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New Blog - Threat Axis Log

Threat Axis Log.

Well, its new to me anyway, stop by and say hello. Its a new blog, but I like what I'm seeing.

Posted @ July 30, 2008 10:06 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Snickers: Get some nuts!

Back when the earth was young, dinosaurs roamed the Earth and all TV shows were made by either Irwin Allen, Quinn Martin or Sheldon Leonard, this would have been considered funny to one and all, but lo, in the age of the "sensitive man" this advertisement makes some people cry and because of that, it must not see the light of day.

Of course, when I say "sensitive", I'm referring to people who play soccer.

It's days like this that I weep for the species. and when I say "weep" I dont mean "cry' I mean I shake my head quietly, by myself, where it cant be seen. I dont want to get caught showing emotion in public because, well, that would be wrong, am I right? I mean there are just some things that a man doesnt do, right?

Posted @ July 30, 2008 12:13 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

How to fix the social security system

Eat up baby boomers, the only thing thats gonna save my generation is a healthy heapin' of suvivor benefits, so forget about your "healthy start" organic food options, forget about the gym you joined and start smoking and drinking again just like in the good old days.

Then fix youself up a daily plate of these:

Paula's Fried Butter Balls

2 sticks butter
2 ounces cream cheese
Salt and pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg, beaten
1 cup seasoned bread crumbs
Peanut oil, for frying

Cream the butter, cream cheese, salt and pepper together with an electric mixer until smooth. Using a very small ice cream scoop, or melon baller, form 1-inch balls of butter mixture and arrange them on a parchment or waxed paper lined sheet pan. Freeze until solid. Coat the frozen balls in flour, egg, and then bread crumbs and freeze again until solid.
When ready to fry, preheat oil in a deep-fryer to 350 degrees F.

Fry balls for 10 to 15 seconds until just light golden. Drain on paper towels before serving.

Wait a second - Peanut oil? PEANUT OIL! Oh come on Paula, isn't this exactly the right application for Coconut Oil? Peanut Oil? Sheesh. Everyone knows if youre going to fry butter fat that you want an oil thats 95% trigycerides. Get Chef Gordon Ramsay on the phone, he will make me a proper deep fried butter ball and show this lady a thing or two.

mmmm... deep-fried-butter... Its so simple! Its like Elvis' Fried Peanut Butter Sandwhich, just thinking about it takes 10 years off your life. I'm wondering why I never thought of the idea of "Deep Fried Butter" myself! Its like a "deep fried embolism"! The last thing you say is "Wow, that really is good! then you just expire right on the spot. You could put them on a stick, sell them at the State Fair. If you could get them with a side of salmonella, it would be like virtually everything else you get at the State Fair, except that unlike that corn dog that will make you sick for three days afterwards, the Fried Butter Balls will simply kill you on the spot. So, you take the kids to the fair and one of them says " Hey look, its that prop comedian Carrot Top is playing a double bill with Gallagher, can we go see them, please?" You can just say " Sure kids, just let me stop off at the Fried Butter Ball Stand first". They dont get any pangs of guilt for having driven you to thoughts of suicide and you dont have to sit through Carrot Top and Gallagher. Its a total "Win-Win" as they say...

Go on, laugh if you want to but you know you want to try them, dont you... Wait a second, Im having a flash! So, why not wrap them in bacon before you fry them? yeah buddy, Now were talkin'!

Posted @ July 29, 2008 02:13 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (14)

earthquake - 5.8 Chino Hills California

Bennie - Check your bookshelves bruddah...

For everyone else, a 5.8 in the southern california is an interesting event, but there is likely only to be some spotty damage. If this occured anywhere else in the world, say Seattle for example, there would be a loss of life.

Building codes - ya just cant beat em...

Posted @ July 29, 2008 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (12)

Introducing the Martin Jetpack

Somewhere in my garage is a peechee folder from 1975 that shows this exact design scribbled along the inside along with some random algebra homework. So is this my "teen dream" come to life? Well no, its more like my adult nightmare because all this reminds me of is how much I hate leaf blowers.

I really, really, really hate the sound of leaf blowers.

Posted @ July 29, 2008 09:08 AM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Well that was a long way for nuthin....

I had originally planned to go direct to Mojave and watch the White Knight Two from there, but I had a better offer, which turned out to be not as good as it looked. Long story short, I didnt get to see White Knight Two today as I had planned.

I should have gone with my original plan.

