Friday - March 12, 2010

No, it’s not wkend women or even eye candy. Am posting this due to some confusion. Take a look.

Somethin’ ain’t quite right here although she is darn pretty. This photo appeared in the hard copy of the morning paper along with this story.

SOURCE

Malaysian Prince wins £1.2 million defamation suit against wife
A Malaysian prince was awarded 6 million ringgit (£1.2 million) in damages in a defamation suit against his teenage wife who accused him of sexual and physical abuse after fleeing home to Indonesia.

Miss Pinot and her mother told Indonesian media that the Prince, 32, held her captive and treated her as a sex slave. She also made graphic allegations of physical torture during their marriage.

The Prince subsequently filed a defamation suit against Miss Pinot and her mother, both of whom refused to testify in the hearings.

But that is not the photo they ran in the on line version .... they ran this.  Now then.  Is this the girl above?  The mouth is different and so is the nose. Even allowing for weight gain, which of the 2 pix are more recent.  But since the top photo is so damn pretty, who really cares?

Posted by peiper     on 03/12/2010 at 12:14 PM   
Filed Under: • International • Love-Marriage • Sex •  
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BATTLE OF THE CARTOONS ?

Can’t say I always care for Garland but I can’t deny he’s clever and , yeah, he is pretty damn good.  I have to remind myself that since I’m to the right of his general views, my opinions can often be colored. Still, no matter.  He has talent and he’s often funny as so many illustrators are and so ... here.

From the Daily Telegraph

Posted by peiper     on 03/12/2010 at 12:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • UK •  
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Government Departments Arming Themselves

Department of Education Buying MORE Shotguns


Why do they need more? Why do they have any to begin with? By what authority do they arm themselves? Why do they need short barreled weapons?

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven (27) REMINGTON BRAND MODEL 870 POLICE 12/14P MOD GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14” - PARKERIZED CHOKE: MODIFIED SIGHTS: GHOST RING REAR WILSON COMBAT; FRONT - XS CONTOUR BEAD SIGHT STOCK: KNOXX REDUCE RECOIL ADJUSTABLE STOCK FORE-END: SPEEDFEED SPORT-SOLID - 14” LOP are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
The required date of delivery is March 22, 2010.

If the workers at the DOE feel the need for armed protection, hire some guards. Or borrow some Marines. And why would they need armed protection in the first place?

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2010 at 11:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Government • Guns and Gun Control •  
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Nobody Listens To Poor Joe B

The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, was set to withdraw from all peace talks with Israel last night after the announcement this week that 1600 apartments would be added to Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

The announcement enraged the visiting US Vice-President, Joe Biden, who has told the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that it was liable to ‘’set the Middle East on fire’’.

Mr Biden blames Mr Netanyahu for the decision, telling officials on Wednesday that the United States’ close relationship with Israel was jeopardising its other bilateral relationships across the region.

How much would it cost to ship Israel about 200 million cinder blocks and 50,000 cubic yards of concrete? 1600 homes? Build 160,000!

Oh, and “occupied East Jerusalem”??? Like Gaza, and the Golan Heights? Bite me: it’s Israel. All of it.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2010 at 11:28 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats • Israel • Terrorists •  
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Those Who Ignore History …

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2010 at 11:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • Obama, The One •  
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Don’t We Wish

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2010 at 10:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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Light Up Band-Aid Cures Skin Cancer

This is an amazing claim, but they’ve done the trials and it appears to work! It is miniaturization of an already existing and effective treatment. Important point: this treatment is for non melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) only.

Researchers in Scotland unveiled Friday a new treatment for skin cancer that is almost as easy for patients to use, and doctors to administer, as a simple band-aid.

The Ambulight PDT therapy allows doctors to get patients with increasingly common non-melanoma skin cancer in and out of the hospital in just minutes and leaves virtually no scar.

Dermatology professor James Ferguson, who was involved in the clinical trials at Scotland’s Dundee University, tells CBSNews.com the biggest advantage to the Ambulight is that it’s simply “a lot less painful”.

