Category Archives: rants

Robot dragons, video games, Christmas trees, snow cone machines, and chocolate

  • (From DID) US Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) Wastebook 2011 [PDF] first words: “Dear Taxpayer, Robot dragons, video games, Christmas trees, snow cone machines, and chocolate. This is not a Christmas wish list. These are just some of the ways the federal government spent your tax dollars this year.” At #3 is a $14M wind turbine project from the Air Force that didn’t quite work. Support, at least nominal, in unexpected places: the Office of Management and Budget. Coburn was one of the 13 Senators to vote against the FY12 defense bill and one of 32 to vote against the omnibus funding law that followed. Among Coburn’s objections: earmarks and bad accounting.

Israel Says the LCS is too much for too little

Report: Cost Prompts Israel to Reject LCS
Foreign military customers have always been one of the goals of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program, but at least one potential operator may have already backed out. Israel had been looking at buying two littoral combat ships, according to a Jerusalem Post story, but their high cost means they’re no longer in the running. Full Story

Little wonder when the LCS is $700-million plus per unit for a ship armed only with a 57mm gun with a crew only large enough to make the front page of the paper when the craft goes down.

Comparitivly the Dutch built the De Zevern Provincien class 6050-ton FFG’s with a rather robust armarment suite for $816 million

Lets compare

LCS:

The LCS, isnt it cute, with its quaint little 57mm gun up front? But hey $700-mill a unit buys a lot of influence in Congress

 

Dutch De Zevern Provincien

 

Even if you go cheaper and without a large air defense capability, look at the Danish “support frigates” of the Absalon-class. For $267-million per hull (almost 1/3rd the price of a LCS), here is what you get :

Danish Absalon:

Now thats a Littoral Combat Ship! ( i mean frigate)....

1 × 5″/62 caliber Mark 45 mod 4 gun (gotta love a 5-incher for NGFS!)
2 × Oerlikon Millennium 35 mm Naval Revolver Gun Systems CIWS
6 × 12.7 mm Heavy machine guns
MU90 Impact ASW torpedoes
VLS with up to 36 RIM-162 ESSM/RIM-7 Sea Sparrow (Mk 56/Mk 48 VLS)
3 x 2 × Stinger Point-defence SAM
8-16 × Harpoon Block II SSM

Come on!

When Israel, who always wants our stuff says, ‘no thanks’ you have to take a look at our military industrial complex.

I say buy a case of Danish’s

Who is the Current leader of North Korea, not Kim Jong IL !

Since On July 8, 1994, Kim Jong Il has ruled his country. He was a nutjob but at least he got it honestly. His father, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung who ruled for North Korea for 50 years erected more than 34,000 monuments to himself. Benches he sat upon were sealed in glass and preserved forever..to keep that divine buttsweat in.

While in college in the 1960s, Kim Jong Il wrote 1,500 books — an average of almost a book a day, that’s better than Harlequin. He also wrote six operas in four years before he tired of the medium. That of course did not stop him from writing, producing and directing a 100-episode epic documentary about North Korean History on State-run, all-propaganda,  free TV. When KJI was born in 1942, (according to this documentary) “a bright star and a double rainbow appeared in the sky and a swallow descended from heaven to herald the birth of a general who will rule the entire world.”

Good old KJI collected more than 20,000 movies, loved Daffy Duck, and the Godfather. Heck, he even collected a few movie stars. In 1978, he had South Korean actress Choi Eun Hee kidnapped and brought to him. She was held a prisoner for 5 years at KJI’s disposal until she agreed to make seven movies for him (I wish this was fiction!)

It is believed that he bought more Hennessy every year than any other single customer. He digs Michael Jordan (who does not)

What’s better than Hennessey, Daffy Duck and kidnapped actors? Pizza! Since Dominoes doesn’t deliver, he kidnapped two Italian chefs (ever heard of Brooklyn?) and held them captive for four years to get his meat pie fix secured. It was only after they passed on the secrets of good deep dish that they were allowed to leave four years later

He is also a keen roller blader, loved roasted donkey and in 2004, he claimed to invent the Hamburger.

Ah you 5-foot-3-inch Stalinist in 70s specs and elevator shoes, the world will miss you.

Chick Made meth INSIDE a Walmart

She was there for six hours making it before someone finally got wise to her….only after she had just finished mixing sulfuric acid with starter fluid in a bottle….

http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Woman-caught-making-meth-inside-S-Tulsa-Walmart/Rgu31vt1m0me-p0WwKsN_w.cspx

Didnt have enough money to buy chemicals, so she just figured she would mix it up like Kool-Aide in aisle 6 and roll on out with it.

Now you may think this was at 2am..nope….Happened from 12noon-6pm on a weekday…

We are all going down….

Unsettling New Police car on drawing board

Gizmondo has an article on the slightly eery police cruiser from the future,

Police cars of the very near future will be smart to the point of being scary. Equipped with eight cameras, voice commands, incredibly intelligent software, and LTE radios, you’re not going to get away with a damn thing.

