Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect

If you're hiking someplace where you have to crap in a bag, that means there are too many people around.
But per Meplat, an E-tool is one of the most vital tools for camping/hunting.

I suppose a minor quibble would be the fact that the original Magnificent Seven, Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn were COOL. Effortlessly cool. Just by being on the screen you could tell they were comfortable in their own skins and the characters that they portrayed. Steve McQueen was so cool, they paid him to do movies where he raced cars and motorcycles that way he could have enough money to race cars and motorcycles in real life. 
 
And in action, these characters are cool. Cool and deliberate. There is no unnecessary flash. No extravagance. They deal in lead. 
 
Contrast that with the Millennial shitters in the 2016 re-remake. I like Denzyl Washington and he's a good actor. But the producers of this film don't even let him play his character. He's doing a pale imitation (hehehehe) of Jaimie Foxx in Django Unchained. Oh, look, it's a black bounty hunter in a Western. I wonder why Hollywood made that casting decision?
 
And the rest of the characters are about as subtle as gangbangers driving a lowered Cadillac Escalade with rims, ground effects and a sound system blaring. Look at the Chinese knife fighter dude who is supposed to mirror James Coburn's character and all the rigmorale he puts into stabbing someone at the 1:13 mark. Compare this to James Coburn at 1:35 in the 1960 version. There's a world weariness and reluctance. He has killed before. He knows he will kill again. And he has been pushed to kill now. It is a task, and a chore and one where he knows that no thanks will be given and only trouble will result.
 
With this modern incarnation all I see is just empty flash. It's not good enough that we are presented with a retelling of two of the classic movies of the past century. No. We must have a Gatling gun for some reason. We must have more dynamite than is needed to mine the Comstock Lode. We must have tits. Because fuck if the Magnificent Racially Acceptable Seven are going to fight for a trio middle-aged Mexicans.

Remember when I said that Hollywood needed to make more Westerns?
 
Yeah. I didn't mean this pile of horse shit.
 

 
I might do a further fisking of the Magnificent Racially Acceptable Seven later in comparison to the original Magnificent Seven.
 

 
And of course this was a remake - and improvement - on the Akira Kurisawa classic Seven Samurai.
 

 
Now there are all sorts of complaints I have regarding the quality of the musical sound track presented and a comparison of the actors as well as themes about honor and redemption.
 
But with the older films, Samurai and Seven, the motivations of the heroes and the villains and the towns folks MAKE FUCKING SENSE. It's a trailer of course, but I don't really understand the motivation of the badguy in this flick other than that he seems to be a sneering, corporate bad guy with legions of henchmen who are willing to go galloping into murderous crossfires in order to kill innocent women and children and burn down their schools and churches. For what reason?
 
Even Calvara, in the 1960 Seven, knew he couldn't kill off the townfolks since he needed them to grow the corn and beans and chickens his men needed to survive the winter.

On that note - fuck malaria and fuck mosquitoes:
http://www.nature.com/news/gene-drive-mosquitoes-engineered-to-fight-malaria-1.18858
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n1/full/nbt.3439.html

Renegade Troglodyte Polish Nuclear Ants

Be warned, I'm about to get REAL nerdy. 
 
I started playing Elite Dangerous, which is fun. I tend to think of stories for my characters. For this space-outing, my character Hank Sterling is a simple-minded space-janitor on a little space port in a tiny tucked-away solar system. That is, until he falls into a ship that takes him to some wacky adventures.
 
Captain's Log, Day 1. 
 

 
Just a one time gig, that's all. A big hangar full of expensive equipment that he wasn't allowed to touch stood between Hank Sterling, Space Custodian, and his mop. They had something like an oil spill, or what he thought was oil. He brought his expensive degreaser formula just in case. It was there in his cart, which was his toolbag for the creation of clean. But there should be some sort of sheet for nasty chemicals, like a sheet that explains the dangers of them. One that he could read, that is.
 
