So, Bob Gates has blocked the release of torture photos, nominally because they would “endanger US forces”, which is a sack of sh$# they hate us already.
The real reason is that if we see pictures of children being tortured, there might be an outcry for prosecution of the senior officials who authorized this, and that is something that the Beltway Bozos and His Evil Minions™ simply cannot abide.
He was an overpriced rookie flameout with the brain of a turnip* then, and he’s an overpriced rookie flameout with the brain of a turnip* now.
So, big pharma is trying to get a bill through Congress for draconian exclusivity periods for so called “biologics” drugs. It’s 12 years, but with minor changes, snipping a hydroxyl, or adding a time released variant, they could drug companies could extend their government granted monopolies virtually infinitely. (also here, both from Jane Hamshire)
Well, in response to Jane’s push against these provisions, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) turned on their lobbyists, and wrote statements that 42 Congressmen read into the record, almost verbatim.
The kicker is that there were two versions of their talking points, a Republican version and a Democratic version, so depending on party, they were using different cheat sheets….Except, of course for Heath Shuler (DINO-Loser Land), who somehow or other managed to use the Republican version of the talking points.
As a Washington Redskin’s fan, this wanker has been bedeviling me since 1994…..Please, make it stop!!!
Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch after the break.
*My apologies to anyone who fancies turnips.†
†Like this guy.
—Barry Ritholtz discussing an article in GQ that excoriates the author.
Ritholtz himself describes her as a, “pedantic bore,” who writes, “blindingly horrific prose.”
I agree with both, though I have never been able to force myself to read anything of hers beyond The Virtue of Selfishness, a perusal of which made me <sarcasm>long for the straightforward and beautifully written prose of Immanuel Kant</sarcasm> and consider self immolation as an alternative to reading any more of hew work.
His last bit is prize:
Worst of all, Rand’s Objectivism has become the rationale for all manner of morally repugnant behaviour. However, I did take one personal lesson from Atlas Shrugged to heart: Anytime I see a parked car with a John Galt bumper sticker, I like to knock off one of the sideview mirrors, and leave it on the hood. I include a note stating my selfish, random act made me feel good, and therefore should be a perfectly fine act in their world.
I assume the recipients miss the irony . . .
Dean Bakes states the obvious in response to a pathetic OP/ED by David Ignatius.
Go read it, it’s only 5 ‘graphs.
It looks now like the final decision by the Swiss will likely be delayed until 2011, (paid subscription required) and the size of the order may be reduced from 30 to 22 aircraft.
It looks to me like budget considerations are an issue, which would mitigate against the $100-$140 million Eurofighter Typhoon. The Rafale is somewhat cheaper, at about $80 million, and the Gripen is “cheapest” at $40-60 million, which would tend to favor the Gripen.
Additionally, the Gripen is about ½ the size of the competitors, which means that operating costs would be much less, and the aircraft that it is replacing, the F-5 was never the high end of the Swiss AF fighter mix anyway.
Of course, Saab lacks the industrial connections for potential offset deals too, and if the Swiss wish to train at nearby bases, these bases will either have Rafales (France), or Typhoons (Germany, Italy, and Austria) already deployed there, which might simplify support there.
This makes the entire decision process hard to predict, to put it mildly.
The IDF is looking at the CH-53K instead.
It makes sense, really. Israel is the size of New Jersey, and the CH-53 is much more flexible, and the difference in speed does not make much of a difference.
Let’s roll the numbers
| V-22 | Ch-53K | |
| Speed | 450 km/h | 315 km/h |
| Payload | 6,800 kg | 15,900 kg |
| Range | 1,627 km | 841 km |
| Cabin Size (lxwxh) | 7.3m x 1.8m x 1.8m | 9.1m x 2.7m x 2.0m |
Since going from one corner of Israel to the other is on the order of 400 km, the CH-53 K can cover the entire country, carrying more, and carrying more internally.
Additionally, the V-22 costs about $70 million as versus about $30 million for the CH-53K.
With a reduced payload and supplemental tanks, something like a special forces insertion is going to have similar range, and the larger internal payload allows the on an offloading of larger vehicles more quickly.
Finally, in a “hot” landing zone, the V-22, with its heavily loaded props/rotors, is more susceptible to vortex ring state (basically a stall in a rotary winged aircraft), and has to descend more slowly, increasing vulnerability to ground fire.
It’s a no brainer for Israel not to buy the V-22.
Come to think of it, it may be a no brainer for everyone not to buy the V-22.
