Happy Halloween
It's supposed to be a bat. Design had it hanging upside down, but Mr. B. convinced me to do it upright. So it's a little droopy. Still, a fair approximation of what Pumpkin Master tools can do.
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October 31, 2006
Valour IT Project
Join the outrage over Kerry's remarks, or better yet, join the donors of the Valour IT project to provide voice-activated laptops for injured and wounded troops, for which Instapundit has provided a graphic with donor buttons here showing the amounts collected thus far for four services. Don't see Coast Guard there. Can't say why they spell valor with a French u.
Flying his true colors
Look who's slandering the troops, again, as if he didn't do a good enough job on us in the 1970s.
Sen. John Effing Kerry, D-Mass.
"'You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq,' he said, to a mixture of laughter and gasps."
Right, if you don't study, you'll have to serve your country, along with the rest of the ignorant soldiers. But if you do study, you can be a lying phony like John Effing Kerry, marry rich, get elected by people too dumb to know better, run for president on the peace party ticket as a "war hero" (with the able assistance of the draft-dodging, prevaricating news media), and never have to work again.
UPDATE Response from office of Sen. John McCain: "Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education."
Well, they are deficient in duplicity and dishonesty, subjects in which Kerry scores very high.
Via Instapundit
Entertaining commentary on the subject at, where else, Black Five.
21st century pumpkin carving
If you're still carving your pumpkin(s) for Halloween tonight, or still contemplating the idea, get thee to a grocery or hardware store and buy a set of Pumpkin Masters tools and patterns. I gave up long ago on using a kitchen knife on the tough surface of a pumpkin for fear of stabbing myself. Pumpkin Masters tools aren't very sharp but are serrated so they cut right through, and they're small enough to allow tracing intricate designs. I'll put our best ones here at Rancho Roly Poly up in pics later on tonight.
October 30, 2006
Adios Longhorns
El Nino is being merciless, away down there off the coast of Peru, so it looks like Mr. B. and his Tiger Cub buds will not be making a Longhorns practice for the fourth Thursday in a row. Because the field at DK-Royal-Memorial Stadium will be soggy again and they'll move the practice inside where there is no seating for cubs and parents. Oh, well, it was a cool invite. And there's always next week, maybe, after Oklahoma State, which might be another Tech, or worse.
From the Austin-San Antonio National Weather Service Forecast Center in New Braunfels.
Wednesday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 61. East northeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.
Thursday: A 50 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 71. Northeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.
Rainwise, El Nino is being merciful. Spacing it out like this--midweek now for four weeks--means we haven't had a flash flood yet. Of course, we haven't had a lot of rain, either, and the lakes/reservoirs are still way down.
October 29, 2006
Norks & Iran: almost ready for you
More than two decades in the making, ridiculed as "Star Wars" when proposed during the Reagan Administration, the Airborne Laser finally will be equipped with its laser, in 2007, at Kirtland AFB, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then move on to aerial tests in 2008. "When finished, ABL will be capable of destroying a ballistic missile during its boost phase, while it is still climbing in the Earth’s atmosphere and before it can deploy its warheads."
Even if it has only one, primitive North Korean warhead.
October 28, 2006
Roosevelt time
Some places are spared tomorrow's setting back of clocks one hour, according to Wikipedia, because they don't do the daylight savings trick. Next year daylight savings time, which my grandfather derisively called "Roosevelt time" for its originator in America, FDR, will start earlier and end later. Happy extra hour of sleep.
Liberal media? Uh uh
Roger L. Simon is getting wound up about CNN, but he makes a good point the MSM detractors often overlook.
"Of course, Blitzer is only a typical representative of his class. Nothing special or exceptional in any way, except for his success and longevity. Now some people call this class the 'liberal media.' I reject that idea and terminology entirely. There is nothing liberal about them at all. They are a rich, privileged class much like the bourgeoisie in a Bunuel movie (or Moliere, of course). What is 'liberal' is only a talking point to preserve their perquisites. Perhaps these values were there at some point, but that was decades ago in another universe. Now the real issues are good tailoring and homes in the country. Nothing should disturb that."
UPDATE On the other hand, as Mark Halprin, political director of ABC News, tells Hugh Hewitt, there is no question of liberal political bias in the news media.
HH: …the media hates the military, has a deep suspicion of it. Do you agree with that?
MH: I totally agree. It’s one of the huge biases, along with gays, guns, abortion, and many other things....
MH: First of all, I never say MSM, because I don’t believe the old media is mainstream. They’re out of the mainstream on most of the issues I’ve been referring to. So I don’t use that phrase. I believe that as I’ve said several times, happy to say again, that anyone who’s conservative in this country has every justification to be skeptical about anything, an internal memo, or product that goes on the air, from the old media, because of a forty year or more history of liberal bias on a range of issues. And after what CBS News did in 2004, regarding the President’s National Guard record, I would be…I am thankful that any conservative looks to us ever for news and information, given how outrageous what they did was.
Transcript here worth reading. Via Powerline.
