer our problem. 

b) An expensive, unreliable technology that raises eyesores across the landscape, requires a duplication of the entire power grid to make up for its shortcomings, uses scarce resources, kills birds by the thousands, has killed more people than the entire nuclear power industry in the West's entire history, is completely unable to meet the energy needs of any nation, cannot even deliver on it's "carbon" promises, and is beloved by those who would like to send us back to the 12th century.

If you chose b, congratulations; you are the head of every major government in the West.

未来過去の物語

Dark Roast Blend looks at Future Past Japanese style.

It's a lot like the Occidental version, only with a few more missiles tacked on.

Ghastly shirt detector

Saving the world one idiot at a time

The Body in Question: Part 4

Priorities

The BBC claims that Coventry council is trying to decide whether to fund child care or fix pot holes.

This is an easy one.  Fixing roads comes under the core functions of local government, therefore that's what gets paid for first.  Proper roads also means that the economy can grow and with more money sloshing around, people can afford to pay for their own child care and the government can get out of the business they shouldn't have been doing in the first place.

But before any of that, has Coventry council looked at alternatives?  Is the City Clerk called the Chief Executive?  Why doesn't he go back to being the clerk and get paid a clerk's wages?  Is there anyone whose job title includes the words gay, lesbian, transgendered, women, minority, outreach, community, cohesion, green, carbon, arts, culture, Euro, multicultural, assistant, deputy, recycling, under, diversity, enhancement, adjunct, or co-?  If so, why are they still employed?  And why doesn't their job involve a shovel and a pot hole?

Badger vaccine

We don't need no stinkin' badgers!

From the BBC:

The UK's first independent badger vaccination project has proved that the technique is "viable and affordable", according to the charity running it.

Thank heavens for that. Now that we have a viable vaccine we can rid the countryside of those furry little burrowing... Oh, you mean it's for badgers and not against them.

Sorry.

The last straw

For a mess of potage.

Fixing what isn't broken is usually the reserve of Labour or the Liberal Democrats, but Mr David Cameron, not content with the ludicrous and destructive impulse to redefine marriage,  is bound and determined to prove them wrong.  By embracing the abolition of Primogeniture and  the Act of Settlement, Mr Cameron throws the very existence of Britain and the Commonwealth into the hazard for no reason other than facile demonstration of his PC credentials.  This is frivolous, outright insanity and demonstrates that this man is not only unfit to lead the country, but he is unfit to lead his party and that the Conservatives are unfit for tolerating him.  If he wanted to "fix" something, then he should have moved to abolish that vampire of the Welfare State that is draining the life's blood of Britain while turning its working class into a collection of violent, drunken, self-entitled children and then gone on to free Britain from that monstrosity the European Empire.

This sort of idiocy has become the touchstone of all three major parties and makes me despair for the future because throwing one lot out means merely putting another in who are just as mad.  I loathe the idea of revolution, which 99 times out of a hundred is far worse than the alternative, but unless there is some major upheaval that tosses out this toxic Political Class in favour of something resembling the sanity of the defunct Establishment, we are all in very deep trouble.

The 400 mph passenger train

A 1965 vision of how to revive passenger train service in the US through high-speed rail networks, which are a bit like opera; been around for a long time, but never catches on.

The apology that never was

Not so much bowing as mooning his own country.

Mr Barack Hussein Obama not only bowed to the Emperor of Japan in flagrant violation of diplomatic protocol, but it turns out that he also wanted to apologise for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What's interesting here is that since 2009 we have learned how little Mr Soetoro thinks of his country.  At least he didn't try to apologise for the US Navy shooting back at the Japanese during the Battle of Pearl Harbour.

Star Cops: Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits

The Green Jobs Answer Man

America, Britain, Spain or wherever, the insanity is the same.

The Big Germ

Scientists discover a giant virus.  Much larger than any previous virus, this is the first germ capable of inflicting physical violence. Instead of causing fever or nausea, it knees the victim in the groin.

Doctors recommend that the public take a refresher course in hand to hand combat in the event of an outbreak.

X-37B and manned spaceflight

After retiring the Space Shuttle it looked as if the US government was going to sit out manned spaceflight, but now it the US Air Force and Boeing are looking at building a manned variant of the super secret X-37B space plane.

Encouraging news.  Let's just hope President Golfpants doesn't get wind of it or it'll get scratched to pay for another phalanx of windmills.

Update:  Right now, he's too busy with the scissors elsewhere.

Not one

Real estate advice

This is why sea-front property isn't always the best investment.

The Lord Summerisle's Youth

Over at the Telegraph, Cristina Odone frets about how her daughter lectures her about not worshipping Blessed Gaia with sufficient fervour.

It isn't the child nor the insane school that brainwashes her that bothers me here.  What I cannot understand is why Mrs Odone doesn't just cuff the little Young Pioneer on the ear hole then sit her down and explain in no uncertain terms who is the adult and who is the child followed by a stern lecture on what a load of codswallop the child's been fed and why she should treat all with utmost scepticism.