Lights blinked across the expanse, but he kept his head down and mopped. A few more hours of this shift, then Hank had his day off. First in months! The school kept him busy. He liked the school better than this air-force hangar. Sure, the kids sometimes made fun of him or called him names, but they were kids. That's what kids did.
 
Hank didn't have an explanation as to why the teachers and parents called him names too, though.
 
But it was important! Cleaning, that is. 'Cause even on this twisting, floating hunk of metal high above...
 
High above what, exactly? They were in some star system and the name had a bunch of numbers in it. All Hank knew is that it didn't matter where in God's great expanse people went, they left a mess. And somebody had to pick up that mess.
 
'Cause, you know, it sure as hell wasn't gonna be the people that made the mess. Oh no, that'd make too much sense.
 
Beside him was a catwalk that led out to a modestly-sized ship. Hank didn't know anything about it, but that was fine. He didn't need to know anything about it. It could be powered by little rats spinning wheels for all he cared. The job was to clean up the hangar. Catwalks didn't count, Hank figured. Hard to clean up grating.
 
As he turned, though, the hatch opened and Hank heard the sounds of drunken giggling, heavy footsteps, and cursing. A man with half a space-suit unzipped, leaving his chest and shoulders bare, stumbled down the catwalk. Under each arm were scantily clad women with messy hair and fake smiles. They both had bottles in their hands.
 
Hank's eyes rolled, but then the space-man turned and emptied a stomach full of cheap booze and regret onto the hatch of the ship. Afterwards, he laughed, and instructed the women to take him to his bunk. Or theirs, it didn't matter much to the space-man.
 
Filthy space-captain people. Hank didn't understand them. They spend more time bragging about space battles or space flying or space shuttling or space whatever than anybody else. Well, there wasn't much out here other than space. Planets were pretty barren. Not like Old Earth. Before it was torched by nukes sent to destroy the infectious bacteria that was mutated because of the retro-viral biowarfare that resulted from the dissolution of the cyber-protection grid via the EMP blasts from the first nukes dropped on accident from the nations trying to send them into the sun. At least he thinks he's remembering that right. Old Earth History Class was years ago.
 
Hank was almost done mopping the floor when he saw the space-man's greenish stomach contents on the hatch of his ship. Something inside Hank stirred.
 
It wasn't part of the contract, but nobody else was going to clean it.
 
Hank reached down into his cart and proudly removed the bag of absorbent flakes. He strode with mission guiding his feet toward the mess. Hank dispensed the flaky material, each particle imbued with purpose and reason. While allowing the mess to soak, curiosity got the better of Hank and he peered into the space ship.
 
And by the son of Mister Clean himself, that ship was disgusting!
 
Women's undergarments, used rubbers, boxes of expensive food-meal, bottle-corks, they all formed a coalition of filth that twisted Hank's face into a sickly grimace.
 
It wasn't his job. He was making it his job.
 
Hank gloved-up and grabbed an official refuse disposal device, waving it a few times so the bag would fill out, and he got to work. Hank was the proud farmer, and trash the prize crop. And Brother, it was harvest day.
 
By the time he's made the ship spic-and-span, the vomit was ready to be swept away. Hank took one last look toward the cockpit and stopped. The space-ape had left his helmet there. That was silly, those things were expensive. Hank had never been in a ship like this before. It was small, fitted with one of the new super-hyper-driver things that made space slippery. That's how he understood it, at least. And it had guns and a small cargo bay.
 
Still gloved, Hank took the helmet and inspected it. He could see himself. A crooked nose, weak chin, receding hairline, and sleepless, bloodshot eyes stared back at him. Hank was Clean shaved, though, because he cared for what was his.
 
Hank took a clean tissue and began wiping the helmet. But the smudge was on the inside of the glass. Delicately, Hank reached in and wiped the smudge from existence.
 
But, smudges tend to be tricky little fiends. He'd have to inspect closer. He slowly raised the helmet up and slipped it onto his head. It was a snug fit, but not uncomfortable. Not at all, in fact. But it was dim, and Hank couldn't see anything. There were switches in the cockpit, maybe one of them was for a light...
 
