Author: Kilgoar

INTERNET — For people who like antiques, Pawn Stars and American Pickers are the hottest television shows out there. Items roll by faster than Antiques Roadshow while middle-aged men flirt with each other. Most of the meaning of each item is also reduced to cash value, and once per episode an expert will get a sentence or two in about one interesting item. Already, antique stores across the nation are faced with an army of idiots who won’t buy anything without trying to haggle the price down. Customers believe they are antiques experts because they’ve watched every episode of Pawn Stars and American Pickers. As a result, antique prices have plummeted severely in the last year.

But Shopdogsam is not that kind of entertainment.

Shopdogsam has posted hundreds of videos, documenting and explaining methods he uses to restore very old engines. He is practitioner of many lost engine shop arts, but more importantly, he is an authentic and entertaining character.  The meaning of every intricate detail of antique engines is served up with a charming Arkansas accent, and Sam’s long white beard and easygoing demeanor may convince you he’s Kris Kringle, maintaining engines which could only power a toy shop manned by tiny elves.

The thing that sets Shopdogsam apart from television, and even apart from the majority of self-made celebrities on YouTube, is that he doesn’t seem driven by the need for hits. He’s not jiggling female cleavage in his videos, shoving food down his throat, or doing silly stunts in video games. Shopdogsam is opening an honest window into his engine shop to continue to spread the tradition of maintaining and repairing engines from a long lost age of innocence.

Click Here to Subscribe to Shopdogsam’s Youtube Channel, on the East Coast of Arkansas

INTERNET — Joseph Kony, famed general of genocidal child armies and Internet super villain, was hunted down and killed by a team of assassins who funded their mission with crowd-sourcing after an anti-Kony video went viral last year. However, the team of killers have expressed mixed feelings and even regret at carrying out the Internet’s mission of ruthless vengeance.

After the anti-Kony video, Kony 2012, became the most viral video ever, many concerns were raised about its accuracy. Skeptics quickly debunked the claim that Kony was still roving Africa with murderous child armies. Now, some are questioning the one dimensional and inhuman portrait of Kony which stands in stark contrast with reports of assassins who spoke with the aging and defenseless Kony before acting out the Internet’s lucrative vengeance. One assassin, who wished to remain Anonymous, said the kill team found Kony living in quiet retirement, and said, “His exile was mostly self-imposed. He could have continued his raping and pillaging, but he was repentant. We found him living the life of a religious ascetic, and he gladly allowed us to kill him, fully understanding his death would not atone for the great atrocities of his life. He fixed us dinner, and we had thoughts of sparing him, but we all knew that the Internet would send a kill team for us, if word were to get out that we spared Kony.”

In 2006, the military took control of NASA’s unmanned space shuttle program for purposes that have not been disclosed. The X-37 C space drone will be capable of orbiting six astronauts in a pressurized capsule and returning them to the planet. However, there is a smaller version of this kind of spaceplane, the X-37 B, which has been running secret missions for the Air Force since 2008. People know that the X-37 B exists, but they do not know about the military’s Single-Stage-to-Orbit technology.

At Groom Lake, the infamous Area 51, Single-Stage-to-Orbit technology was first developed by modifying a scaled-up SR-71 and adding liquid oxygen rockets for the high atmosphere. This vehicle, known to pilots as “Santa’s Sled,” was capable of a low-atmospheric orbit which quickly decayed, so it was of no use for anything but the smallest satellites. During this time, miniaturized spy satellites were developed out of necessity. “Santa’s Sled” could be deployed to any place on the planet in less than an hour and release cameras, which would remain in geo-synchronous orbit for months. This technology was in use since the late ’60s, and it has only been developed since then.

Secret spaceplanes at Groom Lake have engines able to use both liquid oxygen and atmospheric oxygen, and one can carry the same payload as the X-37 C with more efficiency than is currently thought possible. The “Aurora” spaceplane, a flying wedge, can deploy up to 100 miniature spy satellites, which can each maintain orbit for several years. Enough Aurora Spaceplanes and spy satellites are standing by that the orbiting surveillance network of the United States could be entirely replaced at a moment’s notice.