Posted @ July 28, 2008 01:50 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Off to the High Desert

Thanks to the good folks at Pajamas Media, I've been invited to cover Mondays rollout of Virgin Galactics "Eve". "Eve" is the new name of the "White Knight 2" carrier aircraft. This is a Virgin Galactic corporate event, so had I better set my "reality distortion field" disruptors on full, or at the very least, bring my hip-waders.

I guess that means that Pajamas actually liked that A380 post I weaseled my way into last year.

So, "watch this space" as they say...

Posted @ July 25, 2008 03:16 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Can we do it? Yes we can

Looks nice doesnt it? Must be some sort of Modern office building somewhere in Hawaii right? Well this structure sits on an artificial island in the Harbor of Long Beach California, Its named for one of the Apollo Astronauts, Gus Grissom.

So what is it? Why its an oil rig! Its designed to be both pleasing to the eye, as well as lower the industrial sound levels through the creative use of waterfalls and sound suppression panels. There are 4 islands like this one in sitting right in Long Beach harbor. All are within eyesight of the scenic Pacific Coast highway, a number of schools and office buildings, not to mention the recreational beaches.

This is the face of modern oil drilling, even though this was created in 1964 prior to the ever-so-not-forgotten Santa Barbara blowout in 1968. There is also an oil refinery just up the coast in Carson California. In California, oil is available, it can be drilled, pumped, pipelined to the refinery and brought to the consumer in a way thats cheaper, neater, faster and I dare say "greener" than most anywhere on earth.

What the Sierra club and the rest of the "green-shirts" would prefer we do is pump oil from Nigeria, then ship it to Japan for refinement and then use it in California all for "the sake of the environment" as if Nigeria, Japan and the vast oceans inbetween simply dont count in the equations of "environment". If you take into consideration that the State of California is currently at a 28 BILLION dollar budget deficit, you might think that the first thing they would think about was raising money through the use of new oil leases. This is what the City of Long Beach does with the oil that it sits on. Long Beach generates a fair amount of its annual budget directly from oil revenues.

More details can be found here.

Can we drill for oil and live side by side with it? Yes we can, because I can show you that weve been doing that for a long time already. There are currently 1,500 active wells pumping in the cities of Long Beach, Artesia and the Huntington and Seal Beach areas, actively generating 40,000 barrels of oil per day. Think of it, Oil and lots of people living side by side in harmony. Can we do it? Yes we can...

Posted @ July 23, 2008 07:27 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I cant be the only one who thinks that Obama looks like he's borrowed his big brothers suit

I saw the Obama press conference this morning, and all I could think of was the 80's classic movie "Stop Making Sense":

which if you think about it for a second is an apt metaphor for the whole Democrat Presidential campaign in more ways than one. So here it is, for your viewing enjoyment - The David Byrne "Big Suit"

Posted @ July 22, 2008 12:00 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The only thing that matters

A Pre-war "America First" campaign button. Yes, the way to avoid war is to make sure ships dont sail in convoys. You dont want to make the Uboats mad...

Both campaigns are now busily trying to out do each other on timelines for leaving Iraq. In my mind, this is not the question to ask or answer. Truth is, both candidates and the crrent President all want to leave Iraq. The question is not when to leave but how to leave.

If you leave Iraq in chaos and disarray, you guarantee we will have to come back. On the other hand if you leave Iraq in good shape, you best assure that we will not be coming back.

The question that needs to be asked and answered by each candidate is "What are you doing to ensure that American troops will not be needed in the region during your Presidency?"

Americans left Europe to the Europeans after World War I and found themselves 20 yaers later back in Europe in a wider more deadly war. The instincts of the politicians after the First World War was to leave and never look back. It was the next generation that was forced by circumstances that were created by that decision to go back into Europe. After the war, they knew it would be irresponsible to follow the same action because if we had to go back a third time that there wouldnt be much left to liberate. The words you hear over and over again by any World War II veteran about why they fought so hard is this:

"...So my kids wouldnt have to come over and go through this"

And to that I say - Amen.

After a long and deadly war, Americans collectively decided the best course of action to take to ensure that another generation would not have to die on the beaches of France, would be to stay and act as a force of stability on the continent. It was a long debate with the two arguments coming into the "Morgenthau plan" and the "Marshall plan", but in the end, Marshall won the debate. The result of wishful thinking after World War I was World War II and the deaths of 52 million people. The result of our long costly effort in Europe after World War II is a continent populated by a generation that has no experience in war, which given the long bloody history of that region is quite remarkable. While wars in other regions of the world are still very likely, war in Europe is not very likely at all. No American, and no European leader plan for a war with each other on any level at any time. It is simply unthinkable. I caution the reader that there are many of you out there who say that the middle east can never be peaceful. Rest assured, I am not one of those people. If the Germans can be shown to live peacefully and if the Japanese can turn away from war then any nation on earth can be shown a better way to live with the rest of us.

