Odds, Ends and things In-between
Here are some pictures I took while in the Yucatan Penensula back in
April. I doctored them up to remove the tourists and to give them an
"old" feel. The First two images are from Altun Ha in Belize, the rest are from the Chichen Itza ruins in Mexico
Jonah Hex, the world's ugliest bounty hunter is back in an all-new series penned by Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Luke Ross.
I picked up the first two issues on my last trip to one of my FLGSs. I
haven't looked at comics in a long time, but Hex was always one of my
favorites, and he didn't disappoint me this time either. Each book
seems to have its own story, not being connected to the previous, so
don't be afraid to pick this one up!
L-class airships on a training flight near Naval Air Station
Moffett Field, California, in February 1944.
Dirty 30s - Ships, Trains & Planes
1933
Gee Bee Model R-1
Seats: 1
Cruising Speed: 260mph
Range: 925 miles
1933
Kalinin K 7 (Russian)
Seats: 22/128(passenger version)
Cruising Speed: 180kph
Range: 3030km
1935
Douglas DC3
Seats: 23 (3 + Cargo)
Cruising Speed: 181mph
Range 1500 Miles
I took these while playing with my digital camera a while
back, the first ones are from Deadlands, the second from Necromunda
Super-troopers: Stalin wanted Planet of the Apes-like troops, insensitive to pain and hardship.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005
CHRIS STEPHEN AND ALLAN HALL
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the
Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently
uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.
According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a
new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and
indifferent about the quality of food they eat."
In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of
Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came
at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the
world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to
industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian
society were being created.
The Soviet authorities were struggling to rebuild the Red Army after bruising wars.
And there was intense pressure to find a new labour force, particularly one that would not complain, with Russia about to embark on its first Five-Year Plan for fast-track industrialisation.
Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses.
Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.
Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.
Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar.
Mr Ivanov was now in disgrace. His were not the only experiments going wrong: the plan to collectivise farms ended in the 1932 famine in which at least four million died.
For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.
