Saturday - January 22, 2011

weekend reading

Links offered up by Rich K.

Mark Steyn considers the end of the era, as the cultural torch gets dimmed by the very people who hold it. A half hour well spent that will keep you thinking all weekend.

Not so long ago, Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian and soi-disant Islamophobe, flew into London and promptly got shipped back to the Netherlands as a threat to public order. After the British Government had reconsidered its stupidity, he was permitted to return and give his speech at the House of Lords—and, as foreigners often do, he quoted Winston Churchill, under the touchingly naive assumption that this would endear him to the natives. Whereas, of course, to almost all members of Britain’s governing elite, quoting Churchill approvingly only confirms that you’re an extremist lunatic. I had the honor a couple of years back of visiting President Bush in the White House and seeing the bust of Churchill on display in the Oval Office. When Barack Obama moved in, he ordered Churchill’s bust be removed and returned to the British. Its present whereabouts are unclear. But, given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the bust was almost certainly arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.

Making a silk purse from a sow’s ear is no trick at all to Obama. VDH writes on Teh One’s amazing bipartisan rise in the poles in the last 2 weeks. You’re being played folks.

Two, it was politically brilliant to let the Left fully vent for five days. That way they would not be furious that they had been muzzled, and the interval would allow ample time for finger-in-the-wind testing of the national reaction to their deplorable rhetoric. When Obama did at last come forward, the Left was both satiated and discredited. And in brilliant morally equivalent fashion, the stage was set to channel growing popular repulsion at the Krugmans of the world into popular repulsion at both Krugmans and those that they libeled. A sacrificial Paul Krugman could not have wished for more—as, for example, Palin’s favorables plummeted.

As you scroll down his blog and go back through time, Hanson writes more about Palin, more about Obama, more about Tuscon, and more. A whole month of great posts. This guy is tops.

Ok, time for me to get out of here and go shopping before the temps drop down to the teens. We’re down 3 degrees already and the sun is still shining. Damn. Is it Spring yet?????

Posted by Drew458     on 01/22/2011 at 04:33 PM   
Filed Under: • The New Conservatives •  
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michelle …. our pal …..

How in the world have we managed to live this long without Mrs. Obama’s nutritional input.

I guess every first lady just HAS to have a program but I’ll be darned if I understand why. Who voted for them?

Anyway ... Mrs. O. it appears is in partnership with Wal-Mart, it reads in our morning Telegraph, to lower prices on veggies (I guess that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?) and convinced the chain to make thousands of it’s packaged foods lower in fats and sugars. 

So I guess in addition to being the first lady, she’s also the first mama?

You can’t argue against those things that will benefit people, the argument will run.  And kids don’t generally have a choice when mom does her shopping.
BUT ... as an adult, it’s those bad things that make many foods taste better. As an adult I want to make my own choices.

There’s a drive on here to reduce salt in many foods. Which will be meaningless when ppl start pouring salt on food bought with less cos it tastes bland without it.

Michelle Obama joins forces with Wal-Mart for healthy food campaign

Michelle Obama has helped draw up an unprecedented five-year plan with Wal-Mart, America’s biggest retailer, to drop prices on fruits and vegetables and make thousands of its packaged foods lower in fats and sugars.

Joining Wal-Mart executives at a community centre in Washington, Mrs Obama described the company’s new initiative as “a huge victory for folks all across this country” and said it has the “potential to transform the marketplace”.

She said: “When I see a company like Wal-Mart launch an initiative like this, I feel more hopeful than ever before. We can improve how we make and sell food in this country.”

Wal-Mart, which has 60,000 suppliers, will make thousands of its packaged foods healthier and cheaper by 2015, build more stores in poor areas and increase its donations to nutrition programmes. Sodium and sugar will be reduced in some Wal-Mart foods and the price of fresh produce lowered.

source

oh right on Wal-Mart. Go ahead and build more stores in areas that looters and shoplifters will have easier access to. Nothing like having a Wal-Mart right on your doorstep.  And when they start losing money they’ll close em.
Jeesh ........ when the heck did I become this cynical?

Posted by peiper     on 01/22/2011 at 02:53 PM   
Filed Under: • Health and Safety • USA •  
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why wasn’t he laughing when he got up?  some ppls idea of fun … have your sound on

Posted by peiper     on 01/22/2011 at 01:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Health and Safety • Insanity • Moonbat Award to: •  
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you could not make this one up .. not since ‘who’s on first’ has anything been this funny.

Dear Readers ..
You can be forgiven if once read, you might have to go back and read again, to be certain your eyes did see what your brain read.

