Joe Elliott

The post Power bank catches fire during boarding of Boeing 777 at Guangzhou Airport, China appeared first on ASN News.

I was busy gestating during the Watergate crisis, and not paying much attention to the news, but hopefully this re-creation will resonate with people who lived through it. This comic was of course inspired by the Nunes memo, about which an objective headline might look something like: “Republicans release piece of garbage intended to mislead public about the Russia investigation.”

An amazing and highly-relevant detail that should be household knowledge but that I learned only this week: the origins of Fox News can be traced back to the Nixon White House. The Nixon administration wanted more favorable coverage in the media and hatched the idea of creating a pro-GOP news network. Roger Ailes offered to do it, though it took some 25 years for the network to actually materialize. Via the late Gawker (which was sued out of business by billionaire Trump backer Peter Thiel):

But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers.

The memo—called, simply enough, “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”— is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing Ailes’ work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries.

Flash forward to February 1, 2018. Fox’s Geraldo Rivera tells Sean Hannity “Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed in your current state back in 1972, ’73, ’74.” (Hat tip to Daily Kos commenter MiketheLiberal who alerted me to this development, which I’d missed).

Between the corrupt Fox and an intimidated/lobotomized mainstream media deathly afraid of showing “liberal bias,” we have a crisis of journalistic ethics on our hands, one that deeply threatens American democracy and, ultimately, the freedom of the press itself.

(Full disclosure: I currently do editing work for the company that used to publish Gawker.)

 

 

 

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

Birds have figured out how to light fires to scare their prey into the open

Already replete with sharks, crocodiles, snakes and poisonous jellyfish galore, Australia may also be home to arsonist birds that spread fire so they can feed on animals as they flee.…

A research team from the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) released a report that concludes that drones that collide with large manned aircraft can cause more structural damage than birds of the same weight for a given impact speed.

ASSURE conducted its research with two different types of drones on two types of aircraft through computer modeling and physical validation testing.
Unlike the soft mass and tissue of birds, most drones are made of more rigid materials. The testing showed that the stiffest components of the drone – such as the motor, battery and payload – can cause the most damage. Concentrating those masses on the drone can also cause greater damage, the researchers found.
The research team evaluated the potential impacts of a 2.7-lb. quadcopter and 4 lb. quadcopter; and a 4-lb. and 8-lb. fixed wing drone on a single-aisle commercial transport jet and a business jet. They examined impacts to the wing leading edge, the windshield, and the vertical and horizontal stabilizers. The windshields generally sustained the least damage and the horizontal stabilizers suffered the most serious damage.
The structural damage severity levels ranged from no damage to failure of the primary structure and penetration of the drone into the airframe. However, the research specifically did not explore the risk to flight imposed by that damage. The researchers concluded that unmanned aircraft system manufacturers should adopt “detect and avoid” or “geo-fencing” capabilities to reduce the probability of collisions with other aircraft.
The team conducted a preliminary computer simulation to evaluate the potential damage to engine components if a drone is ingested into an aircraft engine, including damage to fan blades, the nacelle and the nosecone. They plan future additional research on engine ingestion in collaboration with engine manufacturers, as well as additional airborne collision studies with helicopters and general aviation aircraft.
In 2014 Congress directed the FAA to establish a UAS Center of Excellence. The FAA selected ASSURE, led by Mississippi State University, in May 2015.

More information:

• ASSURE report
• ASN Drone Database

The post Researchers release report on drone airborne collisions appeared first on ASN News.

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The mass arrests at the Trump inauguration protests (and at other protests around the country) are a breathtaking abuse of power that should leave every American appalled, no matter what their political leanings.

For more on the latest efforts to criminalize protest, read this op-ed column by a woman who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and has spent the last year fighting felony charges. This is also chilling. Did I mention the police were doing body cavity searches that left a photojournalist feeling as though he’d been raped?

I still remember being horrified by the indiscriminate roundups at the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC, when hundreds of people were trapped and unlawfully detained by the NYPD. A decade later, the city settled a lawsuit for $18 million.

