Friday Ephemera

Gaze manipulation.
I’m not convinced we’ve a got a form of progress here . . . Thirty five years on and Terry Gilliam moving magazine cut out bits comes to mind . . .

Painted ladies.
Hmmm. Definitely different from The Painted Ladies.

A thread devoted to 1980s 12” remixes.
I’ve always been rather fond of the ultra hyperextended dance mix of John Cage’s 4:33 . . . One time when sightseeing a friend’s karaoke host gig, I asked if it was on the menu . . .

The word ‘effects’ doesn’t quite do them justice.
Ave Maria —And that was done with the previous version of more updated software that is now free of charge . . .

Fantabiblical isn’t a mashup of a holy book and everybody’s favorite fizzy drink?

Re: ’80s Remixes
The Soft Cell Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go remix was a staple at our house parties while I was in grad school. Fortunately, that was back in the days before feminists took over the liberal arts.

Re Ted’s link to xkcd…oddly, or not, the personality traits associated with my personal map projection preference, the Goode Homosoline or wtf it’s called, are also the ones I most closely identify with. It’s The Truman Show again, I can feel it.

one of these days I need to get around to tracking down and finding out for myself what Irn Bru is like
I fear what lies ahead is crushing disappointment.

I fear what lies ahead is crushing disappointment.
Nah: Is it Irn Bru, Yes/No. Did some get had and assessed, Yes/No.
Etc.

Is it Irn Bru, Yes/No.
As a child, one of the highlights of visiting gran was that she’d sometimes purchase a bottle of pop for the occasion, which, at the time, was a rare treat. My eight-year-old self was happy to gulp down cheap generic cola, but even then Irn Bru was a pop of last resort, somewhere alongside Dandelion and Burdock.
#PrecociousPopSnob

JL,
The idea is that “normal” maps show countries in Africa not to be the enormous (stews of bad government, stupid economics and mad dictators) size that they actually are.

Irn Bru is amongst the most popular soft drinks in Moscow; Barr had to fight a court case there to protect the brand.

A thread devoted to 1980s 12” remixes.
Art of Noise! Sorted.

Really, really, big amphibious plane.
Interestingly enough, “roughly the size of a 737” makes it about the same size as a Japanese SHinMaywa US-2 which it appears to be a copy of, same as a Short Sunderland, smaller than a Beriev Be-200 it is smaller than the Dornier DoX or Boeing 314 was, and way smaller than the Martin Mars that the Chinese are using to train their pilots of their latest rip-off.

The plane is roughly the size of a Boeing 737, has a range of 2,800 miles, and will be used primarily to fight forest fires or conduct marine rescue missions, according to The Guardian.

Well, there you have the reason for the lack of facts.

I doubt the parachute would be much use below a couple of hundred ft (other than to shroud the wreckage).

Unless there’s some specific moment for it, they seem to be very enthusiastically avoiding discussing how much noise the thing makes . . .
A lot seeing as how it is not really a jet pack but a ducted fan pack.

‘Korean tourist fined £33,000 for mid-air rampage when cabin crew asked him to stop doing yoga: Authorities said he refused to return to his seat, threatened crew members and passengers and shoved his wife… Court records said he threatened to kill passengers and was yelling that there is no god.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/29/korean-tourist-fined-33000-for-violent-mid-air-rampage-when-plan/

Kneel, peasants!
There’s a lot of bacon involved.
Pork fat rules.

I’ve always been rather fond of the ultra hyperextended dance mix of John Cage’s 4:33
The death metal version has its moments.

You haven’t relived the 80s until you listen to the Baby I Love Your Way/Free Bird medley. (It hit #1 in America.)

Re: True sizes of countries…
Only way to do it properly.
http://i.snag.gy/LnwVF.jpg
Surprised XKCD forgot this one.

Ah yes. Socialism. But next time it’ll work, no doubt about it.

Ah yes. Socialism. But next time it’ll work, no doubt about it.
It works for the Party members, every time.
What, you meant something else?