It uses the same principles as light treatments available for years; covering the cancerous skin patch with a light-sensitive cream which is absorbed only by the cancer cells, then blasting the area with a beam of light that turns the cream into a toxic compound. It effectively kills the cancerous cells without affecting the surrounding tissue.

What makes the Ambulight PDT novel is its size and portability. The light emitting device is about the size of a computer mouse.

Patients have cream applied to the lesion, have a clear bandage placed over the cream, and then fix the Ambulight PDT to the bandage. It can do the rest of the work while the patient remains mobile.

The medicines and light combination involved has been in use in the United States for years, “it’s just a new way of delivering it that happens to be much more comfortable,” Ferguson tells CBS News.

According to Ferguson, both the United States and Great Britain are seeing a huge increase in the number of non-melanoma skin cancers reported each year.

The high-tech device contains a small light that combines with a chemical cream to kill skin cancer cells.

The Ambulight plaster has already been used on 50 patients with a success rate of up to 90%. It is less painful than surgery and leaves no scar.

Muriel Lowe, who had two treatments a week apart, described the result as “fantastic”.

She said: “I have a skin condition that means normal surgery would scar me.

“The doctor told me that cosmetically this would be much better. The treatment is called photodynamic therapy.”

Ambicare, the company that makes the Ambulight device, says

Ambulight PDT is a light-emitting sticking plaster for the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) Simple and easily applied, the plasters are used in Photodynamic therapy (PDT) which is an established alternative to surgery for many forms of skin cancer.

PDT has become a key treatment for skin cancers, an established and growing health issue in many regions of the world. The incidence of non-malignant skin cancer continues to grow rapidly and now affects 15% of the UK, 40% of the USA, and 75% of the Australian populations during their lifetimes. The number of skin cancer lesions requiring treatment is doubling every ten years, as individuals live longer and are affected by the consequences of excessive sun exposure.

Photodynamic Therapy has become a key treatment for skin cancers and its use is expanding. PDT is being more widely adopted as it shows greater cost effectiveness and excellent cosmetic outcome while reducing secondary issues such as infection.

PDT is a multi-step process involving the application of a photosensitive drug followed by controlled exposure to a selective light source which activates daughter compound of the drug and destroys the diseased cells. PDT treatment is less invasive and avoids the scarring associated with surgical removal of the tumour and the need for an in-patient hospital stay.

Ambicare also has a version of their device that works on acne, by killing the Propionibacteria that causes it. Another version works for skin rejuvenation. Different wavelengths of light I gather.

All in all, a nice step forward for technology. And all based on the old nearly-wiccan homeopathic belief that red light is good for the skin, and that sunlight can cure acne. The cream used for the cancer treatment is usually aminolevulinic acid.

This is just the beginning. PDT may also be effective for treating internal tumors as well. Research continues. Light therapy is being used for many things these days, from curing neonatal jaundice to alleviating seasonal mood disorders. Cool!

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2010 at 10:09 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
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‘Terrorist British Airways worker planned to take advantage of strike’ a pox on unions and muslims

Two things this country and the world can do without. Unions and muslims.

So there I was last night looking up flights to the USA on Brit. Air.  Originally I had planned to use ship, those plans are not abandoned, but there was a very good write up in the weekend travel section of a little known flight BA runs where one can clear US Immigration at Shannon Airport. Huh? Now that’d be ideal. The filght takes an hour longer then the regular overseas flight BUT, you save time once arriving. So anyhow I’m trying to get further info and as it’s a business class flight I know it won’t be cheap.  I also know that the damn union is striking BA and positions are being staffed by volunteers and I guess, strike breakers. So it is pretty risky. And then I woke up to this when I brought in the morning paper.  Damn these useless bastards.

Yeah I know I’m not supposed to think this way but have to ask anyway.

Are you all certain that genocide isn’t after all, the only answer?  This is a scary read.  The boat’s getting to look good again. Oh right. Pirates. Can’t win these days.

BA worker ‘planned to use strike to become suicide bomber and passed on secrets to terror masterminds in Yemen’

By SAM GREENHILL and PAUL SIMS

A would-be suicide bomber worked for British Airways and plotted to take advantage of cabin crew strikes to launch an attack, it was alleged yesterday.

