ORBITAL SCRAP

 It must be hard to accept that something you gave years of your life to is little more than very polished and near infinitely kinetic orbiting scrap. Not helped by the fact that it’s in a decaying orbit sharing space with a lot of other orbiting scrap.

It has been a very long time since NASA’s human flight group have given us anything to cheer about. I wish they had detoxed the Agency after their Shuttle debacle but they did not and the same kind of enterprising minds called the shot to launch a trouble plagued system again. It didn’t have to be this way and everyone familiar with SpaceX knows it. When SpaceX put people into a spacecraft and launch them it will be only after they are satisfied that all the bugs and troubling issues have been resolved and flight tested. Somehow NASA, Boeing and ULA lost sight of that. 

TONIGHT'S MOVIE

I may not be the best movie reviewer. I can't recall ever sitting down for instance and writing a movie review for a movie I've liked. On the other hand, I've listed a few for many years on the About Me. They may not speak to the quality of the films but they are certainly movies I've enjoyed watching repeatedly. The movie tonight was not such a movie. In the most intense ways imaginable it sucked.

We watched Oppenheimer tonight and I found the story engaging but the qualities that make a movie watchable were almost totally absent. The sound quality was pure crap. Dialog was almost inaudible and the idiotic crescendos of sound jammed into our ears every time some movie maker sensed a dramatic moment had to endured to be believed. Who would do that to a movie?

The endless jump scenes between a never-when followed by a never-was, were a pain. I don't have any problem doing up to 6 things at once but I don't see it as my job to pay the strictest attention in order to find out if the film maker is referring to moments in time divided by years and then returning to the past or leaping back into the future. The director obviously felt it was necessary for some reason to tell the story of two very different men in two very different times. Don't ask me why because it never really became that important in the movie.

All that said, once I got used to the idea that this was going to be a long drawn out endless almost inaudible movie featuring barely audible dialog with occasional sex and nudity, I got out my ipad and wandered back in time to follow up on the old VENONA files from the NSA and to have another look at the history and backgrounds of the major players. When I found myself some hours later reading about Traveling Wave Tubes, Klystron amplifiers and magnetrons I decided enough was enough.  Don't ask how atomic weapons developments roped me into another look into the development of radar.

I will say though that reading and rereading the basic information/biographic information about the people involved is kind of thought provoking. The people involved in the actual science and engineering were giants.

As far as the movie goes, this one ranks right down there with No Country for old Men; Pontification and awards out the ying-yang and really awful in presenting a story or technical merit.

YMMV.

And remember, we only do timely movie reviews here so stay tuned!

WHERE DID ALL THE AMMO GO

 It just wasn't that long ago that some people in the West were lamenting that the poor overwhelmed Ukrainians were running out of artillery ammunition and its stocks were running low and even the U.S. stocks of 155mm artillery were running so low that it found it necessary to replace variable time fragmenting rounds with what it still had in abundance and never planned to use because it is a grotesque weapon of war: cluster munition 155mm rounds.

I haven't heard or read a peep about this in several months now and I wonder if the problem went away simply because the problem was defined away much like Ukraine's shortage of "Absolute War Winning American and NATO Tanks!!!!!" which have also faded away. Is the need for 155mm artillery ammunition no longer acute simply because the Ukrainians have run out of 155mm tube artillery?

You could speculate about how well it's doing with regard to it's formerly unstoppable HIMARS artillery and totally devastating battlefield ballistic missiles the ATACMS. I wonder how many of the HIMARS firing units are left and I don't think the US ever really had all that many ATACMS. 

One of the take-aways (don't they wish) from waging massive artillery duels across one's own territory is the ugly fact of life left behind after the troops have moved on and now the farming class of comrades gets to plow up all the unexploded ordnance (magnified a hundred times by cluster munitions). I know of an island where the Emir ordered every single soul to leave and it turns out to never return because our aircraft simply used it as a dumping target for any unexpended ordnance on their way back to sea to recover aboard our aircraft carriers after striking, or not, targets in Kuwait and Iraq during Desert Storm. 

