Sunday, July 24, 2005
why bother?
I see APOD has an excellent photo of my right eye today! Thanks guys, I tried to take one a while back and the flash drove an icepick through my skull. Photo washed out and there's no bleeding way THAT will be tried again!
If you've not come across the link below, give it a try and download the audio file. If you are only using the little soup-can speakers that generally come with PCs, it'll be a disappointment as it's all bass rumbles.
Eerie Underwater Recording of Deadly Indonesian Earthquake
This is from the Telegraph so you already know the slant. It's still an interesting read and besides, Britain has a couple of hundred deployable nukes.
One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists
(note: the Telegraph as copied by self forbids inserting blockquote html or other html. Microsoft and the Telegraph seem to have a bug.)
For fun and games, this link on Brit nukes is interesting:
British nuclear forces, 2001
Always consider the source. There were a lot to pick from and I just rather admired the quote. For general interest, the Brits presently have just slightly less than twice as many nukes as the USSR did during the Cuban missle crisis (extremely hard to verify! ;o) and the French have twice as many as the ivans did! Then, of course, we've got the US, China, Indians, of course the Pakis, Israelies (?), and who-knows-what in the former USSR bits and pieces. A case of piss-off will undoubtably lead to something unpleasant.
Forty or fifty years ago the United States would probably survive a major nuclear strike with all the Soviets could muster. I doubt seriously that it would make it through a single fat firecracker now. Back then this country was much more de-centralized, now it is a full-blown welfare state with all commands uselessly and expensively executed by whatever $2 1/2 trillion a year beaurocracy will buy. It'll be nothing but dead meat and riots, every slight experienced, every perk or non-perk will be up for adjudication. Just as an observation, the clicky-doodles of the old cold war and a potential nukey (I probably need some good nukey! Did I spell that right? Too pricy anyway.) are more than likely slim in the forseeable future. Besides, we are raising our kids to be totally dependent on the Chinee and the Russians are only up to the robber baron level of capitalism. The evil red Chinee are catching up and they've mastered Detroit's "planned obsolescence" with a vengence. To date, there isn't a single item, even the higest priced, that has functioned three years if it had the tag "made in China". There is only one country that makes sorrier products and that's Mexico. French is pretty good. Crude but durable. German is for keeps and is actually repairable. Japan; better hope it keeps working 'cause when it craps out, instant dumpster. Damn. The good Japanese stuff no longer exists. "Made in" where? The Japanese outfits don't much bother with customer service.
Here's a rather neat link to what we WW II boomer kids enjoyed in grammer school. Can't quite remember the last "duck and cover", most of us already were sure we were gonna die by the 3rd grade anyway. That link takes you to many options and I tested the dial-up. If you are over 50, even the teeny version will give you a "hello!"
American made? What's left? Algore had a serious and now proven handle on the future of America when he was campaigning on this country being a "service economy". "Service" being what? A nation of lawyers with a government of lawyers and "civil servants" to write them. Tiny item: a bunch of years ago I went to build a deck on my shop. 30,000 pages, 8,000 applicable on just exactly HOW it should be built. Five permits (with fees) required. The fees alone cost more than the building materials. In order to rent the finished studio, more than 30,000 OTHER legal pages with huge hoopla on MANDATORY must-do beyond building code and G-D forbid I slight illegal aliens or druggies.
"All rental facilities must have handicap access". That was kewl. As long as I was into the database, got the specs. Good 'ol Lowe's. They had a design calculator for such. My normal staircase was to be replaced by a 110 yard-long ramp. Material cost (back before CCA pressure-treated lumber was banned after a half-century+): $18,000. Kewl. A guestimate by a friend in the trade was the mandatory installation of the ramp would run about $9,000. Lots of concrete piers and lots of Tampa ties. Oh, the deck price went up $1,600 and became 1/4 the size.
Yes, old crippled-up me built it. Took the toughest building code and tripled all the specs. Took a while. O solo fuck you. Sometimes I go sit on the deck.
