Thoughts and Prayers, and Nothing Else

We've had yet another mass shooting, with the highest death toll yet for a single killer. (If you count various forms of race riots and Indian massacres, the death toll is not so remarkable)

At first, it sounded like fireworks — a loud, crackling noise. Then the awful realization began to spread, unevenly, through the huge crowd.

It dawned on people when they heard screams, when they saw bloodied victims collapse around them, or when others stampeded for the exits, trampling some of the people in their way.

Many of the terrified concertgoers followed their instincts and crouched or lay flat, not realizing that they remained exposed to a gunman lodged high above them. Others surged into surrounding streets and buildings, leaving behind debris lost in the panic — drink cups, shoes, and cellphones that kept ringing for hours, as relatives and friends tried to reach their loved ones and find out if they were safe.

By sunrise on Monday, the staggering toll at an outdoor country music festival on a cool desert night was becoming clear: at least 59 people killed, the police said, and 527 injured, either by gunfire or in the flight to safety.

A lone gunman perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino had smashed the windows of his hotel suite with a hammer, taken aim at a crowd of 22,000 people, and committed one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. Late on Monday, law enforcement officials said they still had no idea what the motive was.

The gunman had 17 firearms, including a handgun, in his suite, according to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And when the police searched the shooter’s house on Monday, “we retrieved in excess of 18 additional firearms, some explosives, and several thousand rounds of ammo,” Sheriff Lombardo said. He added that they also found ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer sometimes used in making bombs, in the gunman’s car.

God bless America, huh?

Of course, we will be in the politicians, "Thoughts and Prayers," but I expect nothing meaningful to happen.

Here's hoping that NRA President Wayne LaPierre mishandles a gun and shoots his own testicles off.

Naah ……… I'm not bitter.


See full Tom Tomorrow cartoon here.

Linkage

• How Bad Apples Spoil the Whole Bunch (The Marshall Project) When the so-called "Good Apples" almost always alibi for the bad ones, there are no good apples.
• Jeremy Corbyn: neoliberalism is broken and we are now the centre ground (The Guardian) Why Corbyn has outperformed expectations: He gets the problem.
• Tony Blair’s Ghoulish Last Decade (Jacobin) Even by the standards of the Clintons, this is unseemly.
• Tropical forests may be carbon sources, not sinks (Nature) A consequence of deforestation.
• In Texas, homeowners fight with their HOAs over the right to park fully functioning World War II tanks in their driveways (Fark) Texas Man is rivaling Florida Man.
• Michael Turk - So f**k Google, and allow me to explain...... (Facebook) Your child plays games on the computer instead of working. You block game sites and Youtube. Google Chrome does not allow you to block Youtube, and to block reinstalling Chrome, you have to block Google, which means that his kid could not access his homework.
• What Democrats Must Do (Jacobin) "The Democratic Party’s pursuit of well-off whites undermined its ability to deliver gains for all workers. Going forward, it must place the multiracial working class at the center of its political vision."

Marilyn Manson was injured at a concert the other day by a falling prop. Here is him covering "Tainted Love", which seems remarkably appropriate.

Another Step Forward for Reaction Engines

Proposed Test Stand


Heat exchanger with miles of tiny tubes

Reaction engines, whose SSTO Skylon concept has been making the rounds for nearly a decade, seems to be getting more support, specifically, it has scored a large contract with DARPA to demonstrate its precooler engine technology:

Reaction Engines has achieved a major breakthrough in the U.S. market with a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The award covers conducting high-temperature testing of the precooler technology at the heart of its proposed hypersonic air-breathing, combined-cycle Sabre rocket concept.

Reaction has seen interest grow in the U.S. about elements of Sabre, particularly the precooling heat exchanger, ever since the concept was first independently validated by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in 2015 (AW&ST Aug. 3-16, 2015, p. 63). Designed to chill airflow from over 1,800F to −240 F (1,000C to −150C) in less than 1/20th of a second, the heat exchanger is pivotal to the process of extracting oxygen from the air for use by the rocket.

