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Now That's a Big Fan GE9X, which is destined to power Boeing’s next-generation 777X This summer, the largest jet engine ever built was being put through its paces in Peebles, Ohio. Big plane... the new 777X, will use the new engine Whether your are an aircraft buff or not, this is fascinating stuff, especially since just last week a superjumbo A-380 experienced what it's like when one of these monster fans comes apart in midair. Big fan failure  A380 Sept 30 over Atlantic Perhaps the "inevitability" of an A380 crash is made a little less likely by this case of the plane landing successfully after a catastrophic failure of one of its engines. I pray so.

                BUT OUR GUYS ARE SOUNDING GOOD General Motors is going all electric* GM's Chevy Bolt Excellent  description  of long range planning, with 2 new electric models now and 20 over the next 6 years. Ford is coming along too.  Like Volvo, VW, BMW, Mercedes and all  the Japanese and Korean car  companies, they see the  writing on the  charging station.  Thank heavens. STILL... watch out for China. *eventually

China’s New Electric Car Rules Are Amazingly Aggressive So they are out to pass us in another important category. AND their electric cars will compete with ours bigly. Just look how primitive those Chinese charging stations are! Renault, Nissan, & Dongfeng To Build $8,000 Electric Car In China ... And their purely domestic car manufacturers are going great guns.  The Chinese government is pushing this trend in their usual, easy going way, setting California-like quotas that every car company must meet, starting in 2019.  U.S. car companies are scrambling for Chinese partners to help them. Importance?  If America is to keep up in this, the FUTURE OF AUTOMOBILES, we better get off our duffs. (We are, sort of. See below) As perhaps you know, Olde Duffer here is plenty concerned about U.S. leadership vis-a-vis China. Worry warts: Airliners...  Here ;  here Hypersonic weapons...  Here ;  here   Robots...  Here Quantum communications...  Here ; here

 “We are facing, now, a new era of having a global quantum internet ready to be deployed”  With China in the Lead Laser to Chinese quantum satellite Chinese quantum satellite With military implications out the juazoo, completely secure communications seem quite likely now as the Chinese put heavy support behind the idea. [...and just think, no one will ever discover that time you checked out some porn!] This story in Science News - one of my favorite publications - shows that super secure communications have actually happened.  No Americans involved, alas, just Chinese and Austrians. NEWS QUANTUM PHYSICS Quantum video chat links scientists on two different continents ...And we have no way of "seeing" it. Demo of ultrasecure internet connection is a step toward global quantum communications BY   EMILY CONOVER   5:07PM, SEPTEMBER 29, 2017   Read it here. For sure, your olde blogger bud

Plot & Reviews HERE Prologue and Thirty-eight Chapters Written, Produced and Read by Olde Scooter Give it a shot HERE .  ...All together in sequence, a "playlist" concoction on YouTube. That's an Airedale biting the mic, or light, whatever. Click HERE for the whole enchilada (all 38 chapters of the enchilada - as in "the whole") You can either "Play All" and the book will roll out in proper order, or if you want to listen to a particular chapter, just click it, and it will play through the remaining chapters. (Since the recording is made as a YouTube video, the audiobook part is just the audio track. The visual is a vid place holder.  Try to ignore it. I can't help it if I look like an Airedale licking my thumb, I'm a conflagration, dammit! SUPPORT OLD GUY SCI-FI If you know a sci-fi fan or somebody looking for a free audio book, please refer them here, or "share" if it's no trouble.  T

New literary star 2017 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards Finalists Friend of New Mexico Books : Jill Lane, Executive Director, A   S Fiction - science fiction & fantasy Douglas Arvidson                 A Drop of Wizard's Blood Scooter Duff                         MIZ: Time Tripping with Amazing Females Zelda Leah Gatuskin            Digital Face: Stories RJ Mirabal                            Zero Visibility Possible Both sides now FINAL FOUR! Update: MIZ is being recorded as an audiobook . The "beta" will be free. Scooter hisself is the reader, and he's an amateur at it, thus the zero bucks price. By about half way through, he will have become more competent, and even might charge for the rest. Better rush right over and get it while the getting's good. (It's a YouTube PlayList, so there is a fuzzy picture. Try to ignore it.) - - - - - - - - - - - - Again . In 2015 A Reluctant God got a

