Mercury observatory

NASA has long had a waste not, want not philosophy and loves reusing leftover equipment.  Skylab is the best example of this; a space station cobbled together from bits of Apollo hardware.  But the habit set in early with this charming little orbital observatory built into an old Mercury capsule.

It's a wonder that the shuttles ever made it to a museum.

The waiting game

I observed that he sat frequently for half and hour on end, with knitted brows and an abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his hand when I mentioned it. “Data! Data! Data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”

Sherlock Holmes "The Copper Beeches" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

By now, you've no doubt run across the downright gleeful coverage of the mainstream press of the alleged shooting of 16 people by an American soldier in Kandahar; complete with bloody footage on CNN, lots of talk about reprisals and Mr Barack Hussein Obama once again mobilising an all-out apology to the corrupt Kharzi government.

As for me, I have nothing to say on the matter until I find out the man's name and at least something about his motives.   In other words, something a bit more solid.

Speculation without facts is less than pointless.

Iceman

The Lost Race

Click to listen

Island of Terror

Grey Walter's tortoises

A remarkable story of early cybernetics.

Who would have thought that the start of the robot apocalypse would be so charming

Circle girl to the rescue!

Financial Times headline:

Asia defence spending to overtake Europe

Fortunately, the European Empire has women who sit in circles with disapproving looks to defend it.

Himalayas Water Tower

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) has this solution to the inexorable melting of the Himalayan glaciers due to global warming:  Build 900-yard tall towers, one third of which is filled with ice cubes made up with run-off from the melting glaciers.

Two problems with this.  First, the capacity of these towers compared to the volume of a single glacier is so tiny that it makes wind power look like a good idea and second, the designer has missed out on Glaciergate.

Civilisation Part 13: Heroic Materialism

New blog

I'm starting a new blog today with a very familiar name.  Feel free to cop a shufti.

The future of reading

And what problem does this solve?

Paleofuture looks at what they call the iPad of 1935.

More of a Kindle, I'd say.

Space Station V

Unwanted Blog has some pretty impressive blueprints of 2001: a Space Odyssey's  Space Station V.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

The leadership of Captain Kirk

Forbes looks at the five leadership lessons of Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

Regrettably, flying leg kicks do not count among them.

UFO: Close Up

ASV hulls would dramatically improve ship efficiency by riding on a cushion of air

A European project is developing new Air Support Vessel (ASV) hull designs that allow watercraft to ride on a cushion of air to greatly reduce friction between the hull and the water, resulting in more hull speed for less power than conventional designs. The project is part of a EUR10,000,000 (approx. US$13,225,000) project funded in part by the European Union, the Norwegian Research Council and Innovation Norway, and Norwegian company Effect Ships International AS has recently completed tank-testing in Sweden of two ASV hull models... Continue Reading ASV hulls would dramatically improve ship efficiency by riding on a cushion of air

The Daly Superheroes

What voiceover actors in superhero cartoons face

Pardon?

Headline:

Do people in the Northwest have an accent?

Yes, and you can cut it with a knife.  My wife, who is a native Washingtonian, thinks she's accentless and thinks I'm kidding when I tell her that she has a very thick one and  I sometimes have trouble understanding her.

At least I've got her and the daughter using proper words like "car park" and "offie" and the daughter's Rs are softer than her class mates', so the cause of civilisation is not lost.

That clears that up

Hauliers

Baby sloths in jammies

Did I mention that they hug teddies?

Reality knocks

The end of a dream

The LA Times, oblivious to Climategate et al,  puts energy on the same level of tobacco and smugly claims that the same bullying tactics that have allowed the State to treat smokers like pariahs will also work to convince people to go back to being serfs.  Of course, this won't apply to the Inner Party members.

Meanwhile, the ChiComs have discovered enough shale gas to run the middle kingdom for 200 years and what do you think are the chances of their turning their backs on that gift?  Or that the rest of the world won't follow their example like a shot with the Inner Party looking shocked as they're trampled under foot?

