Tag: Entertainment
-
Classy Spokane
Bank robbers in the meth era just don’t measure up to the old Dillinger standard: Uhaul trucks have governed engines. You can’t achieve a “high rate” in a Uhaul, unless they mean a “high rate” of absurdity.
-
Placing a small bet
The flurry of “news” about Elon’s “battle” with Twitter reminded me of my Follies theme. Sometimes a rich man’s toy advances science. Elon superficially resembles Ned Green, who inherited his evil mother’s criminally acquired fortune and tried to turn it toward enjoyment of science. The spaceflight competition among Elon and Bezos and Branson also has…
-
Tenzor
Continuing a vaguely defined theme of obscure and peculiarly clumsy secret equipment. = = = = = = = = = = Soviet spies were working in Oklahoma and Kansas in the ’50s, as evident in the correct local pronunciations on their maps. Every city and province has its secret shibboleths, its own tests for…
-
Huge exception to an old rule
This is a completely trivial criticism of an old obscure TV show, but it seems to be what I need to write today. Maybe there’s a reason, maybe not. The show was ‘Man of the World’, one of many British James Bond imitators. Other shows in this genre gave us remarkably accurate dramatizations of facts…
-
Pithy point, pithy counterpoint
Kirn’s latest pithy point: If history is any guide, the books that the ideological arsonists disappear first are likely to be the very books needed to spark a renaissance later. Most of the commenters are thinking of fairly modern dystopias, but that’s clearly not where Kirn is going. 1984 wouldn’t spark a renaissance. Purpose-based thinkers…
-
First American radar
Rehashing from two weeks ago: This early radar installation appeared in a 1945 issue of Electronics magazine, which turned out to be the same issue that momentarily revealed part of the atom bomb before clamping down again. The issue includes a significant editorial on the whole subject of clamping and releasing. = = = =…
-
Truly new invention
The peculiar extreme suckerdom of NFTs is hard to comprehend. The suckers proudly exhibit horrible art as their avatars in social media, and proudly exhibit the hexagon-shaped Twitter profile. These fools are proudly walking around wearing a badge that says I AM A PERFECT SUCKER. CHEAT ME NOW! Older generations of scammers bought and sold…
-
Unsurprisingly
After writing about Frank Edwards, the newscaster who found his niche in UFOlogy, I started looking for related material. Surprisingly, Archive.org has an organized collection of the material, curated by Wendy Connors in the ’90s. There’s a huge amount of material: the UFO Hotline, news broadcasts, private interviews with Hynek and others, comedies that happened…
-
Does NASA know something?
NASA’s new probe to Venus reminds me of one specific animal. I wonder if the Venusians will agree?
-
Say the black, do the red (reprint)
Batya is missing the point, intentionally or not: No admission that they got it wrong. No analysis of why. No discussion of how they demonized and silenced people who turned out to be right. Just gaslighting and distraction and a new topic for everyone to dance in lockstep to. It’s ok to be wrong. Everyone…
-
It’s Pi Day!
Polistra and Happystar celebrate National Pi Day with a formal proof! = = = = = Sidenote: After this I posted a sort of followup to the Phlogiston item with some old info about eclipses that struck me as an interesting ‘debunk’. After more thinking, I realized it wasn’t interesting and didn’t disprove any conventional…
-
New GenRad toy 2/2
Last year I bought an incomplete GenRad octave analyzer, as part of my overall move back to analog stuff. This machine is especially rare and useful, so it’s worth fixing. The microphone is missing, and I’ve been watching Ebay since then, hoping to grab up the mic or another ‘parts car’. So far no mic,…
-
Nature wants us to match wits
Via UncommonDescent, a spider develops fiendishly clever strategies for catching and eating another spider. One group of jumping spiders, Portia, lures female spiders of another species (Eurytattus) to their deaths by mimicking the way a courting male spider shakes her nest and then attacking. They also attack web-building spiders by mimicking the tug on the…
-
Kirn and McIntyre, even closer
A while back I compared Walter Kirn with Oscar Odd McIntyre. = = = = = START REPRINT: It struck me that Kirn’s short takes on Twitter are a close modern equivalent of McIntyre’s short takes in print. I tried to find more of McIntyre’s real columns, without luck. Though part of his work was…
-
The magic lantern lasted longer…
Last year I delved into the intersection of science and entertainment in the 1850s, focusing on the Magic Lantern. = = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT: I had thought the magic lantern was just a slide projector with light furnished by flame instead of electricity. The machine was partly similar, but the ACTUAL USE…
Polistra's Mill 