"Escaped prisoner-of-war Winston Spencer Churchill Englishman, 25 years old about 5 foot 8 inches tall, medium build, walks with a slight stoop. Pale features. Reddish-brown hair almost invisible small moustache. Speaks through his nose and cannot pronounce the letter S. Had last a brown suit on and cannot speak one word of Dutch."
Needless to say, Winston got away, and later rose to greatness. A plucky youth indeed.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Authorities in Atlanta are seeking to question William Tecumseh Sherman in connection with the fire on I-85
I guess someone decided to store a huge pile of flammable plastic pipe under the freeway. Some hobo probably set it off with his cooking fire. Or the ghost of General Sherman did it.
Traffic is going to be just fabulous until they get this fixed. The authorities there will no doubt be competing with California to see who can get federal money to fix their respective freeways/huge dam spillway.
Add these to the border wall, and I'd recommend buying concrete futures.
Rainbow Acres, a small development south of Quartzsite, Arizona.
Should call it Arid Acres. Or Scorpion Flats. Or Sagebrush City.
The 2016-17 winter created one of the largest snowpacks in California’s recorded history and it’s loaded with enough water to keep reservoirs and rivers swollen for months to come.
This year’s snowpack is the seventh-deepest since 1950 and biggest since 2011, said state hydrologist Mike Anderson.
So much for the drought. Now we will see if the state can handle the runoff without losing a dam or two.
So much for the drought. Now we will see if the state can handle the runoff without losing a dam or two.
Traditionally considered the end of California’s rain season, the April 1 snowpack is the bar by which the success of each year’s winter is measured. The state takes manual measurements the first day of each month from January to May and because April 1 falls on a Saturday this year, the Department of Water Resources measured it two days early.
As of Thursday, the snowpack across the entire Sierra was at 164% of average for this time of year. The northern region was at 147%, the central was at 175% and the southern was 164% of average, respectively, state data showed.
Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, checks the snowpack depth during the manual snow survey at Phillips Station, near Echo Summit, Calif. The survey found the snowpack's water content at 183% of normal for this location at this time of year.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
These things are peppered all over the UK: The King's Men Standing Stones.
The King’s Men are part of the Rollright Stones, a complex of three Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments near the village of Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. Constructed from local oolitic limestone, the three monuments now known as the King’s Men and the Whispering Knights in Oxfordshire and the King Stone in Warwickshire, are distinct in their design and purpose, and were built at different periods in late prehistory.
The King’s Men is a a stone circle which was constructed in the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age; unusually, it has parallels to other circles located further north, in the Lake District, implying a trade-based or ritual connection.
By the Early Modern period, folkloric stories had grown up around the Stones, telling of how they had once been a king and his knights who had been turned to stone by a witch; such stories continued to be taught amongst local people well into the 19th century
And, it's loaded.
Colt Single Action Army revolver complete with grips and loaded showing period shortened barrel to 4 ¾”, serial number 60090 originally displayed in Lyons Pony Express Museum collection located in Arcadia, California. A very old handmade wood display case that has had the lid removed shows a cardboard label upon which is written in fountain pen “This badly pitted Colt Frontier revolver has killed 8 men – and once was carried by Jesse James famous killer – Jesse James while pursued by officers – while swimming his horse across the Missouri River accidentally dropped this gun in the water 20 years afterward the river changed its course & this pistol was picked up on the bank still loaded but was rusted like hell Oil it up and it will shoot, from The Pony Express Museum – Arcadia, California”. This relic single action has been known by Southern California collectors for more than 50 years and by tradition it was gifted by William Lyon to a close personal friend in the 1950s who inscribed the card and kept it till in sold to Gale Kennedy by Reata Pass Gallery near Prescott, Az.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Cabin Porn
Bring on the winter storms, with a big enough pile of peat, and a couple of cases of brown beer, I could endure a long time there.
This image shows the results of a lab test impact between a small sphere of aluminum travelling at approximately 6.8 km/second and a block of aluminum 18 cm thick. This test simulates what can happen when a small space debris object hits a spacecraft.
The little divot on the backside of the plate is called spalling. Basically you have a thick plate of fairly brittle metal, and when it gets hit hard, the (compression) shockwave travels through the material without dissipating much. When it reaches the end of the plate, it can go no further and essentially 'bounces' back, turning into a pulling force, which pulls the material apart. If the impact had been a little stronger, that bottom part would have come loose entirely and could have ejected at lethal speeds.