Thuburbo Majus, Tunisia

Imagine what this was like in it's prime.

The Mokelumne River

The other day I posted about Cat Creek Road, and how after driving for seemingly forever, it eventually reaches the Mokelumne River (pron: moe - CULL - um - knee ) in central California's Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Bubba also asked about fishing, so I looked through iphoto, and came up with these pictures of the Mighty Moke west and near Salt Springs Reservoir.  Now Bubba, that does look like a fishy river, doesn't it?  Mainly Rainbows and Brown trout, with the Browns getting occasionally pretty big, due to their willingness to eat any other fish that will fit in their mouth.  I like to spin fish these big rivers. 

Higher up, the river gets much more rugged, flowing like this through boulders.  Lots of great holding places for the trout, but fish in the morning, before the sun gets on the river like this.  

Just east of this, there is a wilderness area, and there are few trails after the head of Salt Springs Reservoir.  If you are a real mountain man, that's God's country, and a great place to hike and explore, but you'll really be on your own.  Plan accordingly.

Michelle is sad

A bit of carrier action over at the Flyby

Specifically, it's Strike Fighter Squadron 2 (VFA-2) also known as the "Bounty Hunters" 

Check it out!

A cheap and easy way to defeat night vision cameras filming either from a helicopter or drone

This is what every patriot needs to know.

As Robert Heinlein once said:

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom."

Via Curmudgeonly and Skeptical 

Friday Open Road

That battle for the South China Sea has begun

Note that the Chinese could hardly wait for Obama to leave before beginning this quasi military provocation.  A response must be made to prevent even worse, but it won't, because of the current occupant of the White House has no background or backbone for this sort of conflict.  Without a response more effective than a hash tag campaign, the Chinese will be encouraged to try even more brazen adventures in the future.

All China's neighbors need to band together and go to the UN, at the very least, and try to get some sort of action to stop these provocations, as the US simply doesn't have the leadership to preserve the Pax Americana any longer.

Further, this situation in the South China Sea is far more dangerous to us than The Ukraine, as we have clear treaty obligations to protect several of the players in the area, as well as a clear need to enforce the general rule of the international law of the sea.  The Chinese must be stopped here lest they are emboldened to step up to a conflict with Japan, Taiwan or the Philippines. 

Via The American Interest:

  "The standoff between China and Vietnam over an oil rig under construction in the South China Sea has escalated to dangerous levels, the New York Times reports. A few days ago, CNOOC, the Chinese oil company, began establishing the oil rig just 120 nautical miles from Vietnam, in waters both Hanoi and Beijing claim. Vietnam protested and dispatched a naval flotilla to the area to make its message quite clear. According to Vietnamese officials, the Chinese ships then blasted it with water cannons, injuring the sailors, and rammed two coast guard vessels."

"Yet China’s actions may have nothing to do with oil, a Reuters report suggests:

An oil industry official in China said the deployment of the rig owned by China’s CNOOC oil company to waters near Vietnam appeared to be a political decision rather than a commercial one.

“This reflected the will of the central government and is also related to the U.S. strategy on Asia,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“It is not commercially driven. It is also not like CNOOC has set a big exploration blueprint for the region.”

"Whether purposely timed or not, Beijing has escalated its rhetoric and backed up words with action ever since President Obama’s tour of East Asia. ”It is increasingly obvious that Washington is taking Beijing as an opponent,” warned one editorial in China Daily as soon as President Obama returned to the U.S. ”Ganging up with its troublemaking allies, the U.S. is presenting itself as a security threat to China.” The editorial also called U.S. actions in East Asia ”malicious.”

"Vietnam vowed to do everything in its power to defend its ocean territory, while remaining within the bounds of international law. China’s rhetoric has been decidedly more aggressive. One editorial urged Chinese forces to give Vietnam a ”lesson it deserves to get…. We believe Hanoi has no guts to attack China’s drilling platform directly.” For now, dozens of ships from both countries are staring each other down in the seas surrounding the contested oil rig, and no shots have been fired—yet."

