In a nutshell…
I would point you at Mike Rowe’s foundation, Profoundly Disconnected HERE, for reinforcement of the fact that skilled trades ARE needed and pay well. One other thing to think about, school loans. How much does the trade school cost vs. a 4 year degree at your average liberal arts college? Much less a prestige college???
h/t Timmy
Alma over at Cat Rotator’s Quarterly has a new short out! And it’s only 0.99 cents!!!
Click the cover to get it!
The blurb-
Of all the gods, men fear the Scavenger the most. Wise men and women take pains to avoid His notice.
When Osbert Manns’hillda ventures into the mine called Scavenger’s Gift, the Dark One takes notice. Or does he?
She packs a lot into 5000 words. This story is deep, in more ways than one! You’ll enjoy it, I know I did!
And I just finished what started out as a short, and dammit, by definition is STILL a short story… Contrary to what some ‘friends’ are saying… It’s under 20000 words…
It’s out to alpha readers now. Another chapter worth of tease is below the break. As always, comments appreciated, and as usual, unedited…
The air farce is, as usual, playing games to get their precious F-35 through large scale procurement… The supposed fly off between the A-10 and F-35… Yeah, right…
A close air support test should involve large numbers of ground troops in a highly fluid combat simulation in varied terrain, across many days. It should test the pilot’s ability to spot targets from the air in a chaotic and ever-changing situation. The test should also include a means of testing the program’s ability to fly several sorties a day, because combat doesn’t pause to wait for airplanes to become available.
<snip>
Air Force leaders came up with a simple solution to this dilemma. They are staging an unpublicized, quickie test on existing training ranges, creating unrealistic scenarios that presuppose an ignorant and inert enemy force, writing ground rules for the tests that make the F-35 look good—and they got the new testing director, the retired Air Force general Robert Behler, to approve all of it.
Full article, HERE at warisboring.com
Anybody with two brain cells to rub together know the F-35 cannot perform CAS at anything approaching the level of the A-10, especially when you take away all the fancy electronics and JTAGC directing them…
The F-35B (Marine VSTOL variant), loses over 30% of its fuel capacity, can’t load most bombs, and STILL is not combat capable. Which is ONE of the reasons, the other being F-18Cs falling apart, that the Marines are continuing to fly/support the AV-8Bs for at least a few more years.
The Navy is actually building more F-18s, ‘just in case’…
Reminds me of the ‘Navy’ F-111s that were delivered so McNamara could say the F-111 was a multiservice aircraft. Yeah, right…
Kicking the soap box back in the corner, and looking for my BP meds. Come on Trump, drain the damn swamp!!!
The bane of the writers existence is research, last night I spent five hours digging around in a variety of links and NATOPS. All for what will probably be two or maybe three paragraphs in the short story.
Having experts that one can reach out to is a great thing. But, there is a downside. They are going to read what you wrote, and will expect you to get it right! 🙂
Of course digging back in NATOPS is even more fun, we used to call it the blue pill, because it will put you to sleep faster than anything else the next issue, is to make sure that what you want to do, is actually possible and make sense with in the story.
Having said that, today’s job will be trying to figure out the hastily scribbled notes, and get that into some kind of coherent thought in the story. Lemme see… 120kts, or was it 105 kts, and 1000 feet, and 1.2 miles… sigh…
It’s ALWAYS in the details…
When not calling Trump supporters “Nazis” as a means to dehumanize us, the establishment media like to whine about the lack of civility in American politics, even as they cover up, ignore, downplay, or straight-up approve of the wave of violence and public harassment we are seeing against supporters of President Trump.
Full article with links, HERE from Breitbart.
I continue to find it amazing how ‘little’ coverage stuff like this gets, as opposed to ANYTHING that a Pub does. Did you notice how quickly the latest shooting fell off the media radar when it turned out to be a Hispanic with a shotgun? In Maryland, no less, against a newspaper…
One would think they would be covering this end to end, wanting answers and crying for his lynching on the courthouse… Oh never mind, wrong agenda…
Sigh…
Peter’s third book in the Cochrane’s Company trilogy is up!
Click the cover to get it!
The Blurb-
The shadow war started as a simple contract to defend a system against asteroid thieves. The harder Andrew Cochrane and Hawkwood Security fought, the worse things became. Now they find themselves embroiled in an interstellar war with an entire mafia!
Worse yet, the proceedings are so profitable – not to mention bloody – that they’ve attracted the attention of some of the worst criminal organizations in the galaxy. If Hawkwood is to survive, it’ll need all the wits, cunning and ingenuity it can muster – and the unwavering courage and dedication of its people.
The galaxy’s not big enough for both sides. One or the other will go to the wall.
I was happy to be an alpha reader for this one also, and I think you will enjoy the final installment of the trilogy!!!
Probably one of the most famous engines used in WWII was the Merlin.
Few engines throughout history have achieved a near mythical status among its admirers. Fewer still can share credit for the rescue of an entire nation. Perhaps only the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine can claim both distinctions. During the Battle of Britain, it was the Merlin that powered the Royal Air Force Hurricanes and Spitfires that were England’s only effective defense against German air attacks. With the battle won, and the engine’s reputation thus established, the Merlin would become the stuff of legend and the powerplant of choice for numerous other aircraft.
