The Strange and Interesting Thread

[The Dreaming Dragon]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/man-seeks-restraining-order-against-god/

[The Dreaming Dragon]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/

[The Dreaming Dragon]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10860676/The-woman-who-lived-in-sin-with-a-dolphin.html

[|iR|Focalor]

She's a fish fucker.

[quadz]

This rather odd individual nosed around my wife's car for a few minutes in the parking lot at work, then dumped a soda on it.

Captured on dashcam:

http://cila-search.net/vid/the_soda_jerk/the_soda_jerk.mp4

[|iR|Focalor]

It's never a white guy, is it?

[2d]

Looks like ex's bastard son.

[Golgo13]

This rather odd individual nosed around my wife's car for a few minutes in the parking lot at work, then dumped a soda on it.

Captured on dashcam:

http://cila-search.net/vid/the_soda_jerk/the_soda_jerk.mp4

If that is really your car, he was probably attracted the the spotless exterior and the highest quality HD spy camera that i have ever seen in my life in the window.  (he was jealous as fuck).

[quadz]

If that is really your car, he was probably attracted the the spotless exterior

Hmm. It's a V8, maybe it was anti-global-warming activism.


So, a new development: my wife had alerted the security guard early this morning, and the kid came back today and was hovering around the car again!

Reportedly, the guard confronted him, and the kid apologized. (I wonder if any of that will have been caught on camera.)

[Whirlingdervish]

I thought it was annoying that parking cops keep putting chalk lines on my truck tire to be sure I move it overnight in the lot where I meet to carpool.

I might just flip out if someone intentionally, and for no apparent reason, poured a soda on my paintjob.

 

[quadz]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/05/the_thriving_russian_black_market_in_dissertations_and_the_crusaders_fighting.html

Some of the intellectual theft Dissernet has identified is comic in its brazenness and absurdity. Duma member Igor Igoshin allegedly earned his economics degree by turning someone else’s paper on the Russian chocolate industry into a thesis on meat; the dissertation replaced every mention of “chocolate” with “beef,” “dark chocolate” with “home-grown beef,” and “white chocolate” with “imported beef.” All numbers, charts, and analysis were preserved in their original form.

[QwazyWabbit]

I'm not surprised. When the grade becomes the goal, the method to get the grade becomes secondary.

By now, the financial stakes are so high that students cannot afford to fail or they lose all ability to pay back their student loans. I expect the same thing is going on in America. I seem to recall something about a US Senator or someone in national office plagiarizing his dissertation... can't recall who now.

I wonder what would happen if they turned IBM's Watson AI loose on every published dissertation or scientific paper.

[The Dreaming Dragon]

More hysterical and NSFW Japanese Virtual Reality stuff!

http://vrporn.com/waifu-sex-simulator-vr-1-4/

[Sgt. Dick]

military railgun 'bullets' could travel at Mach 6 - http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/29/first-look-at-navys-experimental-railgun-that-can-fire-at-4500-miles-hour.html?intcmp=hplnws

[QwazyWabbit]

military railgun 'bullets' could travel at Mach 6 - http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/29/first-look-at-navys-experimental-railgun-that-can-fire-at-4500-miles-hour.html?intcmp=hplnws

First look? Not hardly. This weapon has been in development for 20 years. It might be the first time for Fox News but they can hardly be counted on to be current with technology. This is the first deployment of the weapon for testing at sea, so perhaps this can be a "first look" at what a production weapon might look like. They even used footage that is over 4 years old. This was a very poorly done report.

CBS reported on this TWO YEARS AGO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg

Advantages of rail guns:

1. No gun powder.
No need for storage of giant bags of gun powder and no need for stacks of crewmen to load and fire the weapon.

2. Extreme muzzle velocity.
Artillery is limited in range by how fast it can push a projectile out of the barrel. Conventional guns accelerate the projectile with expanding gas from the detonation of gun powder. As the gas expands the force behind the projectile in the barrel is constantly decreasing, limiting the muzzle velocity. Increasing the amount of gun powder to increase muzzle velocity requires increasing the wall thickness of the barrel to withstand the increased pressures. This increases the weight and size of the gun. Range is limited by the muzzle velocity and terminal velocity of the projectile, larger projectiles are required to deliver greater kinetic energy and are enhanced by explosive charges in the projectile. (Think about Missouri's 16-inch guns and 2300 pound projectiles.)
Rail guns accelerate the projectile with nearly constant force for the entire length of the barrel. Taking the Navy at their word at 2000 m/s muzzle velocity (Mach 6) and estimating the length of the barrel at 10 meters with force applied for 10 ms, this computes to about 20,400 g.

3. Electric power.
Rate of fire is limited only by the ability to recharge the capacitor bank that powers the impulse system and the reload time of the weapon. BAE has been developing an automatic reloader for the prototype.

4. Smaller, lighter, projectiles.
This allows for storage of several times more projectiles in the magazine and easier reloading. No need for 2 ton hoists to handle them. This allows the platform to fire more projectiles at more targets before returning to port to reload.

5. Zero defense against a KE weapon.
The weapon kills by penetration. Energy is dissipated as pure heat in the target. Stationary targets such as concrete bunkers can be repeatedly hit with extreme accuracy and pulverized no matter how thick. Impact in the ground near the target causes earthquake damage at the target that can actually be more effective than a direct hit.

The rail gun's disadvantages:
Vulnerabilities of its electrical supply.
Ablation of the rail material as the armature propels down the barrel, caused by arcing between the armature and the rails. Specification of the rail material is probably classified since this is critical to success and lifetime of the weapon.
Intimacy of contact between the armature and rails is critically important to efficiency of the weapon.
Insulation of the sabot from the rails. Probably Nylon or Delrin sleeves. This can be mitigated by delivering the projectiles in their sleeves and mating the armatures to the sabots at load time. Delrin would be my guess, since it's very machinable and holds tolerances and doesn't melt and peel like Nylon.

Did they mention there's no gun powder?


http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/videos/high-power-railgun-research