Tuesday - March 17, 2009

YOUR CHANCE TO ASK THE PRESIDENT BMEWSers

H/T Theo Spark

Need I say anything?  Hi BMEWS , have fun with this.

Posted by peiper     on 03/17/2009 at 04:36 AM   
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   Monday - March 16, 2009

U.S. forces shot down Iranian drone over Iraq.

I’D RATHER A NUKE OR TWO ON IRAN BUT OK. I GUESS I’LL HAVE TO SETTLE FOR LESS.

Breaking News

U.S. forces shot down Iranian drone over Iraq

16 mins ago
Reuters Waleed Ibrahim and Missy Ryan

U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone aircraft that ventured inside Iraq last month, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Monday, an incident that highlights deep U.S.-Iranian tensions. Skip related content

A U.S. military spokesman said that U.S. jet fighters shot down the unmanned Iranian aircraft on February 25 about 60 miles (100 km) northeast of Baghdad.

“The UAV had been tracked by coalition air forces for nearly 1 hour and 10 minutes before it was engaged and shot down well inside Iraqi airspace,” Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Ballesteros said.

“This was not an accident on the part of the Iranians” because of the distance into Iraq the drone flew and how long it stayed, Ballesteros said. The aircraft was believed to be an Iranian “Ababil 3” model drone, he added.

But Major-General Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, head of military operations at the Iraqi Defence Ministry, told Reuters he believed the plane’s entry into Iraq was probably a mistake.

“According to the report received by multinational forces, this drone entered Iraq mistakenly at a point 100 km (60 miles) from Baghdad. It crossed 10 km (6 miles) into Iraq,” he said.

“It’s most likely that its entrance was a mistake.”

The three weeks of silence from U.S., Iraqi and Iranian officials about the unusual incident underscores the sensitive nature of any contact between Iran and the United States.

Iranian officials had no immediate comment on the incident.

The U.S. military has long accused Iran of arming militants and meddling in neighbouring Iraq, where tens of thousands of people have died in sectarian and insurgent violence since the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003.

But relations between the government of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Iran, a fellow majority Shi’ite nation, are mostly friendly.

The two countries fought a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s which killed an estimated 1 million people, but ties have warmed since Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, was removed from power.

IRAN’S ROLE IN IRAQ

In recent months, as violence has dropped sharply across Iraq, U.S. officials have spoken less forcefully about Iran’s purported role in Iraq. Tehran denies backing Iraqi militants.

In a shift from the Bush administration, U.S. President Barack Obama, who took office in January, has said he would be open to engaging with Iran on a range of issues, from nuclear ambitions to how Iran might help in Afghanistan.

HERE FOR MORE

Posted by peiper     on 03/16/2009 at 12:53 PM   
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO WARDMAMA-4 ….. CHEERS AND GOOD HEALTH WARDMOM.

A MOST HAPPY BMEWS BIRTHDAY AS I DO BELIEVE IT IS OUR

TO

Posted by peiper     on 03/16/2009 at 10:28 AM   
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Golden era of motoring past found in undergrowth.  This time here in UK.

Some time back one of you BMEWS ppl posted similar but in USA. And those cars were a bit more recent.
Well, this caught my eye and I do truly love old autos more then I can say.
Something about em, ya know? Yeah. I know you do.

Isn’t to say I don’t love newer cars too.  But there was just so much about the older ones like the Stutzbearcat and Doozy and oh right. The Packard and the Hudson and the 37 Cord or almost any Cord I suppose.

I bet those old cars were hell to keep up and running properly in their day compared to ours though.
They looked like sculptured works of art.

So I thought I’d share this.
And wouldn’t it be cool to actually own an auto museum? 

Golden era of motoring past found in undergrowth

A collection of historic cars, including a rare 1930s Morris Minor convertible, is to be auctioned next month after being hidden for more than 50 years in an overgrown wilderness. The cars, said to number more than 30, are a roll call of long-forgotten marques, such as Swifts, Rileys, Austins, Singers, a Lea Francis, a Daimler, a Lanchester and a Sunbeam.

They were found at a cottage in Norfolk after the owner Jimmy Blanche, 80, a former mechanic and bodywork repairer, died this year. The cars, hidden in undergrowth and in derelict sheds, had not turned a wheel since the 1950s. Trees had grown around some of them.

