It’s a curious movie, very different from the usual run of action flics. It reminded me in some ways of “Dances With Wolves”, in the degree of attention to detail paid to the lives of the Mayans. (Did anyone else but me notice, that in “Dances With Wolves”, every conversation among the Indians was carried out while they were going something? Work, mostly. No one was just sitting around, yacking to further the plot points. They were doing something, and talking as an aside…) The DVD of Apocalypto is available very shortly, and I posted a review on Blogger News Network, here.
…Europe was a quagmire, and we just should have pulled out our troops and brought them home!
(Courtesy of Instapundit.)
Mark Steyn on Flight 93’s memorial. The plan now includes – for the sweet love of thorny-headed Jebus – a wetlands. Full of life. Meant to provide reflection and social interaction. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, ducks are now a fitting memorial for our dead.
Go to any Civil War memorial on any New England common, and marvel at how they managed to honor their dead without wetlands and wind chimes.
A hundred years ago they didn’t have people whose sole job was to tell you that your ideas were tasteless or tacky or jingoistic. You wanted a memorial you hired a guy to sculpt a soldier, make sure the names on the bronze were correct and there, done; a memorial for the ages that can move a strong man to quiet tears a hundred years later.
What emotion would wetlands inspire? Nothing that would be fitting for Flight 93. I wonder if that’s what is truly desired.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Via.
A routine moment for the Navy, and for us.
ABOARD USS JOHN C. STENNIS – Cmdr. Muhammad Muzzafar F. Khan relieved Cmdr. Timothy Langdon as commanding officer of Sea Control Squadron (VS) 31 during a ceremony held at sea aboard USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) May 13.
Khan is the first Muslim to take command of an operational aviation squadron in the U.S. Navy.
Not because this is a touchy-feely PC moment – whoop-te-do look at us for promoting an oppressed minority! – but because this kind of stuff happens all the time in the military. It’s only remarkable because he’s the first. And it’s only remarked on because that’s what PR people do.
Here is a guy who had it good in Pakistan; daddy was an airplane pilot and they just don’t give those jobs to anyone. Gave it up when he was 18 to come here and study, then join the Navy. This is what we’re good at doing – co-opting the best and brightest and letting them get as far as they want to.
And the West generally and the United States in particular do this all the time.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Four representatives prove they don’t know how to live like everybody else.
Ryan and three other members of Congress have pledged to live for one week on $21 worth of food, the amount the average food stamp recipient receives in federal assistance. That’s $3 a day or $1 a meal. They started yesterday.
According to the rules of the challenge, the four House members cannot eat anything beside their $21 worth of groceries. That means no food at the many receptions, dinners and fundraisers that fill a lawmaker’s week.
The stunt is to demonstrate that $21 dollars in food stamps doesn’t go as far as it needs to. But the terms of the stunt are self-limiting; Declining a free buffet because it’s not in ‘your’ budget? Can you say “setup an experiment in order to fail”?
“No organic foods, no fresh vegetables, we were looking for the cheapest of everything,” McGovern said. “We got spaghetti and hamburger meat that was high in fat — the fattiest meat on the shelf. I have high cholesterol and always try to get the leanest, but it’s expensive. It’s almost impossible to make healthy choices on a food stamp diet.”
Cry me a river. Food stamps are to supplement the diet, not be the entire enchilada. And for all of that I’ve lived healthy on a budget of $20 a week for food. I didn’t like it but it’s possible. Of course I cheated by eating ‘free’ bagels at work when available but I was aiming for ‘practical’ not ‘prove a point’.
Ryan blogs about here.
The McGoverns blog about the experience here.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
A fine rant, reproduced in full.
