Friday - June 27, 2014
Cheeta
he beamed and said, “Cheeta do good.
She marry lawyer, had plastic surgery,
now live in White House!!!
Vilmar is a bad influence!
Posted by Christopher
on 06/27/2014 at 11:46 AM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Tuesday - June 17, 2014
just because
Because Goat On A Pole is so old school.
So here’s Goat On A Quad.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/17/2014 at 05:59 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Thursday - June 12, 2014
Cat Caption Needed
I was going to send this one to Vilmar, who does all that LOLcatz pictures.
But I figured my BMEWS readers could make up captions (cat-ptions?) just as good as LOL’s.
So have at it.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/12/2014 at 03:09 PM
Filed Under: • Animals • Eye-Candy • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Saturday - May 31, 2014
Don’t Nobody Sneeze
Take a random midnight wobble around the Internets and you’ll find the oddest things ...
Each one of those ball things is the 44lb explosive head from a device called a trench mortar, which would loft these bombs over the top and a few hundred yards towards the enemy in his trenches. A launching pipe was attached to the bomb part prior to firing, so that these things appeared to be launching large deadly lollipops, or candy apples on a stick.
And yes, there really is a place in France called Achoo Acheux.
Gesundheit.
Properly, it’s Acheux-en-Amiénois, and is about 2 miles SW of Gommecourt, infamous crossroads of the above battle, and about 10 miles NE of Amiens.
Wait, the formal name of the little town is even grosser than it’s short name? Achoo and a mayonnaise? Ewwwwww.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/31/2014 at 12:23 AM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • History • Military • UK •
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Permalink • Thursday - May 29, 2014
An Anti-WhatsIt
Y’all know what a WhatsIt is. That’s where I put up a picture of something strange, and everyone tries to figure out what it might be. This used to be a fun thing to post, but alas, these days is pretty much extinct because the image search engines have the entire world cataloged. Tens, hundreds, of billions of images, and some really amazing pattern recognition algorithms. Find a picture of anything online, and these search tools will find it in microseconds. So it’s just too easy to sneak a peak, and the game of WhatsIt pretty much died.
So here’s an anti-whatsit.
What you’re looking at is a spatula (aka turner, flipper) made for outdoor grills (aka BBQ, barbecue). It’s made by the Outset brand (see their trademark PI symbol / picnic table symbol). The arm and blade are one solid chunk of stainless steel, and the highly polished rosewood scales have finger grooves. Construction is full tang, ending in a massive squared off hanging loop half an inch thick and over an inch long. The whole tool is 19.3” long, and it weighs nearly as much as a broadsword. Seriously, I’m only exaggerating a little bit here; this is a spatula that tips the scales at nearly 2 pounds. It’s not just a luxurious tool, it’s damn near a weapon. Fit and finish rivals most firearms too. It’s as well made as those fancy top of the line German kitchen knives.
So why is it an anti-whatsit? Because I’m challenging you ... go find one. Go to Google, or Bing, or Dogpile. Do any combination of search terms you want. Pull up images by the hundreds of spatulas, rosewood grill tools, Outset BBQ tools ... nothing. Visit eBay. Visit Wayfair. Visit the company homepage, and look at everything they make, including the rosewood line. Go to Amazon. And I predict you’ll come up with ... nothing. I’m a real gee-whiz at finding stuff on the internet. Usually in just a couple minutes. I looked around for more than an hour. Nada.
I even wrote a nice email to the company contact lady. And she replied how this was part of their rosewood line ... yet not only does this one not show up in that line, not one other piece in the line looks even remotely like it.
If you can find one online, please email me the link or put it in the comments here. Actually, I want the matching fork. Or the matching tongs, though we have nice tongs already.
Pretty sure my wife found this one at our local TJ Maxx, which is depressing, because our TJ’s is one of the ones that gets the close outs, the leftovers, the odd lots and the orphans. That bodes poorly.
I remember, once upon a time, my brother and I bought sets of combination flat wrenches from a tool catalog. It seemed that the original Black & Decker company was going to expand into chrome vanadium stainless steel tools, but after a trial production run decided not to. We got them for a song, regular and metric, and they’ve done the duty for 30 years now, although they are a little on the thin side across the handle edges. Craftsman wrenches are a little kinder on your hands. Perhaps this spatula/product line was the same way: an experiment that failed. Because who else other than me wants to wield a grill tool you could use to repel boarders, use as a pry bar, or even dig in the garden with?