I really thought this was a joke first time through.  I didn’t get it cos my brain couldn’t register this as truth.
And then the light went on.
As the wife continually reminds me ....

“And what country are you in? Are we in England?”

Here, let me share this with you.

The dinner party that went up in smoke

We didn’t need the emergency services – but they arrived anyway, writes Matthew Norman.

There we were, the nine of us, getting stuck into a delicious chicken pie and wittering about this and that when our hostess went to answer a knock on the door. She returned a moment later to announce, very matter of factly: “There’s a fire next door.” Blimey, someone said, do you mean in the flat next door or in the next block along? “What I mean is next door,” she said, smiling. “In the sitting room.” Well, we don’t get out much, the missus and me, and on the rare occasions we do, the evenings have a tiresome habit of drifting by without an inferno. So what with the novelty value and all, we wandered to the neighbouring room to inspect.

A candle had somehow ignited foliage wrapped around the mirror above the mantelpiece, and the resulting mini-fire was swiftly extinguished. The flat’s owners went to check on their eight-week-old son, whom they found sleeping peacefully and in ostentatiously perfect health in a bedroom protected from so much as an acrid wisp of smoke by a heavy wooden door. All being well, we returned to the chicken pie, commiserating with our hosts about the minor damage, but thanking them for going to such trouble to make the evening memorable.

Several mouthfuls later, the doorbell rang again, and the first tranche of gatecrashers arrived in the form of four firefighters, summoned unbidden by a porter. Nothing peculiar there, you will think, albeit that there was no fire to fight.

It was at this point that the leader of the quartet concluded that we had failed this incendiary version of the dinner party test. To the question, “What should you do if a small fire breaks out during supper?”, the correct answer, he clearly felt, was “Rush out into the street weeping, and scan the road for a Sky news crew to whom you can blub about your journey and the need for post-traumatic stress counselling”. That gets you an A*.

Our answer – “Put it out, make sure any children in the vicinity are unaffected, and get straight back to the food and drink” – failed to impress the board. The chief examiner, overtly irritated by the sang-froid, and possibly by our failure to greet the team as heroic saviours, sent us out into the road, where we were promptly joined by an ambulance crew of four, who seemed to agree that all of us, the baby included, were fine.

And that, you might imagine, would have been the end of it. Perhaps it might have been had the fireman not then made a series of sarcastic remarks to our hostess, hinting broadly that, because that she preferred to let the baby sleep in a warm and smokeless room rather than rush him out into the cold night air, that she, like Sue Ellen in Dallas, was a drunk, a slut and an unfit mother. Eventually, with amazing forebearance, she restricted herself to a mild: “I think you’ve made your point.”

To this, Red Adair’s tough, no-nonsense counterstrike was to summon police back-up. It reminded us of stories about queeny cabin crew demanding an emergency landing to punish a passenger for perceived impertinence in requesting an extra bag of salted peanuts.

Four coppers pitched up, raising the total of public servants in the hallway to a round dozen. “It’s still early,” someone muttered, “maybe there’s time for the coastguard to make a show. I’d hate the last of the emergency services to feel out of the loop on this one.”

It’s always lovely to see the police, especially when they’re so busy servicing shadow cabinet spouses. Even so, it’s hard to understand their presence, in the absence of any suspected crime, let alone why two of them followed mother and baby to a hospital (where the little fellow was monitored through the night and found, inevitably, to be absolutely fine).

Harder to penetrate still is why one officer accompanied my friend when she took her son off to change his nappy, placing himself on guard outside the door. “I’m just doing what I’m told, madam,” was his explanation, but however much one relishes the old Nuremberg defence, it doesn’t quite explain why he was given any orders to obey.

As a unforgettable dinner party, this was as good as it gets, while the deployment of three vehicles and 12 people to deal with a tiny ex-fire, at a cost of God knows how many thousands of pounds, will assuage concern about the ravages of coming public service cutbacks. There may be a little more slack in the system than the Police Federation would have us believe.

As a vignette of an insanely risk-averse culture, however, in which alleged public servants take magisterial umbrage at people’s refusal to over-react with the lachrymose hysteria of an X Factor reject, and even attempt to criminalise them for their calm unconcern, it leaves a slightly more toxic taste in the mouth than any fumes from that melted mirror.

NORMAN

Posted by peiper     on 01/22/2011 at 12:35 PM   
Filed Under: • Big Brother • Daily Life • UK •  
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getting laid can have its downside in a muslim country. but who’d have guessed? not these ppl

There are some muslim countries where you just do not want to violate their religious laws.  Being human of course sometimes means we follow our nature and instincts. 
Sometimes the instinct of self preservation takes a back seat when confronted with sex. Look at those three letters. S E X.  Even the word looks, well, pretty nice.
But forgetting what country you’re in is just plain dumb.  And considering how often this kind of thing happens over there, one begins to think that perhaps white folks are not too bright where things physical come into play. Caution? What’s that?

