In lieu of a real post…

I’m offsite at a training class this week, with HOMEWORK no less…

Sigh…

In lieu of something pithy…

Link from a shipmate that now works at NASA…  The blue flashes are lightning strikes…

The green at the end is the Aurora Borealis…

Back to the @#$%# homework… sigh

Posted in ISS

Unintended Consequences…

Once again obummercare is biting us in the ass…

And I find it interesting that there is almost NO US media coverage…

Volunteer fire departments all across the U.S. could find themselves out of money and unable to operate unless Congress or the Obama Administration exempts them from the Affordable Care Act.

‘I thought the kinks were worked out of Obamacare at the first of the month, Central Florida volunteer firefighter Carl Fabrizi told Sunshine State News

‘Man, oh, man, this could potentially destroy some real good companies in Florida.’

The U.S. Department of Labor takes the term ‘volunteer’ literally, but the IRS says volunteer firefighters are technically employees if they’re on the job more than 30 hours per week, making them subject to Obamacare’s employee-mandate rules.

Full article HERE from the Daily Mail.

Having been a volunteer in Florida for the 10 years I was there, this will KILL most of the rural fire departments in the state, as 90% of them are volunteer.

And in NOVA and MD around the beltway there are large volunteer departments that provide ‘major’ services, including hook/ladder, ALS ambulance care, etc.  So expect your home insurance to go through the roof, as they remap the distances if all these volunteer stations have to close…

Laws…

Laws we live under, like it or not…

LAW OF MECHANICAL REPAIR – After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to pee.

LAW OF GRAVITY – Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

LAW OF PROBABILITY – The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

LAW OF RANDOM NUMBERS – If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers.

LAW OF THE ALIBI – If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

VARIATION LAW – If you change lanes, the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

LAW OF THE BATH – When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

LAW OF CLOSE ENCOUNTERS – The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don’t want to be seen with.

LAW OF THE RESULT – When you try to prove to someone that a machine won’t work, it will.

LAW OF BIOMECHANICS – The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

LAW OF THE THEATER AND FOOTBALL STADIUM – At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance.

THE COFFEE LAW – As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

MURPHY’S LAW OF LOCKERS – If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

LAW OF PHYSICAL SURFACES – The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor, are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

LAW OF LOGICAL ARGUMENT – Anything is possible if you don’t know what you are talking about.

LAW OF PHYSICAL APPEARANCE – If the clothes fit, they’re ugly.

LAW OF PUBLIC SPEAKING – A closed mouth gathers no feet.

LAW OF COMMERCIAL MARKETING STRATEGY – As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

DOCTORS’ LAW – If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you’ll feel better. But don’t make an appointment, and you’ll stay sick.

Ramping up the rhetoric…

Well, the ROKs have jumped into the ADIZ game…

SEOUL, South Korea — Defying both China and Japan, South Korea announced on Sunday that it was expanding its air patrol zone for the first time in 62 years to include airspace over the East China Sea that is also claimed by Beijing and Tokyo.

Full article HERE.

senkaku map

This is getting serious, and pushing closer and closer to a shoot down…

For those that may not be familiar with what an ADIZ consist of, here’s a quick primer.

An Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is airspace over land or water in which the identification, location, and control of civil aircraft is required in the interest of national security. They extend beyond a country’s airspace to give the country more time to respond to foreign and possibly hostile aircraft. The authority to establish an ADIZ is not given by any international treaty nor prohibited by international law and is not regulated by any international body.  There are normally three parts to this-  A flight plan giving time and detailed route to/through the ADIZ; radio authentication/verification including responding to queries from air traffic control and obeying instructions of air traffic control; and transponder operation on assigned modes/codes as directed.

Dating to WWII, these are taken SERIOUSLY by all countries including armed response by fighter/interceptor aircraft and pre-emptive (e.g. weapons free) approval based on certain circumstances (remember KAL 007).

Having operated in that part of the world, I know how quickly things ‘can’ spin out of control…  Remember, blind obedience to authority IS the standard over there…

We know the Chinese have some ‘cowboy’ pilots, as evidenced by the PR32 ‘incident’ and they aren’t the only ones…

The ROKs have a wartime mentality in their government/military structure for good reason, there are constant probes by DPRK and others; so the ROKs do NOT play games. Their approach is sink it/shoot it, THEN figure out if was unfriendly or now (what we used to call the ‘flaming datum’ mentality).

