The classic cry that the future isn't as promised is "Where's my flying car?"

Maybe it's here.

(Although I'm not holding my breath.)

On the other hand, with my luck, the simple fact that I no longer work next to a runway may greatly increase the chances that a successful flying car will be marketed.

At great expense and difficult, I have obtained a preliminary photo from the set of the upcoming movie The First Avenger: Captain America.

My source comes from a long-established family in the entertainment industry...I knew it as soon as he told me he wanted the check made out to "CASH." (Of course I told him I loved the movie Walk the Line. He was so modest, he acted as though he'd never heard of it.)

( He provided this photo: )

Hmmm.

Welll...I supposed they can probably clean it up a bit with CGI.

Well. It's about time.

The First Avenger: Captain America

More news is starting to leak out on the upcoming Oliver Stone film, W.

Entertainment Weekly has a cover story about the movie in this week's issue.

I'm guessing that reactions are running sorta like this:

• President George W. Bush: "That rat bastard Stone. This is gonna be another one of his hit jobs."


• First Lady Laura Bush: "That evil, evil man. He's timing this on purpose, just to have an impact on the election."


• Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice: "Thandie Newton is playing me! Thandie Newton is playing me!"

I may not be posting a lot for the next few weeks, and will try to keep up with major developments as much as possible.

I've got three manuals I need to finish writing here at work, and then in my spare time I need to finish my presentation for the STC conference in Philadelphia next month. I've got about three weeks to complete the paper, turn it into a PowerPoint presentation, and practice it before it's presented on June 3.

Bragg Soldier Awarded DSC

Quote:
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - A Special Forces Soldier who crawled 200 feet while being fired upon to save a wounded colleague, then led a group of besieged Soldiers to safety, received the Army's second-highest award for valor April 30.

Master Sgt. Brendan O'Connor received the Distinguished Service Cross in a ceremony April 30 at Fort Bragg for his actions in Afghanistan. The award is second in achievement only to the Medal of Honor.

On a typical workday, I'll bring in a lunch that includes a sandwich, yogurt, some sort of fruit, some granola bars, a few other items.

The sandwich is in a zip lock bag.

When I'm done eating, I take the breadcrumb and granola crumb littered paper towel I use as a place mat, plus any fruit scraps, wad them into the empty yogurt cup, and zip the whole thing into the sandwich bag. This goes into a trash can.

I figure between the yogurt yeast buds and any airborne mold that drifts down during lunch hour, some of these little sealed bags will start to grow life within the plastic bag long after it's all taken to a landfill.

Most will eventually die out. Some small percentage will mutate, and find that they cans subsist on the plastic bag. Those will grow, and will eventually continue to grow in the landfill as they eat all the refuse around them.

When human civilization collapses and mankind vanishes from this planet, the little mold will continue to grow, mutate, evolve.

I figure that in about three and a half billion years, what was once the mold will have evolved from plant through animal and into a sentient life form. By then of course, billions of years of plant growth will have decomposed into hydrocarbons, and the planet's oil supply will be rich. It will be possible for the descendants of this mold to build a thriving and advanced technological culture.

Just in time for the sun to expand and burn earth to a crisp.

Hillary Clinton says she'll stay in the presidential race

Quote:
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. - Hillary Rodham Clinton says she will remain in the presidential race "until there's a nominee." The former first lady declined to say whether that meant through the roll call of the states at the Democratic National Convention this summer.

My guess would be that indeed, that's exactly what she meant.

Previously, I've predicted that if she fails to get the delegates she needs prior to Denver, we can expect some surprise legal move challenging the party's decision to not allow the Michigan and Florida delegates to be counted. I'm standing by that prediction. In fact, I think we're seeing the first steps here. Does anyone really think for a moment that if the Rules and Bylaws committee decides against her on May 31 that she'll just take it in stride and accept the loss? That doesn't sound like the Sen. Clinton we've come to know over the past two decades.

And now, as a result of last night and this story:

Some Indiana polls kept open past 6:00 pm

...my guess is that she now has a plan to challenge the Indiana results as well.

"But Rick, Sen. Clinton won in Indiana."