Hey, that gives me an idea!! (just kidding. She’d kill me.)
Posted by Drew458
on 05/29/2014 at 11:08 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Thursday - May 08, 2014
and in this corner the current chump …. good for a laff folks, and it’s for real.
Now this is a funny show. Of course, it wasn’t meant to be a comedy. It simply turned out that way.
Journalists fight on live talk show
Two journalists in Jordan having a televised debate about the civil war in neighbouring Syria literally turned - and overturned - the table on each other during an on-air brawl.
If you would like an English play by play explanation, go to this link.
for the xciting play by play in English
Posted by peiper
on 05/08/2014 at 01:21 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Thursday - April 24, 2014
Up, up, and away!!
This may be the last thing that anyone with a touch of ophidiophobia — fear of snakes — would want to hear: flying snakes have surprisingly good aerodynamic qualities.
Scientists studying the amazing gliding proficiency of an Asian species known as the paradise tree snake say it does two things as it goes airborne. It splays its ribs in order to flatten its profile from round into a more triangular form, and it undulates while airborne — sort of swimming through the air.
...
The paradise tree snake is one of the world’s five species of flying snakes, all from the genus Chrysopelea. To be precise, they are gliders, not actual flyers like birds and bats that achieve powered flight.
The mildly venomous snake — green and black with occasional touches of red and orange — has a diameter roughly equal to a human finger and is up to three feet (one meter) long. It lives in rainforests in Southeast Asia and South Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The snake takes to the air from trees, and is capable of gliding about 100 feet (30 meters).
Chrysopelea is also known by its common name “flying snake”. It climbs using ridge scales along its belly, pushing against rough bark surface of tree trunks, allowing it to move vertically up a tree. Upon reaching the end of a tree’s branch, the snake continues moving until its tail dangles from the branch’s end. It then makes a J-shape bend, leans forward to select the level of inclination it wishes to use to control its flight path, as well as selecting a desired landing area. Once it decides on a destination, it propels itself by thrusting its body up and away from the tree, sucking in its abdomen and flaring out its ribs to turn its body into a “pseudo concave wing”, all the while making a continual serpentine motion of lateral undulation parallel to the ground to stabilize its direction in midair in order to land safely.
The combination of sucking in its stomach and making a motion of lateral undulation in the air makes it possible for the snake to glide in the air, where it also manages to save energy compared to travel on the ground and dodge earth-bound predators. The concave wing that a snake creates in sucking in its stomach flattens its body to up to twice its width from the back of the head to the anal vent, which is close to the end of the snake’s tail, causes the cross section of the snake’s body to resemble the cross section of a frisbee or flying disc. When a flying disc spins in the air, the designed cross sectional concavity causes increased air pressure under the center of the disc, causing lift for the disc to fly. A snake continuously moves in lateral undulation to create the same effect of increased air pressure underneath its arched body to glide.[
Wiki says the critters can glide for 100 meters.
Upon lift off, the snake snake stretches out its ribs, instantly flattening the body and taking on an s shape. This action also causes the belly region of the snake to take on a concave shape that acts as a parachute. The snakes plan is to merely enlarge its surface area and increase air resistance, thus slowing its descent. During this period of flattening, the body expands to nearly double normal width. While aloft, the snake undulates and the body contorts to catch air drafts and glide. While the undulations help propel the snake, their true propose is to control the snakes direction. C. paradisi is unique among the flying snake species by the method it uses to change direction. Most species simply bank in the direction they wish to go. C. paradisi on the other hand, turns by moving the anterior portion of the snakes body. The reason as to why the this snake Genus evolved the ability to glide may be twofold; it could be an adaptation to avoid predation or it may have evolved in response to the two Genus’s of lizard and one Genus of frog prey items that also inhabit this area, the Genus Rhacophorus (Flying Frogs), Genus Draco (Flying Dragons or Gliding Lizards, and the Genus Ptychozoon (the Gliding Geckos).
As far as I could tell, the act of flying snakes hunting other flying reptiles while airborne has not yet been observed by Official Science. Could be it’s just a matter of time.