Motorola Solutions isn’t working on building the latest and greatest Droid—that’s Motorola Mobility—these guys have their fingers more in corporate and governmental pots. Engineers have done hundreds of ride-alongs, surveys, and simulations, and have applied all of their wireless knowledge into designing a police car that is so advanced it’s actually very unsettling.

NFA Transfers Up

Hat Tip Forgotten Weapons

NFA transfer requests are up significantly this year (and have been increasing steadily back to 2005. This has led to increased wait times because it has happened in conjunction with a hiring freeze and a couple retirements at ATF. They have 7 examiners now to deal with all the paperwork. It’s also worth realizing that the tax payments go into the feds’ general fund, and that money isn’t made available to ATF to hire more examiners. Not that I mean to stick up for them, but we have to understand how the situation works before we can try to fix it.

The other major change that was discussed at the NFATCA meeting this past weekend was the removal of the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) signature on transfers. For those of you who may not be familiar with the process, right now you have to inform your local chief cop when submitting an NFA transfer, and they sign the ATF form acknowledging this. Well, lots of them have decided to simply refuse to sign the forms in order to prevent their subjects constituents from being able to buy neat toys.

This action, of course, was not without unintended consequences. Some savvy folks noticed that legally, a machine gun or other NFA item could be purchased by a corporation or living trust, and the law did not require CLEO sign-off for transfers to those types of legal entities (and since corporations and trusts are not people, those transfers also did not require photo, fingerprints, or background checks). Today, there is a booming business in NFA transfers to trusts. In addition to bypassing much of the hassle of the transfer process, a trust is originally intended to facilitate inheritance, and allows one’s inheritors to be written right into the trust and take possession of a gun upon the buyer’s death without any additional paperwork (assuming the trust is written correctly)……(read more at Forgotten Weapons)

 

Shredder is Foolproof yes? Not really

The Newsscientist has a great article about how DARPA, the bankroll behind most of the cooky military R&D in the US, sponsored a contest to reconstruct shredded documents

From the Article,

The race to crack the world’s hardest puzzle has finished – two days earlier than expected. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Shredder Challenge saw nearly 9000 teams competing to reconstruct five shredded documents using a combination of computer science and jigsaw-solving skills, but one team surged ahead of the rest and were proclaimed the winners on Friday night, claiming a $50,000 prize in the process.

The team, known as “All Your Shreds Are Belong To U.S.” is made up of three programmers based in San Francisco: Otavio Good, creator of the visual translation tool Word Lens, Luke Alonso, a mobile phone software developer, and Keith Walker, who works on satellite software at Lockheed Martin.

Their winning algorithm automatically suggested matching pieces of the shredded documents based on factors such as the shape of the rip or the marks on the paper. The trio then tasked a group of friends to assemble the suggestions by hand. “Our background writing computer vision, computer graphics, and general simulation software definitely helped us,” explains Good.

Condos & Restaurant Planned for Deer Island

Condos & Restaurant Planned for Deer Island.

 

This is great stuff from the Itchy Pelican

 

Imagine sitting on our Biloxi or Ocean Springs beaches, toes in the sand, basking in the sunlight, gazing out across the sparkling water and seeing…condos.

I recently saw a movie called “The Rum Diary.” In it, some questionable individuals concocted a plan to take a beautiful island and turn it into a destination resort. When I read this article, I had to wonder who else saw that movie alongside me, and what ideas they had taken from it in hopes of making them a reality.

This project is being billed as ‘The Oasis at Deer Island’ which struck me funny as an oasis, for one thing, typically occurs in the desert, and is alternately defined as, “A pleasant or peaceful area or period in the midst of a difficult, troubled, or hectic place or situation.” I agree that Deer Island could be described as such now, but will it still be described as such when all of this is said and done? Will they stop at one condo, or are condos like Lays potato chips in that you cannot have only one?

I will make my stance clear in that I do not feel this is a good idea, for several reasons….

 

Once Upon a time in Somalia

From Foreign policy

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/17/once_upon_a_time_in_mogadishu

When the great Arab explorer Ibn Battuta landed on Mogadishu’s shores in 1331, he was greeted with a feast fit for a king. Hundreds of camels were slaughtered daily to feed the flourishing port city, where a man could eat for ten. The sultan, clad in silk and fine Jerusalem cloth, was followed by a procession of trumpets and colorful canopies upon which golden birds perched.

How times have changed in Somalia. Today, centuries of European colonization and political strife, coupled with interludes of devastating drought and flooding, have created a failed state that’s become a haven for lawlessness. For years, Somalia was passed between foreign powers: first the Portuguese, then the British, then the French and Italians. Upon its declaration of independence in 1960, the country’s artificially drawn borders proved incapable of anything resembling stability. Now, Somalia remains in a constant state of conflict.

Crazy stuff

Messy situation on USS GB

6000 sailors and marines on the USS George Bush have to use 423 heads (toilets)….or about 14 people for each commode.

The problem is half, and sometimes all of the toilets arent working at any given time..which makes a 6-month deployment kinda messy.

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/11/navy-carrier-bush-suffers-widespread-toilet-outages-111411w/

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