Guy Snelling, the auctioneer, said that it was an unprecedented find and there had been a lot of interest in the sale, to be held on April 4. “Some are in a pretty poor state but they are largely complete and most can be restored — one man’s wreck is another man’s restoration project. While some might make a few hundred, others could go for several thousand pounds,” he added.

TIMES

Posted by peiper     on 03/16/2009 at 09:28 AM   
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Nobody listens to the real climate change experts.

There isn’t a thing I can add to anything Mr. Booker says here because he wrote the book (it seems) on this side of the argument.

He is ridiculed by the left of course and that alone tells me he is right on this subject.

What’s interesting too is that while he does try to use reasoned arguments, his opponents reply with insults.

Nobody listens to the real climate change experts
The minds of world leaders are firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers, says Christopher Booker.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 6:52PM GMT 14 Mar 2009

Considering how the fear of global warming is inspiring the world’s politicians to put forward the most costly and economically damaging package of measures ever imposed on mankind, it is obviously important that we can trust the basis on which all this is being proposed. Last week two international conferences addressed this issue and the contrast between them could not have been starker.

The first in Copenhagen, billed as “an emergency summit on climate change” and attracting acres of worldwide media coverage, was explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch. As one of the organisers put it, “this is not a regular scientific conference: this is a deliberate attempt to influence policy”.

Taxes must rise to pay for climate change, MPs warn

What worries them are all the signs that when the world’s politicians converge on Copenhagen in December to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, under the guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there will be so much disagreement that they may not get the much more drastic measures to cut carbon emissions that the alarmists are calling for.

Thus the name of the game last week, as we see from a sample of quotations, was to win headlines by claiming that everything is far worse than previously supposed. Sea level rises by 2100 could be “much greater than the 59cm predicted by the last IPCC report”. Global warming could kill off 85 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, “much more than previously predicted”. The ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica are melting “much faster than predicted”. The number of people dying from heat could be “twice as many as previously predicted”.

None of the government-funded scientists making these claims were particularly distinguished, but they succeeded in their object, as the media cheerfully recycled all this wild scaremongering without bothering to check the scientific facts.

What a striking contrast this was to the second conference, which I attended with 700 others in New York, organised by the Heartland Institute under the title Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis?. In Britain this received no coverage at all, apart from a sneering mention by the Guardian, although it was addressed by dozens of expert scientists, not a few of world rank, who for professional standing put those in Copenhagen in the shade.

Led off with stirring speeches from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the acting head of the European Union, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the most distinguished climatologist in the world, the message of this gathering was that the scare over global warming has been deliberately stoked up for political reasons and has long since parted company with proper scientific evidence.

Nothing has more acutely demonstrated this than the reliance of the IPCC on computer models to predict what is going to happen to global temperatures over the next 100 years. On these predictions, that temperatures are likely to rise by up to 5.3C, all their other predictions and recommendations depend, yet nearly 10 years into the 21st century it is already painfully clear that the computer forecasts are going hopelessly astray. Far from rising with CO2, as the models are programmed to predict they should, the satellite-measured temperature curve has flattened out and then dropped. If the present trend were to continue, the world in 2100 would not in fact be hotter but 1.1C cooler than the 1979-1998 average.

Yet it is on this fundamental inability of the computer models to predict what has already happened that all else hangs. For two days in New York we heard distinguished experts, such as Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, authoritatively (and often wittily) tear apart one piece of the scare orthodoxy after another.

Sea levels are not shooting up but only continuing their modest 3mm a year rise over the past 200 years. The vast Antarctic ice-sheet is not melting, except in one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. Tropical hurricane activity, far from increasing, is at its lowest level for 30 years. The best correlation for temperature fluctuations is not CO2 but the magnetic activity of the sun. (For an admirable summary of proceedings by the Australian paleoclimatologist Professor Bob Carter, Google “Heartland” and “Quadrant").

Yet the terrifying thing, as President Klaus observed in his magisterial opening address, is that there is no dialogue on these issues. When recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found the minds of his fellow world leaders firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers. As I said in my own modest contribution to the conference, there seems little doubt that global warming is leading the world towards an unprecedented catastrophe. But it is not the Technicolor apocalypse promised by the likes of Al Gore. The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.