The studio is much nicer than my house. It was fit for occupancy in 2001. Oh, I forgot. There's another oddity that did not exist in my many years when I rented. It seems I need a liability insurance policy so that a renter could retire on the Riveria if it gets a splinter in it's foot. Oh yes, I checked THAT out. The policy was substantially more than I would ask for rent.
Rent at a reasonable rate. Shoot 'em if one develops a splinter and haul the carcass down to the IRS / lawyer quicksand pit.
That doesn't play any better than the landmine/ITT stock does it?
I wish it did.
* * * * * *
I'm not going to bother linking any of the noise about the jihadi members of the Religion of Pieces whacking out a big chunk of Egypt, we already know they eat their own. Damn, those sand flies eventually may piss off some of their own. Just observing the various world news sources, I'd kinda guess an awful lot of the world is a bit P.O.'ed. Edgy. Unfortunately until things like this are no longer around for a bunch of years, the idiocy will continue. Hitler, Stalin, and the Democrats all had (have) it right; catch 'em early and brainwash the little bastards with what you want them to be. Just out of curiosity, why in hell isn't NOW, the dems, and their ilk totally up in arms with the way females are treated under the misogyny inherent in Sharia? Could it be the grrrls from that collective don't like other women to be free? Just blinders? ...or just as programmed as suicide bombers?
* * * * * *
Sunday morning
Oh good lord, Dick Durbin was on "Meet the Press" this morning. He is beyond just being an idiot. I now withdraw any thoughts of being human for the folks that voted for that unit. ILL has now joined Mass in the collection of diseased countries that need to apply to Libya for statehood.
I'm going back to bed.
If you've not come across the link below, give it a try and download the audio file. If you are only using the little soup-can speakers that generally come with PCs, it'll be a disappointment as it's all bass rumbles.
Eerie Underwater Recording of Deadly Indonesian Earthquake
This is from the Telegraph so you already know the slant. It's still an interesting read and besides, Britain has a couple of hundred deployable nukes.
One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists
However, six per cent insist that the bombings were, on the contrary, fully justified.
Six per cent may seem a small proportion but in absolute numbers it amounts to about 100,000 individuals who, if not prepared to carry out terrorist acts, are ready to support those who do.
(note: the Telegraph as copied by self forbids inserting blockquote html or other html. Microsoft and the Telegraph seem to have a bug.)
For fun and games, this link on Brit nukes is interesting:
British nuclear forces, 2001
"Several factors will determine the number of warheads in Britain's future stockpile. We assume that Britain will produce only enough warheads for three boatloads of missiles, a practice it followed with Polaris. As stated in the Strategic Defense Review, there will be "fewer than 200 operationally available warheads" in the stockpile, and no more than 48 warheads per SSBN. If all four SSBNs were fully loaded (MIRVed with three warheads) that would total 192.
A further consideration is the "substrategic mission." A Ministry of Defence official has described a substrategic strike as "the limited and highly selective use of nuclear weapons in a manner that fell demonstrably short of a strategic strike, but with a sufficient level of violence to convince an aggressor who had already miscalculated our resolve and attacked us that he should halt his aggression and withdraw or face the prospect of a devastating strategic strike." (snip)
Always consider the source. There were a lot to pick from and I just rather admired the quote. For general interest, the Brits presently have just slightly less than twice as many nukes as the USSR did during the Cuban missle crisis (extremely hard to verify! ;o) and the French have twice as many as the ivans did! Then, of course, we've got the US, China, Indians, of course the Pakis, Israelies (?), and who-knows-what in the former USSR bits and pieces. A case of piss-off will undoubtably lead to something unpleasant.