Rajib Karim, a trusted IT expert at the airline, planned to volunteer for crew training to help keep flights running during the threatened walkouts.

He also used his access to BA’s computer systems to gain insider knowledge about airline security and pass it to terror masterminds in Yemen and Pakistan, a court heard.

Union bosses seized on the revelations to claim that passengers could be endangered by BA’s tactics for beating the planned strikes. The airline says it has more than 1,000 volunteer staff ready to work as cabin crew in the event of industrial action. 

Karim, 30, was born in Bangladesh and came to Britain a few years ago to get a UK passport which would smooth his terror mission, it was claimed.

Two years ago he secured a full-time job at a BA call centre in Newcastle upon Tyne and became ‘heavily involved’ in software development.

But he had a ‘clear intention and desire’ for martyrdom and wanted to become a suicide bomber, Westminster Magistrates Court heard.

His computer allegedly contained encrypted files showing he was in contact with terrorists abroad.

Karim requested ‘permission’ from ‘those who appear to be able to give [it]’ to carry out an atrocity in the UK and suggested to colleagues in Yemen that he might be able to train as a cabin crew member to work on planes during strikes.

This would give him ‘inside knowledge’ of training and procedures that could assist in carrying out a terror attack, the court heard.

He also offered to travel to Yemen and Pakistan to train in terrorism, and suggested other people he knew who could potentially be recruited.

The court heard that Karim gave details of ways in which BA security systems and computer servers could be subjected to physical or internal attack to inflict ‘severe financial losses’.

SOURCE

Thousands of BA passengers face travel chaos as cabin crew plan TWO crippling strikes
By RAY MASSEY
Last updated at 1:48 PM on 12th March 2010

British Airways cabin crew are to stage a series of crippling strikes threatening travel chaos for more than a million passengers, it was announced today.

UNIONS

Posted by peiper     on 03/12/2010 at 08:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Immigration • International • Muslims • Terrorists • UK •  
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‘And then the fight started…’

Flapjawman sent me these this morning. Flapjawman is a LtCol in Army Intelligence. I’ve known him since we started playing D&D together back in ‘74. I’d post his pic but that might blow his cover. Anyway, enjoy!

My wife sat down on the settee next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, “What’s on TV?”

I said, “Dust”.

And then the fight started…

******************************************

My wife and I were watching “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” while we were in bed.. I turned to her and said, “Do you want to have sex?”

“No,” she answered.

I then said, “Is that your final answer?”

She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying, “Yes.”

So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.”

And then the fight started....

******************************************

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the van, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.”

My loving wife of 5 years replied, “Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?”

And that’s how the fight started…

******************************************
I rear-ended a car this morning. So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. You know how sometimes you just get so stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well I couldn’t believe it.... He was a DWARF!!! He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, “I AM NOT HAPPY!!!”

So, I looked down at him and said, “Well, then which one are you?”

And then the fight started.....

*****************************************
My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She said, “I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.”

I bought her a bathroom scale.

And then the fight started…

******************************************
When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her some place expensive… so, I took her to a petrol station.

And then the fight started…

******************************************
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s license to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.

The woman said, “Unbutton your shirt”. So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, “That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me,” and she processed my Social Security application.

When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.

She said, “You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.”

And then the fight started…

******************************************
My wife and I were sitting at a table at my school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.

My wife asked, “Do you know her?”

“Yes,” I sighed, “She’s my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.”

“My God!” says my wife, “who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”

And then the fight started…

******************************************
I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason took my order first. “I’ll have the steak, medium rare, please.”

He said, “Aren’t you worried about the mad cow?”

“Nah , she can order for herself.”

And then the fight started…
******************************************
A woman was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She was not happy with what she saw and said to her husband, “I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.”

The husband replied, “Your eyesight’s damn near perfect.”

And then the fight started......

Posted by Christopher     on 03/12/2010 at 09:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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‘…the right to keep and bear chairs…’

Ex-police officer stunned by chair-wielding patron.

Pull-quote:

“I basically kept hitting him until he wasn’t moving anymore,”

Yep! That’s how I’d do it. I’d basically hit, shoot, stab, etc until he’s no longer a threat… moving. (uhh, is his chest still rising and falling?)