FLICKR USER TRAINSNTHINGS VIA CREATIVE COMMONS
14,000 parts, no that is NOT a misprint, 14,000!!! Hand fitted by Rolls Royce, and they dumped the contract on Ford of Britain and Packard in the US to build them. The interesting part?
Both Ford and Packard were mass production! So there were issues…
The article, HERE from Tested, is from 2015, but it’s still very applicable. And it’s a neat one! Terry Dunn did a great job of researching and found some videos from WWII England that talked about the engine’s construction.
And before you ask, no these are NOT the same engines Packard put in the PT boats. It is similar, but the PT boat engine was developed inhouse at Packard, HERE. It’s also based on an airplane engine, but it’s the Liberty engine from 1925!
The irony? It’s 2018, and those 70+ year old engines are still out there powering Mustangs and Spitfires today!
And there are a few of the Packard PT boat engine still running in PT boats too!
h/t Stretch
And a hat tip to John up in Canada, he sent me THIS link. They’re still flying up there!
I thought this was a joke… Nobody would fall for something ‘this’ outlandish…
In the week of America’s Independence Day, the algorithms of Facebook decided that the Declaration of Independence was hate speech.
The Liberty County Vindicator, a community newspaper between Houston and Beaumont, had been posting the whole declaration in small daily chunks for nine days on its Facebook page in the run-up to July 4. But the 10th excerpt was not posted Monday as scheduled, and the paper said it received an automated notice saying the post “goes against our standards on hate speech.”
Full article, HERE from the Washington Times.
After the hooraw over FB earlier this spring, you would think they would be looking at things pretty closely, to make SURE they were being fair and balanced… Apparently not so much…
Hey Zukkie, George Orwell’s 1984 wasn’t supposed to be a GOAL for you and your ‘team’!
In other news, the blaring headlines from the AP about the Army kicking out immigrants was ‘overstated/underreported??? Among other things, they didn’t bother to look at WHY they were being discharged… At least one, was dealing cocaine in boot. Others apparently had charges pending, etc. the article, HERE details some of the other things the AP got wrong…
The con went by way too fast!!! Flew in Thursday, met up with the usual suspects, Peter, Dot, LawDog, Alma, Larry/Bridget, Sarah/Dan Hoyt, Cedar/Sanford, Jonna, Ringo, John Van Stry, Colonel Kratman, Retired Spook, Kirk and he lovely wife, and a host of others. Doc Nik finally showed up too.
Things were a tad disjointed, due to the short time the board had to put this one together, and the venue was ‘slightly’ larger than we actually needed, but the volunteers did a super job!
First ‘official’ year as a presenting author, rather than getting yanked out of the audience onto a panel…LOL That was a little strange, in that I actually had to prepare. Five rather diverse panels, two science ones (VR and The Next Big Thing), Terminal Ballistics for Writers, our Indie Author panel, and a Navy centric one on “Sea Stories”.
But it was funny when LawDog grabbed Cedar to come help on the Indie panel.
All of the panels went pretty well, IMHO. I may have even contributed a time or two, and for those that attended The Next Big Thing, I really DIDN’T intend for the panel to turn into The Next Big Thing That Fails panel. But we went down that road (literally with self driving cars) and the issues with our current power grid. I did offer one kinda big thing, 3D and large 3D printing in space, which devolved into how to do that in zero G. Again, sorry…
The big ‘disadvantage’ was being a panelist limits one’s opportunity to attend other panels, and three of the ones I was on were against panels that I really wanted to hear/see. Sigh…
Also lots of half done conversations, as one or the other would look at the watch, go “Oh crap, panel”, and disappear into the sunset, so to speak. In a couple of cases, I think it took two days to finish conversations. It also took three days to ‘track’ some folks down, even for five minutes. Sigh…
Much the same with the meals, it was catch as catch can, but I also have to give a shout out to both the waitstaff at the hotel and the ladies at City Cafe! Moving tables, combining tables, everything but a Chinese Fire Drill and they all handled it with aplomb.
What ‘I’ didn’t particularly handle well was being recognized, and people wanting to meet me, telling me they were long time readers (sorry Steve and others), LOL. I like being in the background, just watching… Sigh…
It was also nice to basically spend three days off the net, not watching the news, just enjoying the company.
Next year should be even better, with a different venue, sadly on a different set of dates, late May instead of late June, but apparently lots of folks want to attend, since the tickets sold out in six, SIX hours yesterday. You can get on a waiting list, if (as usually happens) folks have to drop for a number of reasons.
Thanks again to the LC31 committee, the volunteers, and those who were kind enough to compliment us on the panels. To those friends that were there, until next year; unless we meet sooner!
For the 242nd time… 🙂
Independence Day, also known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the USA that celebrates the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
On this date, the Continental Congress declared the thirteen American colonies were a new nation called the United States of America.
This meant the colonies were no longer part of the British Empire.
Celebrations include fireworks, parades, and assorted other ‘celebrations’…
Mine will be a little more prosaic… Burger, ‘tater salad, hot dogs, and apple pie with ice cream. If I can move after that, maybe fireworks at the airport.
I hope each and everyone enjoys the day, and take a moment to remember those in the military, the police, Fire/EMS who are out there every day!