Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 17
April 15, 2013
Relighting the Candle
If NASA’s Space Launch System ever moves beyond “Powerpoint Engineering”, it might just do so with an update of the massive F1 engines that powered the Saturn V. If Uncle Sam’s gonna throw my hard-earned tax money down a hole anyway, then I’m cool with this particular hole: How we get there from here is [...]
April 13, 2013
Saturday Night Music
Two of my favorite guitarists, Jeff Beck and Billy Gibbons, covering a classic Hendrix tune: His bass player is no slouch either, a true prodigy. P.S. I modded my ’73 Les Paul maybe 20 years ago with Seymour Duncan JB and Pearly Gates pickups, which were designed for the above-mentioned gentlemen. That thing might feel [...]
April 5, 2013
Something Funny Happened on the Way to Mount Doom
All shall wonder and despair, for the One Ring has been found! The ring is believed to be linked to a curse tablet found separately at the site of a Roman temple dedicated to a god named Nodens in Gloucestershire, western England. The tablet says a man called Silvianus had lost a ring, and it [...]
April 2, 2013
Make It So
Just found this piece on NASA’s research into faster-than-light propulsion at Popular Science (yeah, I know: often not much better than the Weekly Readerfrom grade school, but such is today’s media) so I’ll only link. Deep thoughts later. Or not. Having said that, at least someone at NASA gets it: In the wake of the [...]
March 31, 2013
Happy Easter
Today is the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. I don’t typically flog my religious views much here, but today is different. It doesn’t take much to look around this world and see how mankind has fallen and cannot be redeemed by our own actions. We are imperfect and to think we can each somehow achieve [...]
March 26, 2013
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Mattress
Thomas Sowell poses an interesting question: could a Cypriot-style money grab happen here? This is what happens when nations run up too big of a bar tab and have run out of options as the taps run dry and the bartender shouts “last call”: they start scrounging for dropped change, steal the waitresses’ tips when [...]
Another Space Nerd Roundup
The Atlantic has a conversation with Eric Anderson of Space Adventures: The Coming Age of Space Colonization. I remember this stuff being a big deal in the late 70′s; you couldn’t pick up a fanboy magazine without slogging through a lot of fanciful stories about how we by gosh were going to have a huge [...]
March 25, 2013
What’s Scarier Than Merle?
ZOMBIE Merle! I don’t say much about TV shows, but man if The Walking Dead hasn’t been sharks-with-frickin-lasers awesome lately. One episode left until next fall and I’m already missing it. But hey, Mad Men comes back after that…yawn. Sorry, but perpetually-drunk businessmen in skinny ties screwing each other’s wives just won’t fill that void. [...]
Zero Dork Thirty
In which a gullible civilian reporter gets rolled by the Bin Laden “shooter”. Last month, Esquire magazine published a long story about the post-SEAL life of the trigger man of the Bin Laden raid. The guy has not had it easy by this account, and now I’m very glad I didn’t rush to link to [...]
March 20, 2013
Space Nerd News
Been a while since I’ve updated the blog (I’m largely staying away from the internet ’cause it keeps getting in the way of actually, you know, writing), but as promised here’s some links to interesting stuff: Christian Science Monitor explores the pychological aspects of the Inspiration Mars effort. Short version: “Survivor” in space. Though I [...]
