COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Missile or Aircraft? What was it?

56 comments:

  1. Cameraman Gil Leyvas shot video of a luminous point hurtling through the sky followed by a long vapor trail. He said he was aboard the television station's helicopter shooting footage of the sunset over the ocean about 5:15 p.m when he noticed the spiral-shaped vapor trail and zoomed in to get a better look.

    ...

    "Whatever it was, it was spinning up into the sky kind of like a spiral," and was easy to distinguish from condensation trails from jets, he said. "It was quite a sight to see. It was spectacular."


    Spectacular Sight

    ReplyDelete
  2. A jet at high altitude appears to move relatively slowly across the sky. This appears to be moving 'relatively' quickly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just a HOMEMADE Rocket...

    Just wait for the HLO to form (Hispanic Liberation Organization)

    Just wait until they start shelling the good ole USA with those HOMEMADE rockets that their buddies, Hezbollah, haven't been teaching them just south of the border.

    Yes, what would America do, if let's say 8,000 mortars, Kassams, or HOMEMADE rockets were fired on a daily basis?

    Will you vote for a leader that will pursuit peace with this new LIBERATION group?

    Will you give 1/2 of the south west back to those self proclaimed "people"?

    ah...

    Canary in the mine... We told you so...

    dont listen...

    build bomb shelters...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Selah said...
    Deuce: I expect most people that read this bog will disagree with me on this one.

    Yes, the Elephant Bar has been a bog, swamp, miasma, and muddy bottom for quite a while.


    Cute, clever catch. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Terrorists"

    ...shakes head.

    WIO just doesn't get it.

    Next thing you know he'll be dissing the ROP.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Preserve and Honor

    17 year old creator.

    PreserveandHonor.com was created by the great, great, great grandson of a soldier who fought at Gettysburg; and it is inspired by the words of President Lincoln. In a letter to a war widow Lincoln wrote "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."

    It is the objective of PreserveandHonor.com to provide a virtual place for loved ones and friends to both locate the graves of the fallen and reflect on the memory of their sacrifice. We strive to create an accurate and continually updated listing of the burials at Arlington National Cemetery for those who served in the Global War on Terror.

    Searchable database

    ReplyDelete
  7. Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ROLLS-ROYCE says it has made progress in understanding why one of its engines exploded on a Qantas plane flying out of Singapore on Thursday.

    It was now clear that the problem was specific to the Trent 900 engine on the Airbus A380 aircraft, the company said in a statement yesterday.


    A380 Engines

    ReplyDelete
  9. reflecting the light from Venus.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Ambassador Ellsworth speculated a "show of strength" while Obama was in Asia.

    You just never know what the crazy Americans will do.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I feel like I just got back from Brokeback Mountain.

    Sure looked like a missile to me. The Israelis only have cruise missiles, I think.

    Doug has something to do with this.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It's an airplane.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Was a test launch of an Area 51 prototype to be used to escape a select few from the rat race on earth created by secret powerful men.

    ReplyDelete
  14. If it's a contrail it's a hell of a big thick one.

    ReplyDelete
  15. .
    They are new. They are at the center of the galaxy. They are big. And they are coming this way.

    Bubbles of Energy Are Found in Galaxy

    From end to end, the newly discovered gamma-ray bubbles extend 50,000 light-years, or about half of the Milky Way’s diameter, as shown in the illustration.

    Something big is going on at the center of the galaxy, and astronomers are happy to say they don’t know what it is.

    A group of scientists working with data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope said Tuesday that they had discovered two bubbles of energy erupting from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles, they said at a news conference and in a paper to be published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal, extend 25,000 light years up and down from each side of the galaxy and contain the energy equivalent to 100,000 supernova explosions...


    Mr. Bubble Lives In a Galaxy Near You

    Well, maybe I exaggerated the it's "coming this way" a little.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  16. Dennis said--

    5. Not a skunk works project that’s dropped it’s guard: it’s science fiction to imagine an undersea Area 51.

    Or is it?

    ReplyDelete
  17. "Rolls-Royce said it was the first failure of one of its engines on a civil aircraft since 1994."

    Another impressive record.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Rolls-Royce announced Tuesday it received an order for Trent 700 engines from China Eastern Airlines to power its 16 Airbus A330 aircraft. The deal is worth $1.2 billion, it said.

    China Eastern

    ReplyDelete
  19. He did say though, bob you're in really great shape.

    Albeit I may be rotting on the inside

    Thus I'd conform to my divinity
    By dying inwardly
    Like an aging tree


    x-rays Friday, results next week

    AND, I get to have a camera tube shoved up my dick into my bladder so's he can take a look round

    Nice doc, though, we had lots of hearty laughs, quite an intelligent but earthy guy

    AND I got a whole bunch of free samples of some vunder drug

    ReplyDelete
  20. heh, might as well have a laugh about it. In Campbell, he tells of the earlier upper class Japanese for whom all of life was a game, a game of pretend.