Sadly, this story has an awfully funny side to it. Like an old time movie. Maybe even a silent one.  The Marx Bros maybe, except in those censored times this story line would not have happened.

Take a look.

Dubai sex case Briton ‘was sacked for flirting’

By James Tozer and Rebecca Evans

A British woman locked up in Dubai after being caught in bed with a banker had been let go from a former job amid concerns about her flirtatiousness, her ex-boss claimed yesterday.

Danielle Spencer, 31, has been in ­custody since falling foul of the Gulf state’s strict morality laws when she unwittingly found herself at the centre of a sordid love triangle.

The £100,000-a-year property analyst had spent the night with New Zealander Toby Carroll, only for his Brazilian former girlfriend to burst in and find them in bed together, according to police in Dubai.

He had apparently broken up with the woman – named only as Priscilla – the day before, and she flew into a rage, allegedly slashing at furnishings with a knife while a terrified Miss Spencer hid in the bathroom.

They were all arrested and have remained in custody since December 12 – with the two women having to share a ­single large police cell along with up to 90 other female suspects.

Both Miss Spencer and Mr Carroll – a property analyst for HSBC bank – may be charged with having sex outside marriage, a criminal offence in the strict Muslim emirate for which a British pilot’s wife and her lover were jailed for a month in 2009.

Yesterday her ex-boss at an estate agency described her as ‘a Walter Mitty character’ who had been asked to leave after barely a month for fear that her behaviour would cause a scandal by Dubai’s standards.

‘She could be extremely flirtatious, both with colleagues and clients,’ said the ­British businessman. ‘Danielle sent me photographs of herself in modelling poses.

‘Needless to say she quickly became rather popular, but she was becoming an embarrassment for the firm. Extramarital sex is illegal here, and while the authorities will turn a blind eye if you’re discreet, I thought she was being pretty flagrant.’

The businessman, who asked not to be named, said she had been good at her job, showing clients around luxury properties, including on the Palm Jumeirah sand island complex.

‘She was clearly intelligent, but a real Walter Mitty character,’ he added.

‘She spoke with an Australian accent, but we later found out she was originally from Hull.’

A friend said Miss Spencer was a well-known face on Dubai’s party scene, regularly attending the expat tradition of Friday Brunch – weekly all-you-can-drink binges that can land ­revellers in hot water.

A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN TONIGHT

Posted by peiper     on 01/22/2011 at 11:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Sex •  
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37 years ago today

Today is the 37th anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion across the USA. Prior to that abortion had been legal in some states, some areas, but not in others. As far as I know it was the first ruling ever that cited all the implied rights that we have. Writing for the 7-2 Court, Justice Blackmun held that abortion is a fundamental right because it falls under the “penumbra” of the right to privacy. Which itself is one of those penumbra rights that is not specifically stated, although it can be inferred from the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 14th Amendments. So Roe was a ruling based on a penumbra of a penumbra. I’m all for penumbra rights, even if a dark one like this turns up every few generations. We are Americans, not Germans. Everything is legal that isn’t specifically prohibited, and we have a right to everything that isn’t specifically designated as a power given to the states or to the federal government. Everything else belongs to the people.

Agree with it or not, Roe is the law of the land and is not going anywhere ever, because that would entail a new Amendment, which would itself entail a constitutional convention which would be a huge can of worms, and even with such an amendment getting out there, the likelihood of enough states ratifying it in time is slim ... and even if enough of them did, then each state would have to put the abortion question up for regular public referendum. No citizen would stand for this issue being resolved at the state legislative level, and nobody would ever get it on a ballot as a For Once And Always kind of question. It would come up every few years, forever. And I can guarantee you that it would pass in every single state almost every single time. It is because of this that I feel that the GOP should drop it as a plank in their platform. Or at least focus their point to the belief that the act is a moral wrong, and leave it at that. It is the darkest right, or the darkest wrong if you will, but it isn’t going away.

Anyway, one of the main arguments in favor of legalized abortion was to bring it out of the back alley, wire coat hanger, dark ages. And for the most part it did. Clinics and their staff were held to the same level of cleanliness and medical training as any other surgical center. But a case came up this week in Pennsylvania that shows that the left’s Political Correctness can slaughter even this Goose and it’s Golden Egg wet dream that is their one true victory. Former PA Governor Tom Ridge, Republican (the same guy who went on to lead DHS), buckled to political stone throwing and called a halt to state health department inspections of abortion clinics in his state in 1993. Fear was most likely the cause: the far left and the MSM would be all over him if his state people shut down an abortion clinic for any reason. The state doing things “for your own good” only gets a pass when Progressives do it. When Conservatives do it, it’s called oppression.