 

This 1980 Citroen CX was converted to a tandem rear axle car hauler in 1996, similar to several period factory and aftermarket builds like the Loadrunner. Photos aren’t the best, but what can be made out suggests good pretty build quality–it also seems like the vehicle could be very useful as an actual car hauler, with the large bed showing lots of tie-down hooks and a nice, gradual incline. Combined with ramps and a modified, six-wheel version of the car’s factory self-leveling, adjustable-height oleopneumatic suspension system, it shouldn’t be too difficult to load even low vehicles we’d guess–unfortunately the seller provides neither load capacity info nor photos of the vehicle carrying a load. Find it here on FINN in Kolbotn, Norway for 305k NOK (~$38k USD today). Special thanks to BaT reader Yob S. for this submission.

The seller doesn’t say which configuration this one began life as, but the conversion itself looks pretty well thought out, even if we wouldn’t trust the crash structure in front of the repurposed tailgate rear window to keep a car out of the cabin in an emergency. It’s certainly not a short vehicle, but even factory long-wheelbase Prestige models reportedly have a relatively tight turning circle of 12 meters.

There are no photos of the cab interior or engine. There aren’t any capturing a car strapped down to the back either, but everything to make it happen appears to be present, apparently including a small electric winch. Hauling capacity in terms of weight isn’t mentioned, but output for the 2,347cc carbureted four is 123 HP driving the fronts through a manual gearbox.

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

Ford’s post-acquisition strategy for Jaguar was one of aggressive growth, but it came at some cost – particularly to their core model line. Having taken a multi-billion dollar hit on the acquisition of Jaguar in 1989, Ford executives saw only one way out of the mess they have got themselves into. In order to gain … Continue reading "Stretching a Metaphor"

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

Inshert Hunt for Red October jokesh here

The Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China this week reported the first successful test of a magnetohydrodynamic drive that could let ships and submarines sneak around almost totally silently.…

Fiat received most of the credit, but the 1987 Alfa Romeo 164 was a genuine Alfa Romeo, despite what some might retrospectively suggest. In 2014, then Alfa Romeo chief, Harald Wester illustrated the marque’s latterday decline with an image of the 164, stating that by making it front wheel drive, it had diluted the carmaker’s … Continue reading "When the Poets Dreamed of Angels"

The Australian Transport minister confirmed that the Malaysian Government is entering into an agreement with Ocean Infinity, to search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The Malaysian Government has accepted an offer from Ocean Infinity to search for the missing plane, entering into a ‘no find no fee’ arrangement.  Ocean Infinity will focus on searching the seafloor in an area that has previously been identified by experts as the next most likely location to find MH370. Australia, at Malaysia’s request, will provide technical assistance to the Malaysian Government and Ocean Infinity.

The search for MH370, missing since March 8, 2014,  was suspended on 17 January 2017.

More information:

• Statement from Australian Transport minister

The post Search for MH370 to resume as Malaysia strikes deal with Ocean Infinity appeared first on ASN News.

This cartoon was initially inspired by the insane Fox headline last week, “CNN USES DANGEROUS STORM THREATENING AMERICA TO ADVANCE LEFTIST AGENDA.” Apparently CNN had the audacity to mention climate change.

The building codes I refer to are from an executive order by Obama establishing new construction standards for federal projects in areas prone to flooding. As this Slate article explains, the new rules took into account climate change projections. On August 15, just ten days before Harvey struck, Trump struck down the new building standards. Now, as the costs of reconstruction mount, those rules are apparently being reconsidered.

The improved building standards for flood-prone areas were one of many things the Obama administration did that fall under what is (ironically enough) known as the “submerged state” — vitally important stuff that goes on behind the scenes. It’s one reason I have zero patience for people who say both parties are the same and it makes no difference who you vote for.

When I first started drawing political cartoons around the turn of the millennium, it seemed like informed people were more overtly appalled by FOX News and the abdication of journalistic standards it represented. Sure, progressives still snark about FOX on Twitter, but in some ways, it has become normalized, just one “side” in a world where every fact, no matter how empirically-derived, must be viewed through the lens of “both sides.”

Enter Sinclair Broadcasting’s proposed takeover of a huge segment of the local TV news market. Trump campaign spokesgoon Boris Epshteyn has hopped straight from the White House to the role of “Chief Political Analyst” for Sinclair news affiliates. And he’s penning op-ed columns too. Here’s one on the website for the local ABC station in Washington, DC in support of Trump’s policy of militarizing the police.

I highly recommend John Oliver’s segment on Sinclair for a more in-depth look at this catastrophe in the making.

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!