30 lightyear away, eh? Let me think. With a working Orion-style drive, assuming a payload, for purposes of rough calculation the mass of, let us say, Skylab or 20000 kg; figure that every ton of fully loaded and fueled spacecraft has a volume of 5 to 10 cubic meters, and ten percent of the fully loaded mass spacecraft mass is structural mass. Now, postulating an exhaust velocity of 30000000 m/s, and assuming this is all fuel, and plugging in the values for the rocket equation …. how many years, assuming equal periods of acceleration and deceleration at both ends, minus the relative motion of the star GJ4356 versus Sol … in terms of time, it should take us … let me get about my slipstick … Aha! here we go. My rough back-of-the-envelope calculations show that, under the assumption that we are working within the confines of modern technology, and assuming no fundamental breakthroughs in engineering, and assuming we advance this project at the same rate as other space exploration projects, it should get to his new planet in roughly about … NEVER because OUR SPACE PROGRAM IS TOTALLY DIS-FUNCTIONAL and WORTHLESS pack of time serving BUREAUCRATS who haven’t done anything but throw robots at the outer planets ever since Apollo 17! Do you know when the last moonshot was?? 1972! That was four years before the first airing of Charles’ Angels, it was so long ago. Aren’t those girls grandmas now? THIRTY FIVE FRELLING YEARS SINCE WE PUT A MAN ON THE MOON !!! That’s almost four decades!!!! Do you know what our forefathers could accomplish in four decades? John Ericsson designed the steam-powered ironclad Monitor in 1862; forty-one years later the Wright Brothers flew the first successful heavier-than-air flying machine; four decades later, in 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the first faster-than-sound jet aircraft. Ack! Gack!! Choking on geek-rage! Where’s my flying car? It’s 2007, for Kal-El’s sake! This is the Future!
I couldn’t say it better myself.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Blogging at a minimum this week due to a confluence of other literary demands, and just no enthusiasm for writing about something suitable for here. The WOT is the same old mouthful of well-chewed gristle, ditto for the prelim-presidential-campaign… jeeze, if I feel that way about it now, I’m going to be hiding in a bunker by next year. People, can we give it a rest? Ditto for American Idol (who?) And as regards Paris Hilton; this may be the only time I shall ever mention her.
Over the last month, we have had a very demented bird, a female cardinal who has taken to perching on a branch of the almond verbena, just outside the window to the living room, and flying repeatedly into the glass window. She will do this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch; regularly thumping against the window, as if she is either fighting another female cardinal reflected there, or trying to land on a non-existent branch. We have named her after the stupidest celebrity we know: Paris Hilton.
The pictures of Hot Wells came out very much as I hoped, so finish polishing the article to a high glossy shine, and edit the pictures suitably. I have a thick book to read and a review to write for BNN, ditto a DVD to watch and review… and there is another book on the way. Just when I worked out how to lead into events around the election of 1860 and the secession crisis in Texas, as they affected the characters in part two of Adelsverein; or as a reader described it “Barsetshire with Cyprus Trees”. So I am getting ready to plunge into the operatic drama of the Civil War; murder, lynch mobs, treachery brother-against-brother and all that.
I did get a response from the agent who wanted a look at the first 100 pages; a regretful pass. The first four chapters just did not send her into the transports of enthusiasm necessary to take on representing it, and a paragraph of the usual blah blah blah saying that it was a terribly subjective business, wishing me luck in getting representation elsewhere blah blah blah.
I have sent out fifty query letters for “Adelsverein” including a SASE for response over the last two months, but only gotten back twenty or so letters which usually begin “Dear Author/Writer” and apologizing for the form response. Which leave me wondering where the other queries are, and if they are peeling off my stamps and using them for something else!
Back to work, on Chapter Three, Volume 2. (First chapter posted here)
Murdoc had a bit about an upgrade package to the Army’s M1A2 tanks.
“The guys can’t wait,” said Capt. David Centeno, assistant product manager of the TUSK program. “They need this stuff. Every time I go [to Iraq] they ask, ‘When will we get it?’”
Well gee, I thought, the guys at the sharp end have to wait for the Army to get around to adding equipment like a second mount for an M2? Or a T.V. camera on the back for the driver? Were I the C.O. (and this might be a good reason why I’m not) I’d have my mechanics whip out a welding rig and go to town.
Seems like the Marines have more initiative than the Army.
The Seabees of 30th Naval Construction Regiment (NCR) provided the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion with an armor upgrade May 1 to help keep the gunners safe during their operations in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq.
On a tank crew, the loader feeds ammunition into the machine gun and is often exposed to small arms fire from opposing forces. To stay safe, the loader has to close to the tankís access hatch. But if he does that, he can no longer do his job.
“ì[The new armor] lets us leave the hatch open,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Ceasare Williams, of the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion. “This allows the loader to stay in the fight.”
“It will also help [protect us against] IED (Improvised Explosive Device) shrapnel,” added Marine Sgt. Brad Nevitt, also of the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion, as he referred to IED often placed in the road by insurgent forces.
