The dangers of the metric system

Canada went onto the metric system around the early 1980s, and so everyone in the country suddenly found that they didn't know how to measure anything.  This caused a lot of excitement 34 years ago today, when an Air Canada 767 ran out of fuel half way between Montreal and Edmonton.

You see, people got confused about the whole litres vs. gallons thing, and didn't gas it up enough.

Fortunately, the pilot was a glider ace, and the co-pilot realized that they were within gliding distance of a decommissioned RCAF base that he had been stationed at.  They brought the bird in safely, even though there was a car race on the old runway.

And so the moral of the Gimli Glider incident is to make very sure that change isn't just being made because it's a popular change.

Carlos Paredes - "Coimbra e o Mondego"

Sometimes it seems like listening to Classical Music is like visiting a history museum: everything is old, a legacy of people long dead.  Guitar is not like that - there is still a thriving classical guitar scene in Spain and Portugal.  Carlos Paredes was a master, active pretty much right up to his death not so very long ago.

Paredes is a great example of how Portuguese guitar differs from Spanish guitar.  It has more of an eastern influence, perhaps from Portugal's moorish past, and delights in sad, minor keys - an echo of the Fado songs that have been the Portuguese equivalent of the blues.

There's no Terminex for Trolls

I thought in coming over here to post they'd go away.

Apparently not. They've followed me over here.

Today, my third and latest book, a winner of a major literary award and a best seller here and in the UK got an Amazon one-star review by someone that obviously didn't read it as they talked about using "too much data", to the point they couldn't read it. (to which a retired school teacher called them on that in the comments which was funny).  It's a lyrical, poetic female coming of age story. Data?

The only other review they posted, within 60 seconds of posting MY one-star review and the only books they have ever reviewed was a book written by a good friend, also a gun blogger and conservative Christian. They also gave that book one star saying said that it was written so that they couldn't  be interested in it without providing any real details as to why.

So Virginia - Can we say troll?

But in the four weeks prior to it being possibly selected for another literary award, this seriously dumped its ratings numbers.

I'm open to honest and constructive critique and what I go  with my first two books was valuable in growing as a writer. But this was just a personal attack by someone who uses a fake name and who has never, ever reviewed a book and hit my friend and I a minute apart on Amazon.  I think I'm going to go hide in my cave for a while. For those of you who have read and liked it enough to review, thank you.

Flags and automobiles

There's not just an etiquette involved, there are laws about what you can and can't do.  I hadn't known this, and it seems that the VFW doesn't either.

Now, I'm not arguing that the VFW should get cited, but c'mon.

Terry "Harmonica" Bean - Catfish Blues

Oops

Proof that professional environmentalists don't care about the environment

Lead shot kills a handful of eagles each year and so it must be banned.  Windmills kill hundreds a year but must be subsidized:

When worked at Interior, a quarter century ago, I was told that bird deaths due to wind farms were massive, but orders were to do and say nothing, because wind power was fashionable.

General Electric and T. Boone Pickens make money off of windmills, and donate generously to political campaigns.  Eagles do neither.

The Fireman's Carnival

The village nestled in the shadow of Castle Borepatch has a volunteer fire department. This week is the annual fund raiser carnival. Infield rides, bingo, and carnival food. It has a delightful small town feel to it.

The band was way better than you'd expect - not one but TWO quite credible guitarists.

Last year I won a big stuffed thing for the Queen Of The World at the shooting gallery. Alas, no infield for us as she's hobbling around on crutches.

But it sure is fun to come out to the local carnival. Fireworks is next.

I'd drink that

HAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously, I'd totally drink that.

The slow death of the carrier Air Wing

An Aircraft Carrier is a delivery platform, it's Air Wing is what it delivers.  The last 25 years has seen a big reduction in the capabilities of the Air Wing:

Carrier aircraft during this time were capable of very long-range missions even when relying only on the fuel they carried. The A-6E could fly 1,000 nautical miles from the carrier without being refueled while carrying up to 18,000 pounds of ordnance, and the F-14 could loiter on a combat air patrol almost 800 miles from the carrier. The S-3 could operate for nearly six hours before needing fuel, as it patrolled the waters surrounding the carrier battle group, identifying surface contacts and searching for submarines.

...

For the carrier air wing the Hornet was an opportunity to replace the aging A-7 with a more modern, less maintenance intensive aircraft. However, the more modern Hornet would prove during testing that it could not match up with the 608 nautical mile combat range of the A-7, being able to only fly 370 nautical miles with the same weapons load before having to turn back to return to the carrier.

