Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Monday, December 30, 2013

Off to work with a cook who as apparently chosen ignorance as a lifestyle choice(can we all at least agree this isn't a valid lifestyle). So I'll probably be seeing the bad kind of red this evening, enjoy a bit of the good kind.

More MSFW below break.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

New York Times goes Full Gobbels for Hillary Clinton.

So according to the Ministry of Truth, the Benghazi attack really was a spontaneous reaction to a movie and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and certainly nothing to do with running guns to Syria.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Oh My God It's Full of Stars

My honest reaction below break.

Sorry I missed last week, more MSFW below break. As always bonus points for recognizing the characters.

Have You Met Lydia?

More below break, mostly safe for work but not at all safe for KurtP don't say I didn't warn you my friend.

Wednesday Dreadnought: SMS Nassau

The Imperial German Navy's response to Dreadnought was a more conservative design, and above all enshrining the philosophy that a ships first duty is to stay afloat therefore she sacrificed throw weight and speed, but was far better compartmentalized to absorb damage.

SMS Nassau^[a] was the first dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial German Navy, a response to the launching of the British battleship HMS Dreadnought.^[2] Nassau was laid down on 22 July 1907 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven, and launched less than a year later on 7 March 1908, approximately 25 months after Dreadnought was launched. She was the lead ship of her class of four battleships, which included Posen, Rheinland, and Westfalen.
Nassau saw service in the North Sea in the beginning of World War I, in the II Division of the I Battle Squadron of the German High Seas Fleet. In August 1915, she entered the Baltic Sea and participated in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, where she engaged the Russian battleship Slava. Following her return to the North Sea, Nassau and her sister ships took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. During the battle, Nassau collided with the British destroyer HMS Spitfire. Nassau suffered a total of 11 killed and 16 injured during the engagement.
After World War I, the bulk of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. As they were the oldest German dreadnoughts, the Nassau-class ships were for the time permitted to remain in German ports. After the German fleet was scuttled, Nassau and her three sisters were surrendered to the victorious powers as replacements for the sunken ships. Nassau was ceded to Japan in April 1920. With no use for the ship, Japan sold her to a British wrecking firm which then scrapped her in Dordrecht, Netherlands.

Merry Nerdy Christmas

Guess it wasn't SataClaus comming to town.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Cult of Tacticool: Stockings

Left out to be filled by the original sneaky bearded operator.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Not a Creature Was Stirring

Tuesday Tap, Rack, and Bang

Monday, December 23, 2013

Monday Made Me Laugh

Race Riot Concerns

Death of 17-year-old boy who was shot in the head as he sat HANDCUFFED in the back of police car sparks angry riots

This has potential similarities to the London riots, if you live/work in heavily hispanic areas and don't fit in you need to be aware of the potential for this to spiral into national race riots.

I'm absolutely not condoning the actions of the police in this case but if this gets out of hand rioters will not be bothering to stop and ask if you're a libertarian.

ht: Wirecutter

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Cue Tactical Laughter

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Wendsday Dreadnought

I've recently reread the excellent Robert K Massie Castles of Steel if you'd like a perspective of the Great War that is fairly fresh it is worth the read. It put my mind to try a regular feature about the great ships that formed an apex of the line of battle so we are starting out with the ship that revolutionized naval warfare.

HMS Dreadnought was a battleship of the Royal Navy that revolutionised naval power. Her entry into service in 1906 represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts", as well as the class of ships named after her. The generation of ships she made obsolete became known as "pre-dreadnoughts". She was the sixth ship of that name in the Royal Navy.
Admiral Sir John "Jacky" Fisher, First Sea Lord of the Board of Admiralty, is credited as the father of the Dreadnought. Shortly after he assumed office he ordered design studies for a battleship armed solely with 12-inch (305 mm) guns and a speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). He convened a "Committee on Designs" to evaluate the alternative designs and to assist in the detailed design work. One ancillary benefit of the Committee was that it would shield him and the Admiralty from political charges that they had not consulted leading experts before designing such a radically different battleship.
Dreadnought was the first battleship of her era to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a few large guns complemented by a heavy secondary battery of smaller guns. She was also the first capital ship to be powered by steam turbines, making her the fastest battleship in the world at the time of her completion.^[1] Her launch helped spark a naval arms race as navies around the world, particularly the German Imperial Navy rushed to match her in the build-up to World War I.^[2]
Dreadnought did not participate in any of World War I's naval battles as she was being refitted during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. This was the only time that British dreadnought battleships fired on their German counterparts during the war. She became the only battleship to sink a submarine when she rammed the SM U-29 when it unexpectedly broke the surface after firing a torpedo at another dreadnought in 1915.^[3] She was relegated to coastal defence duties in the English Channel after Jutland, only rejoining the Grand Fleet in 1918. She was reduced to reserve in 1919 and sold for scrap two years later.