Flying snakes. They’re real. Next thing you know, it’ll turn out that Australia’s infamous Drop Bears are real too. Crivens.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/24/2014 at 12:18 PM
Filed Under: • Animals • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Saturday - April 19, 2014
England’s Concrete Hearing Aids
Long, long before the real BMEWS “ultima-Thule” kept us safe, a conceptually similar but completely mechanical system guarded London during WWI and into the mid 1930s. AEWS; the Acoustic Early Warning System. And while there are little bits and pieces of it still dotting the English countryside, the most impressive part still exists in Denge, Kent, just behind the beach at Dungenes, a stone’s throw east of Romney Marsh, on that little point of land a few miles south of Dover where the Channel seems to hit its narrowest point.
85 years later: the “three sisters”: the 200’ wall, the 20’ dish, and the 30’ dish
[decimal map ref 50.956246, 0.953723] Once known as the quietest place in Britain, today the land around this proud nose of the old island is anything but. An airport right next door, row after row of vacation cottages just the other side, and all the busy traffic running up and down the coast, coming and going from the nearby Chunnel ... not to mention all the ships in the Channel, right there, or all the planes flying in or out of Heathrow shuttling back and forth to the Continent. Or that pesky miniature rail road! And even if they were all gone, you’d still have the bleating of the sheep, all those Romney lambs, up and down the meadows. Ah, but Once Upon A Time ...
London had been bombed repeatedly during the Great War. The Germans would send over giant Zeppelins at night, or enormous Gotha bomber planes by day, and bomb the city with relative impunity. Although neither of these aircraft were very fast, you simply could not hear them coming until they were only 6 or 7 miles away. And that left hardly any time to get some fighter planes up to defend the city. Something had to be done.
Something was. A whole series of “hearing trumpet” listening devices were invented, and some of those inventions even slightly worked. But it took some insight, and the application of some actual science, to get it right. Sound could be reflected off of a hard surface, and it could be focused if bounced off a curved surface. And those results were quite impressive indeed.
A 1916 account of tests of a sound mirror considered the invention to be a success: “A man 100m distant, reading a newspaper in a low voice was heard perfectly. Airplanes were heard up to distances of 8 kilometers.” Precursors to the concrete mirrors were cut directly into the chalk of the Kent hills, and there were experiments with acoustic mirrors at Hythe before the 1923 mirror; an earlier 20 foot cast concrete mirror had been built alongside a building lab, workshop, store and provisions for technical assistance to live on site. An acoustic research station was also built at nearby West Hythe.
Primitive sound locators were used on the Western Front to locate artillery and enemy aircraft as early as 1914, however it was events away from the Western Front that provided the real impetus for developing means of detecting and tracking aircraft by sound. In May 1915 Zeppelin and Shutte-Lanz airships of the German Army and Navy started bombing targets around the Humber and Thames estuaries. London was attacked for the first time on the 31st of that month and by 1917 the airships were being replaced by twin
engined Gotha and Giant aeroplanes. In total 300 tons of bombs were dropped on Britain during the First World War causing some 5,000 casualties, a third of which were fatalities. Some form of early warning system was badly needed, especially to counter the night raids.Following encouraging experiments with a four foot diameter prototype built by a Professor Mather a 16’ mirror was cut into a chalk cliff face at Binbury Manor between Sittingbourne and Maidstone in July 1915. The mirror was shaped to form part of a sphere and a sound collector was mounted on a pivot at the focal point. The collector was usually a trumpet shaped cone connected to the ears of the listener with rubber tubes but experiments with microphones were under way before the end of the war. The listener would move the sound collector across the face of the mirror until he found the point where the sound was loudest. Bearings to the target could then be read from vertical and horizontal scales on the collector.
Professor Mather and his colleagues carried out a series of experiments with this mirror and produced a report which claimed that it could detect a Zeppelin at a range of twenty miles.
From 1930 until 1935 the mirrors participated in the annual Air Defence of Great Britain exercises with the RAF. The 200’ mirror was the long range lookout, telling the operators of the 30’ and 20’ mirrors where to listen.
They in turn tracked the incoming aircraft and reported their readings back to a central control centre which calculated and plotted the raiders’ position. In 1932 the 200’ mirror detected aircraft at a range of 20 miles when the unaided ear could only hear them at 6.5 miles and on another occasion at 30 miles when an unaided listener could only hear them at 5.5 miles.
So, as a system, this worked very very much like the German radar of WWII. One set to give you a general bearing. Another set to make it precise. And a third set to guide a stealthy blacked out night fighter plane right onto the target.
The real problem was that airplanes developed at a much faster pace than did manual acoustic location technology. By the time the 3 mirrors at Denge were up and running, airplanes had become faster than they could track. And these were the best of the bunch - other, older, prototype models still dot the Kentish hills.