Texas vs Texas Tech
This should be a fast, high-scoring game out there in Lubbock on the South Plains. Rather like basketball except with longer passes. There is some thought (Austin sportswriter Kirk Bohls) that the Longhorns will focus on the ground game to control the clock, but when Tech gets the ball, the best they've got is an aerial circus, so the passing will predominate. The bookies line is Texas by 11, but I hope it's more than that. TBS, 6 p.m. CDT
UPDATE Yipes, Tech 31, Texas 21 at the half and Tech has almost 400 yards passing. Upset? Maybe.
AGAIN OK, Texas 35, Tech 31. Saltshaker a blogger at statesman.com summed this up real well before the game:
"What does (Tech coach Mike) Leach do to get these less than recruits to make these kinds of plays and run non stop?
"Try double conditioning, and making the receivers only catch 60mph tennis balls, fired out of a ball gun. You think I’m kidding? I’m not. He believes the boys must be in better shape and be able to catch screaming tennis balls. That’s why he produces such an array of good receivers so quickly.
"I'm imagining Jean Claude Van Damme style training montages with Sensei Leach making the young QB wear a blind fold and 'feel' the open receiver.
"He doesn’t run a training camp.....it's a football monastery.
"Colt, your mission this week......just get us the hell out of there with a win."
FINAL He did. Texas wins, 35-31. Whew!
Weaving a tangled Webb
I confess to having read only one of James Webb's war novels, the first Vietnam one, Fields of Fire, which I've read still sells, along with the others that have made Webb one of America's few fiction writers who can make a better-than-good living at it. But I did read his non-fictional Born Fighting, and enjoyed its evocation of the redneck backbone of the American military. So I was amazed when Webb decided to become a Democrat to run for the Senate from Virginia. The Republicans, with whom Webb's right-wing populism would be far more logically aligned, already had their candidate, you see.
Tangled Webb, subtitled Cognitive Dissonance in Virginia, shows why Virginia's miniscule number of Democrats are having to hold their noses to vote for him. Meanwhile, as the Weekly Standard article hillariously demonstrates, the libs say they will, in the words of one activist for Mexican illegals "consult with him, advise him going forward. Educate him."
Good luck.
Webb really has no chance in Virginia, as a county Democrat party chairman of my acquaintence assured me, unless his opponent Sen. George Allen's ineptitude gives it to him. Then came the recent stunner about Webb's incest-pedophillia imagery in one of his books. Webb's done, stick a fork in him. Unless, in the words of a colorful former Louisiana governor, Allen is caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
UPDATE Cute, but no nicotene. Allen got beat, Webb is the new senator, and maybe someday in his six-year tenure we'll read about why this man's man who writes about war needs to have incest-pedophilia in his tales.
Today's pretty picture
Comet Swan, photographed by Italy's Cimini Astronomical Observatory. The comet is now visible in the Northern Hemisphere through binoculars on the northwest horizon, where the sky is dark enough.
Cards win the series
"Favored by few, the St. Louis Cardinals used an unlikely cast of characters to win their first World Series in nearly a quarter century. Jeff Weaver dominated, David Eckstein drove in two runs on balls that didn't leave the infield and the Cards took advantage of another wild throw by a Tigers pitcher to beat Detroit 4-2 on Friday night and won the Series in five games."
Tom Higdon, an old Army buddy who lives near St. Louis, will be celebrating this weekend.
Hopalong Cassidy
Mr. Boy watches Power Rangers and various super heroes, mostly on Blockbuster DVDs. I'm sorry he's missing Hopalong and his horse Topper, which I watched in shadowy black and white on "Footlight Theater" in the mid-1950s. But he might find Hoppy shallow, as I occasionally did.
Hoppy was a Californian but his Bar 20 ranch was "in Northwestern Texas," according to the official fan site by the owners of his copyright. "The town in the [original] novel is called Buckskin. Population of one hundred inhabitants, located in the valley of the Rio Pecos fifty miles south of the Texas-New Mexico line."
Even better known than Hopalong was the actor who played his sidekick, Windy, Gabby Hayes, who went on to play second banana to Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys.
Think I'll give it a try, anyhow, with this $7 DVD of five Hoppy westerns from the 1940s. Afterall, I introduced Mr. B. to the inane Power Rangers. Maybe I can work the trick a second time, and he'll foresake the PR's Kung Fu moves, in favor of Hoppy's historically-accurate high-crowned cowboy hat, a cap pistol and even some silver spurs for his sneakers.
October 27, 2006
Hitting the Bend
For something new in tourism, visit the desert.
"Big Bend has been blessed with abundant rain since the beginning of August. This year, we are enjoying the Chihuahuan Desert's version of a monsoon. It is not an annual event. If it were, it wouldn't be a desert. Daily temperatures have been very pleasant, much cooler than average. Bring a sweater."
Mookie's ticket needs punching
Uncle Jimbo at Black Five tears Muqtada al-Sadr a brand new one. But UJ admits that death, slow or quick, would be better.
"Mookie is the idiot son of a family that can trace its lineage directly to Mohammed but he has failed to distinguish himself at any religious scholarship. He excels at gathering groups of thugs together, getting them jacked up on old time religion, and collecting satchels of Mullah money."