His fingers flipped a few switches, but nothing happened. He kept going. Surely, one of these buttons should-
 
There was a loud noise behind Hank. He turned, helmet slowing him, and saw that the hatch was closed. “But my cart!”
 
A woman's voice started talking to him. “Airlock activated. Main engine warming. Sixty percent output. Hardlines stowed. New contact made. Please check log.”
 
“What? Who's that? Who's there-”
 
Lights came on inside of his helmet, which caused Hank to scream and trip over the big captain's chair. He landed, face down and legs dangling in the air. His boots kicked at a few more switches and knocked down a small tree-shaped air freshener.
Hank tried to catch himself, but an outstretched arm sent one lever forward.
 
“Throttle activated, please allow engine to start-up completely before throttle activation.”
 
“I'm sorry! I don't know what that means-” Hank sat up in the chair, trying to find the switch that opened the hatch. All around him holographic screens folded down and lit the cabin like his Aunt's house during the holidays. “-Can I go please? Can you please open the door?”
 
He tried to touch some of the screens, but one started playing a video. A mustacheo'd man started talking to Hank. “-That information is vital to the success of colony XD-72. The vaccines produced there could save BILLIONS. Soldier, you get there ASAP. I won't lie to you, Griggs, that space between here and there is littered with pirates-”
 
“Hello? Can you please tell me which button escapes? I want to go home-”
 
“-We're sending you and your light scout because they're fast, innocuous, but limited range means you're plotted path will take to you numerous space-ports-”
 
“Where did the lady go? Can you bring her back? She may know-”
 
“-Godspeed, Captain. We'll see you on the other side.” Mister Mustache and Badges saluted Hank, then disappeared. Finally, maybe now he could find the get-outside-and-go-home-button...
 
“Is it this one? Hey, lady, are you there?” There was a hologram that said 'dock'. They were at the dock. Maybe that one would let him go. He pressed it.
 
“Undocking procedure begun. Engines at 100% capacity. Suggest lowering thrust before take-off. Authorization granted, special permission, priority A-class. Hangar doors opening.”
 
Hank didn't understand any of that. But the doors were opening, he heard that part. Maybe it was the back hatch. He turned in the seat and watched the door for a few minutes, but nothing happened. The helmet, which he was still wearing for some inane reason, was blinking on the inside. He took it off and looked at it for a while. He didn't like how the inside-lights of the helmet made his head hurt.
 
When he looked up, however, he couldn't see anything. It was all so black. Dark and black and full of nothing.
 
“Maybe I can only see it with the helmet on-” He put the helmet back on, but still black. Then, a great arm of the huge orbital station came into view, rotating around.
 
Hank was looking at space. Or, maybe Space was looking at Hank. “Oh my God... I can see my living tower from here!” Until it disappeared again as the station turned, that is.
 
This wasn't good. Hank saw a button flash on the hologram that said 'Disengage.'
 
“Heck yes, let's disengage from this. I don't wanna be here.” He hit the button.
 
The lady came back. “Launching in five, four, three, two, one-”
 
Hank was sucked into his seat, G-force sucking his teeth into his gums and threatening to suck his eyes out the back of his head. He couldn't move his arms to reach for any more switches.
 
“Throttle auto-regulation activated, launch speed in excess of space-port parameters-” The lady said, right before the spaceship slammed into an antenna on the orbiting space station, rattling Hank greatly.
 
The ship began to slow just in time for Hank to turn around and watch as the space port, one he'd called home for his entire life, became a small spec of lights and brown against the cold, dark void of Space.
 
Hank was in space. He was in space.
 
“Oh god...” This is not what Hank wanted to do for his day off.
 
 

Expert criticism takes time.

The way I was thinking about was flipping around FSV, using a water cooled reactor (to piggyback off existing expertise with PWRs) and a helium secondary going through the turbine.

