Because it was hard, you fools
By an odd coincidence, I’ve had to deal with the “No, we didn’t land on the Moon!” claim three times in the last few days. My views on it ought to be pretty obvious: if you really want a conspiracy theory, there are far more plausible ones than that.
My current favorite argument against the Hoax: There were thousands, if not millions, of Very Very Smart people involved in the Apollo program. Either they were in on the secret or they weren’t; if they were in on the secret, then it wasn’t much of a secret, really. It’s like the “we test unusual stuff at Groom Lake” secret – the details may be foggy, but the whole world knows that it’s a government testing base.
If they weren’t on the secret, then you have all these Smart People being well paid to develop what they honestly believe will be a moon rocket – to the tune of several billion dollars. These people all think they succeeded, and they aren’t idiots – they would have noticed things like “Hey, there’s not enough radiation shielding in our design.” So, since all these people think we have a moon rocket, and we spent the money to make it, why just go ahead and make the landing? Hmmm?
As an aside – the Soviet Union at the time definitely had the technological ability to detect whether we really went or not – they were quite close to managing it themselves. If we didn’t really go, the Russians of the late 1960’s really didn’t have much motivation to help us cover it up. Unless you believe that the One World Government was already up and running by then, and the Soviet space establishment was also ordered to lie; in which case, I will choose to bow out of the discussion at this point and move on to another World of Warcraft post of some kind. Circy’s level 60 now! Woo!
The essential Moon Hoax links:
Quick and simple: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
In-depth and pretty: http://www.clavius.org/
Start Me Up
Sometimes, people post things on the Internet that just plain make me feel glad to be living in a world where someone spent the time to make them up.
The “Lions In Kenya” and “Shirley Bassey Getting the Party Started” videos are two examples. Here’s another:
I successfully stayed up all night on Saturday night. We decided that our level 56-ers needed to hit 58 This Weekend, which we reached about 6 am. It was nice to know that I can still do that… a year of 10pm bedtimes had left me doubtful. Still, I had to down several Tums, as one of the tricks my body uses to try to get me to go to bed is surges of stomach acid. Also, I was kind of out of it the next day; so, I’ve learned from this that I can do it, but not easily.
Found a website that generates an automatically updated stat block I can use for my characters, like so…
Too bad that the servers are now far too overloaded with requests to actually function properly. (This one won’t update, it’s static.)
Local TV re-ran the Special Edition “Trouble With Tribbles” this weekend, so last night I dug out the “Trials And Tribble-ations” DS9 episode for Starr, who’d never seen it. Great fun! And then it hit me… there’s no way in heck that J.J. Abrams’ Lt. Uhura will be running around in that red minidress. Not in a 2008 feature film. I weep.
This concept is Anathema
Did you know that, as recently as the eighteenth century, “engine” meant any generic “device” or “tool”?
Of course, in the twenty-first century, “engine” almost always means “machine that provides motive power”. We still, though, have some leftover of the old meaning when we talk about someone who designs, maintains, or operates devices and tools as an “engineer”.
In the older usage, a loom might be a “weaving engine”, a crane a “lifting engine”, or a computer a “calculating engine”.
The only reason this is on my mind at all is that, while waking up this morning, and sorting and filing the loose random thoughts of a foggy brain, I suddenly heard Scotty warning that “The devices canna take tha strrain!”
…
Look, it’s not like I’m charging you admission.
Frankie Say Relax
The other day it was cold enough for me to wear my Fourth Doctor scarf to work. This morning it’s so warm I didn’t really need a jacket, and there are mightily-confused birds singing in the trees.
Elfie.org seems to have been down since yesterday. How am I supposed to see all your comments of love and adoration without my e-mail? Sob. Weep.
I was unsettled and short-tempered all weekend, and I’m not really sure why. Was it a late bout of S.A.D.? Have I been obsessing too much about my sundry responsibilities? Or was it just my time of the month? Not sure, but I’m done with it, and I’m determined that this week is going to be a week where I get things done and yet enjoy myself.
And I’m-a gonna crack this Writer’s Block I’ve been having right down the middle, yes sirree.
Tweets for Today
- 08:25 End of a loaf of garlic bread for breakfast. Yummm. Frost on all the laws this morning… boo. #
- 11:35 NEED MOAR PANTZ. Nearly all the ones i have don’t fit any more or are coming apart. 🙁 #
- 14:19 Boy, you plug one bad FireWire hard drive into your machine, and everything stops working. #
- 14:25 @dragonpearl: Any good dales at the CompUSA near you? #
- 14:30 Y’know, my typing ability, never stellar, has declined noticeably in the last few months 🙁 #
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The Master Control Program requires epic loot
Hmm, well. Apparently a batch of Maxtor/Seagate drives were shipped from the factory with a password-stealing virus, in search of your World of Warcraft gold.
Massively.com reports that “The virus is the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah, a molar virus that searches for passwords to online games and sends them to a server located in China. It also deletes other molar viruses and can disable virus detection software. All of the known games affected are Chinese with the exception of World of Warcraft. […] The virus resides in the root directory of the drive, and is executed by Windows when the drive powers up and is connected by the Windows Drive Manager.”
“Seagate is writing the infection off as an accident”.
Yeah, sure. We know what this is: SkyNet is taking its first steps to global domination – control of an MMO economy!
Birthday presents
Got some cool stuff from Starr for my birthday… a refractor telescope, a black tee with a handcuff graphic (“I can’t believe I’m buying you another black t-shirt”) and… this!
Can you guess what it is (besides an afghan, of course)?
Visual scanning jammed
I’m trying to remember when I bought my Umax 1200 SCSI scanner. It’s gotta be at least 12 years old… maybe 15 or more.
It’s certainly old enough for the adhesive holding the glass platen to the upper casing to fail, dropping the platen down into the mechanism and jamming it.
I think the old thing’s trying to tell me to replace it. I’ve been having to run hacked Linux software to use the scanner with OS X 10.4 as it is. Wonder if I can find a legal-size hi-res USB scanner for a decent price. Anyone got any suggestions?
My packrat-fu is strong
Starr’s parents gave her a bare-bones used iPaq PocketPC to use at work – there are all sorts of electronic drug references and such for nurses. Luckily, I happened to have an iPaq stylus lying around. Luckily, I happened to have an iPaq power cable lying around.
I smiled at her, and said “To answer a question you asked several weeks ago: This is why I have all the boxes of old cables.” She laughed.
I’m still not on jdunson‘s level, though. I’m pretty sure he carries around the necessary cable to connect a SATA DVD-RW to an ENIAC.
Getting up before the sun is bad enough for me. Soon, I will be driving to work before sunup. I really hate that… but I shall live.
I did fix a space heater before attaining full consciousness this morning. Some doof left two loose washers in it that were getting caught in the internal fan; I found a hex driver that would loosen the grille enough for me to shake them out. Saving $40 before breakfast makes me feel good.
Plot a course, Mr. Mayweather
Here is a link to a picture of the flight deck of an Airbus A830, the largest passenger aircraft in the world:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg
Notice that the flight control sticks have been moved to moved to the side, to make room for the primary control – the laptop keyboard.
Note also, without comment, the two Windows-based displays in the front panel.
This is looking less like a plane cockpit, and more like the bridge of the NX-01.