Meanwhile Iraqi PM Maliki owes his parliamentary coalition--the votes that keep him prime minister--to Mookie's voters. But Mookie's thugs may have been involved in the recent kidnapping of an American soldier, certainly have killed others, and been instrumental in keeping up the level of violence in Baghdad. Something's got to give.
Ralph Peters agrees.
"I lost faith in our engagement in Iraq last week. I can pinpoint the moment. It came when I heard that Maliki had demanded--successfully--that our military release a just-captured deputy of Muqtada al-Sadr who was running death squads."
Set-recs
Set-recs, for "set the record straight" is what the old time newspapermen called corrections, which were always plentiful although frowned upon. After five years of pummeling from the not-always-accurate MSM's preferred war narrative, it's about time the defense department entered the set-rec business, here.
They're also into argument for their side of the issue, even when rebuffed.
"Second, the issue is not Newsweek’s position versus the ‘government position.’ The issue is that your readers were given a one-sided, opinion-laced article on Afghanistan based on falsehoods—which is something that journalists and editors are usually concerned about. Your dismissive reply is disappointing, to say the least.”
More, please.
Via Op-For
October 26, 2006
Sensor web
A new way for satellites and rovers to study a planet. Today, Earth. Tomorrow, the moon, Mars and beyond.
"EO-1 is a new breed of satellite that can think for itself. 'We programmed it to notice things that change (like the plume of a volcano) and take appropriate action,' Chien explains. EO-1 can re-organize its own priorities to study volcanic eruptions, flash-floods, forest fires, disintegrating sea-ice—in short, anything unexpected."
Third time was not the charm
The Cub Scouts got another bye on seeing a Longhorns' practice this afternoon. The field at DK Royal-Memorial Stadium is soggy from yesterday's rains, so the team will practice indoors to avoid injuries, and there's no seating at the indoor field. El Nino gets the blame for making this a wetter-than-normal fall. Maybe next week?
October 25, 2006
Paris burning?
Not yet, but the French cops are getting ready for it just in case.
UPDATE "A year ago this Friday, the poor, predominantly Muslim housing projects that ring France's large cities went up in flames. Just this past weekend, as if to mark the anniversary, a group of about 30 "youths" in a Paris suburb (banlieue) attacked a packed bus in broad daylight, forcing the passengers off, torching the bus itself and stoning the firefighters who arrived on the scene. In recent weeks, similar sorts of gangs have set upon police patrols in the banlieues, throwing stones and wielding metal bars. Plus ça change, indeed."
Poster girl
Aussie Beccy Cole is one country singer whose style is to embrace the troops in The Long War.
Via Blackfive, of course.
Uranium melt
Latest from the translated Iraqi documents indicates Saddam (also called "the Leader God") was still interested in nukes in 2001.
"...Saddam was asked by the Organization Staff to give his permission for re-using the infamous ' Degussa Vacuum furnaces' that were used in the previous and prohibited Iraq nuclear program. These furnaces can be used to melt uranium and other nuclear related activities."
The site seems to be having server problems, so here's Google's cache of this translation.
Climbing the beanstalk
The official results of the Space Elevator Games are in.
"...the competition was obviously a huge success. It was the first full-form competition, and we already had 7 major universities participate, three professional engineering teams, and one aerospace company. We've had very good press coverage, and a spectator crowd of 20,000 people."
The climber definitely has improved. The beanstalk still needs work. Next year's prizes will be increased to $500,000.
Bush unfiltered
You may not like what he says, but you have a better chance of hearing it in his words if you read the transcript.
"I'm sure people who watch your TV screens think the entire country is embroiled in sectarian conflict and that there's constant killing everywhere in Iraq. Well, if you listened to General Casey yesterday, 90 percent of the action takes place in five of the 18 provinces. And around Baghdad, it's limited to a 30-mile area. And the reason I bring that up is that while it seems to our American citizens that nothing normal is taking place -- and I can understand why, it's a brutal environment there, particularly that which is on our TV screens -- that there is farmers farming, there are small businesses growing, there's a currency that's relatively stable, there's an entrepreneurial class, there's commerce."
Peep, peep
Couldn't resist borrowing this from Lone Star Times.
That Longhorns practice
Mr. Boy and his fellow Cub Scouts allegedly are on for tomorrow's Longhorns practice, the third rescheduling in a row due to rain. Meanwhile, it's raining again, and if it rains enough today and tonight, presumably the field will be wet enough once again (as it was last Thursday) to move the coaches to move the practice inside, so none of the players are injured. Or not. We shall see. Hopefully we can see a practice before the season's over.
October 24, 2006
Explorer 7 not so hot
I downloaded the new IE7 edition in hopes that it might be faster than Firefox. It is, somewhat, but has other quirks. For one thing the favorites can't be easily loaded from Firefox, and the IE7 homepage is stuck and can't be changed. I've tried every way I can think of. What a piece of sh***!
The Browser Den review is more complimentary but also discovers enough quirks to make switching back to it from Firefox not worth the trouble.
Via SlashDot
October 23, 2006
Robert Johnson's graves
Reading "Looking Around Mississippi," a limited-edition 2005 photo and essay book by Mississippi television weatherman and features writer Walt Grayson, I was reminded there is more than one location for the grave of Delta blues musician and composer Robert Johnson who inspired Elvis and the Rolling Stones and many more.