Oh, Never Mind... Just Wishful Thinking (and that's the last update) UPDATED 1:00 PM (MST) 10/15  Look at the number of times "HURRICANE PROOF" is mentioned below in the "greatness" plan for rebuilding P.R.  I saw today Elon Musk and Governor   Ricardo Rosselló  are talking "all renewable" power sources. Puerto Ricans were already talking about it, but when Elon Musk weighs in, there is a much higher likelihood of something getting done. And it sure as heck could be built to be  "HURRICANE PROOF!" Think about ELIMINATING the old-school high voltage power grid with huge towers and miles of cable, replacing them with "micro grids" that just cover small areas like cities and towns, powered by solar, wind and big storage batteries. Trump doles out vital supplies Never mind the politics....... A HUGE plan is needed Puerto Rico was CRUSHED by Hurricane Maria. The more we learn, the more terrible it looks. Li

These Are the "Threats" to Trump in 2020 All the targets of the Pre-Smear Republican strategy Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders ,  Sherrod Brown,   Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar,   Chris Murphy,  and  Cory Booker,  as well as Governor  Andrew Cuomo The "pre-smear" is digging up fake dirt, exaggerating alleged flaws, making up lies, and spending big money using all that in attack ads, innuendo-laced social media, etc., etc., et-@^$%!-cetera. It's rotten politics at its rottenest. That's How They Smeared Hillary They did it in spades on Hillary Clinton. The poor woman was so thoroughly pre-smeared by lies, false accusations, guilt-by-associations, conspiracy nutjob theories and endless mysogynist dog whistles, that she was carrying a high-weight handicap when her race for the Presidency finally happened.  "Worked on Hillary; let's do it on all potential Democratic candidates," said the Re

Mueller just obtained a warrant that could change the entire nature of the Russia investigation Robert Mueller obtained a search warrant for records of "inauthentic" Facebook accounts If you are a hard core newsy, or if you follow the Investigations of Robert Mueller, you've no doubt heard about the fake accounts on Facebook and the $250,000 ad buy by by Russians on Facebook. Now Mueller has a warrant for the specifics inside the phoney accounts. It looks like a new direction for the investigation. In their piece on this news, Business Insider said: Facebook said in its initial statement that about 25% of the ads purchased by Russians during the election "were geographically targeted," and many analysts have found it difficult to believe that foreign entities would have had the kind of granular knowledge of American politics necessary to target specific demographics and voting precincts. In a post-election interview, Kushner   told  Forbes   tha

Russia, China and  Chinese, Russian military, atomic, weapons propaganda, fake news THIS IS A TEST .... sorry about that.  I was testing the idea that a certain portion of the page views on this elderly blog were "bot probes" from either Russia or China.  The theory is that all new posts (all!) on various blog and Twitter platforms are scanned by RorC A.I.s and are clicked to look for useful propaganda - or security flaws.  It was just my guess that the bots look for " military, atomic, weapons propaganda, fake news" words. So far, the evidence is ambiguous.  If it clears up, I will report. You decide.

Bots (on-line "comments" from roBots) are pretty dumb - but they are getting smarter. Learn to smell 'em out. With practice, you can stay as smart as the bots. Here are a few tips for your smeller.  If you read "comments" on any web site, look for these "tells." 1. They are quick . Bot comments roll out immediately after actual reader comments that contain certain key words or phrases the A.I. in the bot recognizes as a "key." Actual human responders typically take a little longer. 2. They are generic . Bots have meme-heavy, specifics-light responses. "Another big government fan, I see," is common. "You must hate the Constitution," is another. "Go home to your safe place," "Once a commie, always a commie," "Put her in jail,"  etc., etc.  3. Sometimes they use stupid grammar . Bots don't get a lot of copy editing in the propaganda mills from whence they ooze. "You need a s

Public/Community Radio Rides Roaringly; Roger Dodger A "Pledge Week" Pitch * One of our Albuquerque Public Radio Stations (we have two!) is KUNM . I have been involved with the station in various ways for years. I helped conduct focus groups with their listeners and I served on their board for four years. It's a really good station, something of a hybrid that may be unique in the country in that is is a "Public" station and a "Community" station. (Don'tcha see?) This has been pledge week, and they manage to make it quite interesting - a creative challenge. As an exercise in keeping it interesting, I wrote this little ditty: We don’t say it enough, but what we are asking you to support is a  non-commercial station . One of the biggest differences between commercial and non-commercial stations are their business plans - how they pay all the costs of running a radio station. Both privately or corporately owned and public