Cp of CO2 gas ranges from 0.8 to around  1 Kj/Kg*mol.
 
 
Helium gas does better, sitting at around 5.09 Kj/Kg*mol. 
http://catalog.conveyorspneumatic.com/Asset/FLS%20Specific%20Heat%20Capacities%20of%20Gases.pdf
 
Helium could definitely work, but it's expensive and we're running out of helium on Earth.
 
Also, I just asked a professor friend of mine why the hell Helium gas has such a high heat capacity. 
 
He says, "Well, it's sort of trippy and it has something to do with its chemistry."
 
Thaaaaanks Doc. 
 
My issue with using a gas would come with the heat transfer coefficients being rather low compared to that of a liquid. 

My brother surprised me with a gift over the weekend:

It's an old scout knife that he found and restored. He re-attached the blade to the handle assembly, put in brass shims, added an aluminium piece to replace the front spacer/guard thingy, and made new grips out of ironwood.
I had a go at sharpening the blade - it's usable now, but not particularly amazing.
Edit: this is pretty much what the knife originally looked like

Well, I got Elite Dangerous. Looking forward to SPACE once my internet comes back up.
 
Edit: WE ARE GO (once steam updates)

That's why you pack enough food. Cannibalism is so embarrassing.
Particularly since there's only enough meat on Colli to make a thin broth.

Yep.  In 1977 the Carter Administration indefinitely deferred reprocessing of nuclear waste.  A typical commercial power generating reactor like a light water reactor actually fissions relatively little of the fissile material that goes into it.  Let's say that the design needs uranium enriched to 3% 235U in order to reach criticality.  You feed it uranium enriched to 3.5% (just bullshitting numbers here, but they should be ballpark for light water reactors).  It stays critical until it gets down to 3%, and after that there's not a sufficient concentration of fissile material to keep reacting.
 
That's a hell of a lot of 235U still left in the spent fuel.
 
On top of that, there's a significant amount of 238U that got bred into 239Pu (all reactors breed 239Pu, but breeder reactors do it faster).  So fuel reprocessing can get at that stuff too.
 
The reasoning behind the cessation of fuel reprocessing is that 239Pu is the preferred material for nuclear weapons (although it generates electricity just fine too), and there were concerns that moving large amounts of reprocessed fuel around would make it easier for plutonium to go missing for illicit bomb making.  This is complete horseshit and ignores the well-documented fact that plutonium reprocessed from spent reactor fuel is hopelessly contaminated with 240Pu, an isotope that has a very high spontaneous fission rate.  Even a fairly modest amount of 240Pu contamination makes the plutonium unsuitable as a bomb material, and enriching the plutonium to remove the 240Pu is extremely expensive, since the mass ratio between it and the desired isotope (239Pu) is so close.  With laser enrichment this would not be the case, but laser enrichment of actinides doesn't exist yet.  So when the decision was made it was complete horseshit.
But you try to explain any of this to a hippie and their eyes just roll back.  This is why you should never attempt to explain things to hippies.  Just punch them instead.
 
The reason this could allow waste with much more manageable half-life is a little more involved, and would require a more involved fuel cycle that I don't think anyone has seriously tried.
 
You have two sorts of radioactive crap in spent fuel.  There are fission fragments, which are the things that the uranium that fissioned split into, and you have long-lived actinides, which are various radioisotopes that the un-fissioned uranium got turned into while bathing in the neutron flux of the reactor core.  Most of the long-lived actinides are plutonium isotopes, but you also get some exotic americium, curium and neptunium isotopes, along with various other weird shit.  Generally speaking, the fission fragments have half-lives in the microseconds to decades range.  But long-lived actinides can stick around for years, or tens of years, or tens of thousands of years.  Much more annoying.
 
