ROTFLMAO!!!
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs.
Too true.
Not sure of the source, it’s been floating around the innertubes.
Honestly, even with the new poll numbers, this is a heavily Republican distract, so I my guess would be that the Republican has the advantage, particularly given the low turn out in special elections, so I would expect the ‘Phant to win in this Tuesday’s election.
In either case, Jim Tadesco (R), and Scott Murphy (D) contest is much closer than the district’s fundamentals would suggest.
Rather unsurprisingly, Northrop Grumman’s design for the “Next Generation Bomber” (NGB) looks rather a lot like the cranked kite concept that has been floating around for some time.
Among other things, it’s supposed to provide much lower drag, and better high altitude performance than the original B-2, giving improved range, though some of the additional range appears to be at the expense of weapons load: word is that payload is in the 20,000 pound range, or about ½ that of its predecessors.
There is an additional interesting bit of information in another Northrop-Grumman patent application, which shows the aircraft with a mustache.
Given the stealth requirements for the aircraft, and the fact that it will generally be operating at high altitude at relatively high mach numbers, the obvious conclusion is that this is a retractable canard, much like the Tu-144 Charger and the Mirage Milan. (in the latter, the retractable canards were actually called a “mustache”)
The advantages on takeoff and landing are clear, giving a whole lot more pitch authority than is generally available with a short coupled tailless design, which can increase max takeoff and landing weight, decrease takeoff and landing speeds, and shrink the landing gear and breaking systems.
It’s beginning to look like the leading candidate for purchasing the assets of Eclipse Aviation may be positioning itself to restart the company as a going concern.
Given the relatively large customer base, and given that the debts of the company will be discharged in bankruptcy, they may be in a position to bring them back in some form, though I would be doubtful of full scale production restarting with the current investment environment.
Not by the total number of bank closings, there was only one, the Omni National Bank, Atlanta, GA, the 21st of the year. (Full List of closings).
Since I figure that there will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 bank closings this year, that is not a surprise.
What is a surprise is Calculated Risk’s report on regulatory actions in California, where 6 more banks have received a cease and desist order from the FDIC, and there are predictions that two thirds of banks in California will be operating under such orders by year’s end.
I honestly cannot imagine that the situation is better in other areas with the largest real estate bubbles, such as Florida, the Las Vegas area, Phoenix, etc.
So, the National Reconnaissance Office and Space Command are looking to set up a ground based laser system to clean up space debris. (paid subscription required)
And I’m Anna Nicole Smith….This isn’t an attempt to set up a cleaning system, this is an attempt to develop a laser based anti-satellite weapon, not withstanding their fig leaf of some sort of multinational effort:
To help offset such a negative reaction, [Andrew Palowitch, director of the “Space Protection Program”]Palowitch says, five lasers could be built and installed in five countries—Russia, China, India, France and the U.S. All would be operated by an international consortium with “everybody participating equally with free access to the particular sites in a coordinated activity.”
Propose a regime, that you could never get the French to agree to, much less China, and then go and develop a satellite zapper on your own.
Seriously, how stupid do they think that we are?
The Active Protection System (APS) is designed to intercept RPGs, ATGMs, and long rod penetrators, to protect the smaller and lighter manned vehicles of the Future Combat System (FCS), and it now seems that it simply does not work, according to the latest GAO report.
The interesting thing is that the Israelis have a system that does work, Trophy, though it is less ambitious than the APS, but it was rejected and hundreds of millions of dollars directed towards Raytheon.†
One of the interesting bits about FCS is that is as much an industrial base preservation system as anything else, with bizarre separations of work to ensure that various contractors get sufficient workshare.
I believe that the high technology band tracks are the responsibility of the BAE Systems†, and the suspension is the responsibility of General Dynamics, for example, which makes no sense whatsoever.
Trophy Promotional Video
*Full Disclosure, I worked for Raytheon a number of times, both in Texas and in Maryland over the past 15 years or so.
†Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
SAAB has cut a deal to integrate the front end of the Selex Galileo Vixen AESA radar with the existing back end PS-05/A radar for the Gripen NG.
This replaces the Thales radar on the NG demonstrator, which Thales does not intend to make available for production.
No big surprise. Splitting the contract would increase acquisition costs significantly, and operational costs by an even larger amount.
Splitting the contract is about appeasing representatives from Boeing, who quite simply had an older and less capable design that cost more than the EADS proposal.