That sound you hear is Al Gore's bubble bursting.

Douglas conjunction-class Mars mission

Beyond Apollo looks at Douglas's 1965 study for getting to Mars fast.

I miss the days when talk of a manned Mars mission was something taken seriously.

The Master Mystery: Part 14

CAMRA rejoices

Drinking this is like making love in a canoe

BBC headline:

Has Britain fallen out of love with lager?

One can only hope so.  A true sign of Britain's recovery will be the banishment of this undrinkable muck back to its continental lair.  I remember as a young lad going into the Vaults at Stony Stratford and one of my friends asking the barman if he had any lager only to be told, "Yeah, we keep it under the bar for the women and kids, but don't tell anyone."

It seemed like a good idea

As part of a new economy drive, ship's watches will consist of only one officer.  To make up for this, pilots will be issued with these radio remote control devices so that they can still pilot the ship when they need to go to the karzi.

Phase II will convert this to an app.

Go away!

Oh, sure.  First it just follows you around and helps you do the shopping because you ask it to, but pretty soon  the little creeps will be on your heels whether you want them or not, demand a say in the item selections and report you to the Healthy Police if you buy too much cheese.  This demonstration didn't even get a minute in before the iron nanny started nagging the man about the spaghetti, which, amazingly, wasn't answered with a sharp demand that it shut it's cake hole and that if it's opinion is wanted it will be asked for–but don't hold its non-existent breath.

I say we take the them out now.

Intersections... of the FUTURE!

What will the intersection of the future look like when all cars are self-driving and interconnected?  Probably something like this video.

I'm not that impressed.  It looks like any average road in Rome, though with fewer horns blaring and obscene gestures.

Friendship 7

"Interface scaffolds" could wire prosthetics directly into amputees' nervous systems

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have announced a breakthrough in prosthetics that may one day allow artificial limbs to be controlled by their wearers as naturally as organic ones, as well as providing sensations of touch and feeling. The scientists have developed a new interface consisting of a porous, flexible, conductive, biocompatible material through which nerve fibers can grow and act as a sort of junction through which nerve impulses can pass to the prosthesis and data from the prosthesis back to the nerve. If this new interface is successful, it has the potential to one day allow nerves to be connected directly to artificial limbs... Continue Reading "Interface scaffolds" could wire prosthetics directly into amputees' nervous systems

Almost Human

Click to listen

Theatre of Blood

It'll be wicker men next, mark my words

One eye firmly on the camera

It's hard to pull off this sort of self-conscious moral vanity without a decent director to give you notes.

"That was wonderful, Tracy.  I really felt your eco-consciousness there.  But you really need to keep the energy  down at first or you don't have anywhere to go.  Levels, people; levels."

This is why I have absolutely no compunction about satirising worshipers of Blessed Gaia.  Every time I think I'm going over the top, they jam the bar another notch higher.

Murder by ethics

Morally irrelevant?

Reader Ironmistress asked for my thoughts about this pronouncement by a pair of bioethicists, who say that infanticide is "no worse" than abortion because infants are "morally irrelevant".

First off, any time an "ethicist" opens his mouth I know that what ever follows will boil down to either, "Do what thou wilt shall be the only law" or "That which is not forbidden is compulsory".  The idea that you can turn ethics into a science is farcical.  You can become just as much an expert, and probably more so, by running a pub or sweeping floors.  An "ethicist" is an academic mountebank at best and a charlatan at worst.

In this case, what has happened is the logical extension when you remove the idea that human life is sacred.  I don't mean that metaphorically, I mean literally sacred.  It's why in a proper morality killing is only sanctioned in extermis, such as in accordance to the rules of war or as ordinate punishment under the law for treason or other foul crimes.  It's why we don't deal with tramps by organising hunts.  It's why five men will die trying to save one.  It's why slavery is so vile.

It's even the main reason why we don't practice cannibalism or necrophilia.  Such practices are more than profane or disgusting, they are sacrilegious.  From a Judeo-Christian point of view, it is to defile the image of God.

