The last game ever to be played at Yankee Stadium will be played tomorrow, with the Orioles and the Yankees fighting for the basement.
I’m not sure if Steve would give a damn about that, but the fact that the Yankees will be out of the playoffs for the first time in 13 years, that would make him smile.
Oh…Yeah….F@#$ the F@#$ing Yankees.
If you think that this crisis is over, it’s not even close, as evidenced by the fact that 40% of US money market funds posted no returns yesterday:
More than 40 percent of U.S. taxable money market mutual funds posted zero return Thursday amid persistent turmoil in the credit markets, fund tracker Lipper said Friday.
Lipper said 560 of the 1,263 classes of taxable money funds it tracks earned no return Thursday. This compared with 73 classes that posted zero return Wednesday and 63 Tuesday.
A lot of taxable money mutual funds “put up big fat zeros yesterday,” said Jeff Tjornehoj, senior research analyst at Lipper in Denver. “This is unprecedented in recent history.”
Expect to see the phrase, “unprecedented in recent history,” a lot in the next few months.
Part of this was no doubt the rather large gyrations in US T-Bills over the past few days, which went almost to 0% a on Thursday, because people were so concerned about finding safe havens. The 3 month T-Bill was at 0.22% Thursday, before heading back up to 0.91% on Friday following announcement of various rescue plans for the financial markets.
The dollar rose in response to the bailouts too, as did oil, though gasoline is down for the 3rd straight day, as that market adjusts to the realities of Hurricane Ike.
That being said, even with the rescue packages, Moody’s is still looking at cutting its ratings on monoliner insurers Ambac and MBIA.
Also, it now looks like Morgan Stanley is still looking at merging with a commercial bank, even if the news of the bailout plans may have helped.
It’s not my headline, though I wish that I had come up with it.
It’s an article on powered underwater exoskeleton called the Performance Improving Self Contained Exoskeleton for Swimming (PISCES*) that has people flapping like penguins.
It’s penguins….It’s always the penguins.
*People spend way too much time on developing cute acronyms.
The Bulava missile, which reportedly has an 8000 km range and 10 MIRVs, though some reports say that it can fire MaRVs.
I don’t think that this has anything to do with the Georgia kerfluffle, but you never know how that issue might have influenced the choice of the timing for the tests.
Seeing as how the TP400 engine is the major delay item on the A400M transport, the fact taht they have finally done some full power runs on the C-130 demonstrator, this is a long overdue positive sign.
It is still an open question as to whether EADS will be able to get the A400M into the air before year’s end though.
It appears to be a significant improvement on the original AIM-9X, with lock on after launch, and could drive the move to a new rocket motor, the rocket motor on the AIM-9X is the same as previous models, as it would allow launches to longer range.
From all I know about the missile, the kinematics (basically range and long range maneuverability) are not that good, having a single pulse motor (with thrust vectoring, you want lower thrust at the start in order to make the vectoring work better) and being smaller (5″ body diameter as vs 6″) than many of its competitors.
Well, it looks like the sad saga of the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyers may become even sadder, as there are now doubts that the two ships purchased may never sail.
Noah Schactman cites a report from Defense News:
Issues have arisen in guaranteeing the seals between the composite construction panels of the huge Zumwalt deckhouse… [where] all of the ship’s major sensors… are embedded in the structure, and all of the ship above the first superstructure level is contained…
[O]ne source familiar with the situation said the Navy is so worried about the problem that it has been canvassing other manufacturers of composite structures to see if an alternate production source could be found.
So will any Zumwalts be built?
… Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and a key supporter of the DDG-1000, told Defense News, “I still expect the Navy’s going to abandon the DDG-1000.”
It sure sounds to me like the ships cannot be built right now.
Background here.
This is not surprising. The SS-N-27 Sizzler is a tough nut to crack to create a viable simulator, and in doing so, it means that ATK will have accumulated the expertise necessary to create a full up missile version.
I would not be at all surprised if they have the missile on the market in the next 5-7 years.
Background here.