A fast neutron reactor can break down long-lived actinides into the less persistent fission fragments.  However, that would require a large number of commercial fast fission reactors, and only a few nations have even dabbled with that concept.  The Soviets and the French got the furthest, but it looks like the Chinese will pick up at some point in the next ten years.  I'm not entirely sure what sort of fuel cycle they intend to pursue (according to Mech, they're a little bit touchy about their nuclear stuff), but their building program for the future includes a large number of fast-neutron reactors.  Last I checked these were supposed to be license-built versions of the Soviet/Russian BN-800 design, but the article linked above mentions a gas-cooled design that I'm not familiar with.

Here's a video of a hipster with his Ted Cruz knockoff face and a pleather vest yammering on about how the .300 Blackout doesn't actually do anything other rounds don't do, but you should buy one anyway:




I love the delicious irony in him saying the .300 Blackout isn't a fad, because it's like the .40 S&W.

Be warned, I'm about to get REAL nerdy. 
 
I started playing Elite Dangerous, which is fun. I tend to think of stories for my characters. For this space-outing, my character Hank Sterling is a simple-minded space-janitor on a little space port in a tiny tucked-away solar system. That is, until he falls into a ship that takes him to some wacky adventures.
 
Captain's Log, Day 1. 
 

 
Just a one time gig, that's all. A big hangar full of expensive equipment that he wasn't allowed to touch stood between Hank Sterling, Space Custodian, and his mop. They had something like an oil spill, or what he thought was oil. He brought his expensive degreaser formula just in case. It was there in his cart, which was his toolbag for the creation of clean. But there should be some sort of sheet for nasty chemicals, like a sheet that explains the dangers of them. One that he could read, that is.
 
Lights blinked across the expanse, but he kept his head down and mopped. A few more hours of this shift, then Hank had his day off. First in months! The school kept him busy. He liked the school better than this air-force hangar. Sure, the kids sometimes made fun of him or called him names, but they were kids. That's what kids did.
 
Hank didn't have an explanation as to why the teachers and parents called him names too, though.
 
But it was important! Cleaning, that is. 'Cause even on this twisting, floating hunk of metal high above...
 
High above what, exactly? They were in some star system and the name had a bunch of numbers in it. All Hank knew is that it didn't matter where in God's great expanse people went, they left a mess. And somebody had to pick up that mess.
 
'Cause, you know, it sure as hell wasn't gonna be the people that made the mess. Oh no, that'd make too much sense.
 
Beside him was a catwalk that led out to a modestly-sized ship. Hank didn't know anything about it, but that was fine. He didn't need to know anything about it. It could be powered by little rats spinning wheels for all he cared. The job was to clean up the hangar. Catwalks didn't count, Hank figured. Hard to clean up grating.
 
As he turned, though, the hatch opened and Hank heard the sounds of drunken giggling, heavy footsteps, and cursing. A man with half a space-suit unzipped, leaving his chest and shoulders bare, stumbled down the catwalk. Under each arm were scantily clad women with messy hair and fake smiles. They both had bottles in their hands.
 
Hank's eyes rolled, but then the space-man turned and emptied a stomach full of cheap booze and regret onto the hatch of the ship. Afterwards, he laughed, and instructed the women to take him to his bunk. Or theirs, it didn't matter much to the space-man.
 
Filthy space-captain people. Hank didn't understand them. They spend more time bragging about space battles or space flying or space shuttling or space whatever than anybody else. Well, there wasn't much out here other than space. Planets were pretty barren. Not like Old Earth. Before it was torched by nukes sent to destroy the infectious bacteria that was mutated because of the retro-viral biowarfare that resulted from the dissolution of the cyber-protection grid via the EMP blasts from the first nukes dropped on accident from the nations trying to send them into the sun. At least he thinks he's remembering that right. Old Earth History Class was years ago.
 
Hank was almost done mopping the floor when he saw the space-man's greenish stomach contents on the hatch of his ship. Something inside Hank stirred.
 
It wasn't part of the contract, but nobody else was going to clean it.
 