Forty or fifty years ago the United States would probably survive a major nuclear strike with all the Soviets could muster. I doubt seriously that it would make it through a single fat firecracker now. Back then this country was much more de-centralized, now it is a full-blown welfare state with all commands uselessly and expensively executed by whatever $2 1/2 trillion a year beaurocracy will buy. It'll be nothing but dead meat and riots, every slight experienced, every perk or non-perk will be up for adjudication. Just as an observation, the clicky-doodles of the old cold war and a potential nukey (I probably need some good nukey! Did I spell that right? Too pricy anyway.) are more than likely slim in the forseeable future. Besides, we are raising our kids to be totally dependent on the Chinee and the Russians are only up to the robber baron level of capitalism. The evil red Chinee are catching up and they've mastered Detroit's "planned obsolescence" with a vengence. To date, there isn't a single item, even the higest priced, that has functioned three years if it had the tag "made in China". There is only one country that makes sorrier products and that's Mexico. French is pretty good. Crude but durable. German is for keeps and is actually repairable. Japan; better hope it keeps working 'cause when it craps out, instant dumpster. Damn. The good Japanese stuff no longer exists. "Made in" where? The Japanese outfits don't much bother with customer service.
Here's a rather neat link to what we WW II boomer kids enjoyed in grammer school. Can't quite remember the last "duck and cover", most of us already were sure we were gonna die by the 3rd grade anyway. That link takes you to many options and I tested the dial-up. If you are over 50, even the teeny version will give you a "hello!"
American made? What's left? Algore had a serious and now proven handle on the future of America when he was campaigning on this country being a "service economy". "Service" being what? A nation of lawyers with a government of lawyers and "civil servants" to write them. Tiny item: a bunch of years ago I went to build a deck on my shop. 30,000 pages, 8,000 applicable on just exactly HOW it should be built. Five permits (with fees) required. The fees alone cost more than the building materials. In order to rent the finished studio, more than 30,000 OTHER legal pages with huge hoopla on MANDATORY must-do beyond building code and G-D forbid I slight illegal aliens or druggies.
"All rental facilities must have handicap access". That was kewl. As long as I was into the database, got the specs. Good 'ol Lowe's. They had a design calculator for such. My normal staircase was to be replaced by a 110 yard-long ramp. Material cost (back before CCA pressure-treated lumber was banned after a half-century+): $18,000. Kewl. A guestimate by a friend in the trade was the mandatory installation of the ramp would run about $9,000. Lots of concrete piers and lots of Tampa ties. Oh, the deck price went up $1,600 and became 1/4 the size.
Yes, old crippled-up me built it. Took the toughest building code and tripled all the specs. Took a while. O solo fuck you. Sometimes I go sit on the deck.
The studio is much nicer than my house. It was fit for occupancy in 2001. Oh, I forgot. There's another oddity that did not exist in my many years when I rented. It seems I need a liability insurance policy so that a renter could retire on the Riveria if it gets a splinter in it's foot. Oh yes, I checked THAT out. The policy was substantially more than I would ask for rent.
Rent at a reasonable rate. Shoot 'em if one develops a splinter and haul the carcass down to the IRS / lawyer quicksand pit.
That doesn't play any better than the landmine/ITT stock does it?
I wish it did.
* * * * * *
I'm not going to bother linking any of the noise about the jihadi members of the Religion of Pieces whacking out a big chunk of Egypt, we already know they eat their own. Damn, those sand flies eventually may piss off some of their own. Just observing the various world news sources, I'd kinda guess an awful lot of the world is a bit P.O.'ed. Edgy. Unfortunately until things like this are no longer around for a bunch of years, the idiocy will continue. Hitler, Stalin, and the Democrats all had (have) it right; catch 'em early and brainwash the little bastards with what you want them to be. Just out of curiosity, why in hell isn't NOW, the dems, and their ilk totally up in arms with the way females are treated under the misogyny inherent in Sharia? Could it be the grrrls from that collective don't like other women to be free? Just blinders? ...or just as programmed as suicide bombers?
* * * * * *
Sunday morning
Oh good lord, Dick Durbin was on "Meet the Press" this morning. He is beyond just being an idiot. I now withdraw any thoughts of being human for the folks that voted for that unit. ILL has now joined Mass in the collection of diseased countries that need to apply to Libya for statehood.
I'm going back to bed.