My own daughter gets similar, though less strident, propaganda, but it never lasts an hour past this retired professor's withering glare and demands that logic be applied.

Yes, her teachers hate me.

Red Scene

Genocide cuisine

Apparently, there's a craze in Red China for restaurants peddling nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution.  You know, that unfortunate time when the Chinese were being murdered by the tens of millions by the Communists, ended up eating grass because of the famines and when wearing glasses made you an enemy of the people?  Good times, good times.

Next up:  Germany opens a chain of Death Camp Delicatessens and Russia a Gulag Goodies franchise. 

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe - Chapter 9

The future of the B-52

Mention the "B-52" to most people and they'll think of either an '80s pop group, a bad hair style, or an ancient bomber that's a relic of the Cold War. The name conjures up a vintage warplane featured in grainy footage from the Cuban Missile Crisis, but what may surprise people is to learn that in the second decade of the 21st century, the B-52 fleet still plays a key role in America's nuclear deterrence and conventional warfare strategy. Now the US Defense Department is upgrading the venerable USAF B-52 heavy bomber to allow the sixty-year old aircraft to continue in active front-line service until the 2040s. Read More

The Dutch war on dignity

The horror... The horror...

Ever on the cutting edge of customer service, Dutch trains will be equipped with plastic "wee bags" for passengers who are caught short.

Some my disparage such a move, but I've seen the WCs on Dutch railways and lived to tell the tale. This can only be regarded as a marked improvement.

Brings back memories of a Magic Bus trip to Athens in 1982

Kindle and the bookshelf

Nigel Farndale looks at the Kindle and worries about its impact on the traditional bookshelf.

Barring the car exploding, I'm getting a Kindle in a couple of weeks (I haven't before because I'm cheap) and I've been thinking along the same lines.  My conclusion:  Predictions to the contrary, I don't see ebooks pushing proper books to extinction or even close.  Books have too many advantages over ebooks.  They are format-free; don't need electricity; if properly made, they last nearly forever and with a cheap paperback you don't get too upset if you drop it in the bath.  

That being said, I'm not such a Luddite that I reject ebooks.  In fact, I think they're brilliant.  Before the Internet came along, wherever I lived looked like a secondhand book shop had burst its seams.  I'm one of those people who is forever looking up obscure facts at 2 AM and that meant having an extensive library–even if nine-tenths of its contents were ratty old volumes that smelled of attics and barns.  Then came the Internet and I found that I could eliminate half the collection without any pain at all.  I wanted the population of Peru?  Just look it up on the computer.  Needed a quote from Emerson?  Ditto.  

When ebooks came along a couple of years ago, I got rid of 90 percent of my books because they were all things I'd read, things I kept around just in case I needed a fact out of them, and the sort of tomes that squeeze in through worm holes in space caused by having too many books in one place.  Now, my library consists of books I need for my work, those that have sentimental value (Grays Anatomy, how would I have got through med school without you?), those I like the bindings of (And yes, I've read them), those that I find I can look things up in easier if they're hard copies (Bible, Roget's Thesaurus), those that were trophies of protracted hunts through the warrens of Oxford Covered Market, and those I haven't read yet (recorded on spreadsheet, so I don't forget).  

The only drawback of this system is that reading ebooks means sitting at my desk or balancing the netbook on my lap.  The former is too much like working and the latter is uncomfortable and completely impractical in a car or aeroplane.  So, the Kindle, which means I can now do for books what my ipod did for my music.  As for Farndale's fear of not being able to scan his shelves, I can still do that, but what I see up there is what I really want rather than what I can't convince myself to part with because I don't have to part if I don't want to. 

Now if I can only get a default screensaver for it that says "Don't panic" in large, friendly letters.

The South Pole question

Al Fin looks at the story of the female manager of the South Pole Station who is yammering to be air lifted from the base for medical reasons while officials back home point out that it's too dangerous to risk sending a plane in the Antarctic winter.   This serves as the starting off point to question modern Feminism's insistence on giving women every opportunity available for men while still allowing easy opt outs when the going gets tough.

In regard to the manager of SPS, I don't know if her being a woman is as great a factor as her being unsuited to command an Antarctic installation.  This "Damn the aircrews, I've got an aneurysm!" attitude hardly has the Admiral Byrd spirit to it and she should clearly never have been given a position of such responsibility.  However, I do think that Al Fin has it right about our blindly shoving women into hazard without any thought beyond placating doctrine Feminists.  The point about female soldiers being sent home pregnant as routinely as letters is a real scandal and I can't imagine the furore if a group of men in the armed forces was able to demob themselves at will and did so to the tune of 19 percent of their numbers, which is what the Royal Navy suffers.