Hank reached down into his cart and proudly removed the bag of absorbent flakes. He strode with mission guiding his feet toward the mess. Hank dispensed the flaky material, each particle imbued with purpose and reason. While allowing the mess to soak, curiosity got the better of Hank and he peered into the space ship.
 
And by the son of Mister Clean himself, that ship was disgusting!
 
Women's undergarments, used rubbers, boxes of expensive food-meal, bottle-corks, they all formed a coalition of filth that twisted Hank's face into a sickly grimace.
 
It wasn't his job. He was making it his job.
 
Hank gloved-up and grabbed an official refuse disposal device, waving it a few times so the bag would fill out, and he got to work. Hank was the proud farmer, and trash the prize crop. And Brother, it was harvest day.
 
By the time he's made the ship spic-and-span, the vomit was ready to be swept away. Hank took one last look toward the cockpit and stopped. The space-ape had left his helmet there. That was silly, those things were expensive. Hank had never been in a ship like this before. It was small, fitted with one of the new super-hyper-driver things that made space slippery. That's how he understood it, at least. And it had guns and a small cargo bay.
 
Still gloved, Hank took the helmet and inspected it. He could see himself. A crooked nose, weak chin, receding hairline, and sleepless, bloodshot eyes stared back at him. Hank was Clean shaved, though, because he cared for what was his.
 
Hank took a clean tissue and began wiping the helmet. But the smudge was on the inside of the glass. Delicately, Hank reached in and wiped the smudge from existence.
 
But, smudges tend to be tricky little fiends. He'd have to inspect closer. He slowly raised the helmet up and slipped it onto his head. It was a snug fit, but not uncomfortable. Not at all, in fact. But it was dim, and Hank couldn't see anything. There were switches in the cockpit, maybe one of them was for a light...
 
His fingers flipped a few switches, but nothing happened. He kept going. Surely, one of these buttons should-
 
There was a loud noise behind Hank. He turned, helmet slowing him, and saw that the hatch was closed. “But my cart!”
 
A woman's voice started talking to him. “Airlock activated. Main engine warming. Sixty percent output. Hardlines stowed. New contact made. Please check log.”
 
“What? Who's that? Who's there-”
 
Lights came on inside of his helmet, which caused Hank to scream and trip over the big captain's chair. He landed, face down and legs dangling in the air. His boots kicked at a few more switches and knocked down a small tree-shaped air freshener.
Hank tried to catch himself, but an outstretched arm sent one lever forward.
 
“Throttle activated, please allow engine to start-up completely before throttle activation.”
 
“I'm sorry! I don't know what that means-” Hank sat up in the chair, trying to find the switch that opened the hatch. All around him holographic screens folded down and lit the cabin like his Aunt's house during the holidays. “-Can I go please? Can you please open the door?”
 
He tried to touch some of the screens, but one started playing a video. A mustacheo'd man started talking to Hank. “-That information is vital to the success of colony XD-72. The vaccines produced there could save BILLIONS. Soldier, you get there ASAP. I won't lie to you, Griggs, that space between here and there is littered with pirates-”
 
“Hello? Can you please tell me which button escapes? I want to go home-”
 
“-We're sending you and your light scout because they're fast, innocuous, but limited range means you're plotted path will take to you numerous space-ports-”
 
“Where did the lady go? Can you bring her back? She may know-”
 
“-Godspeed, Captain. We'll see you on the other side.” Mister Mustache and Badges saluted Hank, then disappeared. Finally, maybe now he could find the get-outside-and-go-home-button...
 
“Is it this one? Hey, lady, are you there?” There was a hologram that said 'dock'. They were at the dock. Maybe that one would let him go. He pressed it.
 
“Undocking procedure begun. Engines at 100% capacity. Suggest lowering thrust before take-off. Authorization granted, special permission, priority A-class. Hangar doors opening.”
 
Hank didn't understand any of that. But the doors were opening, he heard that part. Maybe it was the back hatch. He turned in the seat and watched the door for a few minutes, but nothing happened. The helmet, which he was still wearing for some inane reason, was blinking on the inside. He took it off and looked at it for a while. He didn't like how the inside-lights of the helmet made his head hurt.
 