The man who stopped a bar shooting incident by hitting the suspected gunman with a chair was hailed as a hero on Monday.

The Saturday night shootings at Jim’s Sports Club Bar and Grill left one man dead, another critically wounded and a third with a less serious wound. Authorities said the suspect, Jason Musburger, 47, a former Chisholm police officer, had gone to the bar to confront his ex-wife.

Ryan Simonson, 27, of Chisholm, confirmed Monday that he was the patron who smashed a chair over the suspect’s head, knocking him unconscious.

“He’s a hero,” Mayor Michael Jugovich said, adding that Simonson likely saved other lives, given that the suspect had a second gun he was unable to use.

I’m still bemused by the use of the term ‘suspect’. He’s not a ‘suspect’. He did it, and the chair proves it!

Posted by Christopher     on 03/12/2010 at 07:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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   Thursday - March 11, 2010

Vilmar’s version of Aesop’s Antz and Grasshoppers

I thought of Vilmar immediately upon recovering from Mountain Dew shooting from my nose:

Once upon a time, there was a happy-go-lucky grasshopper who lived only to have fun. All through the long summer days, he would sing and dance, and laugh at the industrious ants who were busily preparing for winter. But then cruel winter came, and the grasshopper was starving. In desperation, he approached the ants’ nest and begged for food. “You should have danced less and worked more,” the ants scolded him, but then, being basically kind-hearted creatures, they decided to give him a few of their hard-won crumbs.

The next summer was exactly like the one before: Once more, the ants worked without pause, while the grasshopper sang and danced. When winter came, he appealed to the ants again, only this time, he brought his 10,000 children along with him. “It’s thanks to your kindness,” he said, “that I made it through the winter, and was able to father these little ones. Surely, you won’t let us all starve to death.”

The ants convened a meeting of their Council to decide what to do. On the one hand, they felt a certain responsibility for the grasshopper and his huge brood; on the other hand, feeding 10,000 growing grasshoppers could make a serious dent in their winter provisions.

Finally, one Council member had a brilliant idea. “Let’s just take some food from the hardest-working ants. They’ve got more than enough, and won’t mind sharing their good fortune with the needy grasshoppers.”

The Council-of-Ants thought this was a splendid plan, and quickly acted on it. As a result, the grasshoppers survived the winter, the ants congratulated themselves on their compassion, and hardly anyone noticed that the hardest-working ants, whose food had been seized, left the nest in disgust.

Summer came around once again, and once again the grasshoppers danced and sang, while the ants toiled and saved. But without the hardest-working ants to do the heavy-lifting, the ants did not get very much accomplished, and barely accumulated enough food to get themselves through the winter.

And then, one cold and snowy day, the ants heard an ominous rumble approaching ever-closer. It was the sound of a million grasshoppers, all converging on their tiny ant-hill. “Since time immemorial,” Grandfather Grasshopper solemnly declared, “the ant people have shared their winter provisions with the grasshopper people. We demand that you do so now, immediately, or we’ll destroy your nest, and take by force what is rightfully ours.”

This is how the Dilemma of the Welfare State, aka the Entitlement Crisis, came into the world.

Oh, read the source here.

Posted by Christopher     on 03/11/2010 at 10:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats • Economics •  
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‘The Wreck of the… uh… Barack Hussein?’

Lisa Farizio owes Gordon Lightfoot an apology.

The legend lives on from old Honest Abe on down
Of the group that they call “Grand Old Party.”
The media it’s said gave her up for half dead
Though in truth she is still hale and hearty.
But in two-thousand eight she fell under the great weight
Of a candidate too weak to steer her.
That good ship and true failed in states that were blue
When the gales of November came callin’.

Posted by Christopher     on 03/11/2010 at 10:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Humor • Satire •  
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Secret to a happy marriage revealed!

The secret to a happy marriage has now been placed on a scientific basis… much like the theory of global warming:

Swiss researchers report the discovery of a magic formula for successful marriages. If true, this could mean that marriages of the future will be contracted based on scientific principles, instead of such common, but notoriously unreliable factors as failed prophylactics and tequila.