Now, I don't want to get into the whole abortion debate.  I tend not to touch on it because it's the sort of topic that generates far more heat than light and I prefer productive discussions to ones that end with a pair of armed camps glaring at one another.  The logic of the Catholic Church, which I subscribe to (the logic, that is), is that only a human fetus can develop into a human being that will possess an immortal soul.  We do not know where along the line from fertilised ovum to infant that this happens, but it does and it is therefore logical to err on the side of caution.  Hence the prohibitions that Catholic doctrine demand.

With the "ethicists," on the other hand, they have rejected the sanctity of human life and have determined that when it is permissible to kill someone is based largely upon what is most convenient and what the killer can get away with at the time.  Their definition that they give of personhood is as tenuous as it is ungrammatical:

Their definition of a person was "an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her."

This sort of personhood is about as protective as a G-string. Any third-rate sophist could twist this to justify disposing of anyone at any time. For that matter, what gives the ethicists any authority to establish this as a definition or to declare it set in stone?  Once the practice is accepted, the definition can change to fit whomever is next for being declared an unperson. It is, to coin a phrase, a licence to kill.

If we accept their argument even in the tiniest degree, we are staring into the abyss.  Why stop with infants?  Why not the very ill?  The deformed?  The old?  The homeless? Class enemies? The politically incorrect? Or anyone else the Party decides is undesirable?  Why not?  Once you've swallowed the camel of infanticide, why strain at the gnat of genocide?  And the truly appalling thing is that our world has slid so far that the infanticide isn't enough to show the true evil of this idea.  I have to bring up genocide.

If I were a homosexual, for example, I would be denouncing our ethical comrades very loudly indeed.  At the moment, the sexually deviant are riding high because they are very popular with the political class.  But, as the Jews can tell you, that can change very quickly and when that happens, you don't want to be living in a world where being inconvenient is a capital offence.

One columnist recently pointed out that with this as the moral standard, you could make a nice living breeding babies in quantity to be lobotomised and sold as slaves.  Why not?  They're "morally irrelevant", after all and once their frontal lobes are detached, they're sure to remain so.

How to deal with these ethicists?  I've been reading postings that say that they've been receiving death threats and that there have been plots to murder them.  These have, of course, been quite rightly denounced as wrong. I can't think of a blunter word to describe such things.  However, what I would say to the ethicists is this:  Using your own logic, there cannot be anyone less "morally relevant" than a man who advocates such an abomination of an idea.  If anyone deserves to be the recipient of the reward for such irrelevance, it is such vermin.

Perhaps, we should tell them, it is time to revive the old practice of outlawry and declare them beyond the protection of the law and fit for any man to do with them as they will.  Think of it as the ethical version of what happens when you live by the sword.

Or perhaps we should, as always in a free society, acknowledge their right to say such vile things, but then use our right to refute them and call them what they are: Evil.

Civilisation Part 12: The Fallacies of Hope

Future Cars of 1948

UNIT might want to hear about this

And here's some we made earlier

Wired headline:

Russian Mogul’s Plan: Plant Our Brains in Robots, Keep Them Alive Forever

What could possibly be wrong with that?

UFO: Court Martial

Saint David's Day

Happy Saint David's Day

From

Ephemeral Isle

BMW Concept M135i brings the entry level 1 Series into the M performance class

BMW puts a lot of stock into its 1 Series motor cars. As its entry level line, the 1 Series was meant to both eradicate the memory of the failed BMW Compact and to lead first-time BMW owners toward more prestigious performance models, such as the M class. The BMW Concept M135i, which is slated to be put before the public at the 2012 Geneva International Motor Show on March 7, 2012, is BMW’s latest attempt to create a hot hatchback that combines and expands on both the 1 Series and the M lines... Continue Reading BMW Concept M135i brings the entry level 1 Series into the M performance class

Bill and the volcano

Personally, I prefer a more traditional approach

Tim Blair reports on the latest affront to Blessed Gaia with this clip from one Bill McGuire:

Across the world, as sea levels climb remorselessly, the load-related bending of the crust around the margins of the ocean basins might – in time – act to sufficiently “unclamp” coastal faults such as California’s San Andreas, allowing them to move more easily; at the same time acting to squeeze magma out of susceptible volcanoes that are primed and ready to blow.