However, the heat exchanger can also be used more generically to precool other engine cycles and reduce heating on engine components in high-speed flight. According to Reaction, the design, dubbed HTX, “could enable new classes of vehicles and operational possibilities.” The precooler will be tested at speeds up to Mach 5 in a new high-temperature airflow evaluation facility to be built in Castle Rock, Colorado, as a base for REI (Reaction Engines Inc.), the U.S. subsidiary of the UK-based company.

It does appear that their technology is getting funding and support, so I'm hoping to see a flight test article in the next 5 years or so.

Previous posts about Reaction Engines here.

Oh Crap………

Venezuela is moving its oil sales to non dollar currencies.

The last guy to do this was Saddam Hussein in 2000, and it was seen as a challenge to the position of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, and we know how that turned out.

Fail, Madrid Edition

The Catalan independence referendum has faced an unbelievably heavy handed response from the central government in Madrid, with the obvious result, supporters of secession have flocked to the polls, while opponents are unwilling to get a baton to the crotch, so early results show overwhelming support for Catalonia leaving Spain:

Catalan officials have claimed that preliminary results of its referendum have shown 90% in favour of independence in the vote vehemently opposed by Spain.

Jordi Turull, the Catalan regional government spokesman, told reporters early on Monday morning that 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who voted Sunday chose yes. He said nearly 8% of voters rejected independence and the rest of the ballots were blank or void. He said 15,000 votes were still being counted.The region has 5.3 million registered voters.

Turull said the number of ballots did not include those confiscated by Spanish police during violent raids which resulted in hundreds of people being injured. At least 844 people and 33 police were reported to have been hurt, including at least two people who were thought to have been seriously injured.

………

Puigdemont had pressed ahead with the referendum despite opposition from the Spanish state, which declared the poll to be illegal, and the region’s own high court. He told crowds earlier in the day that the “police brutality will shame the Spanish state for ever”.

The Spanish government defended its response after hundreds of people were hurt when riot police stormed polling stations in a last-minute effort to stop the vote on Sunday.

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy, and his People's Party, has been running against Catalonia, and against Catalonian independence for years, and this has served to galvanize the secessionists movement.

First, they rushed to overturn existing agreements, and now they have sent national and other police forces into Catalonia as an occupying force with a license to abuse, and the results are ugly: senior citizens bloodied, voters dragged out of polling areas by their hair, and condemnations from Human Rights Watch.

I don't think that we are headed for another Spanish Civil War, but if someone doesn't put a leash on Rajoy, things are going to get a lot worse.

Common Sense That I Did Not Expect out of State

But reports that there are direct contacts between the US and the DPRK is an indication of at least a small modicum of sanity in Foggy Bottom:

The Trump administration acknowledged on Saturday for the first time that it was in direct communication with the government of North Korea over its missile and nuclear tests, seeking a possible way forward beyond the escalating threats of a military confrontation from both sides.

“We are probing, so stay tuned,” Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said, when pressed about how he might begin a conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, that could avert what many government officials fear is a significant chance of open conflict between the two countries.

“We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang — we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout,” he added. “We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang,” a reference to North Korea’s capital.

Considering the fact that the US and the DPRK are the principals in their dispute, direct contacts are a good thing, even if it runs against the standard US regime change consensus among the DC cognoscenti.

Bad Day at the Office

There was an uncontained engine failure on Airbus A380 on a Paris to London flight:

An Air France A380 superjumbo jetliner taking more than 500 people from Paris to Los Angeles made an emergency landing in Canada on Saturday following “serious damage” to one of its four engines, the airline said.

“Flight 066 landed without further damage at the Goose Bay military airport in Canada and all of the 520 people on board were evacuated with no injuries,” an Air France spokesman in Paris said.

The Airbus double-decker, wide body aircraft was rerouted as it passed over Greenland, landing in Goose Bay in eastern Canada, the spokesman said.

The landing went off with no problems for the jetliner carrying 496 passengers and 24 crew members, the spokesman said. The airline was exploring options to get the passengers to the US.

Glad not to be on that flight.