I’ve always found tequila to be a wonderful factor…

The study begins by echoing what many of us have known all along: that a successful marriage has little to do with passion, sexual prowess, your partner’s good looks, or the make and model of his car. It has to do with smarts.

According to these well meaning, but obviously over-funded scientists, the key to a happy marriage—if you are a man—is to find a woman who is 27 percent smarter than you are. If you are a woman, you need to find a man 27 percent dumber.

It’s that simple.

No, it’s not that simple, as the author notes;

Well, it is, and it isn’t. For instance, it is not hard for me to find a woman who is 27 percent smarter than me. The hard part is getting her to go out on a second date.

Go read the article. And don’t be surprised if the Democrats liberals want to regulate marriages according to IQ tests.

Posted by Christopher     on 03/11/2010 at 10:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Colleges-Professors • Democrats • Love-Marriage •  
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It’s Peiper’s Fault

Another entry in the continuing Letters from Littleton series

First, I’ve been working, doing the handyman thing again. And I have decided to identify my profession as gigolo when asked. It’s true! My customers are women of a certain age, either divorced or widowed young, or married ones whose husbands can’t give them what they really want. So I go to them, referred by one satisfied client to another, and I let them know that I have certain skills and abilities that most men don’t have, and quite a lot of experience. That I pay attention to detail, don’t rush my job, and work until they are completely thrilled. And in exchange for money, I’ll do whatever they want. I should incorporate, and call the business Sometimes You Just Need A Man.

Second, Peiper sent me another one of his envelopes full of various clippings from the British newspapers. They’re always fun to read. This time, the articles were on the latest political scandals - their MPs have misplaced over ONE MILLION POUNDS in improper reimbursements!! (which is less than what Charlie Rangel probably owes in taxes), how ClimateGate egoist-in-chief Raj Pachauri owns lots of different hats, considers himself to be a test quality cricket bowler, gets himself driven to work one whole mile in a chauffeured Toyota Corolla (!!!) instead of driving the green car his institute gave him, two columns on utterly MAD Harriet Hartmann ("This woman is a plague on England!” engraves an enraged Peiper at the top of the page) is going to ruin the nation with her Equality Bill, a real estate article showing me I can now buy d’Artagnan’s actual house for a mere £3.24 million (I want it. Utterly. Even if I have to buy my own sword to live there. Drool, swoon, and gibber with excitement. It even has a mother-in-law turret on the back side of the castle, with it’s own studded iron door!) And this article on the Cutty Sark.

The what? The which? Your typical American, if she happens to be a drinker, will recognize the name as a brand of very light bodied blended whiskey. Yellow label on a green bottle I think.

I am not your typical American. I knew that the Cutty Sark was a clipper ship. And I know what clipper ships were, and I’m pretty sure I saw the rotting timbers of two or three of them somewhere on the coast of Maine when I was a little kid. Or my great gandmother did and I saw the pictures. Hey, I was small at the time! They were sailing ships from a long time ago, queens of the seven seas from the last dying breaths of the Age of Sail. Back in the long gone times when there was no such thing as stay-fresh packaging, and tea came in a wooden box, clipper ships would race home to England with the fresh crop of tea leaves from China, all the way around the southern tip of Africa, flying past pirates and sailing through storms at the neck snapping speed of 15 knots. 17 mph. Fresher tea sold for more money, and these ships made their owners a fortune.

That era ended when a) steam ships became reliable, and b) the Suez Canal opened, shortening the journey by at least a month. Actually, the short era of the clipper ship never really should have happened. 20 years before they existed you could take a propeller driven steamboat from London to New York. Or to Rio. But steam ships were expensive, and expensive to operate. Sail was cheap. So were the lives of the sailors. Here’s an account of one voyage of the Cutty Sark. I’d rather do time in prison. Or serve under Holly Graf, who seems a whole lot nicer than the first mate. He was so nasty the whole crew ran off. And his replacement was even worse!