BOOKER ON CLIMATE

Now then there is another voice to be heard from the other side and not and unknown one either.
Prince Chucky, as Drew refers to Prince Charles, the future King of England and current Prince of Wales, has said the world only has 100 months to reverse the ill effects of gorebal warming.  One Hundred Months.  That’s the word from Chucky.

Well, Seems I recall Sir Chuck shilling for the following but .... things haven’t worked out as promised ...

Prince of Wales’s guide to alternative medicine ‘inaccurate’
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
The Times Online

The Prince of Wales is being challenged today to withdraw two guides promoting alternative medicine, by scientists who say that they make misleading and inaccurate claims about its benefits.

The documents, published by the Prince and his Foundation for Integrated Health, misrepresent scientific evidence about therapies such as homoeopathy, acupuncture and reflexology, say the authors of a new evaluation of alternative treatments.

In a letter to The Times, Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, and Simon Singh, a science writer and broadcaster, call on the Prince to recall the publications, one of which was produced with a £900,000 grant from the Department of Health.

“They both contain numerous misleading and inaccurate claims concerning the supposed benefits of alternative medicine,” they say. “The nation cannot be served by promoting ineffective and sometimes dangerous alternative treatments.”

OKAY THAT DOES IT DAMN IT!
I WANT MY 100 MONTHS BACK RIGHT NOW!

Posted by peiper     on 03/16/2009 at 08:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • EUro-peons • International •  
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I MOST SINCERELY HOPE THIS IS A HOAX, A JOKE, A GIGGLE SOMEONE MADE UP. IF NOT…..

If it’s true and there really and honestly and truly are people who buy into this for honest to gosh serious ,,,,

Then England and Europe europe are in some deep doo-doo. 

If this is not a hoax, as I’m almost inclined to believe it is, then there are some ppl who need to seriously think about getting a job. If anyone will have them. But oh wait a minute, that’s why they’re employed by the eu.

These folks rake in tons of money from member states,,, for this?
I should mention that I couldn’t find this story in the Daily Mail.  ??? 

Maybe the citizens of the member states should pay em to DO NOTHING!

Euro chiefs ban ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’
The European Parliament has banned the terms ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’ in case they offend female MEPs.

By Simon Johnson
Last Updated: 3:06PM GMT 15 Mar 2009

The politically correct rules also mean a ban on Continental titles, such as Madame and Mademoiselle, Frau and Fraulein and Senora and Senorita.

Guidance issued in a new ‘Gender-Neutral Language’ pamphlet instead orders politicians to address female members by their full name only.

Also, ‘sportsmen’ be called ‘athletes’,
‘statesmen’ be referred to as ‘political leaders’ and even that ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ be used instead of ‘man-made’.

The guidance lists banned terms for describing professions, including fireman, air hostess, headmaster, policeman, salesman, manageress, cinema usherette and male nurse.

However MEPs are still allowed to refer to ‘midwives’ as there is no accepted male version of the job description.

The booklet also admits that “no gender-neutral term has been successfully proposed” to replace ‘waiter’ and ‘waitress’, allowing parliamentarians to use these words in a restaurant or café.

It has been circulated by Harold Romer, the parliament’s secretary general, to the 785 MEPs working in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Struan Stevenson, a Scottish Conservative MEP described the guidelines as “political correctness gone mad.”

He said: “We have seen the EU institutions try to ban the bagpipes and dictate the shape of bananas, but now they see determined to tell us which words we are entitled to use in our own language.”

Philip Bradbourn, another Conservative MEP, vowed to ignore the booklet, which he described as a “waste of taxpayers’ money” and called on Mr Romer to reveal its cost.

He added: “I will have no part of it. I will continue to use my own language and expressions, which I have used all my life, and will not be instructed by this institution or anyone else in these matters.”

Seven years ago, an attempt to amend noise laws came close to effectively outlawing bagpipes.

However, a number of bizarre EU rules remain in place, including a directive stating that every pair of rubber boots must be supplied with a user’s manual in 12 languages.

