November 19, 2015
Good Grief!!
Art by Meow Neuron
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November 18, 2015
The Russian's Strategic Situation Room is Much More Bright and Cheery Than Ours
We cannot tolerate this lily gap!
This is all in Russian, but allegedly they are making a big show of the pounding of ISIS positions earlier in the week which saw the first combat use of the Tu-160 (Blackjack). Tu-22m(Backfire) as well as the ubiquitous 'Bears' were used as well. Additionally, according to RSNF, Putin orders the CO of the task force built around the big cruiser Moskva to co-ordinate with French forces.
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November 17, 2015
The Christmas Imp Is Out Early This Year
Despite, (or perhaps because of) the fact that the economy has been so-so and is looking uncertain moving forward, online orders are surging, with the result that a full week before Thanksgiving we are already getting the kind of hours we got in early December last year.
Unhallowed Yuletide Yandere By Toropu
Blogging is likely to suffer a bit.
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11:03 PM
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November 16, 2015
Pantheon
...is the word that J.Greely is looking for.
I should point out that what he is trying to find words for does indeed warrant some considerable attention.
"I would like to take this opportunity to remind people that there ARE other options available."
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November 15, 2015
Meanwhile: In Worcester
It looks like someone hit a National Guard Armory in Massachusetts. According to the article the thief or thieves made off with...
Six M4 assault rifles, 10 pistols, and several long guns
That isn't exactly going to arm a brigade but.....Wait...What?
What does that even mean?
The M-4 is a carbine, but it's still a rifle.
Perhaps, by longgun they mean sniper rifles?
"Who knows. It's reporters talking about guns."
In any event, even correcting for Gell-Mann, this is potentially noteworthy.
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09:33 PM
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What ARE We Looking At Here?
From this season's third episode of RWBY which thickens the plot a bit by whisking some ambiguity into the vagueness and spicing it with a pointless fight made with apparently unseasoned ingredients that only serve to remind us how good things were when it was possible to get them made with genuine Monty Oum.
The fight choreography is not actually bad, and pretty decent in comparison to many other shows. However, despite increasing the size of the staff from around 15 to nearly 30 that particular aspect is not up to the standard set by the show's much mourned creator. Oum appears to have been a singular talent.
The story is proceeding apace though the shadowy council opposed to something bad talks in sufficient circuitousness that we still don't know exactly is going on. There is a big reveal, but I suspect that it is probably not at all what it seems to be.
On the other hand the character animation is really well done and the voice work is excellent. Lindsay Jones (Ruby) in particular does a really good job in this episode.
Also there is a drunken martial artist, so they've got that going for them, and in any event, I'm still enjoying the show.
The foreshadowing for next week seems strangely ominous.
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I Suppose One Could, in Good Faith, Quibble Over Whether
...the following embedded video is THE sign of the end times or simply one of many. However, Steven's query has, as I type this, generated 7 responses, none of which definitively answer his question.
I'm going to say yes.
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November 14, 2015
I Now Know What....
...the "Planet Eater Building" is.
I have no idea WHY the Asahi Beer Building has a planet eater on top of it, but I can now at least explain what so perplexed me that day I walked from Skytree to Ueno, and I can do so without alarming people.
I know this only because I read The Arts Mechanical.
Regarding the specific linked post, which you should read in full and which so edified me, the answer to the question it poses, is, I'm afraid, yes.
This is not simply because some buildings with character are to be razed because a certain jet setting demographic finds them tacky. It's because people are being robbed of their property as punishment for not having connections, power or influence sufficient to forestal a most egregious utilization of eminent domain.
Lots of places pass asinine historical preservation laws that hinder people from improving their properties and destroy its resale value, but the same sort of people that pass those ordinances think nothing of razing a historic and character heavy area that is actually thriving.
It's not just the corrupt construction cartels. It's also well meaning Bureaucrats, who muddle though life with delusions of grand vision but have no concept of how a real city lives in the vast expanse of humanity and architecture that exist in nearly invisible symbiosis with its grandest and most recognized edifices.
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Je Sui Paris
The fog of war is slowly lifting from the city of light and it appears that last nights atrocity was every bit as bad as what happened in Mumbai 7 years ago.
A tremendous amount of carnage has just been wrought by what appears to have been a very small group. Reports are that there were as few as 8 gunmen, though whether this includes the suicide bombers is not entirely clear.
Some idea of how confused early reports were, can be gleaned by reading those who were live-blogging it here, here and here.