Now let me give you a situation…

John Q airliner is happily bebopping along at FL360, having been told by his government to ‘ignore’ those pesky ADIZ and only comply with the ‘standard’ ones that have been in place for years…  It’s IFR, cloudy as hell at altitude and they are in/out of the layers.  They’ve filled a generic flight plan route from point A to point B, and ‘should’ miss the new ADIZ (just to be on the safe side).

But… They have to divert to try to get some smooth air, so they turn slightly off course and climb an extra 3,000 feet (light load of gas now).  Their transponder is intermittent and they figure they will get back on track at Kaohsiung.  They’re talking to Tokyo Flight Information Region (FIR) controllers, and trying their damnest to ‘hear’ and understand them due to the static on the radio.  So they don’t hear the Chinese controllers call them multiple times…

The Chinese launch the ready fighters and they haul to the intercept position based on Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) controllers.  Since the pilots have no idea who’s up there, and not really trusting the GCI controllers to get them real close without causing an aluminum shower, they close to within a mile or two before they really start looking out the windscreen.  But they aren’t seeing a lot…

At this point they would split out into tactical spread, bring up the pulse doppler radar (about 40km range), and try to close the target.   They might or might not actually see the target; and GCI would be pushing them for an ID…

Military flights typically don’t respond to radio calls from the Chinese, and if the pilots only get a radar contact/shadow sighting, well, it’s not ‘on’ an accepted flight plan (remember the deviation above) so it’s a military flight being conducted ‘illegally’ within their ADIZ, so shoot it down…

Or they do close and see it’s an airliner, and decide to ‘bounce’ the airliner by coming up in front of them at near supersonic speeds and make the airliner fly through the vortex they generate…

Except they are a little too close…

In either case you have an airliner crashed, hundreds dead,  an international incident and then the finger pointing starts…

Which doesn’t do a helluva lot of good for those who died…

I will be surprised if there is not a serious international incident in the next 90 days over this…

No comment…

I was asked in a couple of emails why I haven’t commented on Nelson Mandela…

It’s simple, I don’t know enough TO comment, and I learned a long time ago to keep my mouth shut if I couldn’t offer an informed opinion…

I would point you to Peter at BRM.  He was there, lived it, and knows the players…

As a buddy who’s a judge told me once, there are THREE sides to every story.  The prosecution, the defense, and the truth…  And seldom does the truth ever have a chance…

After the 1st Amendment???

Ran across this one in the Washington Times…

WASHINGTON, December 4, 2013 — How far will President Obama go to control what we see and hear? How about removing First Amendment protections from FOX News or even from MSNBC, ABC, CNN, CBS or NBC. Maybe no free speech or freedom of the press for The Washington Times nor The Washington Post nor The New York Times or any other major media? Obama would justify it by claiming they are all tainted because they seek to profit from the news business.

Read the whole thing HERE
Going after the 1st Amendment rights for Hobby Lobby for ‘religious freedom’ by saying a for profit corporation does not have those rights…

If this gets through, how far behind will the thought police be on the web??? Especially if you have ‘ads’ on your site…

The more I see/hear about the crap this administration is pulling with ‘selective’ enforcement of laws, putting regulations in place with NO oversight, and the way things are being run (or not as the case may be)…

It literally raises the hairs on the back of my neck…  I thought Slick Willie was bad, but I’m beginning to believe BO is a PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSIST…

And the truly sad point is that everyone in the MSM is enabling him…  Regardless of the situation, it’s always about HIM, not about anyone else.  When you look at what got put out on the Mandela, in his little speech BO managed to reference Mandela eight times. His references to himself?  14 times…

He did the same thing on the Kennedy 50th…

If the administration gets ‘control’ of the media and the web where will we be???  I don’t have a good answer.  But I’ll bet we’ll all be charged with racism, or terrorism or something to shut us down…  And if they make those felonies???

There go the guns too…

 

December 7th…

Then…

Arizona 12 7 41

Now…

Nimitz at AZ memorial

Click to enlarge…  That is USS MISSOURI to the left of NIMITZ.