Ok, so I knew it was a ship once upon a time. A great and famous one. I did not know that it still existed, and that it was some kind of maritime exhibit in England. In Greenwich. Right across the street - Trafalgar Road naturally - from the meridian building at the Maritime Museum and Sir Harrison’s clocks, eh Peiper? Pretty sly, guy. So it was exciting for me just to see the pictures in the paper of this long legged wooden beauty. And read of how it was undergoing restoration while in drydock. And how it was rusting apart. And that the plan was to raise the ship up 11 feet so that everyone could see the amazing round bottomed hull, which is what gave her her speed. And to do that, the plan was to hang the ship from steel girders driven through the sides. Abhorrence! Sacrilege! The chief curator had already quit over this plan, and I could understand that perfectly. It would be like going to a museum to see the famous race horse Man o’ War, stuffed and displayed, but to better show you the underside of his hooves - that’s the part that made him run fast! - we mounted him to the wall by driving a spear through his heart and another through his eyes. Gross!! And this, this in England, with it’s long and grand maritime history. How dare they! And I knew then that I had to post on it, and that meant a lot of research. For starters, the name. Why name a boat after a bottle of whiskey?

Wrongo, Drew. It was the other way around. And the ship was named after the clothing worn by the character Nannie in the Robert Burns poem quoted above. I think it’s a bit of a pun in Scottish, as a cutty sark is a wee slip worn by a wee slip of a girl who grew up to be a naughty witch. Who went dancing in the moonlight wearing only that. Which just goes to show you that sailors never change, and occupy their thoughts with booze and nearly naked women. If they built that ship today it would be named The hot babe in a thong bikini or the X-tra Small Nightie or the SS Underboob or similar. They actually named the ship after a sexy bit of women’s underwear. Not after the oddball little island in the English Channel named Sark, the one that just got around to ending the Middle Ages in 2008. (which is what you get when you let lefty newspapers own entire countries!) See, Nannie the witch almost caught drunk Tam one night, and managed to grab the tail of horse as he rode away in fright.

And I’d be wrong about the fortune part, even though the ship’s figurehead turned out to be quite apt. Cutty Sark never made riches for her owner, John “white hat” Willis. And while she was built for speed, she never beat her rival the Thermopylae. Just caught her tail, finishing the Shanghai to London run 5 days slower. And they both lost to steam and the canal, which opened the year the ship was built.

Her intended lifespan was 30 years when she was commissioned in 1868 by John ‘White Hat’ Willis, a London ship-owner who wore a white topper as he went about his business.

His purpose in ordering the new vessel from Glasgow firm Scott & Linton was not solely commercial.

An old hand in the China tea trade, he owned many clippers, but none as fast as Thermopylae, owned by the rival White Star Line, which had been launched earlier that year and looked set to outpace everything else.

In those days, the annual race of the tea clippers to be the first back to England with the new season’s crop was a national preoccupation. Large sums changed hands in bets.

Her maiden voyage, however, was not triumphant. She had teething troubles on her way out to Shanghai, and her first passage back to England with a hold full of tea took 110 days, compared with Thermopylae’s 105.

That was still pretty swift. The trouble was that however determinedly these two ships raced against each other during the coming years, their real rivalry was with steam.

The Suez Canal opened the very year Cutty Sark was launched. Only powered vessels could use it, and it meant they could do the voyage home in 60 days.

For a time, Willis and the other clipper-owners were defiant, claiming that steamer-carried tea was tainted by coal-dust. But as the price dropped, few tea-drinkers noticed the difference. By 1877, when Cutty Sark carried her last cargo of tea, it had become plain even to Willis that the days of the tea clipper were over.

Like I said, an era that should never have happened. And if Cutty Sark hadn’t split a bunch of sails and lost her rudder in a storm on that trip, she probably would have won.

But why was this old wooden ship rusting apart anyway? Wood doesn’t rust. Well, Cutty Sark is a “composite ship”. Which means it’s only wood on the outside. Teak and elm, actually. The ribs of the ship are iron. Not steel, iron. Not I-beams either. They hadn’t been invented yet. I’d heard of composition ships before, read about them in some little book on ships my aunt gave me when I was young. And in that book was a picture like this one:

which shows half of a rib of a composite ship. Wood on the outside, iron frame members on the inside. But ships have keels and keelsons and bilge boxes and a million other salt encrusted parts. And Wiki is telling me how composite ships were ever so much stronger than plain wood ones. Heck, they practically had the problem of hogging and sagging licked!