Navy test pilots recognized the Hornet’s short range for what it was: a significant decrease in the ability of the air wing to conduct long-range missions while keeping the carrier far enough away from potential threats.

This is a pretty in-depth article that discusses what happens when shorter range, lack of air tanker capability, and longer range (1000 mile) anti-ship weaponry collide.  Given that a complete carrier Battle Group costs around $20B, this is a big problem.

The Queen Of The World would have gotten around more

But she took an arrow to the knee* had knee surgery and is on crutches for the next few weeks.  Blogging will continue to be off an on.

* For those of you who aren't hip to what the youngsters are up to, the reference is to this.

Ten Years of blogging

Not me, but T-Bolt has taken his blog around the sun ten times.  Go leave him some commenty congratulations.

Quote of the Day, Progressives and Trump edition

Great question:

Have the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States and Trump’s first few months in office altered your priors about concentrating power in the federal government?  Do you believe that the only, or the only sensible, response to Trump’s ascendancy is to work harder to ensure that the like of Trump is never again elected to high political office – that is, to work harder to ensure that power is forevermore in the hands only of ‘good’ people?  Or are you now more open to proposals to reduce the reach and the power of at least the national government?  If not the latter, why not?

Narcotics legalization: Comparisons to Gun Control

This is food for thought.  The USA (where there is a War On Drugs under way) has 30 times the overdose death rates per capita as Portugal (which legalized or decriminalized essentially all drugs 15 years ago):

But in Portugal, the numbers paint a different story. The prevalence of past-year and past-month drug use among young adults has fallen since 2001, according to statistics compiled by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which advocates on behalf of ending the war on drugs. Overall adult use is down slightly too. And new HIV cases among drug users are way down.

Now, numbers just released from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction paint an even more vivid picture of life under decriminalization: drug overdose deaths in Portugal are the second-lowest in the European Union.

This data are stark.  We have a policy in this Republic that has clearly and utterly failed - the data do not lie.  We have powerful incentives for Government to try ever more controls (the Attorney General's idiotic plan to ramp up civil asset forfeiture is offered as Exhibit A only due to the fact that it is the most recent example).  The people advocating for more control have no new ideas that can plausibly work, and so fall back on "do it again, only harder!"

The comparison to gun control is more than a little uncomfortable: target something that people don't like (drug use/gun possession), make a bunch of ineffective laws that empower the State at the expense of the people without "solving" the "problem", repeat the stupidity for 30 or 40 years.

When you consider the vast amount of money flowing to drug gangs, when you consider Attorney General Sessions - the highest Law Enforcement official in the land, for crying out loud - advocating seizing citizens' property without charge or trial or conviction, when you consider the body count from gang turf battles over drug sales, and when you consider the lack of any sort of effective detox programs (like Portugal seems to run), we're left with the conclusion that the War On Drugs is simply evil.  I don't see how any other word fits.

The Gales of Remember - A Brigid Guest Post

October 17, 2015.

There was a lot of stuff at the crash pad packed away in boxes from when I sold the big sprawling home that was Range #1 as well as things I'd shipped back from Dad's after my brother passed away. I finally had a chance to go through it as it found a new home in the Bungalow with my new husband where space is limited and only things most precious are on display.

There was a storm brewing that night, the wind fierce off of the Great Lake, stirring things in the trees, stirring things in me.

In the bottom of one trunk, I found something among things gleaned from my brother's belongings that I had not had much time to go though. And it brought me to tears - because of this photo which is always on display.  Look carefully to the left and right of my brother to the two little creatures, dressed for the winter.

My Mom was 1/2 Swede and 1/2 Norwegian, so although I think they are actually Danish in origin, we always had trolls around.  In the picture, we're playing out in the snow, and Mom had actually made little coats for the trolls to protect their felt clothing.

How little we knew that one day that well-worn photo would be held by a magnet on an ancient refrigerator, there as the snow fell down like the gift of grace on the frozen ground, there in the days of honor and play, before we knew anything of selfishness, greed and the uncaring faces of forgetful men.

There were just our toys of childhood, the toy soldiers, our trains, our collection of matchbook cars and hot wheels.  And the trolls.

We played with them in quiet solitude, not because we thought others would make fun of us for "playing with dolls" but because they were an outlet for imagination.  They weren't "dolls" - they were Vikings, bigger than all of our other toys, even G.I. Joe standing down in their presence.  Their hair was tangled with the imagined salt of the sea, their countenance a grin in the face of any adversity. They were born, not of a woman or the earth, but by magic and myth. Others might not have understood, so they were our solitude, that was also our saving as Mom grew sicker and the waters grew colder.