His 1938 "death certificate simply said he was buried at Zion Church," Grayson writes. "For years no one knew which one."
They're still confused, judging from this web site and this one, the former choosing to locate Johnson's remains under a simple flat marker in a family plot behind Payne Chapel in Quito (short for mosquito) reading "Resting in the Blues," and the latter preferring a more ornate cenotaph at Mount Zion Church at Sheppardtown in Leflore County. It says quite a lot more, including "his blues addressed generations he would never know."
Grayson, a Baptist minister, contends the "most likely" grave for Johnson is the one with the modest upright stone at Little Zion Church on the Money Road north of Greenwood, which has this reproduced in Johnson's handwriting: "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He will call me from the Grave." Above that it says "he influenced millions beyond his time."
Each marker is attended by flowers sometimes and offerings most of the time, of pennies and half-empty pony bottles of Jack Daniels. The devout obviously are taking no chances.
Grayson's book, which is full of good reporting and fine photographs, is available via the publisher, and also starts at $144.95 $79.41 used at Amazon.
Rain breeder
Hurricane Paul, off the west coast of Mexico, is expected to be no more than a tropical depression by the time it clears the Mexican mountains on Thursday morning. Meanwhile, it is sending an express train of moisture into Texas, increasing our chances for light to heavy rain tomorrow through Wednesday. As usual, we can use it, being a bit ahead of normal in the city but well behind at the airport.
UPDATE From National Weather Service in New Braunfels: YEARLY RAINFALL FOR 2006 WAS AS FOLLOWS...SAN ANTONIO 17.38 INCHES...9.9 INCHES BELOW NORMAL...AUSTIN BERGSTROM 20.99 INCHES...7.03 INCHES BELOW NORMAL...AUSTIN MABRY 28.15 INCHES...0.73 INCHES ABOVE NORMAL...AND DEL RIO 9.15 INCHES...7.44 INCHES BELOW NORMAL.
Then Paul weakened to a tropical storm before going ashore but, drawing on Gulf moisture, the rain forcast is still on through Wednesday night.
October 22, 2006
Elevating space
Getting a few hits today from people looking for Space Elevator news from Las Cruces. Not a lot to tell, except that the tether and crawler competitions didn't amount to much: "Saturday’s Space Elevator Games...showed that they are still a long way off."
Ted Semon has the latest:
"The Tether Challenge ended just about a half-hour ago and NASA’s Prize money for the Tether Challenge is safe for another year."
Alas.
UPDATE It wasn't all a bust. The crawler of the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team (USST) made the fastest ascent (just not quite fast enough) and is expected to do better next year.
New link
We're moving on up to the big time, as the old TV line had it, or at least becoming available to the readers of a funny blog called "The Passing Parade--Cheap Shots of a Drive By Mind" in New York, as we previously did to those of SimplyJews, another satiric blog in Israel. Most of the links in my blog roll are just ones I like, not folks who actually link here. But Akaky Bashmachkin, of The Passing Parade (the first half of whose title reminds me of a Reader Rabbit computer game Mr. Boy used to play) said in his post New Blog: "If you are interested in what goes on down there deep in the heart of Texas, then I suggest you go over to Dick Stanley's fine TexasScribbler blog and take a look at what he has to say about life, politics, and other important things down Texas way and throughout this our Great Republic." Thanks Akaky, we'll try to live up to that. Akaky's nom de plume is taken from Russian writer Gogol's short story "The Overcoat."
Micromanagement
The more I think about this Land Warrior concept, almost twenty pounds of wearable electronics that some 9th ID troops soon to deploy to Iraq will be toting, the more it seems to me not designed for the individual infantryman to know where his fellows are on the battlefield so much as for his commander to micromanage him from afar. In Vietnam the cliche was the battalion commander high above the troops in his helicopter telling small-unit leaders what to do. With Land Warrior locating every troop by GPS, I can imagine the Pentagon "dropping in" for an audio-video briefing in the midst of a firefight.
The Night Hank Williams Died
Saw this Larry L. King play last night for the first time. I can never figure out with King whether he's simply intent on milking all the Texas cliches (like in "Best Little Whorehouse...") or giving us a genuine view of Texas culture as it once was and might be again. TNHWD, at the Austin Plahouse through Nov. 19. does the latter pretty well, although it piled on rather too many of the former. Like the stereotypical dumb football player who couldn't forget his big game and so made a mess of the rest of his life. It troubled me some that the one-stoplight West Texas town in the play was named Stanley, and it took me the whole two hours to realize that the title was a metaphor, but I came away liking the actors and pretty much everything else, except the ending. I wanted the Hank Williams wannabee to be redeemed, somehow, and the loose ends (like who was Nellie Bess's daddy) tied up neatly. I realize that's not the way Art is supposed to be, but it would be more humanly satisfying, and might sell a lot more tickets.
October 21, 2006
"Who stole my Snickers?"