Wanted to share this short note and photo from the CO of USS NIMITZ.  She is returning to her homeport in Everett WA after what will be an 8.5 month deployment, mostly to the Middle East but she was held on station as a show of force/possible response unit for the Syrian “standoff” shall we call it…

.
“Moored, Shift Colors. Aloha, Hawaii. It’s wonderful to be back in the States! Looking forward to our Tigers arriving and enjoying the beauty of this place. Still, it’s a humbling experience to look out over the flight deck and see the USS Arizona Memorial and know that 72 years ago this week they sacrificed all their tomorrows so that we may have ours.”

RIP L.B. and L.C. we’re tryin…

h/t JP

I don’t think…

They thought this one through…

Bad headwork

And ‘another’ reason NOT to put Christmas lights in a palm tree…

From a shipmate in Hawaii, taken last night on his street…

Understanding a woman’s vocabulary???

FINE” is the word women use at the end of any argument when they feel they are right but can’t stand to hear you argue any longer. It means that you should shut up. (NEVER use “fine” to describe how she looks. This will cause you to have one of those arguments.)

FIVE MINUTES” is half an hour. It is equivalent to the five minutes that your football game is going to last before you take out the trash, so women feel that it’s an even trade.

NOTHING” means something and you should be on your toes. “NOTHING” is usually used to describe the feeling a woman has of wanting to turn you inside out, upside down, and backwards. “NOTHING” usually signifies an argument that will last “FIVE MINUTES” and end with the word “FINE“.

GO AHEAD” (with raised eyebrows) is NOT permission; it’s a dare! If you mistake it for permission, the result will be the woman will get upset over “NOTHING” and you’ll have a “FIVE MINUTE” discussion that will end with the word “FINE“.

GO AHEAD” (normal eyebrows) is NOT permission either. It means “I give up” or “DO WHAT YOU WANT BECAUSE I DON’T CARE“. You will get a raised eyebrow “GO AHEAD” in just a few minutes, followed by “NOTHING” and “FINE” and she will talk to you in about “FIVE MINUTES” when she cools off.

LOUD SIGH” is not actually a word, but is still often a verbal statement. Very frequently misunderstood by men. A “LOUD SIGH” means she thinks you are a complete idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you over “NOTHING!”

SOFT SIGH” again is not a word, but a verbal statement. “SOFT SIGHS” are one of the few things that some men actually understand. It means she is momentarily content. Your best bet is to not move or breathe in the hope that the moment will last a bit longer.

OH” followed by any statement – is trouble. Example: “Oh, let me get that” or “Oh, I talked to him about what you were doing last night”. If she says “OH” before a statement, run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. She will tell you that she is “FINE” when she is done tossing your clothes out the window, but do not expect her to talk to you for at least two days. (“OH” as the lead to a sentence usually signifies that you are caught in a lie). Do not try to lie more to get out of it, or you will get a raised eyebrow “GO AHEAD” sometimes followed by acts so unspeakable that I can’t bring myself to write about them.

THAT’S OKAY” is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman can say to a man. “THAT’S OKAY” means that she wants to think long and hard before deciding what the penalty will be for whatever you have done. “THAT’S OKAY” is often used with the word “FINE” and in conjunction with a raised eyebrow “GO AHEAD“. Once she has had time to plan it out, you are in for some mighty big trouble.

PLEASE DO” is not a statement, it is an offer. The woman is giving you the chance to come up with an excuse for what you have done. In other words, a chance to get yourself into even more trouble. If you handle this correctly, you shouldn’t get a “THAT’S OKAY“.

THANKS” is the woman is thanking you. Don’t faint and don’t look for hidden meaning. Just say “you’re welcome”.

THANKS A LOT” is dramatically different from “THANKS“. A woman will say “THANKS A LOT” when she is really ticked off at you. It is usually followed by the “LOUD SIGH“. This signifies that you have hurt her in some callous way. Be careful not to ask what is wrong after the “LOUD SIGH” as she will only tell you “NOTHING“.

Yeah, good luck with that… 🙂

Being half deaf, I just gave up YEARS ago…

Say Whut???

Only in America can a REAL WW-II Russian rifle made in Russia 70+ years ago, cost less than the imitation airsoft version made in China today.

Real one: $129

http://www.jgsales.com/mosin-nagant-91-30-round-receiver-rifle,-russian-mfg,-7.62x54r,-c-r,-used.-p-1041.html

Fake (Airsoft): $169 ON SALE yet.

http://www.evike.com/product_info.php?products_id=38265