Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Rocket Racing One Step Closer

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Peter Diamandis - the saint-like personage responsible for both the X-Prize and the vast inflation of the hopes of space geeks everywhere - looks like he is within reach of forming an honest to God rocket racing league.  Combining the best aspects of current day NASCAR racing and the golden age of aircraft racing, the Rocket Racing League’s competitors will fly modified versions of XCOR Aerospace’s EZ-Rocket design over complex three dimensional courses, combining gliding with strategically-timed rocket burns to achieve the best time. 

F-16 pilots Robert “Bobaloo” Rickard and Don “Dagger” Grantham paid their $100,000 deposit to the league yesterday, to become the first of what the League hopes will be ten teams in the 2007 inaugural season.  The hundred grand will go to the expected million-dollar-plus cost of their Mark-1 X-Racer.  Operating costs for the rocket and the race team will easily be on the order of a million dollars a year.  But hey, they’re racing rockets.

I will certainly be glued to the tv when this all comes together.  And if it leads to the development of better rocket technology, well that’ll just be pure gravy.


Posted by Buckethead on 01/31/06 at 04:26 PM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • Permalink

Actual Facts

Unmitigated Gall

The meaning of the word “mutant” has changed over the years. 


Posted by Buckethead on 01/31/06 at 03:18 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

A new low

Entertainment

Once, in a brighter age, I was a movie afficianado.  I saw everything.  I loved good movies, and I loved bad movies.  The badder, the better in many cases.  (Evil Dead, They Live for example.) Today they announced the Oscar nominees.  I have seen 1 (one) movie nominated for major awards.  That’s it.  Okay, two if you count the Best Animated Film category as a major award.  Ten years ago, I would have seen all but maybe one of the movies up for the big ones, and most of the movies up for the technical awards.  This year, it’s the exact inverse.

The one movie I’ve seen is “Walk the Line,” the Johnny Cash biopic.  And, of course, the Wallace and Grommit Curse of the Wererabbit flick.  And “March of the Penguins,” nominated for best documentary.  Aside from those, I saw “Batman Begins,” “War of the Worlds,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith,” which were nominated for assorted technical awards. 

The real reason for this cinematic apathy is not a a decling interest on my part in movies.  Or even the widely rumored decline in the quality of films produced.  The reason I don’t see movies is about three feet tall and named John Christian.  Three year olds don’t behave well in movie theaters.  And the prospect of paying out the yin yang for a sitter just to watch a movie I may or may not like is simply inconceivable. 

The only time Mrs. Buckethead and I actually go see real movies in actual movie theaters is at the big holidays, when we have family (read: free babysitters) to watch our spawn.  The very limited opportunities for movie watching has had a drastic effect on how we choose which movies to watch.  Generally speaking, we only watch movies that we can be sure ahead of time that we will really enjoy.  And among that small group, we are likely to pick the movie that woould be the most impressive on the big screen - in order to maximise our movie experience.  In other words, we’ll watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire twice before going to see something like “Syriana” or “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Not to pick on Mr. Clooney, but if he wants to see us watching his movies, he really ought to star in a big budget special effects extravaganza with lots of explosions.

As John has gotten older, his impact on our movie watching has only increased.  For the first couple years of his life, we could watch more or less anything on video.  He was simply unaware of what was happening on screen.  This eased the process of accomodation - we were able to wean ourselves off the movie crack gradually.  But after watching “Christmas Vacation” and having John ask, “Where’s the Kitty?” we realized that even that option had been closed off.  And since John is a night owl like Mrs. Buckethead and myself, the only way I’ll ever watch my Sin City DVD is if I get up at five in the morning and watch it before I go to work.  Which isn’t really an option at all.

Seeing as we have another spawn cooking right now (she’ll be done sometime around the end of March) it will be at least another five years before I can watch movies again.  If we have another kid, that day will be pushed back to sometime after 2012.  Hopefully by that time they’ll be able to beam movies directly into my nob.


Posted by Buckethead on 01/31/06 at 12:21 PM
Entertainment • Permalink

Food and Money… what else you need?

Entertainment

The Carnival of Personal Finance #33 is now up at Fat Pich Financials, who is apparently an ardent devotee of Warren Buffett’s and Seth A. Klarman’s value investing philosophies.

The 76th Carnival of Recipes is up at Triticale, the Wheat/Rye guy. The theme is potluck, so make up a tuna hotdish and head on over. (Wait… you’re not from the Midwest? Then bring mac and cheese.)


Posted by Johno on 01/31/06 at 11:24 AM
Entertainment • Permalink