Global warming causes volcanoes.  Even by climate alarmist standards this is so silly on the most basic of grounds that it makes about as much sense as claiming that petting cats causes lightning storms.  This lot are so superstitious that they'll be amending the Kyoto treaty to include something about tossing the occasional virgin into Mauna Loa just to be on the safe side.

No wonder James Delingpole has stopped being polite to them.

Max, call your service

Wyoming is preparing for the worst and drawing up plans for if the federal government collapses and the state must survive on its own.

It looks fairly promising until you get to the bit about how civil disputes will be resolved by "Two men enter, one man leaves".

She's got a ticket to park

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) does it again with their car park meter machine that prints out a map with your assigned parking spot right on your ticket.  Imagine the convenience.  Imagine the reassurance.  Imagine the blistering fury when you discover that some plonker is parked half in your space.

The most entertaining thing will be watching the entire scheme go south as one unusable space leads to the usurping of a second, which turns into a cascade effect that brings it all crashing to a halt.

The Merits of... Necrophilia

Ingsoc airways

A vintage scene from behind the Iron Curtain:

An elderly couple hears that there will be a delivery of meat at a local store. The husband hurries off to the store. After he has waited on line in the freezing cold for several hours, an official car pulls up and some KGB men get out. They tell the people on line that the meat delivery has been canceled, and that everyone should go home. 

This is too much for the old boy. "Is this why we fought and suffered in the Great Patriotic War?" he calls out in exasperation. "Is this all we have to show for sixty years of socialism?"

One of the KGB men comes over to him. "Pipe down, Grandad," he says. "That's subversive talk. You're old enough to know what would have happened if you'd spoken like that in Stalin's time." The KGB man makes his hand into a gun shape and points it at his head. "Go on home now and stop making trouble."

The old boy goes home. Seeing him empty-handed, his wife says: "Oh no! Don't tell me they've run out of meat again!"

"It's worse than that," says the old boy. "Now they've run out of bullets!"

Why this old Cold War joke? Because the KGB man's attitude is still alive and well as this BBC item demonstrates:

Former fireman Mr Jones, 67, was on his way to Faro in the Algarve, where he now lives.

He was asked to place his belongings, including his scarf, into a tray to pass through the scanner.

However, as he did so, he spotted the woman pass through the area without showing her face.

Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, he recalled how he said to officials: "I wonder what would happen if I covered my face with my scarf.

"It was a quip. And I expected the guy to say: 'Yeah, I know what you mean mate' but when I got to the end and was putting all my stuff back on, I was bagged by a security guard."

Mr Jones said he was told: "You've made a remark which someone finds offensive. Come with me."

And here's the kicker (emphasis added):

He denied making an offensive remark, saying it was "an observation, nothing more", but he was told he should apologise to a Muslim security guard who was nearby when the comment was made.

Imagine such a scene occurring in 1943 with a German who somehow getting a job running a security post in England.  I would have thought that a Muslim security guard working at an airport where he is employed thanks to the heightened security measures due to terrorist attacks by Muslim Jihadists that we are at war with would be a bit more circumspect about what he takes offence at. 

This is not what one expects to find in a free society.  This sort of petty tyranny is what one expects from the Gestapo or the Stasi, not in Britain.  Never mind the farcical, totalitarian idea that a man can be detained because he said something that someone finds offensive, no matter how unreasonably.  The appalling notion that a security guard can demand an apology from a member of the public for what offended him is ghastly and everyone involved in this incident and their immediate superiors should be sacked and publicly shamed.