And guess what can happen when abortion clinics go uninspected for nearly two decades (and the rules that call for inspections when complaints are filed are ignored)? You could get another Joseph Mengele. And that looks to be exactly what happened in the Philadelphia area. A creature straight from Hell arose and prospered. The Law of Unintended Consequences can never be broken or bypassed.

This is a gruesome story.

Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Accused of Killing Babies With Scissors, Charged With 8 Murders
Clinic Dubbed ‘House of Horrors’ After Investigators Found Body Parts in Jars

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, and nine employees from his West Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society were arrested Wednesday. He and his staff also are charged with killing a woman who was given a lethal dose of Demerol.

Gosnell catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women, and made millions of dollars over 30 years performing illegal and late-term abortions in squalid and barbaric conditions, prosecutors said.

“There were bags, and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building,” said Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. “There were jars lining shelves with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

Police officers went to investigate complaints about illegal prescription selling at the clinic last year and stumbled upon what the prosecutor called a “house of horrors.”

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

The clinic was shut down and Gosnell’s medical license was suspended after the raid.

Some of his employees also were charged with murder, including a high-school student who performed anesthesia with potentially lethal narcotics. The grand jury report asserted the people who ran this medical practice did not include any nurses and or other doctors besides Gosnell himself.

Gosnell’s clinic was a prescription mill by day, Williams said, and by night was an abortion mill.

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Prosecutors described the clinic as a “house of horrors” where Gosnell kept baby body parts on the shelves, allowed a 15-year-old high school student to perform intravenous anesthesia on patients and had his licensed cosmetologist wife do late-term abortions. A family practice physician, Gosnell has no certification in gynecology or obstetrics.
...
Gosnell also had a taste for macabre jokes, once muttering that a nearly six-pound baby born alive to a 17-year-old who was seven-and-a-half months pregnant could “walk me to the bus stop,” the report said.
...
In addition to the two women who died, scores more were injured from perforated bowels, cervixes and uteruses, authorities said. Some were left sterile at the clinic, which had no trained nurses or medical staff other than Gosnell, they said.
...
“People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr. Gosnell,” Williams said.

The Grand Jury report is 300 pages long. Every sicko thing you can imagine went on in this place. It was the worst of the back alley world mixed with a horrifying dose of Sweeney Todd. The only things missing were organ harvesting and cannibalism ... but I haven’t read the full report yet.

But according to [District Attorney] Williams, state regulators ignored numerous complaints about Gosnell’s clinic and his office hadn’t been inspected since 1993. One doctor advised the department that numerous patients he had referred for abortions came back from Gosnell with the same venereal disease, Williams added.

Even after the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, on Nov. 20, 2009 of an alleged overdose of anesthetics prescribed by Gosnell, Williams said, the Department of Health did not act.

In fact, he said, Gosnell was caught by accident.

And today the story about those lack of inspections comes out. It makes a gruesome reminder to everyone everywhere to never buckle to political correctness. Do what is right, follow and enforce the laws you can’t or won’t change, and stand your ground against the jackals and the baying hounds.

While this week’s indictment involving a grisly abortion mill in Philadelphia has shocked many, the grand jury’s nearly 300-page report also contains a surprising and little-noted revelation: In the mid-1990s, the administration of Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, ended regular inspections of abortion clinics—a policy that continued until just last year.

According to the grand jury report released this week by Philadelphia prosecutors, Pennsylvania health officials deliberately chose not to enforce laws to ensure that abortion clinics provide the same level of care as other medical service providers.

The grand jury report said that one look at the place would have detected the problems, but the Pennsylvania Department of Health hadn’t inspected the place since 1993. Here’s the grand jury report, in surprisingly strong language:

The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

“Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety,” the report states. “Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer.”

Sick. Nazi level sick, in the true concentration camp meaning of the word.

In a typical late-term abortion, the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces. That is more common than the procedure opponents call “partial-birth abortion,” in which the fetus is partially extracted before being destroyed.

And when a living baby is fully delivered and then put to death it’s called murder. Unfortunately the numbers of deaths Gosnell caused this way are uncountable, since he destroyed the records and the women were under anesthesia at the time. But I bet it’s thousands. The word was out that he was the late-term guy, and women up and down the whole east coast came to see him. Want to bet those were cash transactions? You know they were.