Yep, some of the whiz kids at the National Defense University are pitching the idea that they need funding to protect us all from terrorists who would use Wizard of Warcraft to rehearse attacks on all of us.
Yes, it’s real, see, they’ve got PowerPoints, and everything, complete with a conversation using code words, simulated, of course.
See how they simulate some seriously Kule d00dz haxor terrorists?
So they need to pay someone play Warcraft in order to look for this non-existent problem.
I want the job….I REALLY want the job.
In reality, if terrorists want to engage in virtual training, they will do it on a private server…Just like you see people do with Doom….
After all, who wants to be in the middle of planning to nuke the VP residence, when some n00b comes up and starts asking stupid questions?
If this is why my taxes are so fracking high, I’d rather pay for Sarah Palin’s bridge to nowhere.
But they are certainly making it look like a real competition. The Swedes needed extra time to get approvals for data release from the US, and the Dutch MoD extended the deadline on the bid to 30 September.
I still do not believe that the Dutch are serious about considering an alternative to the Lockheed-Martin JSF, they simply have invested too much time and effort, but they are doing their best to look fair about the process.
It appears that they are in response to the US refusing to take them off the terrorist list, as was previously agreed to.
Seriously, taking them off the list is just a stroke of a pen, and can be reinstated with a stroke of a pen, but Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are so busy swinging their dicks that they are convincing the North Koreans that this is all some sort of ploy to destroy them.
Fracking with paranoids for giggles when they have missiles and nukes is stupid, but for Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, stupid is as stupid does, I guess.
It looks like the Marines are looking at partially replacing their belt fed M249 SAW with a lighter magazine fed automatic rifle.
They are hoping for a 12 lb weapon to replace the 17 lb SAW.
Given that they are also dropping the quick change barrel as a way to get there, and using a slower rate of fire to deal with barrel heating this implies a significant drop in firepower.
Not having served, I’d appreciate any comments from people who have about the merits of such a change.
The US army is looking for a lighter weapon too, but they are sticking with the high rate of fire and belt feed.
Specifically, the fact that naval inspectors flagged the New Orleans, the 2nd of the San Antonio class LPDs, as degraded in basic combat capabilities, despite the fact that the US Navy formally accepted the ship.
It’s bad enough that the San Antonio could not deploy with its strike group earlier.
Our defense procurement system is at least as broken as our financial system.
They really want the F-22, but it appears that this is simply not going to happen, so they are looking at F-15 upgrades and a stealth platform of their own, the ATD-X.
Honestly, for legitimate defensive needs, the upgraded F-15 is all the JASDF needs. It’s actually superior for cruise missile interception, since it has a larger antennae than the F-22, and AESA radars have already been fitted to some export models.
I’m uncertain that this means much in the scheme of things, it’s a demonstration of a UAV helicopter controller that can “learn” as it executes maneuver, but this a couple of cool videos:
Ameribank, Inc., of Northfork, West Virginia.
That makes 12 for the year, and 5 of those were in the past 2 months.
It looks like once Hillary Clinton and refused to share a stage with Sarah Palin, someone got some common sense, and realized that inviting her was a bad idea, so the whacko with the Tina Fey glasses has been disinvited.
Everyone wins, except for John Sidney McCain III, Sarah Palen, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Funny how their interests seem so similar.
Certainly, he’s adopted the Bush mantra, “Never tell the truth when a lie would do,” when he denies spending money lobbying the United States.
Dude, we have the paperwork filed by senior McCain adviser’s Randy Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, showing the payments to them totaling 800 grand.
Honestly, I’m more of a Terry Jones or John Cleese supporter, but I can live with Michael Palin.
I see this as a completely appropriate homage to Screaming Lord Such.
The arrest of Leopoldo Fernández of Pando is likely tied to the unrest there recently, though the accusation is that he supervised the massacre of peasants, which is a not uncommon activity of political leaders in that part of the world.
In any case, it looks like Bolivia is not cooling down, and my guess is that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are doing their best to make sure that it won’t cool down.