Huh? Hogging and sagging? What on earth is that? Well, ships are fairly large. Otherwise they’d be called boats. But the ocean is much bigger. Otherwise ships would be called bridges. And some ships are about the same size as the length of the waves they sail on. So when the top of the wave goes under the ship, it lifts up the front bit. (The front pointy bit is called the bow. Pronounced the same way as that bit of obsequious toe touching that Obama loves to do when he meets important people) And as the top of the wave goes under the middle of the ship, it lifts that part up too. Leaving the front and back (bow and stern) floating on lower parts of the water. So the ship bends. This is called hogging, after the term hogback, which refers to the top of pigs, which are often curved with a high point in the middle. Unlike horses and similar critters, where the high point on the back is at the shoulder. And when the low point of the wave is at the middle of the ship, the bow and stern are floating on higher bits of water, so the ships bends up at both ends. Or sags in the middle. Same same. That’s called sagging.

I’m a natural engineer. I can see how this kind of bending can stress a ship until it breaks. I realize that it really isn’t an issue on small boats. Or on medium ships made entirely of wood, since wood is flexible. Or on steel ships, because they’re far far stronger than wood ones. But I could not see how composite ships had any strength at all, if all they were made from was wood planks over toroidal girders. And that led me on a long chase, until I found a reprint online of a 120 year old book about ship design, Sir William Henry White’s A Manual of Naval Architecture. And found out that those composite ships had plenty of diagonal strap bracing between the ribs, and often had iron keels and keelsons as well. [ The keel is the bottom spine of a ship. All the ribs and hull parts attach to it. Sometimes the bottom of the keel stick through the bottom of the ship and helps it travel straight through the water, like an extra bit of rudder. Keelsons are smaller, lateral parallels to the keel. They are usually built inside the bottom of the ship and help keep the bottom stiff. ] Reading through that was quite interesting, and showed me what was missing in that picture. So I knew how the Cutty Sark was built, before I even saw a picture.

And I was wrong again. The Cutty Sark is a composite ship. But it’s made up of a whole lot more iron than just the inside bracings of the hull. The keel is iron. So are the masts, at least the lower parts. And some of the yardarms. And the bowsprit. And the stern cap. And many other parts. I think that the only reason they put wood planks on the hull was so that they could use Mentz metal sheathing. Another WTH moment. Mentz metal? Yeah, a “patented” alloy we call brass. 60% copper, 40% zinc. Brass doesn’t rust, and it doesn’t get shipworm, and it doesn’t support Mermaid’s Hair and other tropical plants which tend to stick to wood ships sailing in tropical seas. And that slows a ship down considerably. Ok, so you get some galvanic reaction between the brass plates and the iron ribs. But a lot less if you put wood walls between them, and then fasten the brass plates on with bronze screws.

Satisfied at last on how the ship was put together, and knowing a bit of her history, I felt I could better understand this article on the snags in the restoration process. This is the ultimate kind of handyman work, and has to be done carefully. After all, how long has it been since the last restoration of this 140 year old ship? Well, I won’t say I was wrong again, but I’m not really clear on that question. Seems like the ship has been under restoration for nearly 60 years. This ship, designed to last 30 years, worked from 1869 until 1922, then served as a training ship until 1954, then became a museum piece. During restoration work in 2007 some oik left the vacuum cleaner on when he left for the weekend, and it caught fire. And a large part of the ship was burned.

Fortunately, most of the ship had been taken apart by then, and the greater amount of original parts were not on board. But plenty was damaged nonetheless.

So the work continues, but it’s taking longer, and costing more, than anticipated. Like quality work always does, because it’s impossible to accurately estimate things when you are unwilling to hide problems beneath a thick coat of fresh paint.

Here is the link to the official restoration website. There are several galleries of superb photographs here, well worth seeing. The diagonal bracing I researched can be seen in the pictures from October 2007.

And as for Andrew Gilligan and his article on the plan to spear the old girl and hang her high? I’m still not sure. Searching around the official page I can find letters that say such a support is needed, because the ship is starting to sag around her keel. Probably because it was designed to live in the water, not in perpetual drydock! Or perhaps (quick, somebody call Rosie O’Donnell!!) the fire could have melted or softened the iron ribs (only the 2nd time in history that such a thing has happened, eh Rosie??? Stupid cow.)