Now ... sit back and watch him get away with it. “I wasn’t trained as an abortionist or as a maternity doctor”, he’ll cry. “I was helping out minorities and poor people!” “I misunderstood the stages of fetal development: I thought all these pregnancies were at the 23 week level!” “I thought I was following proper late-term abortion practices. Murder was never my intent!!” And after months and months of legal wrangling, he will never go to trial and all he’ll get is his license revoked - now that he’s old enough to retire and no longer needs it - and be fined for poor record keeping, which I bet is a penny ante misdemeanor. Because, after all, he was working on ghetto rats and illegal immigrants, and nobody gives a crispy fried shit about them. They and their babies are those “unwanted elements” that caused SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to so famously support Roe v. Wade because she didn’t want too many of them. Pity they just couldn’t be sterilized in the first place, or put into camps, eh Ruthie?

Posted by Drew458     on 01/22/2011 at 11:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Abortion •  
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Stolen Phunny

borrowed from Theo’s, who borrowed from somebody else ....

KEITH OLBERMAN HAS BEEN FIRED. Guess his boss is now the Worst Person In The World Today. Bye bye Keith. Try not to bruise yourself on the padded walls of the mental asylum. More links at Insty. I don’t watch this clown. Wasn’t he pulled off the air a few weeks ago? I thought he was done then. He must have snuck back in somehow.

You knew this one was coming eventually ...

Posted by Drew458     on 01/22/2011 at 09:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • News-Briefs •  
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   Friday - January 21, 2011

Looks like meat is back on the menu boys!

My fellow Uruk-hai:

I found a very nice letter from a start-up blog in my inbox today, asking if they could perhaps do a guest post on BMEWS. It’s from a group blog, with the cute name of My Dog Ate My Blog.

My Dog Ate My Blog is the creation of editors, writers, and marketers in the education industry looking for an outlet for their general creativity and immaturity.

Our writers and contributors will be focusing on the categories of politics, technology, and pop culture, with an (almost) educational spin. If those topics don’t sound appealing to you, well, we’re at a loss. You are officially on the wrong blog. Fail. If, on the other hand, you’re excited by the prospect of veiled links to the education industry in the form of blog posts, you’re in for a treat (read: entertaining experience).

So I wrote back and asked if they were serious. This blog??? Teachers, fresh out of college, want to write something for this blog? So I invited them in. But instead of just rubbing them with a fresh pork chop and throwing them blindly into the lion’s den, I spent a while checking out their blog. They lean a bit to the left. A bit. That’s not unexpected. But - and it may just be me, deranged Viking that I am - but I found their writing to be rather gentle. Tepid. Not strong or confrontational. Almost as if they were bored students who were writing posts because they had been assigned them for homework. I replied that none of their posts stomped or stamped around; that they write as if they all wear PETA-approved renewable resource artificial chincihlla lined fuzzy bunny slippers. Whereas we write with boots with spikes on. So, since they had asked for writing tips, I gave them some. Be bold, I said. Write about the things that get you fired up. Use your brains. Write with verve and panache. Stand up for what you believe in. And please don’t post any pics with full frontal nudity. That’s Peiper’s job.

I don’t know if they have an essay prepared for submission. I don’t know if they will even respond, or, if they do take up the challenge, how long it will take them to deliver the goods. I suggested that they write about teaching, and come out in support of any of the many aspects about teaching we generally find abhorrent here. Do a great job and you’ll earn our respect I wrote. Do a poor job and my readers will sharpen their knives and bring extra Tabasco sauce to the barbecue. But I wrote that I would go over it first, and reject it if they delivered crap. Come on, who could resist the temptation of grading the teachers?

I don’t even know if they will write in support of any of those academic topics (unions, tenure, Zero Tolerance, diagnosing your child and forcing meds on her, etc). But I would like to to get a good and spirited discussion going in response to their effort if they make one. Hey, go right ahead and visit their place, and read some of their posts to get a feel for things. They don’t like Sarah Palin, they are in slight favor of the Ground Zero mosque, they seem to think that Kelo v. New London was a good decision. But let’s give them a chance.

I also wrote that I would make their author a member here, so that he or she could take part in any discussion that may arise. That’s the fair thing, right?

Notice that I did not write “But instead of rubbing them with a fresh lamb chop”. No. Blood of the lamb would imply a Passover, a free ride. “Hi! My name is Daniel, and I’ll be your server today! Would you like to sit with the lions, or would you like to sit with the lions?” Not that I’m using violent rhetoric to encourage anyone slightly unstable to acts of keyboard violence. I’m just saying that I asked them to be bold and to give it their best shot. So that’s what I’ll be asking of you as well. See? Nothing more than a spirited discussion, using logic and reason to make your points an to win hearts and minds.