That's the Tuscola Kid's first-huddle ice-breaker, according to the Austin American-Statesman's Suzanne Halliburton. She uses it to illustrate how he's become the Longhorns' team leader despite being a redshirt freshman. He'll need it to beat the Nebraska Bugeaters today. (Bugeaters was the Cornhuskers first team name, back in the 1800s.) Could be a close game, with the bookies spotting Texas just five points and at least one Austin pundit describing how they might become a two-loss team today. But they won't. Hook Em!
UPDATE Awfully tight game. Just 22 to 20. But we'll take it. On to a more beatable Texas Tech.
October 20, 2006
View from the black
Scrunching this up took a while, but it still conveys the essential detail. Increasing small amounts of the incandescent planet are dark at night, except for the oceans, of course. /NASA
Tet on the Tigris
Bush's political and media opponents are having a grand time with his remark that there may be some similarities between Tet, 1968, in Vietnam and Baghdad, in 2006--at least in the way that the enemy is trying to influence American politics. Poor man, he has no way to win with some people. If he says nothing, he's uncommunicative. If he says something, he's either blundered or engaging in spin. British military historian John Kagan says he blundered. At least Kagan's numbers are instructive.
"By January 1968, total American casualties in Vietnam — killed, wounded and missing — had reached 80,000 and climbing...In a bad week in Vietnam, the US could suffer 2,000 casualties. Since 2003, American forces in Iraq have never suffered as many as 500 casualties a month...In any year of the Vietnam war, the communist party of North Vietnam sent 200,000 young men to the battlefields in the south, most of whom did not return. Vietnam was one of the largest and costliest wars in history. The insurgency in Iraq resembles one of the colonial disturbances of imperial history."
Via Instapundit
Never forget
The recent discovery in New York City of human remains--some as large as arm or leg bones--found at the site of the 11 September attacks is a ghostly reminder of why we are where we are today, with a looming mid-term election which could change the course of the war begun on 12 September.
The Democrats are pummelling the Republicans for running political ads referring to the 5-year-old attacks, contending the R's are sleazy to make political points off tragedy, but of course they would do it too, given the chance to govern again. How could any party in good conscience not mention the threat and seek to meet it? The human remains at ground zero remind us what's important.
Blast from the past
Google Earth is a neat piece of software built out of a mosaic of satellite images of the planet's surface. It gives you the illusion of flying while using zoom lens vision to inspect the trees as well as the forests. So when an OCS classmate sent our class email list a guide to what he said was a Google Earth "tour of the route we walked/marched/ran one weekend early in the cycle" at Fort Benning in the winter of 1967-68, I went along for the ride.
I didn't remember the walk/march/run, of course, and wonder how he did. He also didn't stay in the army but became a civilian after the war, so has a lot of intervening non-army memories. But it's a fairly scenic, memorable route. In the Google Earth program, he dubbed it "the river walk" because it mostly follows the Chattahoochee River in western Georgia--which has waterfalls above Columbus, where Benning is, but below it was getting steamboat traffic from the Gulf of Mexico as early as 1828. I could recreate our event with a generalized memory of the pain of trying to breathe after several miles of pounding asphalt in combat boots. But what a computer ride. It almost made me nauseated just watching it, because of the way the program made the frequent turns at the beginning of the route in a jerky helicopter motion. If one really flew that way all the passengers would have their faces in the paper bags.
October 19, 2006
Soldiers of the right
"He knew that this uniform represented something good and that he was part of a legacy of men and women who have protected what is good and right in this world.”
A eulogy for Staff Sgt. Jose A. Lanzarin, of Del Rio, and Pfc. Shane R. Austin, of Edgerton, Kansas, two of the dead in this deadly month of the war, as the bad guys try once again to influence an election.
The space elevator games
Ted Semon's informative blog is the best way to keep up with the entrants preparing their crawlers for the games that start tomorrow in Las Cruces. University of Michigan, Germans, Canadians. They look like toys, but proof of concept is the aim.
Canada, oh Canada
Op-For has put up some Canadian combat videos recently, demonstrating the Canuck's prowess in the Afghanistan campaign. Now comes Israellycool quoting from a speech by Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper on the Maple Leaf's new Middle East policy.
“Those who attacked Israel and those who sponsor such attacks ... seek what they and those like them have always sought — the destruction of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish people,” he said. “Those who seek to destroy the Jews ... will for the same reason ultimately seek to destroy us all and that my friends is why Canada’s new government has reacted with speed and spoken with clarity on recent events in the Middle East.”
That about sums it up.
Today's pretty picture -- sor' a thing.
Congestion near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. More than 180,000 stars. And you thought your neighborhood was crowded. Sweeps field (upper left corner) refers to Hubble Space Telescope's sweep of the area hunting for possible solar systems--looking for brief, periodic changes in brightness when a Jupiter-size planet passes in front of its parent star--candidates for which are within the green circles. /NASA
October 18, 2006
Under the gun
Severe weather developing over the next few hours as a big cold front moves across Central Texas. Meteorologist Troy Kimmel expects we'll see some action at the Rancho. So I may be offline a while.