The real deathblow came when someone else realized that nearly the same job could be done electronically, and went out and invented radar. And that was that for AEWS.
By the beginning of the Second World War the mirrors became obsolete, and Rothwell went on to prominence for his work on missile guiding systems and radar. At the time, however, the mirrors were almost objects of ridicule, and referred to by his colleague physicists as “Rothwell’s Folly.” Recently Peter Kendall, the English Heritage Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Kent, has explained the reasons for the preservation of the mirrors. “Standing like huge modern sculptures in the otherwise featureless gravel, these structures are beautiful and fascinating, as well as historically important for the critical role they were designed to have in defending England.” Now that the mirrors are being hailed as objects of artistic merit, it seems cruelly ironic that the “sculptor,” once ridiculed for their construction, should not, until now, have received credit for their design.
I like how Mather’s / Tucker’s / Rothwell’s mirror shapes so closely resemble the radar antenna arrays of a generation or two later. A focusing curve is a focusing curve. Pity that the English gave these early inventors such a rough time for so long. It’s only in the past decade or so that they’ve woken up to the heritage they have here, and have made great strides to preserve it and to educate folks about it.
There is even a little sound mirror for public edification in a nearby park you and a friend can try for fun. Next time you visit the Military Canal be sure to give it a try. But please, BYOB (bring your own bombers). Actually, you stand in front of the mirror, and a friend stands 75 feet away on the other side of the canal, and whispers in your direction. And you can hear him just fine.
Neato, eh what?
The definitive work on this subject seems to be a very rare 2009 book called Echoes From The Sky by Richard N. Scarth. What a great title. Unfortunately the Hythe Civic Society printed so few copies of this book, the only book they’ve every published, that remaindered prices are quite silly.
minor update: Oops, I was wrong. Scarth used Hythe Civic Society to publish Mirrors By The Sea in 1995. A 40 page pamphlet. Another great title, and probably nearly the same content as the later book, except much less of it. I gather Scarth is the living expert. Alas, this book too is impossible to find at any rational price.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/19/2014 at 11:18 AM
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Thursday - April 10, 2014
A fun bit of fluff
The Towel Dance; Cirque du Soleil
Posted by Drew458
on 04/10/2014 at 09:35 PM
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Permalink • kids
Posted by Drew458
on 04/10/2014 at 02:46 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - April 08, 2014
Wee Ones
Posted by Drew458
on 04/08/2014 at 02:36 PM
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Permalink • Monday - April 07, 2014
so, that why!
Sometimes, when it’s time to go, you go!
And now, you’ve got a week to get all the chametz out. Get busy.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/07/2014 at 02:46 AM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Religion •
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Permalink • Wednesday - April 02, 2014
A Week To Go:
Now That Spring Is Finally Here, “Winter Is Coming” Once Again
Best damn non-spoiler spoiler for HBO’s Game of Thrones ... this season’s endlessly longed for, LOUSY SHORT TEN EPISODE SEASON starts next week. Hey, they spend millions on the sets, boobs, film it in locations all over the world, costume up a cast of thousands, boobs, and build a plot that’s so involved and twisted it would make a Minotaur dizzy. Plus boobs. So is it any wonder they can only afford 10 episodes a year? Oh, and boobs.
This clip is pretty funny, but real fans of both show and book can name at least a third of those other extra characters. Mostly. Did I mention the boobs?
R + L = J ... perhaps. So will then J + D = the true Child of Light? Or would we be right back to an Ep 1 kind of incest? Because you know it’s coming ... even with what happened at the end of Book 5. And they’d be perfect together, Ice and Fire. Duh. After all, “What is dead may never die”, right?
Posted by Drew458
on 04/02/2014 at 09:54 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Television •
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Permalink • Monday - March 31, 2014
About time
Hu is on First!
Posted by Christopher
on 03/31/2014 at 06:23 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • History •
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Once Again, The One And Only Post
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Tracked at iHaan.org
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The Brownshirts: Partie Deux; These aare the Muscle We’ve Been Waiting For
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Vietnam Homecoming
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On: 03/20/21 07:00
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[...] RTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPL [...]
On: 07/17/17 04:28
a small explanation
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Tracked at yerba mate gourd
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On: 07/09/17 03:07
DISCLAIMER
THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.
Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
- Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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