    The corpse on the floor--

    "Hiroyoki, I see your father is pretending being dead."

    ReplyDelete
  21. Much more so, gag, than the agent of the Iranians.

    I'm right there with the US of A, on most issues involving foreign policy. Whether I agree with the official stance, or not.

    Politics ends at the water's edge.

    Or at least it used to.

    With regards Israel and those settlements, US policy has been steady, since 1967.

    They are illegal, under the Geneva Accords and unhelpful to the pursuit of peace in the region.

    THAT is, and has been US policy for over 43 years.

    That Islam is an ally, of the US, exemplified in the two Islamic Republics that the US has established, since 11SEP01.

    Both of the Islamic Republics, in Afghanistan and Iraq, set in place by the Bush Administration.

    Neither case being an off-hand remark, nor a "sound bite" without consequence.

    ReplyDelete
  22. .
    ...AND, I get to have a camera tube shoved up my...

    If they don't put you to sleep, ask them for nitrous oxide.

    It works pretty good.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  23. .
    China Eastern

    I flew China Eastern.

    Once.

    Took an Airbus plane (TU 134?) on the short trip from Beijing to Tianjin. Half way through the flight, the cabin started filling up with a white vapor. Filled the whole cabin like a thick fog. Scared the shit out of one of the translators who was napping and woke up to it.

    I guess it was just water vapor. Not sure what the problem was. Kind of scary. The upside. It was a hot humid day and when we stepped off the plane all our clothes were wrinkle free.

    None of us flew any Chinese airlines after that.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  24. The World's largest wind farm is in China?

    Nah

    The one being built in South Korea Makes that Chinese one look like a piker.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Obama's Indonesian Transvestite Nanny

    ---

    AIG is the World's largest purveyor of Sharia Compliant Insurance Products in the World.
    Citibank et al all employ jihad promoting Immams as Sharia advisors.

    ReplyDelete
  26. ask them for nitrous oxide.

    The only time I have ever taken tranquilizers was prior to a medical procedure. Doctors today don't think to offer but the patient can ask.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Wasn't it nitros that William James talked about back in the day--the aesthetic revolution or whatever they called it--everybody sucking nitros and seeing God and so forth. I will keep it in mind.

    Thanks


    Or, I might just pretend to have the procedure, like the Japanese

    ReplyDelete
  28. I'm going to take one of these new free vunderpills - Uroxatral- and go to bed. I'm pooped.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Didn't I read somewhere once that it takes about 20 years for one of those windmills to pay for itself?

    With all the energy that goes into building them?

    ReplyDelete
  30. With regards Israel and those settlements, US policy has been steady, since 1967.

    They are illegal, under the Geneva Accords and unhelpful to the pursuit of peace in the region.


    excuse me mr rodent...

    this is the policy of the USA:

    The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995[1] is a public law of the United States passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995. It was passed for the purposes of initiating and funding the relocation of the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no later than May 31, 1999, and attempted to withhold 50 percent of the funds appropriated to the State Department specifically for ‘‘Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad’’ as allocated in fiscal year 1999 until the United States Embassy in Jerusalem had officially opened.[2] The act also called for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city and for it to be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel. Israel's declared capital is Jerusalem, but this is not internationally recognized, pending final status talks in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States has withheld recognition of the city as Israel's capital. The proposed law was adopted by the Senate (93-5),[3] and the House (374-37).[4]

    ReplyDelete
  31. what is unhelpful to the peace process?

    Islamic murder..

    ReplyDelete
  32. Naw, Sam, their "energy payback' time is really short. A year, or less, I believe.

    ReplyDelete
  33. About $3.30/watt, installed. No coal, no gas, no uranium. No muss, no fuss. For a long time. And, of course, the reason for going 'offshore' is the less erratic wind supply.

    2.5 Gigs would supply 500,000 homes (maybe a million "Korean' homes.)

    Now, if they can back that up with a gig, or two, of Solar for "peak" times, and add in a little wave, or geothermal, or biomass, and they'll be "off and running."

    ReplyDelete
  34. I get the liquid fuel issue but I don't really get the power issue, unless you believe in global warming. USA has enough coal to provide power on the order of hundreds of years.

    Of course South Korea does not.

    The incentive to invest in renewables escapes me unless one believes in environmental damage.

    ReplyDelete
  35. IRAN has branded French first lady Carla Bruni "an adulteress" for supporting a woman facing death by stoning.

    Sex Slur

    ReplyDelete
  36. CL, I figure there's probably more like 40, or 50 years at current consumption.

    Of course, there are about 5 Billion people on this mortal coil that are not the least bit interested in holding to Current consumption.

    And, besides, why Waste your coal when wind/solar/biomass/geothermal are "Cleaner, and Cheaper?"