I watch this election closely because besides just being a good citizen, I have a very good personal reason. My son is 14, and the next President will, through his direct action or inaction as President, determine if my son will spend some part of his late teens not just in the military, but in an active, hard fought and costly war.

As a student of human history I know that wars are often started by well meaning, peace loving folks who intended to do just the opposite. Rest assured, that to me the intentions of the next President will make no difference at all if in 6 years time, my son is called into service to fight to liberate Iraq for a third time because of a desire to leave hastily and in chaos just to meet a campaign promise. Those of you who think we can ignore Iraq and the middle east in the future, need only look at your reaction to the reality of $140+ a barrel of oil. The one thing I have enjoyed about $5.00 a gallon gas is that it shows everyone everywhere that our economy and way of life runs on oil and not pixie dust or compressed hamster pellets.

Let us all agree that even if it takes another 10 years to work out the issues in Iraq and the middle east, that 10 years spent in the region is not the worst thing that could happen. Let's not to spend the hours bickering over whether there was a need to go there in the first place but rather, we should all agree that the best policy to follow in the future is the policy that insures that we never have to go back and fight and that with the right course of action, the middle east might someday be as quiet and peaceful as Europe. This is possible, but only if we do the right thing and not the thing that makes us "feel good".

We left Europe in haste in 1918, It felt good. We embargoed Japans oil in 1940, and it felt good too. We did both those things beliving it would result in peace but 52 million people around the world paid the true price for wishful thinking.

Posted @ July 21, 2008 09:11 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (10)

So Who's Vetting Maliki?

If there is one more translation or one more reinterpretation of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's statement about when US Troops should leave, he will quickly find himself at the top of the list for Obama's Vice President. Who else but 'The Master' himself can be so dexterous with public pronouncements of policy?

If he starts giving statements about "Roe Vs. Wade', tax fairness and Social Security, you'll know what's coming next.

Posted @ July 20, 2008 09:16 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Id like to help you with this but Im a little busy at the moment

Theres a reason I'm not blogging much at the moment. The reason is right in this picture:

I cant get a laptop to set level on the deck and everytime the boat moves, the laptop falls into the water. Whoopsie Daisy..! And you know what? Theres no Wifi out here! I'll have to get Slartibartfast to correct that error with Earth 2.0.

That's little old me in my kayak this week out on Fidalgo Bay, with Mt. Baker in the background. I'm the only person on earth who goes to Puget Sound and gets a suntan, but I have a good reason. Its been in the 80's all week, with nary a cloud in the sky the entire time. The locals of course think they are sizzling on the Devils Own Hibachi whereas I, a member of that deranged tribe of "Desert Dwellers" to the South think that this is exactly how it should always be. Of course if it was, it would be brown rather than green and not nearly as staggeringly beautiful as it is.

I'm not really here right now, meaning that I'm not sitting around the office with my laptop. I'm out and about, on the water and off with the occasional effort to gointo the city to wrap up some business which is the actual purpose to my visit up here, but blogging? Eh, no, not right now. I have a ton of things rattling around to blog about but I'm really not in a position to sit down and write at the moment, so bear with me here...

I'll be back soon, but for now think about a couple of things and we shall discuss when I return.

Ahem...

July 16, 1945 was the date of the First Nuclear Explosion in History.
There are a couple of things about this pivotal event that I want you to think about, for example:

A) What would have happened if the bomb didn't go off? Billions of dollars were spent on this project. Is it at all possible that General Leslie Groves and Dr. Robert Oppenheimer could have somehow gotten away with not delivering the 'finished goods' without a demonstration of what all the money was spent on? Witness what happened to Howard Hughes after the war with acusations of "War Profiteering" over his undelivered wartime projects. Witness the fact that then Senator Truman was already near to uncovering the Manhattan Project because of the tremendous cost that was being expended on the project. Could they simply have walked away from it all?

B) Since the Trinity test was to confirm the design of the Plutonium bomb, would the US have gone ahead with the U-235 Bomb and dropped it on Japan if Trinity didnt work? Remember, the U-235 had serious limitations which is why the Plutonium Bomb was necessary.