But I think the most telling point he has is about not women qua women, but modern women, who are clearly not the stuff their great grandmothers were.  Neither are the men the stuff their great grandmothers were either–never mind their grandfathers, but that's another matter.  I am always gobsmacked when I read proposals for Mars missions that assume that the crew will be made up entirely of delicate snowflakes unable to withstand any a hardships–and then advocates putting this load of Walter the Softies into a ship that's one system failure away from certain death.

I am forever reading hand-wringing reports about isolation and being out of communication that would have made a 1950s BAS crew, 19th century seamen, round the world yacht racers, lighthouse keepers, and any soldier billeted anywhere previous to 1990 screw up their eyes with complete incomprehension.  Isolation, boredom and danger are manageable.  What it requires is discipline (as in military or profound self); the ability to admit the difference between a solider, an explorer, a pioneer and a colonist; acknowledging that men and women are unique and different; and having the sanity of not mixing powder kegs and matches in the same hull.

Stranded in Prescot

Earthsearch Part 7

The Twonky

Wilesco R200 Atomic Reactor

Small nuclear reactors are the future. This size would do quite nicely if it wasn't a model.

Atomic-powered Kindle, anyone?

Thunderbird 7

Strangely familiar

Yanko Design (the DREADCO of the design world) unveils its Archangel disaster relief airship.

This is what happens when you sit up all night drinking espresso and watching Gerry Anderson DVDs.

A tiny detail

Sesame Street introduces a new Muppet to help children confront the terrible problem of hunger in America.

A pity that it's a complete load of bollocks.

The Body in Question: Part 3

Axantha II

Now if it just had deck guns

I'm generally not all that keen on superyachts, but when you have one that looks like a real ship and is built to undertake real voyages, then I'm willing to tip my hat.

French logic

You're economy is on the brink of collapse, your country is being overrun by an unstoppable tide of Muslim immigration, car burnings are a national pastime, you can't even tweak the budget without starting a riot, your pseudocurrency is on the verge of imploding, and your European Empire went from birth to decadence in one step, so what do you do?

Ban ketchup!

The Age of Air

Popular Mechanics in 1942 looks at the future of air travel.  It's pretty prescient in the generalities, though I'm not sure that the wooden gliders as the backbone of air freight had much of a chance even back then.

Nice personal helicopter, though.

Star Cops: Intelligent Listening for Beginners

Sic semper bunnies

NBC cancels The Playboy Club after only three episodes and Morality in the Media claims credit.

That's like taking credit for forcing My Mother the Car off the air.  An alternative theory is that the show was a cynical attempt to piggyback on the success of Mad Men that ended up as a load of unwatchable rubbish.

And the UK becomes Airstrip One

The announcement venue wasn't reassuring either.

Mr Vladimir Putin wants to recreate the USSR, but don't worry.  To reassure the world, he's calling it the "Eurasian Union".

Eurasia.  Yeah, that's reassuring.

Alnwick Gardens

When they say "Don't pick the flowers", they mean it.

Ever plan to murder someone only to discover that you've run out of strychnine?  The good news is that if your neighbour is the Duke of Northumberland, you can always pop 'round to borrow some aconite with a side of hemlock.

Marathons

Finally

Despite all the gloom over the cancelling of the American Space Shuttle project, I can't help feeling that we might be finally on the verge of a real space age. Exhibit A:  SpaceX has decided that parachute recoveries are too 20th century and have opted to rocket-assisted landings.

Still need some swooshy fins on the tail, though.

AlphaDog

Boston Dynamics continues to develop their AlphaDog robotic pack mule (AlphaMule?) for the US military.

Impressive, but I wish they'd put a head on the creepy thing.

A gentle reminder

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 8

Right idea, wrong solution

The Home Secretary has gone on record saying that the tyrant's charter known as the Human Rights Act should be scrapped.

Even if it's just party conference blather, which I suspect it is, at least the idea is out there and like an ember the breath of liberty can be blown on it.  Unfortunately, the Telegraph story has this fly in the ointment:

The Coalition has set up a commission of human rights experts to report on the possibility of bringing in a British Bill of Rights to replace the Act by the end of next year.

Will someone please remind those fatheads in government that we've already had a Bill of Rights since 1689?  We don't need more idiot tinkering by a load of post-modern mental midgets with the souls of dried-out prunes.  We need to get back the liberties are our birthright as free-born Englishmen.  Our American cousins understood this in 1776.  We need to learn this lesson in 2011.

Fat tax

Remember all those jokes about how if the government is treating smokers like Jews in the middle ages, it would only be a matter of time before they'd be taxing fatty foods?

The Danes aren't laughing.

Intelligent cork

Yanko Design (the DREADCO of the design world) comes up with an intelligent wine cork that displays all sorts of information about the open bottle of wine in your fridge.

The only thing I don't understand is all that use-by date nonsense.  Drink inside a week?  Don't they know how dangerous it is to leave wine sit after it's been opened?

The Secret War: Battle of the Beams

Earthsearch Part 6

The Horse's Mouth