Thundercrash

Chasing down a link-train from QandO through Improved Clinch, I arrives at this quirky report* on the wipe-out of a USAF Thunderbirds F-16 at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, last year. Dig that photograph. That is a picture of a man for whom reality is changing at a drastic rate of speed.

You know what? When I see something like that, I think about people jamming Bush for being a "coward", and then I think about him riding around in an early Century Series jet, on an ejection seat about half guaranteed to maim or kill him if he ever had to step out. You see, ejection seats have come a long way since he was riding them, and there is still nothing at all day-at-the-beachy about them.

Not that the dough-brains harping him know anything about any of it.

The details of this crash are interesting to me, though. When I learned to fly, I learned that MSL ("Mean Sea Level") is The Main Thing about figuring altitudes, for exactly the reason made clear in this crash (even though I didn't fly around upside-down...much, anyway). I didn't know that the 'Birds had been using AGL ("Above Ground Level") the way they were. They've changed this, now.

(*The quirks: That report says that "Captain Chris Stricklin has been in the Air Force since 1994 and flew with the Thunderbirds since their first season." That's truly amazing, because their "first season" was 1954. I wonder how the hell Stricklin did that. Also: a Split-S is not a "stunt". It's a maneuver originally designed for combat evasion and rapid course-reversal. It's a half-roll at the start of a half-loop -- the opposite of the maneuver originally performed in WW I by the German ace Max Immelman which is named for him: the Immelman Turn is a half-roll at the end of a half-loop. Here's a picture of the Immelman Turn.)

Edit -- Yikes. When I first posted this, I actualy referred to Immelman as a "WW II" ace. Anyone who went and Googled that should stop laughing, now. I fixed it, and I knew better when I first goofed it.

Boy, was my face red.

"Overheard In DC Late The Other Night"

KERRY: Hi Terry!

TERRY: Hi John! Congrats on a great Super Tuesday!

KERRY: Thanks Terry, I appreciate that. I'm looking forward to my campaign against Bush over the next eight months.

TERRY: Absolutely! We have developed a number of ideas at the DNC about how you should structure and staff your campaign and we will be sharing them with you soon. I've already run them by Bill and Hillary and they have signed off on them.

KERRY: That's great, Terry, and that's part of the reason I called.

I was sad to note in the press last week that you have resigned your position effective early next year. I also realized this evening that, win or lose, beginning right now I am the party's standard bearer for at least the next five years.

Therefore, I think it is not too early for me to bring in my own team at the DNC so that I can do the absolutely best job I can against Bush, not only in '04, but also in the run up to '08, and '12 if I win. Terry, your contributions over the past four years have been enormous, but I know you will agree with me when I say that I need, and have earned, the flexibility to do things the way I see them as I assume this important role.

Terry, do you want to put out an appropriate press release early tomorrow morning? If not, I'll have my staff do it later in the day.

TERRY: >click<

(Reported by a source who will not be named, but whose initials are Ray Heizer)

"This is pompea last day sort of place."

Here is a photo essay by a young woman who likes to ride her bike fast...

Through the Chernobyl disaster zone.

She writes in English with an effect that I find charming. Look at the photographs.

(Found at BlogPulse)

Spider Chase

Bloody hell. You know what? I can manage just about any sort of reptile you could come up with, but I can't stand spiders.

About five minutes ago, a small spider came trotting along my desktop. I stood right up, and he stopped dead in his tracks, apparently playing the old "If I Don't Move, Then It Can't See Me" gag. I grabbed a handy screwdriver and poked at him and he took off running: straight downhill into the pencil-tray of the 3x5-foot drafting table that is my desk.

So, there he was: hiding in all the junk in my pencil tray. You know: the old camel-hair brush in its 50's brass lipstick-type retractable case; the fingernail clippers and the stray 7.62mm rounds; the various quarter-inch to mini-stereo audio adaptors; the pens; the Mini-Mag flashlight, and all the etceteras. (What do you keep in your pencil-tray? Shaddap, already.)

I kept chasing him along with the screwdriver. I hadn't wanted to just murder the little bastard outright, but I should have, goddammit. What I wanted was to drive him to one end or the other and then push him off if he didn't have the sense to jump. But, no....

He ran back up on the desk, right under my keyboard, where he promptly disappeared. I picked up the keyboard very gingerly and looked: there are several apertures under there, into one of which he evidently squeezed his horrible little body.

I think this sonofabitch is now living in my keyboard -- the very one on which I'm now batting this out like it's a ticking bomb.

What the fuck next?

Unintended Consequence: Stoopidness

"This was just one person who didn't quite get it going too much by the rule book."

Those are the words of the person whose review of a Richard Strauss opera was mangled by some sausage-fingered rutabaga at The Los Angeles Times. The vegetable's operating system ground to a halt over the words "pro-life", and the error-trap reverted: "anti-abortion".

Barbara Tuchman wrote that "Strauss was a string plucked by the Zeitgeist."

What we have in this case is the Zeitgeist raised to not quite the power of a four-function calculator, c. 1972.

And the Times rolls on.

(link: The Boy Without Permalinks)