TELEGRAPH

THIS IS THE EDITORIAL REPLY FROM THE TELEGRAPH

Vive la différence
Brussels’ latest ruling on ‘gender neutrality’ is absurd

Telegraph View
Last Updated: 7:18PM GMT 15 Mar 2009

In the interests of “gender neutrality”, the European Parliament is seeking to prohibit the use of such inflammatory words as Miss or Mrs, Madame or Mademoiselle, Señora or Señorita. When addressing each other, MEPs must avoid any reference whatsoever to a woman’s marital status. Whatever next? It can only be a matter of time before the words “man” and “woman” are proscribed by the nitwits in Brussels on the grounds that their use is loaded, gender-wise. What a dull world they want for us – and our civilisation. Would Emma Bovary have been quite so intriguing as a mere Ms? And to gender neutralise the Mademoiselle from Armentières would rather miss the point. Are they being serious – or is this just another one of those notorious Brussels myths? Or should that by Mses?

Posted by peiper     on 03/16/2009 at 03:45 AM   
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   Sunday - March 15, 2009

Housework

One way to tell that you are making progress sorting through old papers, catalogs, and junk mail is when you’ve moved enough paper to locate the paper shredder.

I’m not yet at that point. I know I have one ... somewhere.

If you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, send in the rescue Saint Bernards. Well aged brandy only please.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/15/2009 at 05:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
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   Saturday - March 14, 2009

ANYONE LEAVING ENGLAND BY LAND, SEA OR AIR, WILL HAVE TRIP LOGGED AND RECORDED

AND .... STORED IN A DATA BASE FOR TEN YEARS.

IT HAS COME TO THIS.  I DON’T KNOW.  MAYBE IT’S A GOOD THING.

Reason I say that is because all the civil rights groups are against it.  And hell, if they’re on one side I HAVE to be on the other.

Yachtsmen, trawlers and private pilots will have till 2014 to comply.
Even swimmers attempting to swim the channel will, along with their support teams, be subject to new rules.

Information about travel will be expected 24 hours ahead of leaving.

The following is from The Mail and they quote The Telegraph, which has more detail.  Ah but ... sadly the Telegraph is a submarine with a screen door. Problem is, the story that covers a front page in The Stupidgraph, isn’t online.  Smart.  Don’t understand why they do that. BUT ... I was able to track down (wasn’t easy) the Dummygraph cartoon that went with the story. Clever as always. The cartoonist that is. Bunch of misfits running their web site at the Torygraph.

Big Brother to spy on your holidays as security database is set up to log all trips abroad

By John Garth
Last updated at 1:12 PM on 14th March 2009

* Travellers must give details of ALL journeys out of UK
* 250million trips to be tracked annually
* £5,000 fine if you don’t hand over travel plans, address and credit card details

Passport:

Showing your passport will be the simplest part of crossing borders, with new rules stipulating at least 24 hours’ notice of travel plans

All trips out of Britain are to be recorded on a massive new security database - along with personal details of every business traveller and holidaymaker.

People planning a journey abroad will have to submit their exact travel plans along with details of their passports, home addresses, email addresses, and even credit cards.

Civil liberties groups voiced alarm at the scale of the new system - called ‘e-borders’ - which is aimed at tightening Britain’s perimeters and countering terrorism.

Anyone who does not comply will face the risk of criminal prosecution and fines of up to £5,000.

The rules will apply to all journeys that involve leaving the UK, whether by air, sea or Channel Tunnel, regardless of how brief the trip.

Would-be travellers will have to log details online and the database will eventually track 250million trips every year, according to a report today in The Daily Telegraph.

Airlines, train companies and ship operators will also face fines if they fail to provide details of their crew and passengers.

Massive delays are anticipated at airports and seaports at Easter as the UK Border Agency introduces some of the new regulations.

The UK Border Agency said today that 82million passengers had already been recorded entering Britain - a process which had yielded ‘more than 2,900 arrests for crimes including murder, drug dealing and sex offences’.

By the end of this year, 60 per cent of all journeys out of Britain will be affected. By the end of next year, the rules will apply to nearly all - 95 per cent.

Day trippers will be affected, including shoppers on ‘booze cruises’ to buy cigarettes and alcohol in supermarkets across the Channel.

Even cross-Channel swimmers and their support teams will have to comply.

By the time the e-borders system is fully in force in 2014, it will also apply to passengers and crew of light aircraft; as well as all trawlermen, yachtsmen and leisure boaters who plan to make landfall overseas.