It only happened on Friday, and my comment at the time about Greg Craig’s replacement, Robert Bauer was, “Think Alberto “Abu” Gonzales writ small.”
Well Glenn Greenwald comes across an essay that Mr. Bauer wrote, where he supports the pardon of Scooter Libby, what’s more he does so in the crassest terms, by suggesting that Bush would harm himself more by pardoning Libby.
Keep this guy away from toilet paper, because he will sign anything.
Pigeon Impossible, courtesy of Boing Boing.
BF Skinner, eat your heart out.
They have jumped the shark, and when Cokie Roberts, whose shtick over the last 30 years has been to criticize Democrats for being….Democrats…says that Jon Voight’s ramblings suggesting that Obama has been “programmed” are, “cringe-worthy,” it means something.
Lou Dobbs broke the conservative barrier on TV, by getting thrown off the air for being too wingnutty, a first time I think that this has happened to a major media figure.
I think that the Republicans are crossing lines that are beginning to freak out the “very serious people” inside the beltway.
Notwithstanding all the chest pounding by folks claiming that the, “recession is over,” consumer sentiment is continuing to fall, with the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers falling to 66.0 in November, from 70.6 in October.
It also looks like real estate is in the same bind, with the US Home Purchase Index falling to a 9-year low last week, on concerns that the about what was going on with the new home buyer tax credit.
Basically, this is showing that the only thing keeping the home market from falling further, is massive government support.
We have some good news on inflation, unless you are like me, and see a period of sustained inflation as a way to monetize debts paralyzing our economy.
Paul Krugman has looked at the TIPS Spread, (top pic) basically the spread between the interest demanded by bond buyers on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS), and regular Tressuries, and notes that recent widening of the gap between the two interest rates is because the rates for TIPS has fallen, as opposed to the rates for normal treasuries having gone up, which is kind of the opposite of what you would expect if the bond market was pricing in inflation.
In terms of international trade, we are seeing that the GDP of the Euro Zone has gone positive, and the US trade deficit jumped in September, (bottom pic) both of which indicate improvements in international commerce.
Basically, this news drove the dollar down, because traders were less interested in a safe haven, and oil fell to $76.35/bbl on Thursday’s strong inventory numbers.
Lord knows, I rarely, if ever, quote him, and his mist recent column in the New York Times deserves notice.
His basic point is that there is no recovery for most of the country, even as “Wall Street can boast about recovery all it wants, much of America remains trapped in economic hell.”
Herbert writes about this stuff a lot, and he’s treated like a red-haired stepchild, he rarely gets quoted in the blogosphere, either pro or con.
I’m not sure why this is.
And the folks at New York Magazine have riffed on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book Too Big to Fail, an account of the financial meltdown, and come up with Too Big to Fail and ZOMBIES.
Do not read this while drinking anything, or you will need to clean your screen.
Here is a sample:
It made for an awkward moment, as Merrill CEO John Thain was only seats away. He was likely the next to get the plague, the executives well knew, as his firm was full of the deathless monsters. He had remained notably silent during the exchanges.
“You guys get this done for me, and I’ll make sure I can take care of AIG and Merrill,” Paulson replied. “I’m a little uncomfortable talking about Merrill with John right in the room.” He glanced uneasily at Thain, whose face, everyone suddenly became aware, had taken on a deathly pallor. “John,” said Paulson hesitantly. “Have you been bitten?”
It was then that Thain let out a gutteral animal howl. Half-rising from his chair, he lunged toward Pandit. “BRAINS!” he moaned.
“Holy sh%$!” exclaimed Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, who was sitting in between the men. He rolled his chair out of the way.
Geithner ran out of the room, screaming like a little girl.
(emphasis mine)
I needed to clean my screen.
Because Sean Hannity gets SFO* on this.
*So f$#@ing pwn3d.†
†Owned.
The F136 alternate engine was running on the test stand, and sustained minor damage, which led people to rumors that the combustor needed to be redesigned.
It now turns out that the problem is much less severe than originally reported. The damage was from a lug that attaches the diffuser to the combustor that came loose during testing.
Obviously, this is not something that you want happening on an aircraft in flight, though the damage was minor, and not noticed until the engine was torn down after a test run, but it’s a not uncommon thing to have happen at this state of the development process.
