The Democratic Party sure has come a long way since then, hasn't it?

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Cabin Porn

An interesting historical document

Via Ancient Art

Cuneiform tablet with the Atrahasis Epic. Babylonian, about 17th century BC, from Sippar, southern Iraq.

A version of the Flood story

The story outlines the structure of the universe according to Babylonian beliefs. Heaven is ruled by the god Anu, the earth by Enlil and the subterranean sweet water by Enki. The text then explains how the minor gods work in the fields but then rebel. As a result, humans are made from clay, saliva and divine blood to act as servants of the gods.

This does not prove a perfect solution, as the humans reproduce and their noise disturbs Enlil’s sleep. He decides to destroy them with plague, famine, drought and finally a flood. However, each time Enki instructs one of the humans, Atrahasis, to survive the disasters. The god gives Atrahasis seven days warning of the flood, and he builds a boat, loads it with his possessions, animals and birds. He is subsequently saved while the rest of humankind is destroyed. However, the gods are unhappy as they no longer receive the offerings they used to. There is a gap in the text at this point but it does end with Atrahasis making an offering and Enlil accepting the existence and usefulness of humans.

Copies of this story have survived from the seventeenth to the seventh century BC showing that it was copied and re-copied over the centuries. This is the most complete version. There are clear similarities between this Flood story and others known in Mesopotamian literature, for example, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The stories people tell are sometimes unimaginably ancient.  I'll bet a version of this was told around hunting fires as the Elder hunted the mammoth and the giant sloth, and here we are in the most modern world that ever existed, and anyone you meet at random on the street can tell you this same epic, now called Noah and the Ark.

Obama actually blew Jay Carney a goodbye kiss - yeeeeccchhh!

Warning, it's subtle, but what is once seen cannot be unseen.



Carney's wife better keep a closer eye on her "man."

I wonder how the global warming/climate change models take this kind of thing into account?

A huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia has covered the region in a vast cloud of ash, grounding flights in Australia and south east Asia.

  "Sangeang Api, a volcano off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, which lies in one of the most active areas of the Pacific ‘ring of fire’, has erupted at least three times since Friday.

Dramatic images show smoke, ash and debris shooting into the sky, while a flying saucer shaped current of gas wraps around the plumes.

The ash cloud from the first eruption is around 20,000 and 50,000 feet high and around 15 km wide, according to reports. It is moving south-easterly over Australia. A second, now over Darwin is sitting at around 45,000 feet, while a third is over Bali."

I wonder how many SUV's years of carbon offsets this represents?  Will Obama try to cap and trade this event?

It should be noted that the Romans really began their descent into chaos when they farmed out the defense of their empire to the Visigoths..

"Pentagon officials have approved a policy that would allow a limited group of undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children to enlist in the military, opening up a path for them to eventually become citizens, The Huffington Post has learned," reports the liberal website.

The move, which has not been formally announced by the Obama administration, would affect some of the roughly 550,000 undocumented young people granted the ability to remain in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, many of whom have pled with the government to allow them to enlist.

Immigrants in the country legally can enlist in the military, and through their service, they can receive expedited naturalization as U.S. citizens. More than 89,000 service members have gained citizenship since September 2002, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But young undocumented immigrants, often referred to as Dreamers, cannot currently enlist, even if they have been granted work authorization and the ability to remain in the country under DACA.

I bet you could get that for one today

But then how would the politicians get the money to pay off their LIV's?

Heh

Via American Digest

                                               My favorite: Your can't help it if you're stupid.

Something entertaining.

Shocking

Via Goobing Detroit,  a graphic and frankly disturbing google street view of the deterioration in Detroit between 2009 and 2013.

Go there for more, but good lord, this is a dramatic descent into hell.  Soon there will be nothing but the return of the original primal forest, which would honestly be a huge improvement.  Hopefully none of the inhabitants of this jungle are moving into your neighborhood.

Hat tip: American Digest

Prince Harry of Whales

More genius from the land of editors and fact checkers.

Via Bits and Pieces

Squadron 303 of the Royal Air Force in WWII

Or, the Poles get their revenge on the Nazis, over at the Flyby.

 Jan Zumbach is proud of his kills.

Friday Open Road

Or, the art of the escape.

Come at me, bro!

How to make a water blob

Do you want to cheaply make a super cool giant water pillow for the kids this summer?