Details will have to be logged at least 24 hours in advance and will be stored on the government database for roughly a decade.

It will represent a massive shift from the relaxed situation prior to 9/11, by which time John Major’s government and then New Labour’s Jack Straw had scrapped all exit controls.

Shipping groups and transport companies warned today that the new strictures will mean new delays for travellers.

The Chamber of Shipping predicted ‘unwelcome queues’ and ‘unnecessary complications’.

Chunnel train company Eurostar said check-in times would be longer, adding expense for operators.

Privacy campaigners and travel groups also expressed alarm as the extent of the scheme was revealed.

AA president Edmund King called it ‘a sad reflection of the times’ and warned: ‘Travellers will need to ensure that their passports are up to date and that details are input accurately if they don’t want to end up in a dark room being grilled by border officials.’

Phil Booth of privacy group NO2ID told the Telegraph: ‘Especially given the Government’s appalling record on looking after our data, it just doesn’t seem sensible for it to pass details like this and sensitive financial information around.’

Tory Home Affairs spokesman Chris Grayling stopped short of condemning the e-borders scheme outright, saying authorities must record who exits and enters the UK.

However, he warned that the system as planned could prove ‘unwieldy, impossible to manage and expensive to operate’.

But Labour’s Gwyn Prosser, who sits on the all-party Home Affairs Select Committee, called the system ‘absolutely necessary’, adding: ‘Governments of all complexions have always been criticised for not knowing who is in the country. This is a very sophisticated way of counting people in and out.’

THE MAIL

Posted by peiper     on 03/14/2009 at 01:44 PM   
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Man stabs to death teenage boy trying to burgle his house. ( Bout time we had good news. )

Well GOOD for the home owner.

Scratch one gremlin and too bad there aren’t a lot more.

Be interesting to watch and see how this plays out.  Sure hope the home owner doesn’t turn out to be a baddie involved in a gang thing, but it does not read that way so far.

It pleases me greatly to know there’s one less pile of useless, worthless scum out there.

A man has stabbed to death a teenage boy, aged 17, who was trying to burgle his house in Nottingham, police have confirmed.

Last Updated: 2:09PM GMT 14 Mar 2009

A man has stabbed a 17-year-old boy to death, who was trying to burgle his house in Nottingham, police have confirmed
The man, who is in his early twenties, was arrested after he attacked the teenage boy, who was said to have been breaking in to the house with two other youths.
Nottinghamshire Police said that they were called to the house in Heathfield Road, Nottingham, at 2pm on Friday after reports of a disturbance.

The boy was taken to the Queen’s Medical Centre but died from his injuries, police said.
A second man, also in his twenties and who according to police has an association with the house, is under arrest.
The boy’s accomplices in the alleged burglary were also arrested.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said the dead youth was expected to be formally identified later.
The spokesman added: “In an effort to establish the circumstances which led up to this death, we would ask anyone who was in and around Heathfield Road at 2pm on March 13 to cast their minds back to see if they can remember anyone acting suspiciously.”
The semi-detached red-brick property was cordoned off today with police tape.

Two police officers stood outside the house. The window blinds of the property were drawn and part of its fence lay smashed on the front lawn.
At the back of the house a white police tent had been erected while forensics officers carried out their investigation. The glass door, which backs on to the house’s back garden, was smashed.
It is understood a Jamaican couple live at the house.

Fazal Khan, a 33-year-old computer technician who lives close to where the attack happened, said: “We heard there had been a burglary and when we came down here the police had blocked it off all the way.
“My wife was here and the police told her that the house had been burgled. We have been burgled as well last month so that’s two burglaries in three or four weeks.”
He added: “They are good people who live in that house. They are very co-operative and nice.

“When somebody broke into our house the lady came round because we were not at home and called the police and the police called my wife and she came home.
“I cannot say it is a nice area because someone set fire to the bushes in my front garden. We have had problems two or three times.
“On one occasion somebody broke the window. It is just the youths or something. All the areas have problems but it is 70-80% a nice area here.”
One 75-year-old woman, who did not want to be named, said: “We heard that somebody had been stabbed. There were about seven police cars and then another one came tearing up the road.”