I wondered what had happened to them, more than once. They were our companions on bike rides deep into the trails that formed as more subdivisions were built, they were the silent watch on deck as we drifted off to sleep at night, the moon outside bending low into our window as if to look onto our face as we dream of fast ships and high seas.

My brother and I were perhaps unusual compared to many siblings as he was genuinely my best friend, and not just my older brother. We'd play in the yard, in the woods, and even better, at the coast where we had a small cabin, running out by the waves until the sun sank round and blazing into the crest of waves as if they eroded that luminous circle with their power, until only darkness and the sound of the ocean remained. When we weren't playing together we were playing with Craig - his best friend for life, who lived next door to us, a brother not in blood, but in spirit.

He and I  rarely squabbled.  He held me on those rare occasions I cried and he protected me from any neighborhood bully, who knew better to invoke the wrath of a tall redhead who would grow up to be a giant of a man, a gentle giant who handled those things he loved as if made of glass.

We played hard and well, even if in adulthood it was sometimes just a game of pool and a beer, laughing as much as we did as children, throwing fates to the wind and taking no prisoners, even if we had a designated driver. On, or in, my dresser is the matchbox cars, rocks. shells, and other things of childhood.

But I  had forgotten what became of those two trolls, there in that photo.   Not long after those days, as we left childhood, I never saw them again.  Like many things of childhood, they just disappeared. The earth takes some - toy soldiers buried in the yard with full honors.  Others are simply cast off as young adults, not yet realizing how precious those little things are until we reach an age where the earth calls its account for all things we hold dear, taking them away before we are ready.

I lift them out of the box, plucking a strand of dust from the hair of the female troll, blinking in the hazy light.  With them is a smaller troll - one my brother gave me when he went off to sea as a submariner. They rest on a piece of wood cut more than a hundred years ago, the same shade of that gate that Dad built some 60 years ago, in the house that my brother and I grew up in.

They were not Vikings or adventurers, they were simply toys from which our adventures sprung forth, daring days of glory in the heat and the cold.  But rather than be tossed out with the rest of the toys, my brother had carefully put them away for me to find someday among his things that were left to me on his passage.

As I gathered the box to place them back into safekeeping, I blink in the diffused light, as shadows ebb and flow outside the window.  I look out to the East, to the lake and in my mind's eye see a shadowed vessel manned by a redheaded shade, there beyond the horizon, who sends me a wave of greeting as he disappears into a soundless gale.

Someday I will join him, when the splash of the ocean bites into the Sun, when the end of all things earthly comes without furor or whisper, that moment we release ourself to the water and our hearts cease to beat as if an engine stilled.  In that moment, in that perfect moment of immobility, there will be a new adventure awaiting in glory.

But not for now, now is for living and remembering.

The trolls almost seemed to stir there in the play of light, as if remembering all of those days of joy and freedom.  So many memories there - the laughter of a young girl, and the brave shout of a boy, running his plastic warrior up to the top of the hill, where we are stronger than the oceans, Vikings rule, and imagination never dies.

I  carefully put them away, as I raise my hand into the gales of the east and wave goodbye.

Explaining the security in the "Internet of Things"

But hey, there's a gate, amirite?

What do you get when it's the "Hottest Year Ever"?

Skiing in the middle of summer:

Summer Shredding

With over 600″ of snowfall this winter the 2016/2017 ski season is still going strong and we’ll be skiing and riding into August.

That's some righteous Global Warming, right there.  Skiing until August in California.

So: when it's hot, that's a sign of Global Warming.  When there are record snowfalls, what is that a sign of?  And if there's no possibility of an incorrect prediction, can we even call it "science"?

The very first Internet Security song?

On the Book of Faces, the Queen Of The World found this:

Good advice, actually.  The humor might help people remember the lesson.  And if humor is what you want, this is obligatory:

Grooming at Gitmo?

The World wonders.

Goldilocks and the Three Berettas - A Brigid Guest Post

Goldilocks goes to the gun store to select a pistol for self-defense.  The sales representative shows her several models in different sizes to look at.

"This gun is too big!" she exclaimed.
So she picked up the second gun
"This gun is too big, too!"  she whined.
So she tried the last and smallest gun
"Ahhh, this gun is just right," she sighed.

But when confronted later by the angry bear, the tiny round only pissed it off, and the bear ate Goldilocks.

MORAL OF THE STORY, for primary self-defense, bigger is better.

(and bears who live on porridge are going to be hungry).