You did click on the link at the top of this post, right? [wink wink]

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2011 at 08:18 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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Romulan Technology Here On Earth

Led by mechanical science and engineering professor Nicholas Fang, Illinois researchers have demonstrated an acoustic cloak, a technology that renders underwater objects invisible to sonar and other ultrasound waves.

“We are not talking about science fiction. We are talking about controlling sound waves by bending and twisting them in a designer space,” said Fang, who also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

The cloak is made of metamaterial, a class of artificial materials that have enhanced properties as a result of their carefully engineered structure. Fang’s team designed a two-dimensional cylindrical cloak made of 16 concentric rings of acoustic circuits structured to guide sound waves. Each ring has a different index of refraction, meaning that sound waves vary their speed from the outer rings to the inner ones.

“Basically what you are looking at is an array of cavities that are connected by channels. The sound is going to propagate inside those channels, and the cavities are designed to slow the waves down,” Fang said. “As you go further inside the rings, sound waves gain faster and faster speed.”

Since speeding up requires energy, the sound waves instead propagate around the cloak’s outer rings, guided by the channels in the circuits. The specially structured acoustic circuits actually bend the sound waves to wrap them around the outer layers of the cloak.

The researchers tested their cloak’s ability to hide a steel cylinder. They submerged the cylinder in a tank with an ultrasound source on one side and a sensor array on the other, then placed the cylinder inside the cloak and watched it disappear from their sonar.

The cloaking technology also may affect nonlinear acoustic phenomena. One problem plaguing fast-moving underwater objects is cavitation, or the formation and implosion of bubbles. Fang and his group believe that they could harness their cloak’s abilities to balance energy in cavitation-causing areas, such as the vortex around a propeller.

Pretty awesome. Read the rest. If this gizmo can eliminate vortex cavitation it will massively enhance ship’s efficiency. More knots per nuke, or whatever mpg ratings submarines and surface ships use.

I’m also wondering how this technology, once mature, can be applied to ordinary things like speaker boxes and car bodies. Or hotel room walls, or as a slip-on acoustic barrier for noisy children in the grocery store or in restaurants. Oh hella yeah! The all new Scream Screen™ by Fisher Price. Must. Have. Soonest!!

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2011 at 08:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries •  
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South Korea, Eff Yeah

South Korean special forces stormed a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea on Friday, rescuing all 21 crew members and killing eight assailants in a rare and bold raid on Somali pirates, South Korea said.

The military operation in waters between Oman and Africa, which also captured five pirates and left one crew member wounded, came a week after the Somali attackers seized the South Korean freighter and held hostage eight South Koreans, two Indonesians and 11 citizens from Myanmar.

“We will not tolerate any behavior that threatens the lives and safety of our people in the future,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said in a brief televised statement, adding that the rescue was a “perfect operation.”

The successful raid is a triumph for Lee, whose government suffered harsh criticism at home in the weeks following a North Korean attack in November on a South Korean island near disputed waters. Critics said Lee’s military was too slow and weak in its response to the attack, which killed two marines and two civilians.

With a South Korean destroyer and a Lynx helicopter providing covering fire, South Korea’s special navy forces stormed the hijacked vessel in a pre-dawn rescue operation that left eight of the pirates dead and five captured, Lt. Gen. Lee Sung-ho told reporters.

The 11,500-ton chemical carrier Samho Jewelry was sailing from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka when it was hijacked. It was the second vessel from South Korea-based Samho Shipping to be hijacked in the past several months.

In November, Somali pirates freed the supertanker Samho Dream and its 24 crew — five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos — after seven months of captivity.

Pretty sure that the Samho Dream was also being used as a mothership while the pirates had her. That’s got to be embarrassing for the country that owns/operates/crews the ship, don’t you think?

[South Korea’s] President Lee Myung-bak went live on national television to announce the successful conclusion of the five-hour operation, 1,300 kilometers northeast of Somalia.

Mr. Lee told the country South Korea will not tolerate future attacks on any of its nationals. On board the Malta-flagged chemical tanker was a crew of 11 Burmese, eight South Koreans and two Indonesians. It is operated by South Korea’s Samho Shipping.

Military officials in Seoul say a South Korean naval destroyer, the Choi Young, with 300 special forces aboard, tailed the hijacked ship for days before moving in early Friday.

Two other South Koreans are currently being held hostage by Somali pirates, following the hijacking of their 241-ton fishing trawler, the Keummi 305, last October in waters off Kenya’s Lamu Island.