C) Here's one thats always bothered me. Given the large amount of Soviet espionage that was underway in the Manhattan Project and at work at high levels of the US Government at the time, why didnt the Soviets try to sabotage the bomb? Let's say they did, the US then walks away from the design, convinced that the bomb can never deliver more than a fizzle. Then in 1949, the Soviets demonstrate that the bomb actually does work. During the year it would take to catch up, would the Soviets have used the same restraint against the US and the West as we did towards the Soviet Bloc?

D) What if the bomb simply didn't work? What if the design was flawed and the flaw itself was to go unresolved? Would the bomb eventually have been created by someone else later? How could any follow on team ever received the amount of funding necessary to make that project happen with the political mindset of "It failed with brighter minds than your working on the problem, so who do you think you are that you can solve it?" to fight against. If the smartest minds in the world say it cant be done, do you still try? If so, why? A world where there is no bomb sounds like a dream but I'm not so sure it works out that way and I find that rather interesting idea to consider.

Here's the big question. If there was no bomb, was another World War and this time with the Soviets, an actual certainty? In 1949 over Berlin or in Korea? Did the existence of the bomb and the demonstrable use of it on the Japanese change human civilizations view of the limits of warfare? How many times since 1945 did the bomb actually serve as a firebreak against the horrors of "World War"?

Oh, and another thing. We know about the Manhattan Project because it worked but have you ever thought about the possibility that there were other major projects that didnt work that we never found out about because, well, they did fail. Sometimes things fail because they are silly ideas that dont work and could never work and sometimes things fail because of poor timing. As we all know "Success has a thousand fathers but failure is always an orphan". If there was another "near-hit' project out there like the Manhattan project, how would we know?

Ok, now back to the water. Now where did I put my drybag...

Posted @ July 16, 2008 08:45 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Gack!

Whats it like in the central valley these days? Its 112 degrees, zero wind, and there are three thousand fires all over the state. The smoke literally blocks out the sun. If you want to simulate the experience, turn yur furnace on, close all the windows and start a campfire on the front room floor. Oh, and make the campfire out of Mule dung and you will get the correct amount of throat chocking acridness in the air for the full effect.

I also have two items that are in the process of making matters even worse.

1. The city I live in has decided to take this particular time to resurface the street I live on. Now I have the extra special wafting scent of tar and asphalt to go with the rest of the total "8th circle of dantes inferno" experience.

But wait, the fun doesnt end there...

2. We spent some time this year to put in a garden. Gardens mean plants and plants mean fertilizer and fertilizer means that Flies will make an appearance. We had more than our fair share, so I natually decided to "do something". I bought a rather clever flytrap that is essentially a plastic bag that you fill with water which contains some chemical that acts as a "fly attractant". Given what flies are attacted to, you can imagine what it might smell like and it does. The plastic entrance traps the fly in much the same way that crab traps trap crabs. Once they get in, they cant figure out how to get out and there they stay.

The trap worked really well. Inside of a few days it was filled to the brim with the loathesome creatures so quite naturally, I decided to throw it out into the trash can.

This was, to say the least, a serious mistake. You see the "fly attractant" smells like something along the lines of rotting flesh, spoiled kimchee, week three of a New York Sanitation strike and the worst gag inducing B.O. ever, beyond anything your travels on third world public transport could have uncovered.

You see, when I tossed this bag into the 55 gallon black industrial trash can, it actually amplified the smell. Now the fly attactant rather than just getting flies excited in 6 foot circle around the trap can be smelled from 3 blocks away. The smell is itself a living entity. Its big enough to have its own zipcode. You can actually see the smell. You can see it the same way you can see a dog fart as it moves across the room like a mirage riding above the highway, a small distortion in your view and then blam, you are overcome like you were hit with a wave. In this case the wave is rotting cabbage and vomit.

So whats it like in my slice of California right now?

It's 112 Degrees, theres no sunlight, theres no air movement, the air is filled with acrid smoke and just to tip it off, the lingering smell of dead bodies wrapped in cabbage and dipped in sewage, sitting under a sunlamp for a week. Oh and just to kick me directly in the crotch, Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi are representing my state, which given the state of things right now seems to make a perverse sort of sense.

Yessiree dear reader, I now live in hell...

Posted @ July 10, 2008 12:52 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (4)

How the Irish saved civilization in 1969

Oh, Wheres your cartop mounted loudspeaker when you really need it. eh?

Thats Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem with their 1969 Irish hit "Bringin' Home the Oil", give me a big hand...

Posted @ July 06, 2008 09:28 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wesley Clark on why Wesley Clark wont be Vice President

Oh yes, hes the one to even out the Obama ticket yessiree...

Posted @ July 03, 2008 07:57 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (3)