Knife Porn

Rick Menefee folder

First harvest

The wife just now came in from the backyard, and showed me these carrots and radishes, which are the first harvest for this year.   The carrots actually overwintered from last year, and taste surprisingly good in spite of their rather craggy appearance. Hopefully this is a harbinger of good stuff to follow.  I especially want the tomatoes to do well, but we will see.

The Lockheed WTF

Actually, the Lockheed XFV

The American Lockheed XFV (sometimes referred to as the Salmon) was an experimental tailsitterprototype aircraft built by Lockheed in the early 1950s to demonstrate the operation of a vertical takeoff and landing fighter for protecting convoys.

To begin flight testing, a temporary non-retractable undercarriage with long braced V-legs was attached to the fuselage, and fixed tail wheels attached to the lower pair of fins. In this form, the aircraft was trucked to Edwards AFB in November 1953 for ground testing and taxiing trials. During one of these tests, at a time when the aft section of the large spinner had not yet been fitted, Lockheed Chief Test Pilot Herman "Fish" Salmon managed to taxi the aircraft past the liftoff speed, and the aircraft made a brief hop on 22 December 1953. The official first flight took place on 16 June 1954.

Full VTOL testing at Edwards AFB was delayed pending the availability of the 7,100 shp YT40-A-14, which never materialized. After the brief unintentional hop, the aircraft made a total of 32 flights. All further XFV-1 flights did not involve any vertical takeoffs or landings. The XFV-1 was able to make a few transitions in flight from the conventional to the vertical flight mode and back, and had briefly held in hover at altitude. Performance remained limited by the confines of the flight test regime. With the realization that the XFV's top speeds would be eclipsed by contemporary fighters and that only highly-experienced pilots could fly the aircraft, the project was cancelled in June 1955.

Freckles, they are good.

Cool sci fi

Samuel L Jackson in high school

NORTHROP HL-10

The Northrop HL-10 was one of five heavyweight lifting body designs flown at NASA's Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, from July 1966 to November 1975 to study and validate the concept of safely maneuvering and landing a low lift-over-drag vehicle designed for reentry from space.  It was a NASA design and was built to evaluate "inverted airfoil" lifting body and delta planform.

According to the book "Wingless Flight", by project engineer R. Dale Reed, if he had had his way, the HL-10 would have flown in space in the early to mid-1970s. Following the cancellation of the Apollo moon project, Reed realized that there would be substantial Apollo hardware left over, including several flight-rated command modules and Saturn V rockets.

His plan was to heavily modify the HL-10 at the Flight Research Center with the addition of an ablative heat shield, reaction controls, and other additional subsystems needed for manned spaceflight. The now space-rated vehicle would have then flown on the Apollo-Saturn V launch vehicle in the same space which originally held the Lunar Module.

Once in Earth orbit, it was planned that a robotic extraction arm would remove the vehicle from the rocket's third stage and place it adjacent to the manned Apollo CSM spacecraft. One of the astronauts, who would be trained to fly the vehicle, would then spacewalk from the Apollo and board the lifting body to perform a pre-reentry check on its systems.

It was planned that there would be two flights in this program. In the first, the lifting body pilot would return to the Apollo and send the HL-10 back to earth unmanned. If this flight was successful, on the next launch, he would then pilot the HL-10 back to earth for a planned landing at Edwards AFB.

Reportedly, Wernher von Braun thought it a wonderful idea and offered to prepare two Saturn Vs and Apollo Command Service Modules for the mission. Flight Research Center director Paul Bickle said no, stating that this was beyond his expertise or area of interest.

In an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man entitled "The Deadly Replay", the HL-10 is identified as the aircraft flown by Col. Steve Austin when he crashed, leading to his transformation into a bionic man, and the HL-10 is also featured in this episode.

Kids will believe anything

When I was little, my grandma told me that if I swallowed a hair, it would turn into a worm in my stomach.  After that, there were several instances of panic after I sensed a hair in my mouth, and then couldn't get it out.  My parents were not amused by this trick.

This same grandma, when I was resisting doing something she had commanded, told me she "could see the 'ol Devil' in my eyes.  I thought she could actually see the Devil in the pupil of my eye, dancing and taunting her.  I was possessed!  Again, my parents were not amused when I told them the devil was in me - grandma told me so.

Via Bits and Pieces