Traffic jam

I am headed up to visit with ASM826, and so the wheels will be rolling over pavement.  It will be good to see him, even though this is a terrible reason to see him.

But long distance driving.  We shall see what the traffic is like.  A condolence will be that traffic jams have been with us for 2,000 years.

I am now an empty nester

#2 Son moved out yesterday. It's odd not to have either of the boys there - they've been a daily fixture for over two decades.

It's an oddly liberating feeling ...

Global Warming is good for champagne

Good news for holiday tipplers:

Now Champagne makers have gone a step further, claiming that global warming has been good for them.


According to Reuters;

As France prepares to host world leaders for talks on how to slow global warming next month, producers of the northeastern French region’s famous sparkling wine have seen only benefits from rising temperatures so far.

The 1.2 degrees centigrade increase in temperatures in the region over the past 30 years has reduced frost damage. It has also added one degree in the level of alcohol and reduced acidity, making it easier to comply with strict production rules, according to champagne makers group CIVC.

“The Champagne region and Germany are among the northerly vineyards which have managed to develop thanks to warmer weather,” Jean-Marc Touzard, coordinator of a program on wine and climate change at French research institute INRA.

“Even if I feel very concerned by climate change, I have to say that for the moment it has had only positive effects for Champagne,” Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, president of the group that bears his family’s name, told Reuters at the company’s Reims headquarters.

Remember, the bubbles in champagne are carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas said to warm the Champagne region of France and produce better wine.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Remember

Vaya con Dios, Betamax

Sony is finally shutting it down 40 years after introducing it.  It seems that after losing the home video format war, it dominated the professional news recording business for decades.

Paris Climate Summit to reduce US GDP by 7%, increase US unemployment by 5 Million

Everyone's talking about how the carbon reduction from these proposals (reduce emissions by 80% by 2050) will only result in a tenth of a degree less heating.  What's being ignored is what the cost will be to the US economy:

When I queried [Bjorn] Lomborg specifically about the U.S. numbers, he provided this comment:

Also, note that a reduction by 80% in 2050 will cost the US about $1.2 trillion annually in lost GDP if politicians pick all the smart solutions (carbon tax etc).  This is according to the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum 24, which ran 12 scenarios on 6 models to estimate the cost.  This is 3.8% of GDP in 2050, and experience tells us that if politicians don’t do the smart thing, the cost will at least double (so about $2.4 trillion annually or 7.6% of GDP).  Seems somewhat unlikely.

By point of reference, 7.6% is more than half of the world wide drop in GDP during the Great Depression.  During the Depression, GDP dropped by about 30% and unemployment went up 20% or so.  Assuming unemployment/GDP is about the same now as then, that would translate into an increase in the unemployment rate of 5%, on top of the fudged figure we already have.  And this will be permanent, unless the emission caps are removed (unlikely).

So a cursory reading of the proposed Climate agreement is that an extra 5 Million Americans will be thrown out of work permanently.  But hey: eggs, omlets, amirate?

Can someone please explain to me how environmentalists think they're nicer than you and me?

So much for Paul Ryan and "fiscal conservatives"

Just what's in the Transportation Bill he rammed through?

One of the main obstacles to the bill has been fiscal conservatives (and some liberals) who objected to $80 billion of deficit spending over the next six years. Many of the conservatives wanted to cut spending to be no more than gas tax and other highway revenues; the liberals wanted to raise gas taxes to cover the deficits and provide revenues for even more spending on roads and transit. Instead, the House stayed the course of spending more than is available, using various accounting tricks to cover the deficits.

What really happened is that newly minted House Speaker Paul Ryan wanted to prove his worth, so he twisted enough arms to get the bill passed. The bill even includes reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which many conservatives hated.

Color me unimpressed.I expect come next November, I shall continue to be unimpressed with them.

Semper Fidelis

Since 1775.

I am still humbled that they let me wear the uniform. Happy Birthday, Marines!

What Climate Science can learn from Mythbusters

Reproduceability:

But “MythBusters” captures the underlying mind-set of science. At a time when “skepticism” too often means rejecting any ideas one finds politically unpalatable, “MythBusters” provides a compelling example of real scientific skepticism, the notion that nothing can be held true until it is confirmed by experimentation.