Aaaannnd, now it’s back.

The true sizes of countries.
Oh, Dear . . . .
I’m rather amused at the idea of Glasgow becoming the capital city of everything, but I can just hear the commentary when Prince Philip finds out that Not only does he live in Los Angeles, but he’s only a short drive up the coast from Brussels . . .

“Amulets on standby, people.”
Yeah, I had my initial doubts about the casting, but the visuals..! And that killer last line from Ejiofor!
This one, I’m looking forward to even more than ‘GOTG2’…

At last, your very own jet pack golf cart.
Should we change Mark Twain’s quip that “Golf is a good walk ruined” to “Golf is a good flight ruined”?

Farnsworth: My father, then CO of a squadron of US Marine Corps A-4s, was for some years embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the wife of a pilot who was killed by a malfunctioning ejection seat.
The A-4 has a Zero-Zero seat, that is, it can get you to safe chute-deployment height, about 200 feet, even if the plane is parked on the ground. Rockets, of course.
This pilot had just landed at El Toro Naval Air Station in southern California, and was taxiing when his throttle went to full power by itself. He was about 2 seconds from collision with a fuel truck, so he ejected. The rocket worked, but the seat failed to separate and the chute did not open, so he fell from 200 feet onto the tarmac and was killed. The plane did collide with the fuel truck, but there was no fire or explosion.
5 years of pre-trial later, with Dad as an expert witness, it was discovered that the seat manufacturer and aircraft manufacturer had never actually tested the 0-0 seat in 0-0 conditions. It had a fatal design flaw. Result was an out-of-court settlement with the widow.
Dad’s last remark to me was: “If only his chute had opened. He landed right on the steps to the Operations Office; he could have just unclipped his chute and strolled in to close his flight plan.”
Coda: The dead pilot’s CO, upon hearing of the incident, jumped in his own A-4 and flew down. During landing approach (over ocean and beach) his engine turbine section exploded, blowing off the rear third of the plane. He ejected safely and landed on the beach.
Life in the USMC.

just read this and weep.
So a bunch of spiteful narcissists ruin the evenings of dozens of random people – an action that can do nothing whatsoever to remedy the alleged injustice they claim to have been upset by (i.e., the enforcement of British law) – and they call it an “affirmative action.” I’m not sure what’s being affirmed, besides their own sense of entitlement and colossal self-importance.

Spiny:
Yeah, the A-4, also called Heinemann’s Hotrod, was a nifty little thing, with amazing maneuverabilty and more performance from that tiny engine than was really possible. IIRC Heinemann was responsible for the design principle “Simplicate and add lightness” (though maybe I’m confusing him with Kelly Johnson of Skunk Works fame).
For instance, there is no starter on the A-4. You relied on the ground crew to have a motorized device like an enormous electric drill, that plugged into a socket on the plane, to get the engine spool up to start RPM. If you were flying to a field where they might not have one, you had to remember to make someone in your flight pack one in the tiny “cargo” compartment, so as to avoid having to make embarrassing phone calls at departure time.
(Hmm. 20 seconds on Google indicates that no one really knows who originated that phrase. It’s attributed to Stout and Chapman, as well as Heinemann.)

Hmmm. A question for the general memory.
Name me a:
British or appearing to be TV miniseries. Televised in the early to mid 1970s. Victorian Or So, mebbe Edwardian. Features multiple entrances into rooms where someone would grab both doorknobs of a set of double doors and swing both doors wide open while barrelling into whatever the next room. Something about the Rothschilds, or some major financial family comes to mind.
—I’ve just floundered through a bit of Googlemancy and gotten nowhere. Any ideas?

