Random stuff #346…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional,illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end…


And a pro travel tip…


Two inch lifts and six inch heels may make your ass look like two puppies fighting in a sack, but when you trip over your bag and break a heel off, end up on your ass with your micro skirt up around your navel, and your tit hanging out of the two sizes too small tube top; AND you start screaming and cussing like a sailor at the folks trying to help you, you WILL get laughed at…


Oh yeah, and if you’re gonna wear a thong, you ‘might’ want to do some lawn maintenance…



CONDOM HISTORY

Interesting piece of history!

In 1272, the Arabic Islamic Muslims invented the condom, using a goat’s lower intestine.

In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

Don’t thank me, I do this as a public service for the advancement of Education.


And you can go HERE and see an absolutely WORTHLESS hunting dog 🙂

Time Travel… Kinda Sorta…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
I got an email asking me how I deal with jet lag or desyncronosis as it’s more properly known; so here goes…



A caveat here, is this is MY personal way of dealing with it, and not necessarily what will work for everyone.


West is best, and East is worst for jet lag, due to the circadian rhythm issues; e.g. you can ‘recover’ more easily going West than East.  More about that in a bit…


Anything up to three hours either way, I pretty much ignore and just stay on ‘home’ time.  When I go to the Left Coast, for example, I just go eat early, and go to bed early, and get up about 0300-0400.  This way, I’m not dealing with sleep problems, and I can still get a productive day in.  I do usually get something like breakfast bars, or energy bars to eat at that time of the morning, so that I’m ‘simulating’ what I do at home.  


For the longer trips, say 8-12 hours in either direction, I have to add a caveat here- That being I don’t sleep on airplanes, so I’m up for the duration.  I don’t do sleep aids, either melatonin (gives me BAD nightmares), or prescription stuff. The reason being, if something DOES happen in flight, I want to be coherent and able to deal with it (but that’s just me). Also, I don’t drink on airplanes for the same reason. I drink lots of water to stay hydrated because most airlines run cabin altitudes at 7000′ above sea level, and humidity at about 3% (to keep the PACS from freezing up).  I also get up and walk about every hour to keep the circulation going. 


Another thing to be aware of is you WILL build up gas, and you WILL need to relieve the pressure on your Eustachian tubes HERE in the ears; otherwise you may pay for both of those things later in the evening… Just sayin…


Going West, takeoff is around 1200 my time; when I land, say in Japan, it’s about 1600JST, so about midnight to my ‘body’ clock.  I’ll eat a very light dinner, hit the bathroom, and stay up until about 2100JST, and go to bed then (and no alcohol). At this point, I’m over tired, but I ‘know’ I’ll only get a 4-6 hour nap in, and be wide awake again (not trying to do TMI, but your ‘movements’ will normally wake you up about then, since they ‘think’ you should have taken care of them).  I’ll eat a breakfast bar, start drinking coffee and work until others are up, then go to breakfast.  Then it’s a full day, again staying up until 21-2200, and usually sleeping though until about 0500 the next day. At that point, I’m pretty much on cycle for that time zone.


When I go East, takeoff is usually around 2000-2200 my time; when I land in the middle East, it’s 15 hours later (I do the same things on the airplane going East too), and usually around 1930 Local.  So my ‘body clock’ says it’s not time to sleep, so I’ll eat a good meal and either a beer or wine with dinner (if available), and it’s usually a fight to get to sleep. It’s VERY hard to wake up at 0500, because the body clock thinks I should be sleeping another 5-6 hours (hence the easier to go West, than East).  I usually get up an hour earlier than normal going East, to have time to ‘take care of business’, and have time to get enough coffee in me to be coherent, and functional (I cannot do the 30 minute prior wake up and out the door anymore). I’ll eat a breakfast bar, and that is usually it, as I’m not hungry. Then it’s a full day, but will eat lunch (simulating breakfast), and then a light dinner.  Going East, it usually takes about 3 days to drop into the time zone going East.  


If I’m splitting differences, e.g. Hawaii or Europe, I just modify either the West or East plan slightly to match up to that time zone.


As I said, this is what works for me.  As a former aviator, I just don’t like drugs for ANY reason; AND I stay away from spicy foods the day before departure and initially on arrival (you can guess why).  I know others that will use drugs to mitigate the effects, and there are any number of jet lag ‘cures’ out there… Personally, I don’t believe any of them actually work.


You can go HERE and read more than you want to know about jet lag from the medical perspective…


So I hope this answers the email, if not, please let me know.

Well Dayum…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Strange things happen, sometimes a long time later…


A couple of years ago, I was talking to a good friend (non-smoker), and I mentioned that I collected Zippo lighters.  

Today, he walked up to me at the conference and handed me this!!!


It’s a brand new (1983) brass presentation Zippo, still in the original box from the Kitty Hawk…

Never been used, and was stored in a cruise box for years.  I offered him what it’s worth, but he wouldn’t take a penny, saying he’d remembered our conversation, and the fact that he ‘knew’ I’d take care of it!  He’d gotten it as an E-6 for being the Sailor of the Quarter…

And found it last weekend when he was looking for something else.

Thanks Snake, it IS appreciated!!!

Horse’s asses…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

 This one’s for BZ and WSF 🙂

My Grandfather on my Mother’s side was an engineer for UP back in the early 1900s…


The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? 
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? 

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.


Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.


Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?’, you may be exactly right.Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years agoby the width of a horse’s ass.
And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important!

Now you know, horses’ asses control almost everything…explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn’t it?


And I’ve been dealing with horse’s asses all week, except they are the two legged kind…

h/t- JP

Oh HELL no…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Well, I can scratch Virgin Atlantic off my list of airlines I’ll be flying on…


When they start allowing phone calls, texts, email inflight; I’m done with em…


It’s bad enough to listen to some pax prattle to the seat mate, much less have to listen to one sided conversations.


You can read the whole thing HERE. And I agree with this comment…

“At the very least, the airline will have to restrict times of day when passengers will be able to scream into their phones ‘Can you hear me now?’ at 40,000 feet, in order to not wake up fellow passengers on overnight flights,” says George Hobica, president of AirfareWatchdog.com. “But you know what will happen–no one will listen. There will be screaming matches, glares, and probably fisticuffs.”
Virgin Atlantic’s chief operating officer Steve Griffiths told the U.K. Daily Mail: “We have listened to what customers want and connectivity in the air is always on the wish list.”

Okay Already…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Geez, I put up TWO Air Force videos and I get accused of being a ‘fanboi’…


So in answer here’s something from the Navy side of the aisle!  And HERE is an excellent post by Peter on some of the machinations that are going into upgrading the systems to the Growler (EA-18G)…


Anyway, some shots of EA-6B Prowlers doing their job and some gratuitous A-6 Intruders thrown in for fill…  All set to Radar Love 🙂  



Wayne did a good job with this one, and there is at least one ‘real’ shot from Nam in it… The original (done back in the 80s) had LOTS of mission data from Nam included, which is probably NOT politically correct these days…


And the whole PSH over drones and recording stuff over the US?  That’s been going on since the 50’s… Just sayin…

BUFFs…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
This is why B-52s are still in the inventory…



And when/if they finally retire ’em, they will be 80 years old!

My cousins both flew Big Ugly Fat F**kers (BUFFs) in Nam, Linebacker, Arc Light and other ops and some of those same BUFFs were dropping bombs on the Republican Guards in Iraq in 1991.  They accounted for only three percent of the sorties in the war, they delivered THIRTY-THREE percent of weapons on target!
This video is from 1991 and pretty descriptive about the missions and battle damage. 35 hours and 14,000 nm makes for a LONG day!!!

When you ‘really’ need to bomb ’em back to the stone age, just call for the BUFFs…

National Law Enforcement Memorial…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Today marks the start of Memorial Week for the National LEO Memorial here in DC. LEOs from all over the world turn out to honor the fallen for the past year.  So far this year, the toll is down significantly, with only 40 officers End of Tour in 2012. Take a moment if you would and remember those who gave their lives to protect ours.

Granted not all of them are perfect, but the Thin Blue Line is doing what they can to keep the peace here at home.

Happy Mother’s Day…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Those of you whos Mothers are still alive; call ’em, visit ’em, take ’em to dinner! Do something good for them!!!

The history-

The origins of Mother’s Day are attributed to different people. Many believe that two women, Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis were important in establishing the tradition of Mother’s Day in the United States. Other sources say that Juliet Calhoun Blakely initiated Mother’s Day in Albion, Michigan, in the late 1800s. Her sons paid tribute to her each year and urged others to honor their mothers.

Around 1870, Julia Ward Howe called for Mother’s Day to be celebrated each year to encourage pacifism and disarmament amongst women. It continued to be held in Boston for about ten years under her sponsorship, but died out after that.

In 1907, Anna Jarvis held a private Mother’s Day celebration in memory of her mother, Ann Jarvis, in Grafton, West Virginia. Ann Jarvis had organized “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” to improve health and cleanliness in the area where she lived. Anna Jarvis launched a quest for Mother’s Day to be more widely recognized. Her campaign was later financially supported by John Wanamaker, a clothing merchant from Philadelphia.

In 1908, she was instrumental in arranging a service in the Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, which was attended by 407 children and their mothers. The church has now become the International Mother’s Day Shrine. It is a tribute to all mothers and has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Just remember, if it weren’t for them, WE wouldn’t be here…

It’s Official…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
The Washington Fishwrap…er… Post is in the tank for Obummer.

They had a four column above the fold on the FRONT PAGE of Romney’s high school pranks and two full pages more inside the A-section yesterday in addition to the Toles cartoon below yesterday…

All to question Romney’s ability to ‘lead’ and his ‘qualifications’…

What about Obummer’s dope smoking and ‘composite’ girlfriends in his book (are ANY of them real)?

/crickets/

Bayou Renaissance Man has a good post on parody covers up HERE, and some discussion of the media bias we’re seeing…

Where are the probing articles on Obama???

Well, we ALL know the answer to that…

Why are we NOT seeing reporting on unemployment? Gas prices? Green energy company failures (and all of our $$ that went down the drain)? The housing market STILL in the tank (and Freddy and Fannie wanting MORE millions/billions)?  The fiat by regulation that is occuring (new EPA rules, failure to approve pipelines, drilling, and oil/gas exploration)?  The Justice Department and their selective enforcement of laws (Fast and Furious among others)? And on and on…

Anybody out there want to admit they were the ‘perfect’ kid in high school?

I know for sure “I” wasn’t…

Sorry, rant off, and kicking the soapbox back in the corner… I ‘know’ I’ve got my BP meds around here someplace…