These airport guards, like the police, are public servants and they should conduct themselves accordingly.  I've never called a policeman "sir" in my life and the idea that I should is laughable.  And I certainly wouldn't do so to a rent-a-cop who is only slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than a traffic warden.  It's one thing to haul a man in for insulting a constable to his face in a manner liable to cause a breach of the peace.  It's another thing to think that a freeborn Englishman has to tiptoe around some jumped up little Himmler in an ill-fitting uniform and latex gloves whose job it is to molest the travelling public as part of farcical and ineffective screening process.  It is monstrous and should not be allowed to stand.

There are only two positive things I took away from this incident.  The first is that Mr Jones is consulting with his solicitor about taking legal action and the second is that I thank Heaven that it didn't happen to me.  The moment the apology was demanded, I'd have ended up in chokey after letting rip such a bellowing verbal outrage that it would have set off every car alarm between Brighton and Croydon.

The Master Mystery: Part 13

Home office

via makeuseof.com

An oily home

The idea of living in a converted oil tank is intriguing.  At the least, it would look very cool.  However, I can't decide which is the worst about this particular proposal:

• All the silly "green" touches.
• The ludicrous, upside down, inside-out layout that has the master bathroom opening on the living room rather than the bedroom.
• The fact that the architect intends to have the tank completely dismantled, taken off site, almost entirely rebuilt and then reassembled at another site.

I think the third.  If you're going to go through all that trouble for a bottle of rusty steel, you might as well save the expense and build a new one.

AIRE mask

Now you can charge up your iPod just by breathing.

Or you may have notice that thing in the wall that the charger plugs into.  Apparently, the designer is unaware of it.

Some things are just wrong

Where is your God now?

The Conquest of Everest

Knock

Click to listen.

Lyonheart K - a modern take on the Jaguar E-Type

Last year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Jaguar E-type, the Swiss firm Classic Factory unveiled its Growler concept car. Intended as a modern version of the classic sports car, the concept was so well received that a new car-making company, Lyonheart Cars Ltd. has been opened in Coventry, U.K., for the purpose of turning out a limited run of the production version of the Growler - the Lyonheart K... Continue Reading Lyonheart K - a modern take on the Jaguar E-Type

MST3K: The Phantom Planet

We used to dream of plankton!

When I were a lad, we 'ad it tough.  We'd have to get up at two o'clock in the morning, go down t'mill, work 18 hours a day, come home and all we'd 'ave t'eat was a bowl of plankton.

Cooked?

Aye.

Luxury.

Hobby horse nation

In The Abolition of Britain, Peter Hitchens charted how Britain went from being the nation of Sir Winston Churchill to that of Princess Diana; a once-serious country that put up statues to heroes in Trafalgar Square that  is now dominated by a decadent uberclass that erects ephemeral monuments to toys instead.

We present the symbol of an age.

Crazy, messy accident waiting to happen

Cannonbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!
(THUD!)

Civilisation Part 11: The Worship of Nature

Mobile Kitchen Unit

Nicely compact, I must admit, but if you're going to go this minimal, you might as well go for a gas ring and a camping mess kit (steel, not aluminium) with a canvas roll for the utensils and be done with it.

By coincidence, that's exactly what I used at Oxford back in the '80s.

The Dynasphere revisited

Recently, we looked at the Dynasphere.  Now, British Pathe presents a more detailed account of this remarkable opossum squasher.

BBC: Is English or Mandarin the language of the future

English.

NEXT!

UFO: The Square Triangle

UK's next generation Wildcat helicopter completes sea trials

A Lynx Wildcat helicopter has completed 20 days of sea trials aboard the British frigate HMS Iron Duke in waters off southern England and northern Scotland. It was the latest in a series of trials required before the £16 million state-of-the-art combat aircraft can enter into active service with the British Army and the Royal Navy. The latest tests involved putting the helicopter through tests that involved over 400 day and nighttime take offs and landings from the Iron Duke in the worst weather conditions that could be found to put the mission systems, night-vision equipment and navigation systems through their paces... Continue Reading UK's next generation Wildcat helicopter completes sea trials

Noah's Ark

For those not very big tsunamis
Please confirm ave height before using.