Another article by Gilligan, dated yesterday, says the plan is for the ship to be floated on a giant bubble of glass. So maybe I misread the “steel beams, punched through the ship, would hold it in place” part. Wait, no I didn’t. Gilligan is against the plan. And I am too. Unless there is absolutely no other way and even refloating the ship in a giant aquarium full of pure filtered water won’t work. The big glass bubble and I-beam idea “would give the ship a modern, iconic look” according to Gilligan. Who the hell wants that, when we’re talking about a living piece of mi 19th century history. It would be as bad as that damned pyramid at the Louvre. Please England, let the French stand alone with iterations of poor taste like that.

But maybe Andrew is closely related to that Gilligan more famous in America. I tried to go through every page of the official site, and I did not see a word about any big glass bubble, but it is a pretty large web place. They mention that the ship must be supported by a collar, whatever that means. Is there a lack of transparency in their news about that transparency? Who knows. And Gordon Brown wants it done in time for the 2012 Olympics, and some of the restoration funding may truly be contingent on this horrid method of support.

Wrong for the N^th time on this one Drew. Gilligan is no Gilligan. The funding is there, and it is hooked into the glass bottomed dock concept:

Cutty Sark’s consultants suggested suspending the ship above the dry berth to even out the strains on the hull. The approved scheme not only allows the public to admire the ship’s lines for the first time, and appreciate the reasons for her success in carrying cargo under sail, it also frees up the dock below to be used for education, exhibition and entertainment purposes.

The ship’s fame and performance comes ultimately from her shape.  The importance of being able to see Cutty Sark’s under water shape was recognized by Frank Carr during the restoration of 1953.  He originally proposed that the ship should be drawn up on wooden ways on the hard at Greenwich, rather than her exquisite hull being concealed in a dank dock.  He saw that this would enable visitors to wander around her to see her lines from every angle, much as they would have been able to do when she was being built in Dumbarton at Messrs. Scott & Linton’s yard in 1869.

Historic ship conservators have long pondered the best way of conserving a ship out of the water.  It has been recognized that a large vessel tends to “sit down” on her keel over time.  The shores that supported Cutty Sark in her 1953 dock had cut into her hull planking and the keel was stressed. 

Rats. I was hoping that this Gilligan was true to this roots, and I could call a “Gilligan, drop those coconuts!” line. After all, the guy does not know front from back. Or bow from stern, actually:

DUDE. It’s the other end, m’kay? It ain’t the “front”.

And it looks like there will be a History Channel special on the ship next week. Tune in and watch, Tuesday the 16th at 8pm!

On the 140th anniversary of the Cutty Sark’s maiden voyage, and for the first time on television, Ben Fogle presents the full story of this world-famous ship and the dramatic bid to save her.Many believed the infamous fire of May 2007 spelled doom for the Cutty Sark, but using exclusive access, this programme explains the true context and consequence of that disaster.

Her story begins in 1869, launched from a Dumbarton slipway and bound for the lucrative Chinese tea trade. It was the age of the famous ‘tea races’, in which the clippers (merchant ships built almost purely for speed) competed to be first back to London with the new tea crop. The clippers were the fastest commercial sailing ships ever built, and the Cutty Sark was the fastest and most famous of them all. Her speed and grace made her a legend in her own time. 

In her long life she has faced the scrapyard many times. But thanks to good fortune and the hard work of her admirers, today she is the last tea clipper to survive. For fifty years she has stood in dry dock in Greenwich, where she has become a top tourist attraction and famous London landmark. She is, not least, a unique link to Britain’s proud maritime past.

So that’s where I’ve been. It’s all Peiper’s fault, actually.

And I still say it’s wrong - creepy even, in a perv kind of way - to lift up a ship named after a witchy hot babe in a really short dress in a way that lets everyone look up her skirts and see her nicely rounded bottom. Show a little respect.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/11/2010 at 02:18 PM   
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, big machinery, and automobiles •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink •  

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