Do you want to impress the wife and neighbors with your skill, imagination, and handiness? To maximize your "cool" factor with everyone?

Do you want to annoy Toure by using your white privilege to achieve all of the above with ease and on the cheap?

Then go here for the easy directions, and make it happen.  I see the weak spot being the duct tape over the fill hole, but extra care there when sealing up will hopefully do the trick.  

I also see delightful fun in slicing a big hole in it when it gets old, and letting everyone watch the mini tidal wave wash into the rose beds.   Or wash over a line of squealing kids!  Yeah!

The smiles on those chillins' faces alone would make this project well worth it.  Too bad I'm between kids that age and grandkids (hopefully).  

A narrow save

The U.N. Resolution 2117 lists 21 points dealing with firearms control, but perhaps of most interest is point number 11, which

“CALLS FOR MEMBER STATES TO SUPPORT WEAPONS COLLECTION and DISARMAMENT of all UN countries”.   In a 53-46 vote, the Senate narrowly passed a measure that will stop the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.  The Statement of Purpose from the Senate Bill reads:  "To uphold Second Amendment rights and prevent the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty."  The U.N. Small Arms Treaty, which has been championed by the Obama Administration, would have effectively placed a global ban on the import and export of small firearms.  The ban would have affected all private gun owners in the U.S. and had language that would have implemented an international gun registry, now get this, on all private guns and ammo. The main question here is which 46 Senators Voted to Destroy Us?  Well, let their names become known !  See below . If you vote in one of the states listed with these 46 treasonous "Americans," let them know what you think at the ballot box.   Here are the 46 senators who voted to give your rights to the U.N. Baldwin (D-WI) Baucus (D-MT) Bennett (D-CO) Blumenthal (D-CT) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Coons (D-DE) Cowan (D-MA) Durbin (D-IL) Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY) Harkin (D-IA) Hirono (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kaine (D-VA) King (I-ME) Klobuchar (D-MN) Landrieu (D-LA) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) McCaskill (D-MO) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR) Mikulski (D-MD) Murphy (D-CT) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Schatz (D-HI) Schumer (D-NY) Shaheen (D-NH) Stabenow (D-MI) Udall (D-CO) Udall (D-NM) Warner (D-VA) Warren (D-MA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR) Notice something about everyone of these "Americans?"  They are Democrats. Cite this vote the next time someone makes the false and intellectually lazy argument that both parties are just the same.  At least the Republicans, for all their many and various faults, know not to vote consistently to take away both our constitutional and God given liberties, and as much of our money as they can.   It's as if the Democrats wanted to destroy the principles of  freedom and individual rights our country is built on, and replace that winning formula with a smothering socialist state which will decide everything, and to which we will all have to go for permission to do anything, and after which we will be forced to pay a fee for the state's ok. Given all that, it's simply disgusting that there were any who voted for that at all, let alone 46 senators. All via Gorges' Grouse.

Made it with room to spare

Looks like San Francisco.

West Point speeches compared

Discuss:

Bush addresses the cadets. Note the lack of a teleprompter.



Obama addresses the cadets.  Teleprompters to the right and left.



The reaction was a bit less enthusiastic than for Bush.  Wonder why?

St Magnus Church, Orkney, Scotland

Needs a new roof.

I can't resist: Al Sharpton vs. The Teleprompter.

This guy is beyond hope, which is the same thing that can be said about the network who hired him.

Fordite - Earth's most psychedelic substance

The story:

Fordite is an enamel created when paint accumulates and becomes hardened. The name presumably derives from its being harvested from old Ford automobile manufacturing plants. 

The original layered automotive paint slag "rough" was made incidentally, years ago, by the now extinct practice of hand spray-painting multiples of production cars in big automotive factories.The oversprayed paint in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. These layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed.

As the story goes, some crafty workers with an eye for beauty realized that this unique byproduct was worth salvaging. It was super-cured, patterned like psychedelic agate, and could be cut and polished with relative ease!

Sadly, the techniques that produced this great rough years ago, are no longer in practice. Cars are now painted by way of an electrostatic process that essentially magnetizes the enamels to the car bodies. This leaves little, or no overspray. The old factory methods that created this incredible material are long gone.

Via Tai Wiki Widbee

More here. 

The Strokkur Geysir in Iceland the instant before eruption.