The facts are still a bit sketchy, but as horrific as this massacre is, it it not terribly surprising, and it is only a matter of time before similarly well coordinated attacks take place here.
In the meantime, if France invokes the NATO charter over this (as is to be expected) things in the Mideast may get really interesting....in the Chinese sense.
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November 13, 2015
Happy Paraskevidekatriaphobia Awareness Day
UPDATE: Well, crap.
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November 11, 2015
Translation Glitch?
The Daily Beast reports on a story that could be confirmation of a suspected Russian weapons system or simple disinformation. (via)
It seems that Russian TV, while reporting on a meeting between Putin and Russian defense officials, captured a good shot of a page describing a weapon designed to be fired into a harbor and inflict considerable damage and radioactivity, shutting the port down for years. The story ran on Russian TV once and rebroadcast with the 2 second "breach" excised, but an unedited version was recorded and is making the rounds on the intertubes.
It's unclear if this was an intentional leak intended to fill us with terror or just a screw up. Even if the leak is intentional, it could be a real weapon system or it could just be them trolling the world.
In fact, the device described is tantalizingly close to a rumored Russian project called Kanyon which we blogged about some months ago. The dimensions of the weapon are also pretty close to the T-15 torpedo concept from the late '50's and early '60s (which was supposed to carry a 100+ megaton warhead).
That's one impressive torpedo tube.
For some reason, the Daily Beast seems to think that this is a radiological weapon rather than a nuke.That is, the article is describing a conventional explosive laced with radioactives. Assuming that it is real, that seems a highly unlikely design choice.
Dirty bomb does not only refer to conventional explosives dispersing radioactives. There is such a thing as a dirty nuke. If a thermonuclear bomb has something like enriched uranium as its secondary stage tamper, it will greatly increase the yield of the weapon because the fissioning tamper will squeeze more energy out of the fusion stage and being involved with the fusion explosion, it will itself undergo fission and add its yield to the total explosive force of the bomb. This has the potential of, in some cases, more than doubling the yield of the weapon. The trade-off is that the bomb is getting much more of its 'splody' from fission and leaves behind far more radioactive pollution. The U.S.A. deployed a 3 stage weapon, the B-41, which came in two versions, the clean version which replaced the third stage with lead or some-such was about 9 MT in yield, the dirty version which had a working 3rd stage had an estimated yield of 25 megatons. It was expected to be SO dirty that the full yield version was never tested due to environmental concerns...in the 1950's. The weapon was replaced with the B-53 which, it seems, did away with the dirty version altogether. Normal fusion weapons can be made dirty (and increase their yield, but having enriched uranium in the casing makes them dangerous to handle due to radiation hazards and I think the US had gotten rid of any such weapons by the end of the '80s.
The Russians have kept using three stage nukes such as their big 20MT (8F675 ?) warheads that they recently removed from their SS-18 ICBMs. In that case the high yield seems to have been intended to be used in space to generate a big EMP.
A multi megaton weapon going off in a harbor would combine the aforementioned radiological effects with the dreadful fallout of a ground burst. It would certainly be a dirty bomb by any reasonable measure.
If real, this weapon seems worrisome. The intention of destroying what they see as Atlantacist harbors for a generation or more may have ideological as well as strategic implications from a Eurasianist perspective. It can't really act as a deterrent since deploying it would be an act of war and announcing it destroys its tactical (in this case, arguably strategic) surprise.
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Ignore This. It Will End...
...if it's even happening.
Which, of course, it's not.
Because, you see, this can't happen here.
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November 10, 2015
Meanwhile....On Youggoth
It appears that NASA's New Horizons probe may have photographed volcanoes on Pluto.
Well, they certainly DID photograph two mountains that each have big fumaroleesque holes in their tops. Additionally, they seem to be associated with fairly young terrain so it is quite possible that these are, in fact, multi-mile high volcanoes.
Interestingly, these two mountains don't fit into the general pattern of geek addled naming conventions for the planetoid and it's satellite, being named for aviation pioneers ( it's those Piccards, not the other one).
Of course, while volcanoes are the most likely explanation yet, they could be something else, perhaps access tunnels for the saucers of the Sinister Snake-Women of Pluto.
Err...There's more here.
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Portents in the Shipping Industry
Maersk is the worlds biggest maritime shipping company.
It's quite common if sailing in Hampton Roads Harbor to see three or more Maersk ships.
The company, presumably knows something about the shipping industry.