Troy says, "I do expect thunderstorms to develop with some thunderstorms possibly becoming severe with the primary risk being damaging straightline thunderstorm wind. A severe weather watch may be issued over the local area within the next few hours. You can see the NWS/SPC discussion and associated graphic for this mesoscale discussion [here]."
UPDATE Turned into a nice, soaking rain of half an inch to an inch and a half over much of the area. No wind damage or hail at the Rancho.
Texas vs. Nebraska
Interesting tidbit from the Austin American-Statesman the other day about Saturday's Texas vs. Nebraska game (ABC, 11 a.m. CDT). They are two of the only four college football programs with at least 800 wins. The other two are Michigan and Notre Dame.
Broken bombs
Here's something you seldom hear amid the chatter about the vulnerability of the Russian arsenal. Even if you find some Russian nukes to steal, you may not be able to make them work:
"Russian nukes are more high maintenance than most, and after as little as six months without tinkering and replacement of worn parts, the bombs no longer work."
Via StrategyPage.com
October 17, 2006
Let the games begin
Just three days to the opening of the Space Elevator games in Las Cruces, NuMex, where we can hope to see some new improvements in the technology that ain't rocket science but presents challenges and opportunities of its own--and the promise of a smooth, no-pressure ride into the black. /image by Christian Science Monitor
October 16, 2006
Cub preview
Mr. Boy and his Tiger Cub pals get another shot at attending a Longhorns football practice on Thursday, before which I will be trying to narrow down his color choices for his first Pinewood Derby entry. Uncannily he drew a profile for the car on his rectangular block of soft pine that almost matched the optimal shape found in the "speed kit" books available on the Internet for tips n tricks, etc. Indeed, thanks to a family friend who is a former scoutmaster, Mr. B.'s block has already been cut by band saw, and belt-sanded, and his "axles" and plastic wheels polished with the aid of sandpaper and an electric drill. It's not all adult-takeover, as Mr. B.'s fingers did the actual work. More later on an interesting industry that's grown up around this pre-teen cub scout activity.
UPDATE The Tiger-Cubs-attend-practice was postponed for a second time, this time due to a soggy field being an injury risk to the players getting ready for what could be a tough game against Nebraska. The practice was moved inside where there isn't enough seating for the cubs and parents.
Computer to Texas: Not impressed
The first Bowl Championship Series poll is out and Texas is almost out of the top ten, falling to 9th despite ranking 5th in the human polls. Texas fans are understandably irritated, especially since three other one-loss teams are ranked ahead of the Longhorns, but it's early times with five games to go for the season--still plenty of time to rise, though one wonders if it would be high enough to make Texas a bowl defender of its own 2005 championship.
The Tuscola Kid is coming along nicely, just being ignored because of the chump nature of his recent opponents (with the exception of Oklahoma) but Texas is beginning a hard slog with Nebraska this weekend and winning out should raise its rankings significantly.
October 15, 2006
Strong Army
The 2:32 heroic music to the new Army recruiting video keeps running through my head and I keep returning for another hit of its booming drums and stacatto brass from the Youtube link at Black Five. The opening shot of a platoon with a billowing cavalry guidon leads to men in camo with automatic rifles slung across their chest armor against a backdrop of diving Apache gunships.
I love the subliminal message, that while some contend the Army is broken, as the narrative says, "there is nothing on this green earth that is stronger than the US Army."
More on the new slogan, Army Strong, which replaces Army of One. Although some are already ridiculing the Hulk Smash grammar and theme, it looks like a winner to me. A great wartime recruiting tool, and a valuable information warfare direct response to the armed doubters of the world.
UPDATE Blackfive seems to have dropped its link to the vid, so here's the one at YouTube--at least until Google decides it's too bellicose. More likely to be permanent is the link at Army Times which needs Windows Media.
October 14, 2006
Texas vs Baylor
Or, in other words, already looking ahead from today's 6 p.m. tussle with the Bears in Austin to Nebraska. Horns Fan at Burnt Orange Nation says he will "enjoy watching us slam the Bears on the field." And to Missouri, which begins to look like the Longhorns opponent for the Big 12 title, if the Horns win out their season. Right now, even with close games with Nebraska and Oklahoma State, that looks likely from here.
UPDATE Then the Ags beat Mizzou 25 to 19 and upset this analysis.
Poor Aggies
Worth a chuckle, via Scott Boswell at Dallas Sports Powerhouse. Wherever it came from.
October 13, 2006
Nuclear watchdogs
Southern Methodist University in Dallas operates two nuclear blast detectors like this one--one south of Reno, Nevada, and another in Big Bend, in West Texas. No word from the university whether their instruments detected anything from North Korea, but since they're funded by the Defense Deparment, they presumably are keeping mum until the Bush Administration issues its definitive report. Popular Mechanics describes the international detection system in this link from Instapundit.
Meanwhile, Pajamas Media thinks there's little chance it was a hoax: "The emerging consensus is that such a trick would be very difficult; getting all of the TNT to explode in the same nanosecond is nearly impossible."
UPDATE Comes the confirmation. "The United States reported Monday that radiation-detecting aircraft had confirmed that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test a week ago." Size: less than a kiloton. Which is impressive enough: even low-yield nuclear weapons are very powerful and destructive. "The nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 10-15 kilotons, so weapons of up to five kilotons are still quite large." Call it a mini-Hiroshima. Suburb sized.