Semper Fi. And the Seabees rock.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
A meditation upon one of WWII’s most unusual missions… which in even at the time seemed almost as if it were a movie…
From Richard Fermandez, “Wretchard” at The Belmont Club, courtesy of PJ Media.
Greeeeaaaattttt. A War Czar. Gosh boss, I feel better already.
Bush selects general for ‘war czar’ Critics are quick to point out that Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute had argued against a larger U.S. force in Iraq. By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers May 16, 2007
WASHINGTON — After a lengthy and difficult search, President Bush has tapped a three-star Army general as his new “war czar,” with White House authority to pull together increasingly frayed federal efforts to deal with the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the operations director for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, will fill the job, which is part of the White House’s National Security Council, administration officials said. He is to be an assistant to the president, empowered by Bush to secure cooperation, support and personnel for the wars from across the federal government.
Because you know, the “Oil Czar” and the “Drug Czar” did so very much to solve THOSE problems.
Three weeks to retire from the Air Force and every day that passes I’m more positive I made the right decision.
Cross-Posted at Faster Than The Blog.
Faster Than The World (FTTW) now has a side blog up and running. All of your favorite whack jobs from FTTW will now be posting in a blog format as well as their weekly FTTW Magazine articles.
What’s it called? Faster Than The Blog of course.
That doesn’t mean I’m finally done for the well and all with The Daily Brief. I’ll still save any military news/opinions for here, but in my current state of mind about the whole military…thing…there’s just not going to be much of that for awhile.
I was hoping not to burn out before I retired. But watching and participating in some of the most recent bullshit has simply enforced my opinion that I’m making the right move at the right time.
This is not the Air Force I joined. This is not the Air Force I love. This is not the Air Force I spent 23 years trying to improve. I don’t know what this is…but it’s not my Air Force.
Get local, get active, and get outdoors. Walk the streets of your neighborhood. Get everyone you know to sign a petition to your local government body—for instance, your town or city council or neighborhood association—to pass a resolution requesting that Congress use its funding authority to support our troops and end the war. Bring the petition to the next meeting. […]
Send our troops a taste of home. Go shopping with your kids, your friends, your neighbors, and buy a whole bunch of stuff that would make a soldier happy to receive (check for restrictions). Then go through a site like Anysoldier.com, OpGratitude.com, or TroopCarePackage.com to send your package to a soldier in Iraq. Take photos and tell us about it.
Gather in public. On Memorial Day, get your friends, kids, co-workers, neighbors, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, and anyone and everyone you know together to publicly support the troops and end the war. Be sure to check with your local authority for any permits you need for public gatherings. Contact local media to publicize your event. Before you get started, please take a moment of silence to honor the fallen. And during your event, make sure you conduct yourself respectfully—both for those serving in Iraq and the memory of the brave servicemen and women that Memorial Day honors. Share your plans here.
Via Protein Wisdom.
This is what Senator John Edwards would have us do.
I’m for much of what he’s calling for…with the exception of the whole turning tail and running like hell…thing. I’m bettin’ the guys in the field might feel less than supported over this. Call me weird.
Blondie and I spent a good chunk of Monday wandering among ruins. By prior arrangement of course; do I look like a trespasser? Frankly I am an exceeding law-abiding person because I don’t have the steely nerve and towering sense of entitlement required to be otherwise. We were there with permission and had the assistance of the caretaker, who took us around to all the most attractive and poignant spots on the grounds of the old Hot Wells Resort, pointing out all the relics of the original landscape plants, keeping us off any bits that were structurally unsound (although it was fairly obvious which those were) and generally sharing her own fondness for the place. And it wasn’t a bad place to spend a spring midday, with all the wildflowers growing tall around the crumbling brick walls and butterflies staggering erratically from plant to plant, the birds singing happily… and the caretakers’ dogs in vocal outburst with some of the feral dogs which live in the ruins of the old tourist cottages, back in the thickets where the old hotel building was, before it burned to the ground in the 1920ies.
This junket came about because a friend put me in touch with the editor of a local monthly magazine (which actually pays rather handsomely) who liked my writing samples. The editor asked me to pitch her some story ideas, and the one she liked was about Hot Wells… especially if I could do pictures to go with it.