Both Boeing and Northrop/Grumman-EADS are expressing serious concerns on the USAF’s draft tanker Request for Proposals (RFP). (paid subscription required)
We have Northrop’s complaint that Boeing got Northrop’s detailed pricing data when it made its challenge on the last contract, and Boeing is complaining that there requirements are all weighted identically:
The draft RFP places equal value on non-essential and essential qualities—such as sink and toilet water flow and fuel offload or past performance—respectively. “If everything is important, is anything important?” [Boeing business development vice president Mitchell] Waldman said. “In this competition, risk is essentially pass/fail.” In the last competition, key requirements were weighed as well as past performance and risk.
There are also complaints from Boeing that have not been released to the public.
The Secretary of the Airforce has stated that he is open to changing the RFP, but that would invite a repeat of the last clusterf$#@ on tanker procurement.
It would be a good thing to remember that Italy has still not received its 767 tankers, because there are problems with the centerline hose and drogue.
Boeing’s delivery of 767 tanker aircraft to the Italian Air Force has slipped again as the company fixes a problem with the hose-and-drogue refueling system, a senior Italian defense source said.
Italy ordered four tankers in 2002, with deliveries first expected in 2005, before a series of hitches, including vibrations in wing pylons, pushed the schedule back.
One of the reasons that Northrop won the last time around, was that the USAF doubted that Boeing could deliver the tankers on time and on budget.
Also note that drogue/boom thing is an area where Boeing is specifically claiming that its high level of expertise makes them uniquely suited for the contract.
Germany’s aerospace research center, DLR, is looking at a capillary system using water for cooling on a civilian high speed sub orbital transport
Obviously, you have the weight of the water to deal with, but with the specific heat of water being more than double that of kerosene (4.19 vs 2.01 kJ/kg K), the greater density of water ( 1000 vs. 817.15 kg/m3), and the much greater heat of vaporization (2257 vs 108 kJ/kg), there are weight savings with the associated pumps, tankage, and tubing:
An orbiter sub-scale wing leading edge section made of carbonfibre-reinforced carbon (known as carbon-carbon and developed for use in the nose cones of intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as Space Shuttle leading edges) will be water cooled. In theory the temperature of the orbiter’s wing leading edges could reach up to 2,500 Kelvin (2,227°C).
“With water you can use small amounts because it takes so much energy for a phase state change [from liquid to gas]. The leading edge will cool to the temperature of the boiling water and natural capillary action will constantly draw the fluid through the material to the surface at the rate we need,” says DLR space launcher systems analysis group research engineer Arnold Van Foreest.
Of course, the real problem here is not cooling, it’s the economics of such a transport, where the costs of transporting payload/passengers will likely be in excess of €10/kg in a best case situation, mitigate against this becoming reality.
LCROSS
Image of Plume at +20 after impact
Near-infrared spectrometer data. Yellow areas indicate the water absorption bands
Data from the ultraviolet/visible spectrometer
And we only need to bring the Scotch, because the LCROSS impact data indicates water on moon, and not just water on the moon, but lots of water on the moon.
It appears that we are talking gallons of water in an area the size of a football field, which is by earth standards pretty f$#@ing dry, but is actually enough to be “mined” as a resource.
This is interesting not just because it makes the possibility of a habitation there more interesting, but it also raises the question as to the source of the water.
The usual suspects here are comets, the solar wind, or some hitherto unknown lunar process.
Unfortunately, as Bill Sweetman laments, the software in question is:
While we’re going back and forth about the supposed sixfold advantage of the JSF over anything except the F-22, see this from a year ago:
“U.S. Air Force analyses show the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is at least 400 percent more effective in air-to-air combat capability than the best fighters currently available in the international market.”
And now it’s 600 per cent. This does of course prove convincingly that Lockheed Martin is right to suggest that the F-35’s capability will be able to be vastly improved through software alone.
That software being, in this case, PowerPoint.
…
(emphasis mine)
Mr. Sweetman owes me a screen wipe.
The trust vectoring system in the video resembles that of the X-31
Stephen Trijble came across this video of Japans for developing their own stealthy fighter.
It appears to be similar to the F-22 in configuration, and it looks like they are looking for stealth and supercruise, though the slab sides on the side of the fuselage (at about 0:25) look to my very untrained eye to be an issue, and given that it is much smaller than the F-22, to my eye less than 1/2 the weight, I’m not sure how much it would be able to carry internally.
It also looks like they have a 3-D thrust vectoring system on the the video (2:30)is very similar to that of the X-31 Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability test bed (shown in bottom picture).
It’s a wicked neat video, and the translation, while sometimes clumsy, is sufficient.