Of course, the New York Times won't recommend Climate Scientists lose the models and trust the (unadjusted) data.  Of course, testing falsifiable assumptions might lead to Unapproved conclusions.

The Right Stuff doesn't think much of today's generation

"The Right Stuff" is an under statement:

I had dinner with Stefan Cavallo, a test pilot for NASA (“NACA” in those days) during World War II (interview). Cavallo intentionally flew a P-51 fighter into a thunderstorm to figure out why they were breaking up on the way back from bombing runs into Germany whereas the supposedly weaker B-17s were fine. It turned out that the stresses from turbulence caused the engine internals to come apart. Gaining this knowledge meant the loss of the airplane and Cavallo was forced to bail out of the test airplane.

At age 89, in 2010, Cavallo was off the Long Island coast when the engine on his Cessna 210 failed. He dead-sticked the plane onto the beach (the media account is interesting because the journalist adds an ejection seat to the P-51 (“I crawled out” said Cavallo when I showed him the piece) and conventional landing gear (with a tailwheel) to the Cessna 210).

...

What does this quiet widower hero, still flying light airplanes, think of the society that younger folks have created? “Somewhere along the way younger Americans squandered what we had built,” said Cavallo, though not with any bitterness. When he looks at us he sees timid paper shufflers, aggressive divorce lawsuit plaintiffs, and a general “can’t do” attitude: “By our mid-20s nearly all of us were in what would turn out to be lifelong marriages and we already had kids. The Empire State Building was built in a year.”

Giants strode the Earth in those days.  Or Pygmies stride it today.

Go home, Harley-Davidson

You're drunk.

Those aren't Ape Hangers.  They're Neanderthal Hangers.

One

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
-- Deuteronomy 6:4

The Absolute Universe is One. We call this this "spiritual energy" or Ki. Our lives and our bodies are born of the Ki of the Universe.

--Koichi Tohei Sensei.

 

Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 

--Mark 12:29

He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings,
and all beings in his own Self.
--The Buddha

 

And so on...

Do it yourself kit

They forgot to include a bottle of Bactine ...

Military history, frozen in time

The Douglas A-1 Skyraider was first test flown during World War II, and remained on active duty until 1972 - a 27 year run.  What makes this run astonishing is that it was a propeller driven anachronism in a jet age.

Image via Wikipedia

Propeller?  Check.  Radial, piston engine?  Check.  Maximum speed a little over 300 MPH?  Check.  Straight wings?  Check.  The design was so outdated that it was called the "Spad", after the World War I fighter plane.

But it was superbly suited to a ground attack role.  It was long range (over 1,300 miles) which gave it a very long loiter time over target.  It had seven hard points on each wing and could carry up to 8,000 lbs of bombs, torpedoes, mines, or rockets (by way of reference, the B-17 Flying Fortress was rated at 8,000 lbs of bombs).  It sported extra armor which made it famous for its toughness and ability to shrug off enemy fire.

And so it kept flying sortie after sortie, because it took decades to come up with a better design to replace it.  It's comparable with the A-10, which the Air Force has wanted to kill for 20 years but which is so superbly adapted to its mission that any replacement would be a step backwards.

And it had enough air-to-air capability to shoot down several MiG-17s over Vietnam.

There is a beauty is a design that is extraordinarily well suited for the intended use, where extreme practicality assumes an esthetic all its own.  The A-1 had that in spades.  Or, well, in spads.

Sir John Blackwood McEwen - Scottish Rhapsody

Image from the Bonnie Wik

On this day in 1745 Charles Edward Stuart and 5,000 of his troops invaded England in a campaign to retake the British throne lost by his grandfather James.  The young would-be King was known as Bonnie Prince Charlie to the Scottish Highlanders who rallied to his cause.

The House of Stuart had been in exile since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had expelled King James in favor of the Dutch William of Orange and his wife Mary, James' daughter.  The joint monarchs William and Mary lent their name to the Virginia University, and led to the dynasty of the Georges.

Britain had been at war with France for two years, and leading Tories sent a letter to King Louis XV asking for help restoring the Stuart dynasty.  Leaders of thisTory movement included Edward Gibbon, of Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire fame.  And so to the invasion.