She won a slim majority of votes, but she's got much to gain by a challenge. The delegates from Indiana are awarded proportionally. If she can successfully challenge the votes cast after 6:00 PM, she can grab a bunch of delegates that right now are slated to go to Sen. Obama. And reports indicate that up until about 6:00 PM, Sen. Clinton was kicking Sen. Obama's ass from Gary to French Lick.

I hate to say this, but she may have grounds for her challenge because the order to keep polls open wasn't issued state wide. It only took effect in areas that were leaning to Sen. Obama.

Of course my entire prediction of Sen. Clinton's legal challenge hinges on one theory: that she is not only a power-hungry politician, but is also a devious lawyer willing to use any conniving trick to achieve her ends.

If I'm wrong in that feeling, then I'll be wrong about Denver.

CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police

Quote:

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

The wallpaper on my work PC is this graphic:



A short time ago, a Chinese-born software engineer came into my cubicle looking for a tech manual. He glanced at my monitor, and said "You have Chinese writing on your computer."

I said yes, and that I was told that it meant...

"Quietness" he said.

So I said that I'd been told it meant Serenity, and a bit about Firefly (particularly mentioning that the profanity and insults were largely in Chinese).

His reply was most interesting. He said "Yes, I can see how that would apply as the name of a space ship, the quietness of outer space."

I opted to skip the explanation about the Battle of Serenity Valley. The guy has to do a technical review on my draft manual, I don't want to confuse him.

I posted a shorter version of something to this effect a few years back (most likely during the 2004 election season). The version below the cut is longer, but then it accounts for the past four years.

I don't know if I should be surprised that we're still suffering the aftereffects of possibly the most short-sighted political decision ever made...or if I should be simply depressed because we're where we are today because of decisions made ten years ago.

And yet...here we are.

Fair warning...Democrats may also find this very depressing.

And they may not agree. I concede, this is just one possible "alternate history," but I would argue that there is nothing in here that calls for a wild stretch of the imagination. I'd also argue that what follows below is a very plausible scenario of how things could have been very different in this country, merely with one very different decision.

( It goes like this... )

Personally, I'm thinkin' that "open source boob" is a charitable description of the guy who thought up the concept.

(First posted as a response on ginamak, then opted to share with all...)

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Quote:

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

We've been hearing for weeks how Sen. Clinton "must win" certain states in order to remain viable against the Obama electoral juggernaut. This time yesterday, the pundits were all saying that in order to show that she's a viable candidate, Sen. Clinton would have to win in Pennsylvania by ten points.

She did. (OK, 9.4%. Exxxcuuuuuuuse me.)

Today, the "must win" calls are starting up again.

Except...except...

Junior To Obama: “You Have To Win Indiana”

Things change quickly.

Al-Qaida No. 2 says 9/11 theory propagated by Iran

Quote:
CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden's chief deputy in an audiotape Tuesday accused Shiite Iran of trying to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida terror network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

Nothing like an inter-terrorist rivalry.

Of course, this also tends to weaken all those "troofer" arguments that 9/11 was a US conspiracy when you've got a group out there who is getting pissed off that they aren't receiving enough credit for the attacks...

EDIT...UPDATE...WORLD PARODY ALERT!

From The Onion on April 1:

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Possible causality loop explanation: April 1 is the day in which news organizations often run fake stories as an April Fools prank. As The Onion always runs fake news stories, it goes to figure that on April 1 they'd run a story that turns out to be true.

Alas, another aircraft that I worked on retires...

New Mexico base sends last F-117s to retirement in Nevada

HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. — Holloman Air Force Base has bid farewell to the F-117 Nighthawk.

The last four stealth fighters left the base Monday. They will be mothballed at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

The Air Force’s 49th Fighter Wing and its F-117s was brought to Holloman in 1992. The F-117s will be replaced by the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth technology.

The 49th Fighter Wing’s commander, Col. Jeff Harrigian, says the first F-117 prototype flew in 1979 and the first Nighthawk was delivered to the Air Force in 1982. Eventually, 59 F-117s were made.