An 84-year-old neighbour who lives close to the property said she had trouble before with youths throwing eggs at her house.
She said: “The police did say that somebody had got killed in Heathfield Road and that he had been stabbed.
“I’m surprised really because although I have had a lot of trouble with my windows being broken in by lads in the past I didn’t expect this.”

ARTICLE SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 03/14/2009 at 11:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • UK •  
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Rare first Superman comic sells for more than $300,000 in online auction.

Just saw this. Gee, wonder what those old ones I had in the late 40’s might be worth. ??  A moot point since I never saved any. Who wouldda knowd?

Rare first Superman comic sells for more than $300,000 in online auction

A mystery buyer has paid $317,200 (£227,000) for a rare copy of the first Superman comic book, which had a cover price of only 10 cents when it was published in 1938.

Last Updated: 10:22AM GMT 14 Mar 2009

The first Superman comic dated June 1938 Photo: APEX

Only around 100 copies of the publication are left. It is credited with being the first appearance of any cartoon superhero.
Bids in the online auction, which started two weeks ago on http://www.comicconnect.com, immediately topped $200,000 and a last-minute surge crossed the $300,000 mark.

There were 89 bids and the online auction house extended the deadline by several minutes to catch the late interest. Neither the seller nor the buyer were identified.

The comic is an unrestored copy of the first issue of Action Comics, with a cover showing Superman in his trademark red cape hurling a green car past terrified onlookers.

Stephen Fishler, the owner of Comic Connect, said the unnamed seller had owned the comic since around 1950, when, as a young boy on the US west coast, he had bought it for 35 cents in a second hand store.

He forgot about it until 1966, when he found it in his mother’s basement, and had held on to it ever since, hoping it would gain in value.
Mr Fishler called the publication “the Holy Grail of comic books” and said: “There was no such thing as a superhero before it . . . It’s the single most important event in comic-book history.”

Before the auction began there was speculation that bidders could include Samuel L. Jackson, Quentin Tarantino and Eminem, who all collect comics, and even President Obama, who is a Superman fan.

Superman - whose daytime identity is Clark Kent, a mild-mannered news reporter for the The Daily Planet- was created by writer Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster.

The run-down house in Cleveland, Ohio where they came up with the character sold in an auction last year for only $100,000 (£71,000), far less than the price of one of their comics.

SUPERMAN

Posted by peiper     on 03/14/2009 at 11:12 AM   
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HE SAYS IT BEATS PLAYING WITH A RUBBER DUCK. YEAH WELL, I’LL TAKE HIS WORD FOR IT.

Kevin Richardson is a S.African zoologist.
He apparently loves animals and claims he even sleeps and swims with them.
Trusting soul is Kevin.

Now then, if the term Eye Candy can be strictly translated as anything that is very pleasing to the eye, then this qualifies.
All 400 plus pounds of her.
What a beautiful animal.

I love looking at photos like this but will happily pass on taking a swim with them.

Kevin says Meg here follows him around like a dog.  That’s cute.  Really.
Hope she doesn’t stalk him as food.

Posted by peiper     on 03/14/2009 at 10:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Eye-Candy • Fun-Stuff •  
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Let’s All Kick The Weak Horse

A Russian Air Force chief said Saturday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for strategic Russian bombers, the Interfax news agency reported.

The chief of staff of Russia’s long range aviation, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, also said Cuba could be used to base the aircraft, Interfax reported.

The Kremlin, however, said the situation was hypothetical.

“The military is speaking about technical possibilities, that’s all,” Alexei Pavlov, a Kremlin official, told The Associated Press. “If there will be a development of the situation, then we can comment,” he said.

Zhikharev said Chavez had offered “a whole island with an airdrome, which we can use as a temporary base for strategic bombers,” the agency reported. “If there is a corresponding political decision, then the use of the island ... by the Russian Air Force is possible.”

Interfax reported he said earlier that Cuba has air bases with four or five runways long enough for the huge bombers and could be used to host the long-range planes.

Two Russian bombers landed in Venezuela last year in what experts said was the first Western Hemisphere touchdown of Russian military craft since the end of the Cold War.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/14/2009 at 09:38 AM   
Filed Under: • International • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles • Politics •  
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The scratch-proof car: Scientists create coating that repairs itself in the sun in 30 minutes.

I saw this and thought hey. Wow. That does look neat.  What next? Absolutely dent free cars?  (wasn’t the metal on the 37 Cord almost that?)