According to CNN's Carol Costello, first lady Michelle Obama has the power to sign bills into law

“That was Mrs. Obama back in 2010 when she signed the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act into law. Well now some members of Congress and the food industry want to roll back that initiative and loosen requirements to cut costs. Today the First Lady takes the unusual step of delivering White House remarks speaking out against..."

Astounding ignorance delivered with smug assurance in it's accuracy and moral correctness.

"If a president has to explicitly deny a meme that has arisen about him, then it's almost certainly true."

Via American Digest

The Taco Bell in Al Sharpton's hood.

That Time a Commercial Aircraft Ran Out of Fuel Mid-Flight- The Gimli Glider

An amazing story of a Boeing 767 running out of fuel, yet bringing everyone home alive.

Moral of the story:  Never ever give up.

  "On July 23, 1983, in the small town of Gimli, Manitoba, Captain Robert Pearson and Co-Pilot Maurice Quintal expertly glided a 100-ton Boeing 767 carrying 69 people to a safe landing without engines, air brakes or flaps, and minimal control of the aircraft."

The first warning light came on. Flight 143 was . . . at 41,000 feet and 469 knots at the time . . . . ‘At that point . . . We believed we had a failed fuel pump in the left wing, and switched it off. . . . . When a second fuel pressure warning light came on, Pearson felt it was too much of a coincidence and made a decision to divert to Winnipeg.

Just minutes later, another pressure gauge “lit up,” and they lost their left engine. Two minutes after that: “The EICAS issued a sharp bong – indicating the complete and total loss of both engines. . . . ‘It’s a sound that Bob and I had never heard before.’ . . . . Starved of fuel, both . . . engines had flamed out. Pearson’s response, recorded on the cockpit voice recorder, was ‘Oh fuck.’”

Another problem was that, unknown to the pilots, the abandoned runway had been converted to a recreational center, including auto and go-cart racing. In one of the many weird coincidence of the day, July 23, 1983, was the “Family Day” for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club: “Go-cart races were being held on one portion of runway 32L and just past the dragstrip another portion of the runway served as the final straightaway for a road course. Around the edges of the straightaway were cars, campers, kids and families in abundance…”

Read it all for your adventure of the day.   After hearing this saga, any problem you have to deal with as part of your everyday routine will seem incredibly minor.

Hat tip: American Digest

Heh

Nice

White hot Polish street guitarist - Mariusz Goli

Via Bits and Pieces

The temperature rises a little more

A Chinese vessel attacked and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat, the Vietnam government said, raising tensions over a territorial dispute that saw clashes between the countries’ coast guard ships earlier this month.

“It sank,” ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said of the Vietnamese vessel. “It was rammed by a Chinese boat.”

And that wasn't all:

The Chinese Defense Ministry said Sunday that the country's military scrambled fighter jets the previous day in response to Japanese Self-Defense Forces aircraft entering an air defense identification zone that China unilaterally established over the East China Sea last year.

According to the ministry announcement, an OP-3C surveillance plane of the Maritime Self-Defense Force and a YS-11EB of the Air Self-Defense Force entered China's ADIZ and "monitored and interfered with a joint military drill by the navies of China and Russia." In response, the Chinese fighters were scrambled and necessary identification and security measures were taken, it said.

It added that China protested the monitoring by the Japanese side, and requested it to cease "all activities of monitoring and obstructing" the exercise."

The conflict between China and it's neighbors is escalating, and it seems there is nothing being done to stop it.

The Chinese, apparently unaware of the source of their economic wealth, continue to bully and intimidate the countries that surround them, some of whom have self defense treaties with the US.

Ignore for a moment the rank foolishness of damaging their trade with the rest of the world, as well as the wisdom of manufacturing a circle of enemies, and ask exactly what the end game is here, and why they think that end game has even a shadow of a chance for success.

Is not their boldness due to the sudden and obvious evaporation of the Pax Americana?  Has that in turn not been the goal of this administration from it's very beginning?  Obama's obvious fecklessness and timidity is clearly encouraging adventurism from those that are so inclined.  Not only will Obama and his progressive allies transform America, they are also transforming the rest of the world, and in a way that will very likely result in violence.

If it is any consolation, the Chinese will likely suffer enormously from the conflict they seem to crave, as it will eliminate their ability to market their wares in many places around the world.  Certainly the multinationals that do business there must even now be planning what will be done should the idiots in Beijing start a hot war that separates them from their Chinese factories.  Whether the Chinese are considering what they will do when a hot war separates them from their markets remains to be seen.