the target was the behaviour of the restaurant management, which comes across as really sleazy
Well, we don’t know the full story. Or I don’t, anyway. I did hear that the Byron burger chain may have been duped as part of an organised scam targeting multiple employers with fraudulent papers, etc. And I haven’t seen evidence that the chain, or any particular managers, were aware of any law-breaking. Again, I don’t know the full story. And neither, I should think, do the so-called ‘activists’. But it occurs to me that anyone who learns that he’s been employing undocumented migrants – i.e., employing people illegally – has little choice but to do as instructed by the Home Office and/or police. To do otherwise – to warn the illegal employees in advance of a raid – is a criminal offence and punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
See, for instance, this, and the post above it.
[ Added: ]
Short of further information, to launch childish vigilante attacks on several restaurants, and their customers and staff – staff who will have had to clean up the mess and who will likely lose earnings during any shutdown for health code violations – is simply arrogant and delinquent. And yet the ‘activists’ will doubtless imagine themselves as radical and heroic.

And yet the ‘activists’ will doubtless imagine themselves as radical and heroic.
*raises hand* Can we just deport the ‘activists’?

It is revealing that the people who are most opposed to the enforcement of immigration laws and thus, by extension, in favor of unchecked immigration, are people who believe that they have nothing to fear from it and everything to gain. They are usually educated and in jobs that are hardly likely to be taken over by migrant workers or undocumented aliens; they live in places where the cost of living is high, in large part due to the laws and regulations that they favor, and where the availability of an undocumented work force allows for business activity to still occur at reasonable prices (not least through the decrease in wages at the bottom of the income scale that is caused by the presence of a large pool of workers willing or forced to work at a pay that is below the legal minimum); and often they themselves employ personal staff, in the form of gardeners and maids and such, whose qualification to work in the country they inhabit they do not check too closely.
Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in a nutshell.

I am certain the attack on the burger bars must have broken some law or other, but not sure which. It doesn’t seem like criminal damage as such, but that’s the nearest I can think of.

R.Sherman: I dunno. Sarkozy had Carla Bruni (after divorcing Ciganer-Albéniz). How’d that work out?

And yet the ‘activists’ will doubtless imagine themselves as radical and heroic.
“Would the people boycotting Byron rather see the company break the law, thus making them inadvertent supporters of people traffickers, not to mention liable for hundreds of thousands of pounds of fines, which would no doubt lead to the firm having to lay off migrants and others working in its restaurants?”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/31/the-boycottbyron-mob-dont-want-facts-on-immigration-just-righteo/

We shut down Byrons Burgers yesterday. When they attack one of us. It’s an attack on all of us.
As so often, the display of presumptuous outrage overrides any interest in due process or the facts of the matter. Indeed, the facts of the matter may be irrelevant to the exercise, which is often little more than an opportunity to make radical noises in front of one’s friends, indulge in a spot of exciting vandalism, and then congratulate oneself. See, for instance, this example of Laurie Penny’s grandiose disregard for evidence.
And should the facts of matter ultimately prove unflattering to the ‘activists,’ to their assumptions and to their chosen form of ‘protest’, none of this is likely to impede their rush to judgement and “affirmative action” when the next cause comes along, and the one after that. Each of which will most likely be abandoned in favour of something shinier and more fashionable, leaving someone else to clear up afterwards.

Fred: “Well, when you put it that way…
Given that we are now and have been for quite a while at the point where we choose presidents on the basis of the image we create of them and not on the basis of the policies they claim to support (quick: Obama got elected because (i) the country wanted a third-class academic with no actual experience in anything meaningful but who is afflicted with a ’70s obsession with the struggle against colonialism, or (ii) because he provided an opportunity for people to feel good about themselves and show that they weren’t racists – honest; some of my best friends are African Americans; look, I even voted for one), is there any other way to put it? On one hand, the tangerine tornado with the bombshell wife; on the other, the pantsuit prevaricator with the syphilitic husband. What, exactly, is the question?

I don’t understand why the police seem all too keen to arrest people for wearing mildly offensive t-shirts, but criminal damage while clutching Socialist Worker banners seems absolutely sacred.
I support the right to protest, but when it impacts on other people’s rights to this extent it starts to look rather foolish.