Many years ago, a contractor digging a well near the San Antonio State Hospital had the water come up hot and steaming, and smelling of sulfur. Entrepreneurial local gentlemen put their minds and money into taking advantage of this happy chance. There was constructed a lavish brick bathhouse with three pools, elaborate dressing rooms and an imposing entrance. Off to one side there was an equally ornate and luxurious hotel, set in lushly landscaped grounds, the whole fitted with every modern convenience and offering every amusement that the late 19th century offered. There was a private railway spur, to facilitate the millionaires who came to take the waters and traveled in their own parlor car, a grand avenue ornamented with a fountain and palm trees, a grove of pecan trees by the river, which ran along the back of the grounds… all in all, it was the premier spa in this part of the country for many years, and fondly remembered by many. Because, alas, Hot Wells seemed to be cursed. The various buildings burned no less than four times. The grand hotel burned completely to the ground and was replaced in the late twenties by tourist bungalows. The bathhouse came to house a restaurant called the “Flame Room”, as the once-grand resort degenerated into a scruffy motor-court motel on the South Side, dreaming away among the trees and memories of better days.
The current owner/developer hopes to develop it into a sort of Community Park, with the bathhouse ruins a central jewel. It is a strangely serene place, lightly haunted… but in a happy way, which is my theme for the article. I took lots of pictures, trying for that “ruins of the Roman Forum with plants growing all over everything” look. I have only one days’ work this week for the worlds’ tallest ADHD child, so plan to finish the Hot Wells piece well ahead of deadline, pound out another chapter of “Adelsverein” now that the first chapter of Volume II is posted here… and generally hope to hear from an agent that they love the whole thing, and may they read the rest of it, pleasepleaseplease?
More here, about Hot Wells.
Fascinating animated short from Colby Buzzell’s story “Men in Black”. It is graphic – not so much what is shown but implied.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
The summer that I was sixteen and a half was the one spent in Britain and Europe, doing the Eurailpass/Youth Hostel/$5.00 a day adventure… which upon reflection at a point nearly four decades later seems nearly as long ago as luxury steamship travel and the Grand Tour. I learned many useful and useless things during that summer, and acquired a certain sort of fearlessness about travel and new places, and strange people, as well as the ability to manage a 70-pound backpack in all situations, including the narrow confines of the little stairway to the top level of an English double-decker bus. It’s an awkward thing to manage, of course, and sometimes total strangers were moved to be of assistance, especially when we were shedding our packs (which were our entire luggage) or taking them up again.
It’s of enormous help, you see, for someone to grab the pack and hold it steady as you slip the straps off your shoulders. Then you turn around and thank them, and taking the pack by the frame, you stow it away in the overhead, or set it down…or whatever. We came to know that there were two kinds of men who would instantly offer this assistance: the young ones were Boy Scouts… and all the older ones had been soldiers.
My travel buddy, Esther Tutwyler and I struck up a conversation with one of those helpful older sorts in an English railway compartment… who of course turned out to have been a soldier, and also confessed that he was always grateful to Americans because Patton’s army had liberated him from a German POW camp. This was an instant bond, as Esther’s father was a career Army warrant officer who had fought his way all across France and Germany and done his share of liberating various bits of personnel and real estate. But when I asked the Englishman where he had been captured, he answered with the name of his unit, and that he had been captured at Dunkirk as part of the British Expeditionary Force. I actually recognized the name of his unit, (I knew all sorts of useless trivia at this time) and remarked that they had been part of the defending force around the pocket where the British forces had been driven, upon the opening of the German drive into France,
“Oh, yes,” he said, with great good humor, “But if I had known then it was the perimeter around the bloody place, I would have made Jesse Owens look like a turtle!”
The German offensive of May, 1940 punched through the weak point— Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg— and split the Allies in two. The bulk of the British Expeditionary Force fell back towards the flat sandy coast between Calais and the Belgian frontier… towards Gravelines and La Panne, Nieuport and Bergues… and Dunkirk, with its inner harbor and much of the town smashed to rubble and rendered useless by German air raid. Black smoke from burning oil stocks shrouded the town, and set up a column of black smoke that could be seen for miles. But the outer harbor was sheltered by a long jetty, or mole; wooden gangways spanning concrete plinths reaching out from the shore and sheltering the outer harbor. The moles were not intended as a means of landing or loading personnel, but in a pinch, ocean-going ships could tie up and take on troops… but it was a tricky maneuver at best, and made even more of a hazard by constant German air raids. German artillery dominated most of the sea routes approaching the town… but still, according to most accounts, more than three-quarters of those rescued from Dunkirk were taken off from the moles, by ships who packed in human cargo wherever there was room. It took about seven hours to load 1,000 men on a destroyer, for example… and every minute of those hours, that ship and the men lined up on the mole, patiently waiting their turn to board would be a target of everything the Germans could throw at them. On the evening of 27 May, 1940 the Navy officer on station in Dunkirk sent a message to his superior, saying essentially that evacuating from the moles was too slow, too hazardous. He asked for ships to be sent towards the beaches, east of Dunkirk… and for all available small craft to serve as ferries between the beach and the larger craft.