So anyway, I scooted over here to post this interesting bit of news and fell over Drew’s post of that fabulous new Boberg Engineering XR9 pistol.

Now that really took my breath away.  I guess this is very tame by comparison but it is a step forward none the less.
I won’t hold my breath however as these things almost always take longer then expected.  But it’s something positive to look forward to.

If I ever make it home again, I sure do look forward to that XR9.  Even the name looks like a fast sports car.

The scratch-proof car: Scientists create coating that repairs itself in the sun in 30 minutes
By David Derbyshire

Revolutionary: Repairing scratches on car paint soon won’t be necessarily as a plastic is being invented that can heal itself when exposed to sunlight

Motorists may never have to worry about scratching their paintwork again.

Scientists claim to have invented a ‘self-healing’ coating that repairs scuffs or blemishes on paint when exposed to sunlight.

It apparently takes 15 to 30 minutes for scratches to melt away, and a car’s paintwork could be restored to the condition it was in when it left the showroom.

In fact, the self-healing material’s creators believe it could be used on any objects vulnerable to scratches – including compact discs, sunglasses, iPod screens, handbags, shoes and even furniture.

Although the material is still at the laboratory stage, it could be available on commercial products within five years, experts say.

Dr Marek Urban who developed the intelligent polymer at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, said it could also be used in medical tools where scratches can harbour germs.

‘There are an immense number of opportunities for this,’ he said. ‘Basically anything externally exposed.’

Self-repairing materials have been the dream of engineers for centuries. Many have been inspired by human skin and tissue which meshes itself together if it is damaged.

Some materials include networks of tunnels or tiny nanoparticles that ‘bleed’ when broken, filling in gaps caused by scratches.

However, most of the existing products are complicated and expensive. The self-healing material, described today in the academic journal Science, is far cheaper and simpler.

The coating is a polyurethane – a material used in plastics, foams and films – containing chitosan, a chemical produced in the shells of crabs, lobsters and shrimps, and organic compounds called oxetanes arranged in rings. 

When the coating is scratched, the rings of oxetane are broken to expose chemically reactive sites.

Ultraviolet light splits open the chitosan molecules exposing another set of reactive sites. The oxetane and chitosan attract each other, bond and close the scratches.

The material could be used to make car paint, or transparent plastic coatings for screens, glasses or watch faces. The cost ‘is not really that great’, Dr Urban added.

The speed of the repair depends on the sunshine. In Mediterranean weather scratches vanish three or four times quicker than they would in typical British weather.

‘Dry or humid climate conditions will not affect the repair process,’ Dr Urban writes in the journal Science. However, the coating only works once.

A scratch in exactly the same area would not repair itself. The material also needs more testing before it can be used in paints and protective coatings, he added.

Posted by peiper     on 03/14/2009 at 09:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Friday - March 13, 2009

double porn

The Boberg XR-9 pistol is a short recoil operated, locked breech pistol. It uses rotary barrel locking with a single massive locking lug on the top of the barrel, which engages the slide when in battery. The trigger is of double action only (DAO) type, hammer-fired. The heart of the two-stage “pull - push” feed system is the claw-shaped loader, which is pivotally attached to the slide. When slide is in forward position, the claws are lowered under the barrel breech area, gripping the base of the topmost cartridge in the magazine. When slide is cycled (manually or under the recoil of the previous discharge), the claws pull the cartridge rearwards from the magazine until it is clear; at the end of recoil stroke, claws are lifted to place the cartridge to feed position. On the closing stroke of the slide, cartridge is pushed into the barrel chamber, and the feed claws are lowered to grip on the following round in the magazine. Obviously, such system requires specially designed magazines and is somewhat more complicated than standard “push forward” feed system encountered in most other firearms, including pistols. The benefit of this system is significantly increased barrel lenght, which is especially important for compact pistols with shortest possible barrels.

To quote the designer: “The chamber does not have to be sloppy since the cartridge doesn’t have to come from the bottom and “wiggle” into the chamber like on a traditional feed mechanism. Tighter chamber clearance yields about 4% more kinetic energy with 115 grain bullets, and 12% more energy with 147 grain bullets compared to other same-barrel-length guns with the standard sloppy chambers. More power channeled forward instead of backward...”