Fighting back
"Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got - books, pencils, legs and arms.
"'Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success,' said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools."
It'll work if they surprise him/her. Hope they're teaching them some version of situational awareness.
Via Instapundit
UPDATE Good advice: "In a school shooting, if you can leave then get out. If not, don’t cower or hide. Fight enough to get out."
Aaron Ross's girlfriend
Texas Longhorns star cornerback Aaron Ross, who picked off the Sooners a record three times in last week's fourth quarter, hits a lot harder but can't run as fast as his girlfriend. That would be beauty Sanya Richards, an Olympic gold medalist, according to the Austin American-Statesman's sportswriter Suzanne Haliburton. Nice to see that Ross, an all-around nice guy and one athlete whose name doesn't appear on police blotters, is doing so well off as well as on the field.
UPDATE: Then, in 2008, Sanya competed in the Olympics in China, and seems to be doing well.
Army Strong
That's the new slogan, which goes with this good video available at Black Five. The new words replace the older Army of One, which I thought was a nice improvement over Be All You Can Be, the butt of many anti-American slurs. But my favorite still is the one I saw on posters in the early 1960s: The New Action Army.
UPDATE It's also a good counter for those who like to contend that the Army is broken.
Crucifiction returns
The side of sectarian violence in Iraq you may not see in the MSM.
"Christians are living a terrified life in Mosul and Baghdad. Several priests have been kidnapped, girls are being raped and murdered and a couple of days ago a fourteen year old boy was crucified in the Christian neighborhood Albasra."
Via Gates of Vienna
Comet hunting
Tonight's the night to get the telescope out of the garage and, shortly after sunset, start pointing it northwest, just below and to the right of the handle of the Big Dipper, in search of Comet Swan, a green glow out there in the black.
October 12, 2006
Cub Scout privileges
I just finished sewing the den number under the flag on the right sleeve of Mr. B.'s cub scout uniform shirt. It's not any more crooked than the others Mom did. She rationalizes that he won't be standing still long enough for anyone to notice. That surprises me, since she was a girl scout, but maybe they didn't stand in formation for flag ceremonies as much as the cubs did. I think we'll have to have the dry cleaners take them all off and start over again, but that can wait for the conclusion of today's adventure. All new cub scouts in the Austin area are exclusively invited to a practice of the Texas Longhorns football team, which defeated Oklahoma last Saturday 28-10. If it doesn't rain, at 4 p.m. we'll be in the stands at Darrell K. Royal-Memorial Stadium, which is more or less downtown now that the city has outgrown its longtime boundaries. No entrance fee, except a boy in a new cub scout uniform accompanied by a parent. They'll probably be able to tell if the uniform is new by how crooked the patches have been sewn on. If it rains, the practice will move indoors and the cubs will have to do something else. So my fingers are crossed that it doesn't rain-- even though meteorologists give it a 30 percent chance of doing so after 1 p.m., rising to 40 percent after dark.
UPDATE Shortly after 11 a.m., UT Athletic Department bowed to the weather forecast and moved the practice indoors. But instead of canceling the cub scout invite, they put it off until next Thursday.
October 11, 2006
Feeling a draft? You shouldn't.
"Dr. Francis Harvey, Secretary of the Army...notes that recruitment is at a 9-year high and that reenlistment is very strong. Harvey talks about the Army's strength levels, force structure, equipment maintenance loads, and general ability to withstand the stress of the Long War against terrorism. In particular, he responds rather forcefully to claims that the Army is lowering standards to make its recruitment numbers."
Instapundit's Glenn and Helen "show." Radio, in essence, when you want it.
New Market Battlefield
One last glance back at our week in the Shenandoah Valley where Richard Torovsky, my former Vietnam associate (and a Citadel graduate who is also Mr. Boy's godfather), is president of the New Market Rotary Club, which meets Wednesdays here. RT also is co-owner of the Reveille Vineyard, at nearby Quicksburg, which celebrated its first marketable crop this year. Yay. New Market's battlefield park and museum are worth anybody's visit, or just explore it on the Web. The story of the young VMI cadets who marched 80 miles in three days to help the Confederate Army defeat the invading Yankees is inspiring enough. I was somewhat put out to discover the museum's purported cataloguing of all Confederate veterans does not include my paternal great grandfather, Pvt. Edward Parker Stanley of the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment. It was part of Griffin's/Barksdale's/Humphreys' Mississippi Brigade, which was in Stonewall Jackson's "foot cavalry" in 1862. But otherwise the museum is a stirring experience.
Explosive politico
"The IAF destroyed a weapons storage facility in Gaza City over the course of Tuesday night....The storage facility was located in the home of Hamas parliament member Maryam Farhat, well-known for her oft-expressed pride in the 'martyr's death' of three of her six sons. Farhat, who goes by the nom de geurre Um Nidal, even appeared in a video with one of her sons prior to his dispatch to a Jewish community, where he murdered five people before being shot dead."
The family that kills together... Something tells me even this creature is protective of her surviving sons.