When he looked up, however, he couldn't see anything. It was all so black. Dark and black and full of nothing.
 
“Maybe I can only see it with the helmet on-” He put the helmet back on, but still black. Then, a great arm of the huge orbital station came into view, rotating around.
 
Hank was looking at space. Or, maybe Space was looking at Hank. “Oh my God... I can see my living tower from here!” Until it disappeared again as the station turned, that is.
 
This wasn't good. Hank saw a button flash on the hologram that said 'Disengage.'
 
“Heck yes, let's disengage from this. I don't wanna be here.” He hit the button.
 
The lady came back. “Launching in five, four, three, two, one-”
 
Hank was sucked into his seat, G-force sucking his teeth into his gums and threatening to suck his eyes out the back of his head. He couldn't move his arms to reach for any more switches.
 
“Throttle auto-regulation activated, launch speed in excess of space-port parameters-” The lady said, right before the spaceship slammed into an antenna on the orbiting space station, rattling Hank greatly.
 
The ship began to slow just in time for Hank to turn around and watch as the space port, one he'd called home for his entire life, became a small spec of lights and brown against the cold, dark void of Space.
 
Hank was in space. He was in space.
 
“Oh god...” This is not what Hank wanted to do for his day off.
 
 

A ringworld is a world in the shape of a ring (shocking!). The most well known ringworld is the one from the Larry Niven novel;
 

 
Which encircles a star similar to the sun.
 
(Things like Installation 04 from the Halo series aren't usually considered to be ringworlds, since they're just circular things floating in space not encircling a central body.)
 
Among the many issues with the eponymous ringworld (aside from its graviational instability) was exactly what it was made out of. At a radius of about 150 million kilometers (1.5*1011 meters) and producing about 1g of gravity on the inner surface of the ring, it would have to be made of an absurdly strong material (wiki says it would have to be about as strong as the strong nuclear force). This is unlikely to be possible with any current or near-future technology.
 
Stress in a rotating ring is given by the following equation;
 
σz = ω2 ρ ( r12+ r1r2 + r22) / 3   (2)
where
r1 = outer radius of ring (m)
r2 = inner radius of ring (m)
 
(via http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/stress-rotation-disc-ring-body-d_1752.html)
 
ω is the angular velocity in radians/second, it can also be written as v/r
Also, as is well know, a = v2/r, or v = (ar)1/2 
In other words σz  = a*r/r2*ρ *( r12+ r1r2 + r22) / 3
As stress is proportional to the acceleration and radius, reducing both means that the ringworld material will have to be less strong.
 
According to wikiped, white dwarfs could potentially have a habitable zone around .005-.02 AU. .005 AU is about 7.5*108 meters (we're using the smaller value because anyone building a ringworld has probably invented air conditioning). We'll use a density of 5500 kg/m3 for the ringworld material, about the same as Earth's total density. Additionally, to simplify our analysis, we'll assume that the inner and outer radius are equal (with a thickness of about 10 km, the difference between r1 and r2 gets lost in sig figs.)
 
Plugging our values into the above equation, we get σz  = 4.4*1013 N/m2, or 4.4 TPa. This is dozens of times stronger than steel, or even absurd tungsten alloys. But wait!
 
According to wikipedia and various  other sources, carbyne has a Young's modulus of roughly 32 TPa, well above what we need. True, carbyne (basically polymerized acetylene) has never been made in quantity and would probably react exothermically if it depolymerized, but still, it can be done!
 
tl;dr If you want to make a ringworld, put it around a white dwarf and make it out of acetylene.
 
 
 
 

I triggered 1911 fanboys pretty hard today with this article: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/08/25/business-insiders-terrible-horrible-no-good-bad-list-weapons-military-bring-back/

Lacking another place to put this and not to downplay the Seaworld OP, but here is a video of a "transient" Orca punting a harbor seal 80 feet into the air.
 