There were already hundreds of regular Naval and merchant-marine vessels at hand to serve in the evacuation, plus a number of requisitioned Dutch coastal transports, known as “scoots”… but during the night of the 27th, Navy officers scoured boatyards, yacht-ports and wharves all through the south-eastern coast and rivers of England for small craft that could be of use. Fishing trawlers and tramps, tug boats, motor yachts and countless numbers of row-boats, fire-boats and cross-channel paddle-steamers were pressed into immediate service, with crews formed by a mix of reservists, regulars, volunteers, civilians and owners… hastily equipped and fueled up, sketchily armed, formed into convoys or taken under tow, they all went straight into the thick of it… to get their soldiers out.
The legend of the little boats was born out of Dunkirk, of civilian boat-owners sailing into hell … even though it wasn’t quite like that, there’s enough truth in it to stir the blood of anyone inclined to step forward in a time of crisis. Though most of the BEF that escaped did so through the harbor, the image of shallow-draft little boats sailing close into the shore, and of columns of soldiers standing chest-deep in the water, waiting for their countrymen to come for them and bring them safe home … oh, yes; there is the image imperishable, of nine days of glory in the midst of defeat. The British Army left their armor, their heavy artillery, their transport behind; with luck all of it spiked, scattered and burned all along the sandy dunes along the shore from Dunkirk to La Panne. They came away with what they carried, their weariness and pride, for they were still alive.
Arms and transport, armor and artillery, they could be replaced… at a cost, and in some little time; but in only a fraction of the time it takes to train an officer or an NCO, or to raise up an Army. And that was the victory of Dunkirk, delivered out of defeat and captivity at the hands of Hitler’s marvelous war machine; an Army that would return. And that was the victory of the little boats, the volunteers, and the organization of everything that could float, and head towards the column of smoke in the sky…and carry away a soldier or two. It must have been all the sweeter, a victory and an army, snatched from the wreck following on the defeat of an ally which had been until then thought stout and strong.
I couldn’t resist this coda, found from one of my reference books: A very junior Navy officer on the destroyer HMS Grenade was later asked by his commanding officer to write an account of his experience, after the ship was fatally disabled by a bomb which went straight down the funnel and exploded in the boiler. He wrote
“Dear Sir: there was a bloody great bang. I have the honor to be, Sir, Your Obedient servant.”
MC Hammer – he has a blog of course – has been hired on to a panel of expert by Technorati. Is he an expert on startups and marketing and Web 2.0ish things?
Well, he did squander 33 million dollars. One could say that is enough to qualify him.
Word.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Found at “Chicago Boyz“: a long evocative essay about the fall of France, which took place early in May, 1940. The writer takes a look at some of the factors which led to the gutting of France… factors which may look hauntingly familiar.
My own essay on a significant historical event which followed closely after, will follow.
Somewhat diverted this week by simultaneously beginning the first chapter of the second book about the Texas Germans (see the website, in a couple of days I’ll post the sample chapter there) and by actually having nearly a full week of work with my some-time employer… or as I call him, the worlds’ tallest ADHD child. I’ve now been working for him long enough that I have said this to his face, and he knows himself well enough that he can laugh… mostly because it’s true. I’ve been working a half day, two or three days a week, just doing basic office admin, filing, data entry, doing letters and brochures and reminding him about things like… oh, I dunno, answering telephone queries about properties for sale, and paying the bills regularly. And finding things. Very important, that…being able to find things. My personal tendency is to put things away, and remember where I put them. Therefore, it will tend to appear like the deepest sort of black magic when I can produce them almost before he can finish asking “Where is….??!!!”
His preferred method, BTW, is to just let it accumulate on his desk— notes, bills, reminders, reports, correspondence and all, and when the piles get too deep, scoop it all into a file box, stick it in the corner… and then wonder why he can’t find anything.
Hey, that’s why I get paid the big bucks. But wait, there’s more.