October 10, 2006
Of tractors, parrots and cousins
Mr. Boy enjoyed the Virginia interlude, getting to help drive a tractor at his godfather's Shenandoah Valley vineyard and see the house parrot while maintaining a respectful distance from her curved and pointed beak. Then he got to spend a few days with his older and younger cousins from California and Mississippi who converged on Roanoke's grandest hotel for my niece's wedding, a get together of more than 250 relatives, friends and other guests from around the country.
He was quite good despite long hours in cars and on planes. For the latter he enjoyed the view out the window at eight miles high, remarking on the flight up there: "Mom, we're above the Earth!"
Gigging the mullahs
Cox And Forkum entered this one in the choice Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest with a hidden anti-Iranian motif that takes some looking and manipulating to spy out, or you can go here for it, which you should anyway because it's a good story. The cartoon lost. Wasn't vile enough.
El Nino part 2
Rain is coming down hard at times at the Rancho with already four inches in some spots across the city, and a flash flood warning and a tornado watch until 2 p.m. It's ponding on the walks in the back yard. Mark Murray, KVUE meteorologist, says in today's paper that this is "a typical El Nino autumn weather pattern" and the radar shows plenty of yellow and some red, the colors of storm intensity. After more than a year of drought we can sure use the rain. But I am reminded of the rain in the Shenandoah Valley last week, which was steady instead of coming in bursts like our climate gets. I heard the valley's apple crop was losing out this year to Japan, free trade the old timers could not have imagined.
Watch list
My little trip to the sacred soil of Virgina, as Southerners used to say, but pretty much don't any more, produced several oddities. The most surprising was discovering before takeoff from Austin that my name was on the watch list. The ticket agent checked my driver's license and said it was someone else, so I'm off as far as Southwest is concerned. But it delayed getting a boarding pass and so I was one of the last on board for SW's unassigned seating. It insured a middle seat, between a burly Maryland fireman coming back from a convention in Texas, and a young fellow who wore headphones the whole way. I still don't know what to think about the watch listing. A convert jihadi, perhaps?
October 09, 2006
WTF?
I tried to remove some code from the index and wound up losing the template and everything else. If I can ever figure this out, I'll be back to normal. Or not.
Then I saved and rebuilt the above and the template returned but most of the sidebar is gone. If you're looking for any previous post, it's in the archives or recent posts. I will have to slowly rebuild the sidebar, incluidng the blogroll. I knew I shouldn't have started messing with html.
October 02, 2006
On a wing and prayer
Flying out tomorrow morning to Baltimore and thence by car to western Virginia for the niece's wedding. Will try to post from there, but the only known computer available has a phone line connection. So?
First word from the moon: Houston
While Times Online claims Neil Armstrong's planned utterance ("One small step..." etc.) was ungrammatical--and sci fi writer Arthur C. Clarke (writing in 1986) agreed--until an Australian computer expert recently uncovered the missing article. Well, every Texas schoolboy knows the REALLY important matter was the First Word from the lunar surface, not those planned-in-advance words.
That first word? "Houston," as in Armstrong reporting the landing by saying "Houston, Tranquillity base here..." etc. I used to have a colorful poster of an orbiting city made up by the Houston chamber of commerce crowing about it. As a paid scribe, I even once examined the official transcript to confirm it.
Comes Wikipedia claiming the first words were those of Buzz Aldrin: "The first words spoken from the surface were Aldrin's, who reported 'Contact Light' as the Eagle's landing probe touched the moon."
Harrumph. This is why, as we so often hear, Wikipedia's encyclopedic veracity is questionable at best.
October 01, 2006
The silly season
Pundits of my long-ago youth called the last few weeks before a national election "the silly season." They might also have said it was a time of bewildering blizzards of prevarications and outright lies dressed up as important investigative reporting and other revelations. Thus the current crop of Sunday MSM reports about that awful Bush administration. How else to win without making the incumbents look bad? On the Iraq war, however, recent claims that the violence is increasing, it's a civil war, etc., are contradicted by, among others, the Defense Department in its latest, i.e. Aug. 29, "Report on Stability and Progress in Iraq," as summarized by NRO which has a link to the pdf version:
"...attacks against Coalition forces have dropped since the summer of 2004, while casualties of Iraqi Security Forces have increased dramatically as ISF have moved to take main responsibility for providing security in the country ( p.32). Also the attacks remain confined mostly to one out of 18 provinces (Anbar) and Baghdad, while the vast majority of the country — 14 out of 18 provinces — has remained peaceful and largely secure."
Sure doesn't sound that way in the 24/7 news cycle, where "violence rocks Iraq" yet again, but what can you expect? It's the silly season--or, if you prefer, the season for lying.
U.S. Army Sgt. Jennifer M. Hartman, R.I.P.
"Farrell said the high attendance showed the community’s care and support. The motorcyclists set up a lengthy wall of flags on both sides of Route 309 to honor Hartman. Richard E. Marcks, Allentown, is a permanent ride captain for the Fifth Division of the Patriot Guard Riders, one of the groups that was represented. 'When the family came to the funeral home and they saw the wall of flags, they broke down in tears,' Marcks said."
