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.