A total of 29 vessels and 693 hostages are known to be held captive by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2011 at 08:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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I Miss Global Warming

We had another snowstorm late last night. This was just 72 hours after the pile of wet slop that fell from the sky on Tuesday, which was a few days after the snow that fell on Friday, which was a few days after the snow that fell on ... well, you get the picture. We’re having winter this winter. Quite unusual for the New Jersey I’ve come to know and detest. Just about everywhere in the northeast has had 20-50% more snow so far this season than they usually average for the entire winter.

When I first moved here, back in the halcyon days of Global Warming, I distinctly recall going outside for coffee breaks in February in only a light jacket; we only had one or two snows the whole winter with no more than a few inches total. It was awesome.

Today the temperature is just below freezing, and the predicted high for the day is just over freezing. I’d better get out there and enjoy it, because the weather wienies say that by Monday it’s going down to -9. Which is somewhere between “quite vexing” and “my goodness” on the English thermometer. After that it will warm up ... and snow again.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2011 at 07:57 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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Eye Will Drink To That!

With the proliferation of wines out there these days, vintners have gone to great lengths to come up with eye catching labels for their products. At least here in America. Most French wine labels are still going with that 19th century motif, trying to get on the elegant and classy bandwagon. As if. The American concept is that Wine Is Fun, especially for the cheaper stuff, so they go all out.  We saw this bottle in the store, and couldn’t resist, since my wife works for an ophthalmologist. And for $12 for a Columbia Valley Washington Cab, it isn’t bad glug at all.

Seeing Red is 82% Cabernet and 18% Merlot from the Columbia Valley. The nose on this wine is a clear highlight, with its oaky and dark floral notes making for a definite treat.  Seeing Red is aged in new American and neutral French barrels. The American Oak makes a real impression. On the palate the wine has notes of cherry, cola and light pepper. The wine is medium-bodied and the tannins are present but subtle on this Cabernet.

The Cartel Wine Group is making three wines, sourcing their grapes from some of the same locations in Washington where wines cost two or three times the price.  They have kept their overhead way down, and they bring you wine you can drink every day and not bat an eye at the price tag.

Not a bad idea. All the other wine makers buy this wine and that one to make their blends, and then these guys come around and take the extra off their hands, then make their own blends from it. You wind up with better quality vinos going into the blend, and with a bit of skill and luck you get a better wine coming out. This is the same approach that the infamous Two Buck Chuck wine, only with less ownership of the market and at a higher quality point.

From what I can find out, Surveyor, the third wine from the Cartel Group, is the best tasting stuff. It costs about $2 more. But it doesn’t have this label, which is sure to eventually find it’s way into the office of every eye doctor in the country. We bought an extra bottle for her to take to work just for laughs.

Yes, the graphic here is a bit blurry. I had to enlarge the picture since the only one I could find was tiny. Here, let’s try this lens. Is it better now? Or now?

“A Cabernet Sauvignon that plays with your perceptions, bringing fruit and structure into balanced focus.”
- from the bottle label

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2011 at 07:21 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining • Fun-Stuff •  
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   Thursday - January 20, 2011

Time To Ramp Up Production

Hillerich & Bradsby, the company behind the Louisville Slugger brand of baseball bats, turns out about 1 million bats per year. If they turned production over tomorrow and made nothing but ClueBats, they’d never be able to make enough. Case in point ... here we go again ...

No, not guns that shoot fingers. He stuck out his thumb and index finger and went “pow pow pow”. Like every little boy on earth does. And got thrown out of school for it.

A seven-year-old child was suspended from his elementary school after making a seemingly harmless gesture many see everyday. Meet the little boy and see exactly what he did.
Patrick Riley was simply trying to distract himself during an assembly at his school. The first grade student formed a gun with his hand and pretended to shoot the wall with a fellow student. That’s when he was asked to go home.

‘Him and a little girl were just getting bored at an assembly and doing some target practice at the wall,’ Lydia Fox, Patrick’s mother, explained.

The school disagreed with Fox’s interpretation and issued a statement regarding Patrick’s misbehavior.

‘A student has repeatedly used his hands to simulate a gun and act as if is shooting fellow students,’ Parkview Elementary clarified.

Fox says the principal told her the boy would be placed in in-school suspension for the rest of that day and threatened a longer suspension if it happened again.

Midwest City-Del City Schools spokeswoman Stacey Boyer confirmed the incident and says the district’s policy is to “address the disruption of the learning environment.” Boyer says Fox’s son “has repeatedly used his hands to simulate a gun.”