Yanko design (The DREADCO of the design world) comes to the rescue of future tsunami victims with their New-Age Noah's Ark; a building designed to survive the worst tectonic event because it sits on shock absorbers and in the event of tsunamis "the architecture float on water by buoyancy".

No doubt the architecture dodge wave of water-borne debris crashing down it like a sledge hammer by luckiness.  I hope so because all that hurtling timber and motor cars aren't going to do the Ark's tsunami-driven hydroelectric generators any good at all.

How anyone is supposed to reach this thing in the event of an earthquake is left to the imagination as is the question of what the survivors are supposed to do when they get there because instead of dormitories and medical facilities the Ark consists entirely of a tastefully lit garden and a small art gallery.

This may prove something of a disappointment on the day

Space tucker

What?  No Tang?

We've got some hard facts about that Mars mission simulation that NASA wants to run on a lava bed in Hawaii.  Apparently, the purpose is to find the ideal menu for Mars-bound astronauts.

Doesn't seem that hard a task to me.  Lay in some ship's biscuit, bully beef, a few wheels of cheese, dried peas, sauerkraut, jam, tea, bacon, porridge, Bovril, tinned butter, tinned milk, powdered eggs, lime juice, beer, and an ample supply of rum* and and you're set.

Oh, and the shrimp cocktail, of course.

*Pemmican, cocoa and Kendal mint cakes will also be available for landing parties on Mars.

The Day of the Campions

This won't end well

Russian scientist cultivate seeds from plants frozen in Siberia for 30,000 years.

Why is I feel like I've just walked into the first chapter of a John Wyndham novel?

Men's Reticence to go to the Doctor

Amazing Anti-Thief Security Case

From a time when security devices had much more entertainment value.

Your green lesson of the day

Much easier to hit than a pigeon

When trying to spy on suspected pigeon hunters it is,

1. Extremely stupid to use a flying camera drone because pigeon hunters have shotguns and know how to use them.
2. Monumentally stupid to then complain to the press with an air of self-righteousness that makes you come off looking like no end of a pratt.

Rinspeed Dock+Go provides bolt-on solutions for small electric cars

If you live in a traffic-nightmare city like New York or London or Bangkok, an ultra-compact urban electric car is great. They're so tiny that they fit in the smallest parking space, they're quiet, they're often exempt from congestion charges and they're tailpipe emission free, which is important if you live where the air is so dirty that it's visible. Unfortunately, they also have all the boot space of a glove box and the travel radius of a tortoise in a hurry. Unless you have the ideal lifestyle that allows you to work within the vehicle's limitations, there will come the time when you'll need to carry more than a messenger bag or drive farther than a single battery charge. When that happens, you'll probably wish you had some way to magically add an extra boot or a bigger battery. Rinspeed's Dock+Go concept car looks forward to a day when that may be possible... Continue ReadingRinspeed Dock+Go provides bolt-on solutions for small electric cars

City of trees: 1934

Via Paleofuture.

The Master Mystery: Part 12

Han shot first

The sociopolitical importance of setting the record straight.

ICBM away!

I don't care how drunk they were, I like it.

This is either Cold War ingenuity at its finest or a perfect example of world-class cocking about.

Tally pen

As a professional writer, the word count function on my processor software is my constant companion.

Who knew that they had it in 1934?

On fountain pens.

Combat America

No Contact

Click to listen.

The First Men in the Moon

You're not taking me seriously!

This is what happens when you don't think through your plan.

Swish

From Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world), comes the Swish:  A specialised nappy washing machine built with pleasing Blessed Gaia first and getting the washing done second.  It's solar powered, of course, uses eco-friendly "soap nuggets" (detergent is an abomination in the sight of Lord Summerisle) and dumps the poo and urine-laden waste water into the nearest pot plant.  Yes, it's substandard washing (if it starts at all with that tiny photovoltaic panel) and is guaranteed to kill your plants after the first spin cycle.