It was doomed from the start.  The Tories had asked for 10,000 French troops and money for 10,000 unemployed English and Scottish ones, but Louis only provided half.  Bonnie Charlie's army marched deep into England but was forced to fall back in the face of three armies sent by George II, not to mention confusion and indecision among his staff.  It ended on Culloden Moor where the Highlander charge failed to break the red coat lines and the rebellion collapsed into the mists of legend.

John McEwen wrote music to remember this, from the safe vantage point of a century and a half in the future.  A professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he never forgot his Scottish roots.

Vince Gill - Go Rest High On That Mountain

A great song speaks straight to the listener's heart.  Vince Gill won a CMA Song of the Year and two Grammy awards for this, because it speaks to that part of the heart that never quite heals.

At least, if we're any damn good at all.

Sometimes words fail us, and all we can do is rely on art to give voice to grief.  This is about the best example of that I can think of.



Go Rest High On That Mountain (Songwriter: Vince Gill)

I know your life
On earth was troubled
And only you could know the pain
You weren't afraid to face the devil
You were no stranger to the rain

Go rest high on that mountain
‘Cause, Son, your work on earth is done
Go to Heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and the Son

Oh, how we cried the day you left us
And gathered round your grave to grieve
Wish I could see the angels’ faces
When they hear your sweet voice sing

Go rest high on that mountain
‘Cause, Son, your work on earth is done
Go to Heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and the Son

Go rest high on that mountain
‘Cause, Son, your work on earth is done
Go to Heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and the Son

Go to Heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and the Son

Rest in Peace, Michael.  Go to Heaven a shouting' love for the Father and the Son.

Riding The Waves As They Come

Here is Michael's obituary and the tribute website the funeral service provides. Here's a tiny few from the images I have been collecting for a slide show.

Michael

I don't want to just drop a bombshell and then disappear, so here's what I have to share at the moment. I'm pretty raw, sleep in two hour sets, and not trying to do anything but ride this wave that has washed over me. I don't know what to share, what to keep private.

Michael was 30. He had gotten into whitewater kayaking years ago and had many friends in that community. He had, like all my kids, grown into being an amazing person. Every parent thinks that, but here's a few of many comments I have received from his friends in the last two days. Name and places edited for privacy.

Amanda

I had the most utter pleasure to work with Michael at ******* where we would regularly cut up and have the best time. When we were dead with no customers we would turn the satellite radio up as high as possible and sing at the top of our lungs. I was going through a lot of grief in school and with personal issues and he was always quick to "turn my frown upside down" with some quick wit and banter. I truly adored him. He was one of those people you meet in life and know if you went 10 years without seeing or talking to each other you could just pick back up. I am so sorry for your loss, you created one hell of an amazing man. I don't know what happened but do know that he lived the fullest life and full of love especially for his family. Is there a donation I could make in his honor or something that can help you all? Sending love and good vibes to you and family and friends.
Sincerest,
Amanda

Maggie

Hi, you and I met long ago one summer that Michael worked at Camp ***** and we came to visit one weekend together. I am so terribly sorry to hear of his passing and wanted to pass along my condolences. While Michael and I have not intentionally kept in touch over the years, we have run into each other on occasion and my memories with him are nothing short of wonderful! I am sure you are inundated with people contacting you, so please do not feel obligated to respond to me by any means. I was wondering if you could provide any additional info about his passing and, when details are available, if you could please share info about a memorial service? My heart is hurting for your family and please know he was loved by so many people from all over. Your family is in my thoughts.

Emma 

Hi -
My name is Emma. I was close friends with Mike some time ago. I've just learned of Michael's passing and wanted to reach out. Mike is one of my favorite friends that I met during my time at **** and I am so, so sad to hear the news of his death. He could always make me smile. He constantly made me laugh to the point of tears. I have incredible memories from the time I spent with your son. He was a great friend.
You and your family are in my thoughts. I would love to send flowers or memorials for anything you have planned. I will look out for details.
My deepest sympathies, Emma

Joel

I'm sorry to hear about Michael. He was one of my favorite people to paddle with. I was just thinking about our last green lap together, and his laughter on the shuttle ride with our shenanigans. Please let me know when the memorial service will be, and I'll spread the word to the river folk. You'll be in my thoughts and prayers, in truly sorry.