Fox said her son, Patrick Riley, who is in first grade at Parkview Elementary, was asked to go home after he formed a gun with his hand and started to pretend he was shooting at a wall.

School leaders said Riley was misbehaving during the assembly. Fox said she was outraged at the reason why her son was suspended.

“One of the things I’ve always been able to brag about Oklahoma is that common sense still rules here. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can say that anymore,” Fox said.
...
Parkview Elementary said Riley was not suspended anymore.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/20/2011 at 06:42 PM   
Filed Under: • Education • Stoopid-People •  
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Once more into the breach

Here’s a bit more on that Kel Tec shotgun I mentioned in passing yesterday. Right now the annual SHOT show is going on. It’s a trade show for all the gun manufacturers worldwide to come and showcase their products for the coming year. After months of not so subtle rumors and leaks, Kel Tec is unveiling their new gun at the SHOT show.

If we didn’t have a video of the gun I’m not sure I could even explain it properly. I stood back for a while and watched the crowd (more of a swarm actually), around the Kel-Tec booth today, and there was a palpable aura of disbelief. Some people got it, you could see, but a lot of people just didn’t, and even a one minute dis-assembly/re-assembly of the gun didn’t seem to help. This is a completely new firearm, from concept, to design, to gun on the shelf (it won’t be on the shelves until fall), and as exciting as this is, in the climate of a skeptical gun buying public that is our industry, Kel-Tec has a long road to go for the KSG to gain long term commercial success. The potential for the gun is staggering, much like it was for Glock, and if the KSG is as sturdy and reliable as it is innovative, this gun could become the standard for Law Enforcement and consumer tactical shotgun sales in the years to come.

The KSG is a bull-pup shotgun design that has two magazine feed tubes, each side capable of holding 7 shells, for a total capacity of 14 +1. Yes folks, that is not a misprint, 14 shells in the magazine, one in the pipe, for a total of a 15 round pump shotgun with no external magazine.

One question you are going to hear about the KSG right out of the gate is “Is it legal for civilian purchase?” This is because it looks too short to be legal. A shotgun, by law, has to have an 18”+ barrel or it is falls under the National Firearms Act (like machineguns) as “any other weapon” and requires a special permit and tax to own.

The KSG has an 18.5” barrel, which is perfectly legal, but the chamber is not over or in front of your trigger hand like it is in a standard pump shotgun. The chamber is actually resting against your shoulder, with your cheek resting against the side of it. This backs the whole gun up, making it seem impossibly short to be legal.

The KSG weighs 6.9lbs and is as compact as legally possible with a 26.1” overall length and an 18.5” cylinder bore barrel.  Even with this compact size, the internal dual tube magazines hold an impressive 14 rounds of 12 gage 2-3/4” rounds (7 per tube).  The simple and reliable pump action feeds from either the left or right tube.  The feed side is manually selected by a lever located behind the trigger guard.  The lever can be positioned in the center detent in order to easily clear the chamber without feeding another round from either magazine.  A cross bolt style safety blocks the sear, and the pump release lever is located in front of the trigger guard.

The pump includes an under Picatinny rail for the mounting of a forward grip, or a light or laser.  The included top Picatinny sight rail will accept many types of optics or iron sights.  Forward and rear sling loops are built in, and a basic sling is included.  The soft rubber butt pad helps to tame recoil.

MSRP has not been officially been set, but we are looking at the $800.00 range.

The shotgun bears a stunning resemblance to the South African designed Neostead pump action scattergun. The operator is able to move a switch located behind the grip next to the ejection port to select the right or left tube, or move the switch to the center to eject a shell without chambering another round. The bull-pup design results in an overall length of only 26″ with an 18.5″ barrel while the bottom eject design makes the firearm truly ambidextrous.

Shown next to the box of slugs in the photo to the left, you truly begin to get a sense of scale. The bull-pup design of the KSG makes it ideal for home defense and CQB. The incredibly short overall length makes it more nimble than a sawed off shotgun, and with a 14+1 capacity you don’t sacrifice ammunition capacity to get a shotty in a small package.

Ammunition capacity is 14+1 with 2 3/4″ shells. The KSG is shown with a factory installed Picatinny rail with flip up sights and a pistol grip. MSRP is not known at the moment, nor is there an expected date of availability.

Notice that this is not a shotgun with a “high capacity” magazine stuck on. No, it was DESIGNED this way. 15 shots is it’s standard magazine capacity. I’m crying in my beer already, because I can absolutely guarantee that this home defense weapon - which could hold off an entire gang of invading thugs - will not be legal in New Jersey.

pictures courtesy of Oleg Volk

Posted by Drew458     on 01/20/2011 at 05:28 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
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