As much as I like Killer Whales, they are aptly named and are singularly bloody minded.
 

Not sure what there is to be afraid of here, exactly. The 5.8mm can't penetrate ESAPI and it by Chinese source's admission has shitty tissue destruction capability. So it might have "600m" range, but not against a US infantryman.
 
 
Are we worried that the QLZ-87 is going to be a squad level weapon? I'd be surprised if that were the case...
 
 
According to Maxim Popenker, this is weapons-grade BS.
 
 
Well, except for enemies killed with M79s, XM148s, M203s, and rifles equipped with rails and ACOGs. Except for those.
 
Yes, Tim Coburn is persistent, and annoying.
 
 
Most of these claims are oft-repeated but unsubstantiated. The ones that are actually true are the MPI shift and the feedramp erosion issue. MPI shift is something that would happen with any significant cartridge change (so there's literally no way to avoid this), and it's easily solve through re-zeroing. The feedramp issue has been solved through new magazines that present the rounds at a different angle and are much more reliable anyway.
 
 
Speak of the devil!

Ah yes, the "wars are fought against deer" fallacy.
 
 
 
Isn't there an adage about this?
 
"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." - Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980  
 
Cry me a river, I guess? This is like arguing about the best bayonet.
 
 
They may also be people who own a reloading scale and have read a certain CDEC report.
 
 
Because weight matters, Jim.
 
 
Oh, I stand corrected. It's actually because grunts who don't know anything about ballistics and who will willingly carry 40 extra pounds of useless crap they bought in a Ramadi market aren't involved in the decision process.
 
 
Yeah! Damn the fact that Program Managers have the power to actually manage their programs!
 
I am not a Special Operations character, but I suspect that if I were one, this sentence would make me erupt into laughter.
 
 

 
 
This is a really strange pair of sentences. Jim appears to be arguing that funds that were spent beginning in 2000 somehow could have been used to procure HK416s five years later. Then he basically repeats the error, but this time with a weapon that fills a completely different role.
What's weirder is that he's for some reason shifted gears from "the US Army needs to adopt a new caliber to replace 5.56mm" to "the US Army should have bought 5.56mm HK416s". Wait, I thought the caliber was part of the problem? So wouldn't buying HK416s be a mistake?
 
 
By POGs like this guy, right?
 
 
...Apparently by adopting a cartridge that is 28% heavier.
 
 
Yes, there's no additional cost in the purchase of tooling; that does not mean that adopting a 6.5mm wunderkart would be just as cheap as what we're doing now, or adopting lightweight cased 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds.
 
There may literally be half a dozen individual weapons chambered for telescoping ammunition in the world; there are not half a dozen different kinds of weapons chambered for them!
 
 
But it's in the early stages of development, and weapons always get heavier as they mature. Plus, it's still much heavier than the 5.56mm LSAT weapon.
Also, I guess we're just not going to mention the 9.6lb 6.5mm CTSAS carbine...
I am done for now.
 
Ah yes, the "wars are fought against deer" fallacy.
 
 
 
Isn't there an adage about this?
 
"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." - Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980  
 
Cry me a river, I guess? This is like arguing about the best bayonet.
 
 
They may also be people who own a reloading scale and have read a certain CDEC report.
 
 
Because weight matters, Jim.
 
 
Oh, I stand corrected. It's actually because grunts who don't know anything about ballistics and who will willingly carry 40 extra pounds of useless crap they bought in a Ramadi market aren't involved in the decision process.

WT is somewhere between a guilty pleasure and legitimately good.
 

Given the news about former 3 Doors Down lead guitarists dying in an apparent prescription painkiller overdose, this is in order.
 

 
And fuck off. I still like the song even though it was overplayed about eleventy billion times too many.

Number of individuals under the age of 1 year on California's gang member database: 42
Number of people shocked by this level of incompetence by the state of California: 0
 
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/scathing-audit-bolsters-critics-fears-secretive-state-gang-database/