The mechanism is actual quite similar to the one on a Browning machine gun. Cartridges are held by very light spring pressure in a magazine. Instead of coming out forward like cartridges do in a regular magazine, these come out to the rear.

When the pistol is fired, the bullet travels down the barrel, and spins in one direction because of the rifling in the barrel. You can’t phool physics: this creates a torque in the opposite direction. That torque spins the barrel along its axis a little, perhaps slowed down by a helical spring, and that turning unlocks the barrel from the slide. The bullet is now out of the barrel, but inertia is still pushing the cartridge case back against the bolt face area of the slide. So unlocking the barrel lets the slide ... slide. It goes back over an ejector, spits out the empty case, and is brought to a stop by the compressed mainspring. As the slide begins it’s rearward travel, a little clothespin-like spring thingy pulls a new round from the magazine. At the end of the slide’s rearward stroke, this claw pivots up and raises the fresh cartridge into position. As the slide moves forward, the cartridge is fed straight into the chamber. No feed ramps needed. No slop in the end of the chamber like on most semi-automatics, to give the round a bit of spare room to “go around the corner”. Which means less pressure wasted on expanding the brass, and more of it spent pushing the bullet. Finally, at the end of the forward stroke the slide pushes a little cam upwards which rotates the barrel back, and the loaded round is now locked into battery, ready for the next pull of the trigger.

There is a most excellent 2 second animation, along with several videos of the gun firing, and lots of pictures and information at the Boberg website, Boberg Engineering.


Early reviews are quite positive. The pistol is accurate and reliable and oozes quality.

Ok, why all the fuss? What makes this thing so special, considering the mechanism concept is over 100 years old, and the rotating barrel idea is borrowed from Beretta and other modern designs? 

First reason: Almost all semi-automatic pistols put the barrel above and in front of the magazine. The XR9 puts the magazine under the barrel. That means you get either a longer barrel for a given length pistol, or a shorter pistol for a given length barrel. Either one will give you at least an inch more barrel than you can get in a regular pistol. And a longer barrel means higher velocity. More velocity means more power and less flash. Very short barreled guns, like the tiny ones you’d want for a pocket sized CCW “mouse” gun, lose huge amounts of velocity because their barrels are really short.

Second reason: a pistol that uses a locked breech design is much stronger than one that is designed to use a blow-back, unlocked breech. This lets you use more potent cartridges, without getting a face full of still burning gunpowder gas.

Third reason: I think it’s bloody cool looking!!



Boberg is planning on releasing two versions of their new pistol. The “regular” XR9, which offers full sized pistol performance in a small sized package, and the “micro” or “shorty” XR9S that offers mid sized performance in a very small package. How small? This small:

The Ruger LCP has very tiny low sights. The XR9 has typical “low” sights; my guess is another .1” - .2” could be shaved off the height by using lower sights. So the Shorty winds up being shorter than the loose-it-in-your-pocket small LCP, but about half an inch taller, and a few ounces heavier. The Standard is just over half an inch longer. But either model gives you one extra shot, has a longer barrel, and uses the 9mm cartridge, which is nearly twice as potent as the .380. Especially when you have enough barrel to stop losing velocity. Oh, and the grip is steeply angled, very much like the P-08 Luger, which gives it nearly perfect ergonomics and a very natural hand position. That steep grip puts a good chunk of the upper back over your hand, so the balance should be very neutral.

Downsides? It isn’t on the market yet, and it is going to cost what most quality pistols cost - $800 - $1000. The company is in start-up, so expect the first couple of years to be, if not a bit rocky, then at least a little gravel strewn, just like any other start up.

More upsides? Mr. Boberg wasn’t overly specific in his patent, so his action could be made for a rifle as well. How about this idea applied to a bullpup action? Talk about minimum length guns! Or he could turn out a full size pistol, perhaps with a double stack magazine, that has a 7” barrel instead of the typical 5” one. Which would add another 100fps or so to the velocity of any of the more potent pistol cartridges, like the 10mm Magnum.

This is the first actually new pistol design I’ve seen in ages. Looking at it, realizing how simple it actually is, gives me such a Duh Moment that I wonder why JMB didn’t figure this one out 100 years ago.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/13/2009 at 09:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control • Science-Technology •  
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