It's also only big enough to take only ONE nappy at a time, so do ask your little cherub to refrain from pooing more than twice a day.

The chicken farm of Dr Moureau

From Wired.co.uk:

Architecture student André Ford has proposed a new system for the mass production of chicken that removes the birds' cerebral cortex so that they don't experience the horrors of being packed together tightly in vertical farms.

Lobotomised chicken farms?  Okay, I've been around chickens on a daily basis for much of my life and I've yet to see one "horrified", but we'll let that pass.  So, aside from avoiding the offence of any alleged chicken sensibilities, why are we doing this?

(T)o meet the rising demand for meat, particularly poultry.

And this is going to do this, how?  Apparently, architecture students aren't required to run any numbers as they work out daft schemes.  This chap plans to somehow raise these chickens (How?) until they're large enough to perform brain surgery on, then lobotomise them, and stick them in machines to feed, water, cleanse and massage them until slaughtering time.  Aside from having a full-time poultry neurosurgeon on call, how in the name of Colonel Sanders is this supposed to be cost effective?  Putting a battery farm full of chickens into intensive care units?  It would make Wagyu beef look like the lunchtime special.

Civilisation Part 10: The Smile of Reason

Please specify which revolution

Our triumph in space is the hymn to Soviet country!

This bit of Soviet space propaganda looks strangely familiar.

Oh, dear

Oh, yes.  That's it.

An object lesson about why you should always step backwards and take a good look at what your message is actually saying.

Obama tries to stamp out heresy

Mr Barack Hussein Obama's trampling on religious freedom by demanding that the Catholic church pay for the contraceptives it opposes by doctrine is nearly as bewildering as Mr Soetoro's counterattack when he was called on it.  Glenn Reynolds has the best take on this:

It’s as if we passed a law requiring mosques to sell bacon and then, when people objected, responded by saying “What’s wrong with bacon? You’re trying to ban bacon!!!!

UFO: The Responsibility Seat

Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?

This year is an historic one for nuclear power, with the first reactors winning US government approval for construction since 1978. Some have seen the green lighting of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built in Georgia as the start of a revival of nuclear power in the West, but this may be a false dawn because of the problems besetting conventional reactors. It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes, it won't be led by giant gigawatt installations, but by batteries of small modular reactors (SMRs) with very different principles from those of previous generations. But though a technology of great diversity and potential, many obstacles stand in its path. Gizmag goes in depth with an examination of the many forms of SMR, their advantages, and the challenges they must overcome... Continue Reading Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?

Gone with the wind

Think that wind turbines are the answer to Saving the Planet ^TM?   Then look at this from the New Scientist (Emphasis added):

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them.

Fifty percent destruction over their operating life span.  If that was true of any other power source, they'd be shut down the next day.

These aren't power plants, they're totem poles.

How Americans sound to the British

Living in the States, this is exactly what I sometimes hear and this is why my wife thinks I'm going deaf.

Future fashion: 1893

There are a lot of misses in this article from the Strand, but they got the '70s spot on.

Via Retronaut.

Man flu

Falklands morale

I'd be happier about this if I wasn't firmly convinced that the illegal junta that occupies Britain wasn't defending the islands out of principle, but rather out of bed-wetting terror for their political skins.

Given a free choice, I have no doubt that the Political Class of all three parties would hand the lot over to the Argies with a big, fat grin.

Have bombs, will travel

Pakistan: Nuclear arms supplier to the Umma?

That's a comforting thought.

Change!

From the Seatte Times (the walking dead of the newspaper world):

Electric cars, no longer an oddity, make few inroads on market

It's a long feature article that tries to put a brave, green face on the situation, but when it's boiled down it's prety simple:  Due to US subsidies, mandates, regulations, nationalisation and outright blackmail, car makers are cranking out electric cars, but consumers people aren't daft, so they won't buy the wretched things.

Liberty's a pain, isn't it, Mr Soetoro?

The Master Mystery: Part 11