The whole idea of the opening of China back in President Nixon's day was to make them a member of the international economy, and dependant on it for their prosperity, and thereby to make a war too expensive to contemplate.  Perhaps that plan is about to come apart.

Jeep in the Hot Tub, and other epic failures

Thanks, Bayouwulf, for this one.



These are worth watching as well.

Fun with science

This is possible because of how superconductors react to magnetic flux lines. When the s.c. enters its superconducting state it expels all magnetic field lines and so levitates above a magnet. But in a type II s.c., at higher temperatures the magnetic flux is allowed to enter in quantized packets.

If one then brings the s.c. to lower temperatures these flux packets are pinned in position and cannot be moved in or out. So the s.c. will not only levitate above the magnet, but below!

                                                  More fun with the same principles 

This is a manifestation of the Meissner Effect. When a superconductor reaches a critical temperature (usually very cold, 1 - 70 K) it expels all magnetic field lines. So if you place it on top of a magnet, it will float. It will float on a cushion of magnetic field. Additionally it will experience almost no friction so if you make a circular track of magnets it will levitate around it for quite a long time. And look awesome doing it. That vapour trail isn’t propulsive. It’s just how cold that superconductor is, it’s condensing the air around it.

Via Nanodash

Popcorn backwards

Some people's kids....

There's stuck, and then there is STUCK!

Via Expedition Portal

Reseating the bead on a tire like a boss

USMC Door Gun - Afghanistan

Weaponsman brings a fascinating post on the door gun on the Marine Corps battle helicopters.

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Matthew Ghibaudi performs a weapons check from inside a UH-1Y Huey helicopter before providing aerial assault support for ground convoys in Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 3, 2014. Ghibaudi, a crew chief, is assigned to Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 369. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Frances Johnson.

Some interesting info on their choppers as well.

The Marines are the only service still flying the 1950s-vintage H-1 Huey and 1960s-vintage H-46. But their Hueys have been rebuilt, zero-timed in fact; the airframes born as UH-1Ns were a twin engines (the Sea Services always wanted this for over-water reliability) version, unlike the Army’s old single-turboshaft H-1s (the Army equivalent being the UH-1D/H). Supposedly, 100 or so of the Y models are rebuilt Ns but the Marines have found it more economical to buy all-new airframes than to pay for Bell to disassemble, evaluate, repair and restore clapped-out N airframes, so a lot of these are all-new birds.

The UH-1Y and its sister, the AH-1Z, also have a fully articulating all-composite four-blade rotor system in place of the much simpler two-blade teetering rotor of the H-1, which inherited its rotor system, conceptually at least, from the 1940s-vintage Bell 47. The new rotor eliminates some of the low-G limitations and safety issues (look up “mast bumping”) of the original Huey rotor system. The old bird was safe within its flight envelope, mind; the new one just has a larger envelope. 

 I did not know what "mast bumping" was, so I looked it up.

There is also a hilarious military video on Youtube from the 80's that seeks to explain it, but I kept getting distracted by the antique verbal delivery of the people and the fact that no one had any computers on their desks.

In a shocking display of stupidity, the Obama administration accidentally identifies the CIA's top spy in Afghanistan.

  "The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country."

I'll bet the Diplomad will have some commentary on this.

I'll also bet that the administration didn't catch it, the CIA did.  

The press is naturally withholding the name of the CIA officer at the request of Obama administration officials who warned that the officer and his family could be at risk if the name were published. 

Well, he/she is outed now, no matter what, thanks to these bumblers.  Time to reassign the agent before someone detonates nearby.

No Respect

" Afghan President Hamid Karzai was offered a meeting with President Barack Obama at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul but declined, a US official said Sunday.

The official said that Washington was not surprised that the meeting did not work out at short notice, after Obama arrived at the base on a surprise visit after night fell on Sunday.

“As we said, we weren’t planning for a bilateral meeting with President Karzai or a trip to the palace, as this trip is focused on thanking our troops,” the official said.

“We did offer him the opportunity to come to Bagram, but we’re not surprised that it didn’t work on short notice."

No American President should put up with this, under the circumstances.  On the other hand, as soon as we leave, I'm sure the Taliban are looking forward to their revenge on Mr. Karzai, and Karzai knows it.   He'll be gone within a week of our exit, with millions of our taxpayer dollars safe in Switzerland.  

Is that Darth Vader in the cockpit?