In Other News: Dreamboat Delegates, Drones… and Deathrays

Often less-than-beautifully-photographed possible VP Cara Carleton Fiorina is now running mate of also often-less-than-photogenic possible POTUS Rafael Edward Cruz.

Last year, she earned the respect of millions with her memorable put-down of also-possible POTUS Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Fox News had her accusing Mrs Clinton of running for office “on a record of air travel”.

“Like Hillary Clinton, I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe,” she said. “But unlike Hillary Clinton, I know that flying is an activity, not an accomplishment.”

And that activity, according to Fiorina, now means that thanks to so much activity on the part of the then Secretary of State “every place in the world is more dangerous today than it was six years ago”.

There might be one exception: as the rest of the world in general and the Ukraine in particular looks back on the events of 30 years ago, the Toronto Suntells tells us a steel-clad arch designed to enclose the remains of the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear reactor plant is soon to be completed and installed.

Once in place, it should contain radiation leaks for the next century.

The UK’s Express also marked the thirtieth anniversary of that disastrous meltdown by running a story on the then worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.

But rather than trumpeting the ecological cost of all that fallout, instead it tells us about the tours available in the area.

Pripyat — now a ghost town — is a popular destination, we’re told, but only for guided tours: the exclusion zone isn’t completely clear of radioactive debris, meaning visitors have to stick to certain paths and tracks.

So even though some say it’s not safe for human life for the next twenty thousand years, perhaps Chernobyl and the surrounding area is one of the very few places on the planet that’s still as dangerous — if maybe even slightly safer — than it was six years ago.

Safer for humans, at least. For animals that don’t read the newspapers it seems to be safe enough already: apparently it took less than a decade for certain species of small mammals to start moving back into the area once more, and they’re now thriving there.

But then again, ignorance is bliss since they never read the Reuters commentary warning us the next Chernobyl might not be all that accidental.

After all, Greenpeace activists made it look easy enough to break into a nuclear installation as they did in 2012 — as did another group from the same organization when they broke into a French nuclear power station three years later.

So Belgium’s installation of armed guards at their nuclear plants following the terrorist attacks in Paris could just be described as firmly shutting the stable door — long after the proverbial horse has ambled casually away and out of sight.

Perhaps, though, we shouldn’t be talking about horses wandering happily around, away from their normal living quarters: ABC 13 Eyewitness Newsoriginally ran the story of a tiger on the loose on the street of Conroe TX. Admittedly it was more of a hundred-pound cub than a full-grown five-hundred-pound adult, but it still must have come as a surprise to meet it in the street.

From there Eyewitness News later moved on to another story about the same hundred-pound cub, but this time she was the target of an attempted theft. The Conroe police Department had been granted temporary custody of the beast so they placed her in the local animal shelter — which was not only secure enough to deter the tiger from escaping, but also — fortunately — to prevent a break-in to steal her.

Elsewhere on the Eyewitness News site, under the heading “More Stories” and not too far from a link entitled “Police: Teen hires prostitute, blames missing cash on burglar” (well, he would, wouldn’t he?) is the photo of an American Airlines Airbus 321, with a very large dent in its nosecone.

Nearly two feet across, that dent was caused by a bird strike. What kind of bird could make that kind of impression is open to conjecture, but bird strikes aren’t the kind of flying activity airport authorities are worrying about more these days — it’s drone strikes.

Another Airbus was approaching London’s Heathrow airport a few days ago when it was struck by a drone at an altitude of 1,700 feet. Fortunately, the drone in question wasn’t sucked into an engine (remembering that time yet another Airbus suffered multiple bird strikes just after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia airport, and had to ditch in the Hudson river within swimming distance of midtown Manhattan),

Now that kind of flying — and landing — really was an accomplishment.

However, London’s Evening Standard then ran this ominous-sounding headline: “’Deathray’ could be used at Heathrow to shut down flying drones”.

Admittedly it’s got potential: a drone plummeting from a couple of thousand feet would make a much smaller hole in the sidewalk than a full-sized airliner — despite the legal maximum altitude for a drone being 400 feet.

That might be the legal max height for a drone in China during gaokao season, too — or it might not. Gaokao are the notoriously difficult exams that determine whether or not Chinese students make it to university.

Popular Mechanics reports that the Chinese city of Luoyang used a six-engine drone to monitor radio signals as it hovered over the examination hall, but as for its altitude we have no details.

Chinese students have a long history of examination answer enhancement and now, apparently, they’ve started using tiny earphones. These devices are so small they have to be removed by a magnet after the exam, after receiving radio feeds of answers to questions.

Other, less hi-tech but considerably more expensive ways of ensuring satisfactory exam results include paying large amounts of money to hire surrogate exam takers, but so far the Luoyang authorities don’t seem to have figured out a way of using their drone to prevent that.

But what happens to the Luoyang Educational Drone once exam season is over for the year and its flying activities are no longer required? Good question. There are other uses for drones rather than making dents in airliners: CNET informs us that Chinese rock singer Wang Feng asked “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” star Zhang Ziyi to marry him with the help of a drone… but doesn’t tell us what her answer was.

CNET did say, though, that for a mere $6,500 or so, you can avail yourself of a Wedding Proposal Package from UK drone dealer Drone Direct. This comprises the rental of two drones — one to deliver the ring to a pre-arranged location, and the other to record the proposal and subsequent reaction.

How droner and dronee originally get together is another matter. The Huffington Post hints that Smell Dating might just be the way forward in this digital-but-disconnected age.

For a properly physical matchup, as opposed to a simple swipe of the screen, Smell Dating — the self-proclaimed first mail odor dating service — sends members a t-shirt to be worn for three days and three nights sans deodorant. They then cut the shirt into swatches and send them out to other members.

If a member likes the smell of any of those swatches, Smell Dating puts both parties (presumably now showered) in touch with each other and stands well back.

But for those more into digital dating than other people’s dirty laundry — in Australia at least — Tinder, says Gizmodo, is running beta testing of “Tinder Social”. It’s like Tinder, but with multiple swiping rather than just one person at a time.

Tinder calls it a helpful tool for instigating new group hangouts or “a better way to hang out with friends” — if “hang out” is what you really want to call it. And if “friends” are really what you want to call them.

To the rest of us, the word “orgy” springs immediately to mind.

And the timing is perfect: according to The Australian, dating website BeautifulPeople has been hacked à la Ashley Madison. BeautifulPeople differs from other dating sites in that members can vet applicants on the basis of whether they’re beautiful. Or not.

And members now need another way of making contact with each other (if that’s what you really want to call it) while staying as anonymous as possible, because thanks to that hack, some very personal information about them — plus fifteen million very private messages — is now available online.

This is now an incident considered more serious than the 2011 “Shrek” virus that allowed thousands of unattractive people to become members of BeautifulPeople without going through the vetting process.

Then, Managing Director Greg Hodge tactfully stated: “We have sincere regret for the unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and who believed, albeit for a short while, that they were beautiful. It must be a bitter pill to swallow, but better to have had a slice of heaven then never to have tasted it at all”.

Ah, those beautiful people. Will any of the beautiful people here in the USA become president? Or even vice-president?

Judging from many of their photos in the printed press, on TV and on the internet…

…er, no.