Twenty-five-year-old bad sports rap becomes marketing tool!

Maybe that was unkind…but nobody says that the “Super Bowl Shuffle” was great art. When the Bears did it in 1986 it was a curiosity. I don’t know how much anyone thought of it outside of Chicago. We had just moved here that year. I don’t know how much anyone outside of got a kick out of it. I was on a plane coming back from LA that January and they played it on the plane to great cheers and applause, but the plane was coming back to Chicago, and was a couple of weeks before the Super Bowl.

It’s just surprising to me that a cell phone company would consider that video to be well-known enough in pop culture to bring those guys back, and then spend that much money on a Super Bowl commercial.

Here’s the original:

More cowbell!

Chilling, even after all these years…

This video of the Challenger explosion was recently brought to light. The info can be found on the link. It was absolutely chilling to watch, and a large part of that is because of the commentary by the guy doing the video.

I missed the actual explosion. I remember that day like people remember Pearl Harbor or 9/11. I heard about it on the radio after it happened, then saw the video of the explosion that evening. I think in many ways it was more of a history-defining moment than the loss of Columbia because there was no good video of Columbia’s breakup.

Still, it’s heartbreaking to watch, twenty-four years later.

Well, I was really wrong on that one…

I believed, like many Americans, that the Indianapolis Colts were going to tromp New Orleans. I even predicted they would win by two touchdowns.

I was wrong. This is why I do not gamble. I like Las Vegas – the shows, the weather (sometimes), the air show at Nellis – but I don’t gamble.

31-17. Gads.

Obama a slow learner? Don’t tell Rahm!

Oscar Goodman, Mayor of Las Vegas, talking about how Obama seems to always have something bad to say about his city, and that it has a negative impact on convention and other business.

“Everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I’ve got to tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner,” Goodman said.

With Rahm Emanuel under fire for his “f—ing retards” remark, maybe we should keep Obama’s learning difficulties on the down low…

Tuesday TV questions and comments

Does it make him less interesting if you know that LL Cool J’s real name is Todd Smith?

NCIS: What’s up with Agent Fornelle’s beard? (He’s played by Joe Spano. The beard appears in next week’s episode.)

NCIS: Gibbs is getting a new girlfriend (played by Rena Sofer)? She’s not a redhead, and that would break the rule! (Which of Gibb’s rules is that, anyway? At leas, it breaks Rule: #23: Never, ever involve a lawyer.)

Liquid Glass?

This stuff sounds too good to be true. If it is true, it will change many things – for the better.

Updated scratchbuilding pictures

Alien dude and plasma engine nozzles

I got the macro function to work better on the camera so you can now see the castings of the plasma engine nozzles for the Princess Cecile. Along with them is one of the little tripod-aliens that will go in the Apollo 27 diorama.

I did ten castings of the nozzles, and will only need eight. I think I will build a box for the bottom of the ship and attach the nozzles to that…it will give me a flatter surface. Otherwise I would need to recess part of the nozzles or angle them, and I like neither of those options. I have some plastic sheet and can build the box for the bottom pretty easily, I think.

I’m experimenting with a bigger mold for the “thruster cluster” – like the ones on the Apollo Service Module or on the Lunar Module. These are scratched from a small wood bead and four of the resin nozzles left from the construction of the Fantastic Plastic von Braun rocket. (There were extras provided with the kit.)

I put the thruster cluster on top of some cut up pieces of the first mold I made. I poured some rubber around them. Then I poured rubber over it. I will cut the mold apart once it’s cured. Since it’s a small part, I hated to spend all the time doing the two-part thing.

Images of that when I get it done, if it works.

Here’s another alien image:

Green dude

He’s the other one. (She?) More detail will be included later.

Here’s one of the outboard engine pods from the Apollo 27 kit, sprayed with Alclad II Aluminum:

Engine pod

It will still get buffed once the lacquer is cured, then sprayed with Testor’s Metalizer Sealer. I may add some Metalizer weather effects later.

Here’s the cockpit – it’s light on detail, but the clear dome is pretty thick and would distort anything inside anyway:

Cockpit

So the Princess Cecile work continues. I’m just glad that the resin castings worked out so well.

Sadness

These are images of one of the three existing Typhoon submarines – like the Red October, sort of. Over 500 feet long, 70 feet wide, with two pressure hulls running parallel. The images come from a Russian web site.

Is the cat the guard?

It’s sad, isn’t it? I know, they were the enemy – and could be again, that’s the beauty of it. But this was a magnificent piece of engineering. I’m glad they don’t have missiles pointed at us from these babies anymore, but I hate to see them just rusting away up there.

I don’t get it…

Of course I don’t get it. I’m not a Demon-crat; nor am I Obama.

I did the math. I found that NASA gets about $ 19 billion a year, give or take. With the incredible deficit spending Obama is going to do with FY 2011, his budget is around $ 3.83 trillion – yeah, trillion.

NASA’s budget is under 0.5 per cent of the Federal budget. Did you get that? Half of one per cent! For another billion dollars a year the Constellation program could be back on track, according to the Augustine commission. (The reason it’s not on track is that they’ve been trying to do it on a shoestring, of course.)

As I said in a previous post, the stimulation of private-sector space access is vital, and a better use of taxpayer dollars. Don’t use outdated, costly technology just to protect jobs. Use efficient, new technology. Want to send stuff to the ISS? Send it by Dragon/Falcon 9. Going to the Moon is a little bit different.

But it’s only another billion dollars. He’s been spending money like a drunken sailor, and he won’t throw a measly billion dollars to NASA.

This is with almost half the budget being deficit spending. There’s a point where deficit spending almost doesn’t matter anymore. And this money isn’t thrown away – it’s spent on jobs here, in US companies, and by research institutions. We get more than just spacecraft. We get new technology. It’s worth it.

Is he really trying to bring on a new Dark Age?

More modeling updates

Flying sub on an old base I bought years ago

I finished the Flying Sub, One-Man Sub and Diving Bell a few days ago. These are from the Moebius big Seaview kit, although they are available as a separate kit without the Seaview. I will try to get better images. I lit the interior of the Flying Sub with two LEDs and used the photoetched interior set from Paragrafix. The images of the other two suck right now, so when I get better ones I will post them. I also used the decal set from TSDS.

As a break from the picky detailed stuff I started work on the Apollo 27 kit from Pegasus Models. It’s kind of cute. I decided the way to go was a diorama where one of the crew is negotiating a buy from the local aliens. I created some aliens using two part epoxy putty. They are trilaterally symmetrical…and green. My human is a modified US fighter pilot. There are a couple of things lying around that I made for him to buy from the Greenies. One looks like an egg – is somebody selling Junior?

Green dudes

I’m painting the engine pods with Alclad aluminum lacquer, with several coats of black Alclad primer underneath.  They’re mostly done, after a lot of polishing. The seat cushions in the cockpit are bits of epoxy putty as well. Behind these you can see the Princess Cecile end caps, with wooden spheres built in for the turret guns. I’m stuck on those because at the scale I’m working in the gun barrels would look like needles. Maybe that’s what I’ll use.

Engine pod and cockpit

More later when I figure out “macro” mode on my camera!