The first is a report from the GAO revealing the least well kept secret in defense procurement, that the JSF is over budget and behind schedule, to the tune of about $2 billion, the GAO also believes that the F-35 will need about 1000 additional flight test hours than the F-35 Joint Programme Office (JPO) does, and notes that the time to assemble the first production airframes was 40% greater than predicted.
Additionally, as I have noted before, it appears that there are some very concerning issues regarding thermal management for the aircraft, and it looks like the fuel-air heat exchanger, which not only cools the avionics, but the electro-hydrostatic flight controls is not sufficient in hot weather conditions, like the Middle East.
Additionally, the author of the linked article, Bill Sweetman, notices another potential heat issue, this one having to do with IR signature, that the location of the exhaust for the integrated APU/EPU exhaust has been relocated in the production models.
In the pre-production models, it was located on the top of the aircraft in front of the left vertical stabilizer (you can see where the heat cooked off the paint in the top picture), but in the production models, it has been relocated to the bottom of the fuselage.
The exhaust does not look particularly stealthy from a radar perspective to my untrained eye, and I would have to imagine that it would be a big infra-red “kick-me” sign for Marine STOVL JSFs which would be minutes from the battlefield with APUs running on unimproved strips when the aircraft is used to provide close air support.
A helicopter and a Tornado crashed in Germany recently.
No fatalities in either incident, though the Tornado crew was taken to hospital.
Which is generally considered the bottom bound for viability as a battlefield weapon.
This is significant because an electric laser should be a lot easier to handle than the chemical lasers, which require very large quantities of noxious and hard to handle chemicals.
They are looking take it out of the lab and hit a test range in about a year.
If you win the CBS Cares® Colonoscopy Sweepstakes:
Welcome to the CBS Cares Colonoscopy Sweepstakes!
This is an actual sweepstakes and, if you are the grand prize winner, we will fly you and a companion to New York where you will receive a free colonoscopy. You will also be given three nights’ accommodation in a suite at the luxurious Loews Regency Hotel, which will include the night before you are “awarded” the colonoscopy.
…….
This is just wrong on so many levels.
People over a certain age should get regular colonoscopies, and they should be checked for polyps, but this contest is the worst idea since the little Johnnie home root canal kit.
Courtesy of the Texas Freedom Network, we have a live blog of their meeting, where they are going Creationist.
There has now been testimony that Nasser Kazeminy, a close friend of Norm Coleman instructed his CFO to pay $100,000.00 to Coleman’s wife’s insurance agency for nothing in the way of services.
Now the Star-Tribune has obtained a March 19 deposition from the lawsuit that first surfaced the scandal. The deposition is from B.J. Thomas, the chief financial officer of the company that paid out $75,000 to a firm where Laurie Coleman worked as a consultant — even though he found no evidence of actual work.
Thomas was asked: “In that conversation that you had with Mr. Kazeminy, did he tell you, quote, United States senators don’t make sh#$, close quote? Or words to that effect?”
Thomas answered: “Yes, sir.”
Kazeminy is boned, unless he roles on Coleman, and Coleman is a rat, so you gotta figure so is Kazeminy.
Pass the popcorn
HR 875 is a fairly innocuous bill, trying to make sure that food, both domestic and imported, is safer, but a campaign by the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (NIFCA), which opposes any regulation of food, and a couple of right wing conspiracy theorists, and suddenly the bill is an attempt by Monsanto to shut down every farmers market in the nation.
Well, it’s not. Go read the article for the full scoop.
Well, it looks like the Europeans are wising up to the China option of creating false offsets for greenhouse gasses:
The European Union, frustrated that its 11,000 factories and power plants are failing to adequately reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, will seek tighter emission rules that may raise the price of burning fossil fuels.
The 27-nation bloc wants to curb access to a program run by the United Nations that rewards companies more for funding emission-reduction projects in China and India than for decreasing their own gas output in Europe. New limits are needed to force extra pollution cuts at home, the EU said in proposals for climate talks starting in two days in Bonn.
My original post on the subject.
It appears that they are concerned that foreign authorities will arrest them…..More accurately, they are concerned thatforeign authorities will arrest them, and then they will sing like canaries.
My heart bleeds for people whose business model is based on the idea that, “Only the little people pay taxes.”
And I mean this in a clinical sense, though obviously, I am an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
They expect to see an annual savings of ¼ billion from not locking up people for years for a single joint.
It looks like we will see more of this as the downturn saps state budgets.