    ReplyDelete
  37. People talk about how "cheap" coal is. They didn't hear about it in 2008 when Coal jumped from $30.00/ton to $140.00 right in lock-step with oil.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Oil traded below $USUS87 a barrel after falling from a two-year high as a report showed that US gasoline demand dropped to a six-week low and the dollar strengthened against the euro, curbing demand for raw materials.

    ...

    US crude inventories plunged 7.4 million barrels last week, the most since September 2008, according to the American Petroleum Institute. An Energy Department report today will probably show that supplies increased 1.5 million barrels, according to analysts in a Bloomberg News survey.

    ...

    The department lifted its crude oil price forecast for 2011 to an average $US85.17 a barrel from $US83, according to its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook, released yesterday. It also boosted its fourth-quarter 2011 forecast by $US2 from a month ago to $US87 a barrel “as US and global economic conditions improve.”


    Demand Slides

    ReplyDelete
  39. .
    About $3.30/watt, installed. No coal, no gas, no uranium. No muss, no fuss. For a long time...

    Sounds like the perfect solution.

    Of course it takes quite a bit of rare earth metals to produce them.

    Same for electric cars.

    And since the rare earths are only the start, and it takes expertise to convert the rare earths to products like magnets etc. needed for the green technologies, and because China is currently the only country with that expertise, and because it will take years to develop the expertise here or in Australia or any place else, we are basically trading one form of dependence for another, at least for some time to come.


    .

    ReplyDelete
  40. Sam, I normally look at the EIA weekly data on Wed morning. It gives the "product supplied" (4 wk average) data for gasoline, and diesel. I think MC is having a bit of trouble accounting for an increase in 'cash' sales.

    In any case, it's probably not a good idea to get too wrapped up in "weekly" oil data. You can get some really weird numbers "week to week." 4 week average data is usually pretty informative.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I don't think so, Q. Several countries (Kazakhstan, Greenland, and some others) are ramping up production as we speak. The thing is rare earths really aren't all that "rare," nor are they particularly expensive. China just made the world "an offer it couldn't refuse."

    ReplyDelete
  42. The oil market can be really nutty. Right now, the driver is the strikes at the refineries in France. We have been picking up a lot of extra crude that couldn't unload in Marseilles, but we Haven't been getting the half million barrels, or so, of gasoline that we normally get from over there. Maybe.

    Then there's China. They'll step in and buy all the oil in the world for a couple of months running, and then take a holiday for a month. All you can do is try to understand the overall picture, and never, ever try to trade the stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  43. .
    You missed the point Rufus.

    When we ceded China the business on rare earths, they recognized the advantage thay had. Rare earths mean zip until you have the technology to convert them into product.

    China has been turning out engineers for more than a decade. They have thousands of them. It's a little sobering but they are the world's current experts on rare earth technologies. At least if what you read is to be believed.

    Why do they have an advantage on 'green' technologies? Because that is where the expertise is.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  44. I gotta, kinda, doubt all that, Q.

    I don't think we'll have any trouble getting up to speed.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I suspect the only edge they have in "green" technologies is the edge they have in everything else - cheap labor.

    I remember reading that only a small percentage of those "thousands of engineers" they turn out are actually considered "hirable" by American companies.

    ReplyDelete
  46. .
    .
    remember reading that only a small percentage of those "thousands of engineers" they turn out are actually considered "hirable" by American companies...

    I'd like to think you are right. As you know I have to posted here on all the disadvantages China has going against it.

    On the other hand, it was only a week or so ago I posted a link that showed China has recently developed the most powerful super computer in the world, 40% more powerful than the US best.

    The point I made on China's rare earth expertise was from an article in the NYT by a lady from the Army's FMSO.

    Since these rare earth components are used in jets and other advanced weapons systems it is a critical strategic issue not just about energy. I hate all subsidies; however, if we are going to continue to use these things in critical military systems we should be doing what it takes to assure we are not dependent upon China or Russia (second largest at 19% of world's rare earth supplies).

    .

    ReplyDelete
  47. Actually, Q, I think China jumped the shark on this rare earths deal.

    I might be wrong, but I think we'll replace them pretty easily. Admittedly, I haven't read the article you're referencing, but everything I've read just makes it sound like a not wildly profitable, messy business than can be picked up by us, or any number of other countries pretty easily.

    I think they gave us a valuable insight into their character, and intentions without getting a whole heck of a lot out of it.

    ReplyDelete
  48. I told you Dancing With The Stars was fixed. Bristol Palin is still in it, and she's not that good.

    This is the shameless exercise of raw political power, possibly even rising to outright bribery.

    Disgusting.

    And I like Bristol.

    ReplyDelete
  49. And here you people are talking about rare earth metals when corruption is staring you in your faces, right here at home.

    Back to bed, just not believing any of it.

    Any of it.

    ReplyDelete