Virgin in Space

VSS Enterprise

It’s great marketing on Virgin’s part to call their new spaceship the VSS Enterprise, and congrats to them for a great PR day with the recent “test flight”.

Branson’s company Virgin Galactic announced Monday that the VSS Enterprise had successfully completed what it called a captive carry flight attached to a carrier plane.

…

The VSS Enterprise remained attached to its carrier aircraft for the duration of the 2-hour, 54-minute flight, reaching an altitude of 45,000 feet, according to a statement from Virgin. – CNN

A necessary step towards space tourism, which makes me happy, but certainly not a cheap one:

Virgin Galactic has envisioned one flight a week, with six tourists aboard. Each will pay $200,000 for the ride and train for at least three days before going. About 80,000 people have placed their names on the waiting list for seats. – Still CNN

Still, there’s definitely something to be said for the odd Leer-Jets-strapped-to-a-flying-wing appearance, although it sort of looks as if it were designed by an eight year old mashing up airplane model kits.

The Latest Last Supper

The Last Snack by Tom Altany

From an LA Times article:

In a bid to uncover the roots of super-sized American fare, a pair of sibling scholars has turned to an unusual source: 52 artists’ renderings of the New Testament’s Last Supper.

…

Using the size of the diners’ heads as a basis for comparison, the Wansinks used computers to compare the sizes of the plates in front of the apostles, the food servings on those plates and the bread on the table.

…

Over the course of the millennium, the Wansinks found that the entrees depicted on the plates laid before Jesus’ followers grew by about 70%, and the bread by 23%.

As entree portions rose, so too did the size of the plates — by 65.6%.

A predictable result to a neat approach for a study, but it’s my terrible fear that all this proves is the ongoing shrinking of the human head.

I’ve always found the concept of the last supper an interesting choice as the last major signpost before Jesus’ imprisonment and death – that it’s not some burning bush or tripped-out series of doomsday prophecies, just a simple round of mastication.

Landships

The British government, to keep the development of their new weapon a secret, told the North British Locomotive Company – the ladies who were doing the actual iron and grease work on the Allies’ new landships – that they were constructing water carriers intended for the middle east.

The women simply called the things “Tanks”, and for better or worse, that’s how we all know them today.

Landship development, originally conducted by the Royal Navy under the auspices of the Landships Committee, was sponsored by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and proceeded through a number of prototypes, importantly among them the Little Willie, designed byWilliam Ashbee Tritton and Walter Gordon Wilson, as the first-ever completed tracked tank prototype vehicle, culminating in the Mark I tankprototype, named Mother.

The descriptor “tank” is reputed to have evolved from the construction of the early batches by North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow. The order was coded as “special tanks”, and much of the work was undertaken in the NBLC Tank shops and the name stuck. – wikipedia

Mother

Saturdays

A scan from World at War #35, from 1982:

My Tantrum Mat

You can click the ad page to see a larger version – I’m going to insist any future advice I give is endorsed by “The Head Psychiatrist”.

I wonder how many Saturdays I’ve spent setting up the various versions of the Windows operating system.

Beemer

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-DiWJ9TzNw]

BMW Marketing people, please don’t show me a lightsaber and then try to sell me a ginsu – it may be a fine knife, but no amount of transposition is going to make me think it’s a lightsaber.

Crazy Station

It’s tough to get a crazy organization off the ground these days.

During the evenings we watch Letterman from a station out on the coast, one of the last bastions of broadcast crazy. It has no commercials, just loud bouncy music videos that I’ve long suspected were chosen by the owner’s 14 year old niece.

More interestingly however, the station is one of the few in Canada that maintains a 24 hour broadcast without playing paid infomercials. This is like a blank canvas to crazy.

Nowadays the hours may be filled with “specials” featuring, among other things, Stirling’s metaphysical thoughts, his interviews with likes of the late Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood and conspiracy theorist David Icke, a “Computer Animation Festival”, various features or animations starring Stirling-created superheroes such as Captain Atlantis and Captain Canada, extended (sometimes all-night) tributes to the late Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy, and other programs that are truly miscellanea. Stirling once stated during a “fireside chat” that he’s against abortion in China because those aborted babies could have grown up to become NTV viewers.

Other topics seen on the late night NTV programming schedule relate to Stirling’s interests in eastern mysticism, as well as intestinal health, Unidentified Flying Objects, crop circles and the pyramids. Mr. Sterling has been known to telephone master control from a remote location and order that a particular favorite program immediately preempt current programming, or that a particular effect be applied to the screen by the technician. Often multiple videos would be “layered” over each other, with unusual results. While things like this tend to anger viewers, Geoff Stirling’s eclectic programming has its cult following. – Wikipedia

Mr Stirling does have a website, but it doesn’t see much updating.

Captain Canada