Dave the Computer Genius had installed a very workable little scheduling and data program on the office computers, and showed me how it functioned: it’s called “Time & Chaos” by the way… the nonconformists answer to “Outlook” I think. Up until this week it was just another funny icon on the bosses’ desktop, but last week I commandeered his Palm-Pilot and transferred the client and contact information and sorted them neatly into various categories. Nearly 500 of them… but hey, who’s counting. Data entry… it’s the office workers version of ditch-digging.
Beginning this week, I stood over the boss with a whip… no, not really, but the thought was really tempting… and I showed him how to open the program, and the field where he could enter reminders and notes for himself, link them to his client/contact data base, prioritize them, and check them off as they were done. And to enter appointments… and even to enter new contacts, instead of scribbling them on post-its and bits of scrap paper, or on the backs of envelopes or pieces of junk mail… all of which were prone to being thrown away, lost or misplaced, accidentally stuck to a completely unrelated file, gathered up and dumped into a box, played with by one of the cats, or eaten by the dog… (Yeah, it’s that kind of office. 4 office cats, one office dog.)
So, the boss is as nearly organized as it will ever be possible for him to be, and meanwhile I have been working away in my own little office, cunningly disguised as the south-west corner of my bedroom, sending out query letters about “Adelsverein” to an assortment of agents. There is a website that lists the fairly legitimate, reputable agencies, and I have been methodically working my way through it. I sent out to all the ones who accept email submissions months ago; now I send out about five to seven query letters every week, sometimes with a synopsis or sample chapter attached if requested, and the always-required self-addressed-stamped-envelope. This has taken on the feeling of a necessary chore, like putting out the trash cans. As this blogger sympathetically noted, “Writing it is easy. Selling is the hard part”. Honestly, I put the submissions and the queries out of mind as soon as I send them; somehow it just feels mentally healthier that way.
I do own to being mildly curious about one thing; I send out five or six letters and submissions a week, each with a self-addressed-stamped-envelope. I’ve been doing this since about October of last year, so I would normally expect back about the same quantity to come trickling back… but I never seem to get more than three or four in a week. (Although I did get four of them in one day… bummer!)
So, what is happening to all the others? In this best of all possible worlds, the submission is sitting on someone’s’ desk, or being reviewed by a committee and I might hear back months later. Or, they are peeling off the stamps and using them for their office correspondence?
I have had an email request from one agency for 100 pages, as they were somewhat intrigued by the premise… and just yesterday I opened the usual little return envelope and barely glanced at the letter before throwing it into the reject file… but no! They want to look at the first fifty pages, a detailed chapter outline, a copy of my original submission letter, a cover letter with a current telephone and email, another self-addressed-stamped-envelope… and way down at the bottom in teensy print I think they are requesting a small sample of belly-button lint, also. I’ll send it off, of course (all but the lint, I was joking, people!) and forget about it the minute I drop it in the mail.
So, that’s were it stands this week. Same Stuff, Different Day.
Carnival of Space – Week 2 is up. And look – The Daily Brief was mentioned.
At The Daily Brief Brian Dunbar responds to an Apollo Lunar Surface Journal article. Brian points out that we are in danger of losing knowledge regarding the moon from the guys who DID go to the moon. It is amazing to think these men will be pushing 100 years old when we finally get around to going back.
Respectfully Submitted,
Brian Dunbar
*that one’s for you, Timmer.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Master Sergeant Michael Wert, a Marine stationed at Cherry Point, was on vacation. He and his family were soaking up the sun at Atlantic Beach when he noticed two boys in trouble. They were drowning.
Wert ran into the water, swimming to the boys to help them. His wife ran to call 911. His daughter grabbed her boogie board and paddled after dad.
The boys are safe. Wert saved them, and his daughter got them onto her boogie board. But Wert was nowhere in sight. Rescue personnel found him, but it was too late.
Thank you, Master Sergeant Wert, for putting others before yourself. Not that we would expect anything else from a Marine.
h/t Blonde Sagacity
The only thing more boring than last night’s performances were the Presidential Debates of last week. I’m not what you call a Bee Gee’s fan so…take that for what it’s worth.
There’s no Kelly here. No Bo, nor Carrie. No Chris Daughtry. LaKisha is a good gospel singer. Melinda is a good, solid, singer but there’s no longer any magic. Jordan is also a decent singer but, again, there’s nothing that makes me want to hook my computer up to the DVR and save this or that song. Blake? Ummmm, I’m a middle aged man, he’s not FOR me. I’m sure the skunk haircut and funky breaks are pleasing to someone.
