Friday, November 29, 2019

BeCos(play) It's Friday

 More not safe to mess with the hair below the break, bonus nerd points for recognizing characters.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Friday, November 22, 2019

BeCos(play) It's Friday

 More not safe to raid below the break, and as always bonus nerd points for recognizing characters.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Tonight's Music



The audio is a good as the....presentation.

Thursday: Wifus with Rifus



 More not safe for fan-service below the break.

Courage, Skill, and Ingenuity

Reading about the Yorktown in Coral Sea and Midway one can only marvel at the men who saved their ship and crewmates over and over until the very end:

The Battle of the Coral Sea highlighted the seamanship of the Yorktown’s captain, Elliot Buckmaster, as the commanding officer (CO) avoided eight Japanese torpedoes using the carrier’s maneuverability and speed. According to Stanford Linzey, “Captain Buckmaster had been a destroyer skipper . . . and in the battle of the Coral Sea, he handled the large carrier as if it were a small destroyer.”4
Despite the torpedo misses, the ship suffered one bomb hit and a near miss off the port side. The former caused significant internal damage, while the latter split open the exterior plating of the carrier and damaged the internal shell strengthening structure.5 The dislocated shell reinforcement left the ship’s hull weakened and subject to failure.
This type of seamanship is something I pray is still around nowadays but recent events in the 7th fleet make one worry for such.

Prompt action by the hangar repair party in quickly using fire hoses down through the bomb hole in the hangar and No. 2 elevator pit quickly brought the fire below deck under control. The Engineer Repair Party, Repair 5 . . . was completely wiped out with the exception of several wounded men. The Midship Repair Party, Repair 4, sent a fire party with rescue breathers into the smoke filled damaged compartment . . . cleared the wreckage and personnel casualties, then sent a man through the bomb hole down into [another compartment] where he extinguished the smoldering stores.6
Courage of sailors especially to safeguard their shipmates is an area I worry least about.

The Yorktown’s acting executive officer, Commander Irving D. Wiltsie, later reported one reason the carrier had escaped more extensive damage: Shortly before the dive bombers had attacked, “all gasoline in the topside gasoline lines was pumped back down to the gasoline tanks. . . . [A] CO2 purging system for the topside gasoline lines and a CO2 blanket for the gasoline tank compartments” prevented a serious conflagration. Machinist Oscar W. Myers, the air fuel officer, had developed the carbon-dioxide purging system to expel vapors.14 This lesson had been learned from the loss of the USS Lexington (CV-2) at Coral Sea.
I also worry that such innovation and initiative as this would be crushed or punished even if it proved crucial to saving lives in the modern rule bound bureaucracy. 

This article on the damage control efforts and practices on CV-5 is well worth the read.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Monday, November 18, 2019

Food for Thought

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
Frank Herbert, Dune 
 How many people nowadays are lost to this peril, I would caution all of us to bear it in mind.

Dat....

 A new feature, I realize different people have different tastes. More not safe for seats below the break.

Monday Made Me Laugh




Saturday, November 16, 2019

Flex Time







 Busy week coming up, gotta keep things flexible, more not safe for the imagination below the break.

Friday, November 15, 2019

BeCos(play) It's Friday


  
More not safe for subtext below the break, and as always bonus nerd points for recognizing characters.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

So about that MeToo Moral High Ground

So it comes out (actually has been out for a long time) Deval Patrick fired some of the people who were in charge of the Massachusetts sex offender registry when he was governor. Because they wanted to make his brother-in-law register for a rape committed in California.

. . . On Monday, Patrick, still seething over the story eight years later, explained his recent decision to remove the top two officials at the state Sex Offender Registry Board, saying they improperly tried to force his brother-in-law to register as a sex offender.
In his first public comments on the shakeup at the agency, Patrick blamed the officials, his own appointees, for a number of other problems, including failing to update regulations and fostering an unproductive work environment. But he made it clear, as he prepares to leave office, that he is still nursing wounds from his first political campaign.
Blaming the Herald and the Republican Party for the revelation, Patrick said the disclosure that his brother-in-law had been convicted of raping his wife, Patrick’s sister, more than a decade earlier in California “nearly destroyed their lives.”
Not only that after all of this the brother-in-law goes and does it again!

A Norfolk Superior Court judge sentenced a Milton man on Monday to six to eight years in prison for kidnapping and raping his ex-wife, former Gov. Deval Patrick’s sister — even though prosecutors asked for 17 to 22 years and the victim said she is “terrified” at the prospect of his release.
And this is the Democrat's sane and mainstream hope? If it weren't for double standards some people wouldn't have any standards at all.

Thursday: Wifus with Rifus


 More not safe to field-strip below the break.

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Monday, November 11, 2019

Clowns-Me-You-Jokers (Cleavage Megapost)


Many many more pleasant places to be stuck in below the break.

Armistice

Recessional


1897
God of our fathers, known of old,
   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
   Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
   The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
   An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
   On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
   Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
   In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Monday Made Me Laugh






Friday, November 8, 2019

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Dispatches from our Next Door Neighbor/Failed State

Again at the risk of being declared an irredeemable racist, it sure would be nice to dramatically step up border security between this country and this:

At least six children and three women, all Americans with ties to Utah, were killed in a daylight ambush in Northern Mexico on Monday, likely by cartel gunmen. The family reports that more than a dozen family members are still missing following the attack on the caravan of three SUVs, believed to have been kidnapped following the massacre.
On the off chance anyone who isn't already in this mindset is reading this blog, I would advise starting to treat Northern Mexico Atzelan with the same mindset one would Somolia etc and border areas of this country with the same mindset one would of border areas near other failed states.

Passion Substituting For Scholarship

This may explain Rosenhan. He saw real problems in society: The country was warehousing very sick people in horror houses pretending to be hospitals, our diagnostic systems were flawed and psychiatrists in many ways had too much power — and very little substance. He saw how psychiatric labels degraded people and how doctors see patients through the prism of their mental illness. All of this was true. In many ways, it is still true.
But the problem is that scientific research needs to be sound. We cannot build progress on a rotten foundation.
In disregarding Lando’s data and inventing other facts, Rosenhan missed an opportunity to create something three-dimensional, something a bit messier but more honest. Instead, he helped perpetuate a dangerous half-truth.
And today, what we have is a mental-health crisis of epic proportions. Over 100,000 people with serious mental illnesses live on the streets, while we are chronically short of safe housing and hospital beds for the sickest among us.
One problem with passion in pubic policy is that it can harm the very cause you seek to help. In this case we have people with real mental issues homeless and abusing drugs.

It is probably something we should all watch for in causes that we believe in. Any time someone proposes a "simple" or "quick" solution it likely isn't to be a good one, because the real world and real change aren't simple or quick; especially if they are going to be also thorough and lasting.

I fear that for a segment of our population inclined to embrace the power of the state for solutions that is message will not be learned except through great turmoil. I would however strongly recommend those of us with more liberty minded views to not think ourselves immune to this moral hazard, and the very willful blindness of others to it means it is all the more vital that we not succumb as well.

Tuesday: Tap, Rack, and Bang

 More not safe to field-strip below the break.

Saturday, November 2, 2019

Tonight's Music

Beware: Sirens


 I know the weather is now turning cold enough to tempt you to go to some tropical location where the water is warm, allow me to show you why that's a bad idea. More dangerous aquatic creatures below the break.

Friday, November 1, 2019

BeCos(play) It's Friday

 More not safe oral fixations below the break, and as always bonus nerd points for recognizing characters.