"We believe that global growth is slowing down,†he said in a phone interview. "Trade is currently significantly weaker than it normally would be under the growth forecasts we see.â€
This does not jive with other forecasts, and certainly, with regards to domestic air and ground shipping industry my completely anecdotal and unscientific observations have been of daily box tsunamis. However, the shipping company I work for seems to be benefitting considerably from the explosion in online ordering, and we are spinning up for the hell called "Christmas". Maersk handles 15 percent of worldwide maritime trade. They have a particularly good vantage point to see things on a macro scale that includes raw materials as well as finished products. They probably should be taken seriously.
I cannot speak to their corporate culture or analytical methods, but in my experience inspecting their vessels in the Coast Guard, Maersk always ran tight ships with highly professional crews. They seemed pretty squared away.
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Possibly the Biggest Story You Haven't Heard About
One of the after-effects of the 2008-9 economic downturn was a drop in the price of aluminum. Unsurprisingly, this is having a deleterious effect on the American aluminum industry. simply a market contraction and ought to be self correcting, if highly irksome to aluminum workers on the low end of various seniority lists.
While the price of element 13 continues to plummet, China is ramping up production in a big way.
Really Really Big
While competition driving down prices is generally a good thing, there are some problematic implications here...
Now, with prices languishing near six-year lows, it’s wiping out almost a third of domestic operating capacity, Harbor Intelligence estimates. If prices don’t recover, the researcher predicts almost all U.S. smelting plants will close by next year.
(Emphasis mine)
Some of this is simply inevitable market forces. China has lower labor costs and advantages in scale. However the surge in production during a massive Al glut is most likely a government funded endeavor to kill worldwide competition. It should be noted however, that domestic policies which cause energy prices to " necessarily skyrocket" are an insurmountable hurdle for an industry that requires a huge amount of electricity. Thus the industry is being hit from both sides.
There are, additionally, issues beyond the strictly economic ones.
Aluminum is a strategic material despite its abundance. If everyone has to import their Al from China it could lead to problems.
Should the supplier not be forthcoming for some reason, domestic production might take a bit of time to spin up; perhaps too long to be relevant in the context of a short, sharp war.
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40 Years Ago Today
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November 08, 2015
Nukes on a Flatbed Truck
Russia has announced that they intend to begin producing a series of road mobile nuclear power plants. (via)
The project is called Pamir and the mobile plants are supposed to hiot the road sometime in 2020.
Such a short development time might be cause for considerable skepticism save for one important detail not mentioned in the article.
The picture is of a previous project, also called "Pamir" which was a Mobile Nuclear Power Plant being developed in the 1980s. The project was suspended after only two had been produced in the aftermath of the Chernobyl unpleasantness.
The concept seems to have been twofold. The plants would power dispersed mobile radar arrays that would be moved around constantly to add uncertainty to any wild weasel operations and they could be dispersed and hidden by the dozens to provide power for rebuilding after a nuclear war.
"Oh please...He doesn't have any idea what the hell that means."
Ahem...
There is also a PDF concerning the Pamir from the perspective of its dismantling under a nonproliferation program here.
Given that the original design seems to have worked, it may not be a stretch to expect that they could simply spool up production again, though the loss of the original engineering cadre would certainly be a significant hurdle.
To what end they are making this non-trivial expenditure is unclear. A couple of megawats available on 2 flatbeds would certainly be useful in building infrastructure and kick-starting settlements in Siberia, though given current events, the original operational concept may well be closer to the mark.
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November 07, 2015
Well, This Explains Everything
...except how to fix the problem.
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes contemplates this fascinating exchange between Bill Whittle and Stefan Molyneux on, biology, evolutionary strategies and the rise and fall of civilizations.
"The implications...can't unsee...can't unhear..."
Oh, yes...It involves an alarming amount of politics too, so any neurotic Eloi should probably not click on this.
It's kind of like a secular, ninety minute Necronomicon.
Have at it in the comments...
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Just No Idea
The inscrutable conundrum of why a college student went all stabby on a U.C Merced campus has been further clouded by the discovery of a manifesto on the corpse of the perpetrator, who has been identified as Faisal Mohammed.
A handwritten manifesto carried by a California college student whose stabbing spree Wednesday left four wounded, bore names of his targets, a vow "to cut someone’s head off†and as many as five reminders to "praise Allah,†law enforcement authorities told FoxNews.com, while insisting that neither terrorism nor religion appear to be motives in the attack.
Still no word on any of his affiliations, though ominously it has been suggested that he may be....a freshman.
"Be nice to the first years...or we might cut ya!"
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Exactly The Right Length
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