…of those e-mailed lists going the rounds:
Number 10: Life is sexually transmitted.
Number 9: Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
Number 8: Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. f you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
Number 7: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.
Number 6: Some people are like a slinky … Not really good for anything, but you still can’t help
but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
Number 5:Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
Number 4: All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
Number 3: Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you 30.00?
Number 2: In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take prozac to make it normal.
And the number 1 thought for 2007: We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven’t got a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.
And finally, this little warning: “Life is like a jar of jalepenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow”.
Bill Whittle, one of my all time favorite writers on the web, has done some refurbing of his site and has even MORE new content.
No Bill, you’re not alone. Lot’s of us just can’t say it as well as you do.
If you’ve never read his stuff, go make yourself a pot of coffee or a quart of milk, get a bag o’ cookies and just start somewhere and keep going.
Reminder from Henry Cate
I am feeling better and plan to put together the second Carnival of Space this Thursday. Entries are due Wednesday evening, at 6:00 PM PST. Go here for instructions on how to send in your submission.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal is a record of the lunar surface operations conducted by the six pairs of astronauts who landed on the Moon from 1969 through 1972. The Journal is intended as a resource for anyone wanting to know what happened during the missions and why. It includes a corrected transcript of all recorded conversations between the lunar surface crews and Houston. The Journal also contains extensive, interwoven commentary by the Editor and by ten of the twelve moonwalking astronauts.
Interesting? Heck yes. Important? Quite.
By the time anyone else walks on the moon anybody who was involved is going to be pushing their century mark or dead, and long retired certainly. They won’t be around to tell us about the hard lessons learned – we damned well better write as much of it down while we can.
Ask anyone who gets and does something for a living – be it welding or flying airplanes or leading a patrol in Juwayba – book learning is all well and good but learning from people that have learned the hard way is vital.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Because it has a light side , and a dark side, and it binds the Universe together!
And also does a pretty good job on ducts, too. Which is why I remembered that joke: I’ve been up in the attic crawlspace, possibly my least-favorite place in my house, although flat on my back with an adjustable wrench in my hand trying to remedy a persistent malevolent leak under a bathroom sink is in neck-and-neck competition.
Did Martha Stewart ever do a show, or a magazine article about replacing lengths of AC duct? I seriously doubt she ever has; it has all the charm and appeal of a DIY septic tank pumping. About all that can be said in favor is that replacing lengths of ducting yourself is significantly cheaper than paying someone, even an illegal alien to do it for you. I was actually briefed on how to do it, by a client six or seven jobs ago, who did HVAC as a side-line. Being that my house is fairly new, and everything about it is standard and bought by the contractor truck-load, swapping out any elements, from door-knobs to the kitchen sink is a pretty straightforward one-for-one exchange with stuff on the shelf at Lowe’s or Home Depot.
See, this came up because I had the yearly maintenance inspection done a couple of weeks ago, and the technician said the AC unit is fine and functioning as well as could be expected… but that the ducts were well beyond anything but last rites… there were in fact, gaping holes in the inner layer of the largest ducts, where the plastic outer layer had disintegrated, and the fiberglass insulation layer had also dissolved. This must have developed late last summer, or perhaps over the winter… as I said, the attic crawlspace is not my most favorite place in the house. It does explain why the air emerging from the vents in some rooms was coming out as a less-than-frigid blast, even when the thermostat was set really, really low.
And this is South Texas, where air conditioning in the summer is absolutely positively essential. I don’t even live in one of those old-fashioned houses, which they used to build in the days before routine installation of AC… you know, the sort of houses with deep verandahs, thick walls and a good cross-breeze through tall windows on all sides? We flirted with the thought of patching the broken places by wrapping them with layers of heavy plastic trash bags and a lot of duct tape… but how would we know if there were other breaks, in places we couldn’t see them? It was just easier and probably cheaper in the long run to buy three boxes of different-sized ducting, two packages of plastic ties… and lots of duct tape, and spend a lot of uncomfortable time scrambling around in the rafters.
With luck, I will manage to replace all the segments running from the central unit to the various registers without putting a foot through the ceiling. I can’t spend too long up there at a stretch; either… it gets too hot, now that I have stopped up most of the cool-air leaks!