Actually, that last sentence isn't quite accurate.

There were five YF-117A prototypes. These were instrumented aircraft used to test flight and low observable characteristics. Externally they looked just the same, internally there were a few differences. For example the YF-117A used a "steam gage" type control panel (in other words, traditional dials and indicators) while the production F-117 used a three-screen video display system essentially identical to the one used in the F/A-18 Hornet.

The Air Force contracted for 60 F-117A aircraft. The first airplane completed had a mis-wired flight computer (the data inputs were cross-connected). On its first flight, it took off, promptly rolled over onto its back, and crashed. (The pilot was injured but survived.) That left 59 airplanes on contract, they were all delivered successfully.

59 delivered plus 1 crash plus 5 prototypes equals 65, not 59.

Oh yeah, and the engineers modified the flight computer data connectors so that the cross-connection would never be repeated.

The F-117 airframes still have a lot of life in them, but the first-generation stealth coatings are labor-intensive. It takes too many man-hours to strip and re-coat the airplane in order to perform routine maintenance, the more advanced coatings on the F-22 make the job easier and faster. Right now, the Air Force is going broke and can't afford to pay for the man-hours to do the maintenance, so a good airplane is getting grounded.

Only one was ever lost to combat fire (over Serbia in 1999), and even that wouldn't have happened if politics hadn't dictated that the airplanes be sent in along the same attack route night after night. You don't need a solid radar lock to hit an airplane if you've figured out where it's going to be and can pepper the sky with surface-to-air missiles. (Funny, you'd think that the government would have learned that lesson in 1972. I guess not.)

By the way, there is no big secret to stealth. It's simply all in the shape. Any high school student who passed geometry could work out the basics of designing a stealthy airframe. The key is in the precision of the tolerances: the precise angles and tight fits. In Ben Rich's book Skunk Works, he tells the story of YF-117 radar cross section testing and the day an airplane showed up on radar two or three times the expected size. After it landed, a very close inspection of an area (where they'd done maintenance the previous day) revealed a single screw-head that was one-quarter turn out of alignment, leaving the slot on the head perpendicular to the direction of flight instead of parallel. That was enough to make a difference.

If your country has an industrial base that can guarantee multiple airframe construction with consistent tolerances to the degree necessary for precise alignment of structure and components, your country can build a stealth aircraft. If your country doesn't have that degree of precision, your country can't do it.

That's the only "secret" to stealth.

Got a new cell phone over the weekend, a Nokia 6085.

I swear evilegg, unless the thing grows legs or explodes while on my hip, this is the last you'll ever hear of it.

Many hope for Clinton and Obama on one ticket, except the candidates themselves

Quote:

For months, the Clinton and Obama campaigns have been hearing suggestions of a so-called dream ticket of Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama. Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, has pressed the idea most aggressively - it also came up in last week's debate - while a major Clinton supporter in the Pennsylvania primary, Governor Ed Rendell, has blessed it, too.

• If each senator is running for President with the objective of improving America through principles and programs in keeping with Democratic Party ideals, then surely these two very bright people will recognize the reality of what I've said above and will put aside their differences to run on a common ticket.


• On the other hand, if each senator is primarily driven by personal ambition and a political lust to sit in the Oval Office, then they will never consent to run together because neither would consent to the number two spot. Sadly, this would reveal them both to be not the bold forward-thinking leaders that they claim to be, but simply self-centered, ambitious political hacks.

So, in a couple of weeks I'll be participating in the Project Bread Walk for Hunger.

They've got an on line registration page, and I'm working my way through it when I hit the part about the date of birth. The page uses a popup pick list, and...

( ...it looks like this (below the cut due to image size) )

They're allowing entrants with birth dates as late as 2015?????

If I find any, I'm askin' for investment tips and I promise to pass them along.

(They should be easy to spot. They'll be the ones who arrive via jetpack and flying car.)

Ex-leader recalls how Jews uprising in Warsaw ghetto in 1943

This weekend marks the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Quote:

Despite the ghetto uprising's ultimate failure, "it was worth it," Edelman said. "Even at the price of the fighters' lives."

ernunnos