Nobody likes to walk around in an impact area even years after the fighting has stopped. I know of another place in New Jersey which still has many square miles fenced off simply because the ordnance stored there exploded with such fury over the years that it scattered unexploded munitions far and wide and it was deemed too expensive to sweep them all up.

Did the rocket science minds of the various national security staffs in NATO forget why exactly the United States military did not attack targets in China during the Korean War or why we did not interdict the supplies coming into North Vietnam beyond the token and far too late mining of places like Haiphong? Why we didn't simply sink all the Soviet ships bringing in more SAMs and weapons to fight the war in the South? Why did they think we didn't do that then but contemplate the reasonableness of directly attacking the xSoviet Union now?

I really am looking forward to the pirate submarines sinking one or two of the ships carrying weapons for Ukraine to NATO ports for further shipment to Ukraine. Why wait until you have to engage them with ABM or counter-battery fires? It is the same thing in the end, isn't it?

For those eager to know of my admiration for "pirate submarines" they were a lesser known feature of the Spanish Civil War. Who, the NYT wondered, could have pirate submarines attack the communist forces supporting the commies in Spain? Well, with the Houthi now trading in direct attacks on world shipping in the Red Sea, who is to say it isn't pirates sinking ships mid-Atlantic or in the Med?

I WOULD THAT PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD THIS

A recent post from Moon of Alabama.* I am open to all source intelligence and I figure I can separate most of the wheat from the chaff. I am inclined to believe that our intelligence communities no longer pay any attention to things they don't learn from spies or technical means. That means that they miss out on the most glaring and obvious truths. 

You pretty much get the same thing from the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. The phenomenon of people trusting news sources SPY agencies for topics which they are not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing them to be extremely inaccurate on certain topics which they are knowledgeable about.

Putin has said the same thing over and over and people persist in believing that he doesn't really mean it. What does it take to make them believe?

 This is the unofficial translation of Putin's latest speech. Read it and weep for another lost world.

PACKING FOR SPACE

 There is a delightful book by Mary Roach that springs to mind sometimes when I hear NASA or Boeing Space talk about anything at all. It is:

 

I wonder if the two ancient astronauts who blasted off last week from Cape Canaveral thought about it when they packed for their week long mission in space. That mission has now been pushed another week to the right by circumstances, yes, circumstances and that leads me to wonder about space laundry facilities and just how much do you pack when NASA tells you to pack for a week in space especially when you can confidently predict, based on recent experience, a certain number of weeks of 'delays'.

When did astronauting become an old people game for retirees?

A WEE RECONSIDERATION IN ORDER

 Well, all the leaders and Chief Lackeys of the G7 got to meet up close and personal with the degenerate remains of our degenerate President at their little get-together in Normandy where they got to look on the face of the man who leads the country that has Europe's back if it ever decides to tempt Putin into lashing out at them and make them consider any attack by that man on them or their countries an act of war suitable for Articles 4-6 of the NATO Treaty. I suspect they do not like what they saw in the face of that ruin of a man. He was always soulless but now there is nothing at all home in those eyes except possibly a backdoor into Hell.

I'm going to watch the news now for a week or two and see if all the clamoring for sustaining Ukraine and urging Zelensky and his thugs to use NATO weapons to attack Russians in Russian territory continue along the same demented and insane line that they were proceeding prior to their recent hook up with the face of evil.

I think even the dolts that actually own and operate Europe are coming to understand how little is left of the shattered remnants of the countries and empires that once ruled the entire world, minus Russia.

HAPPY FLAG DAY

 

Don Surber has the details.

Also, it is very important to remember to only pose as above when you're sure you have a friend at the helm.

THIS WILL ALWAYS BE FUNNY

 I see today that our modern Crazy Dictator-for-Life Zelensky has managed to extract at the G7 meeting in Italy, the long-promised security arrangement and first steps to ensure Russia pays reparations for the damages it has inflicted. Srsly, this smells every bit as badly as it did when the same offer was made to the Republic of South Vietnam or to the fools that rushed in to 'govern' Iraq when the idiot in charge made L. Paul Bremer the sole autocrat of things in Iraq. One cannot help but turn to look at the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of constant warfare in support of an 'anything but the Taliban' government that didn't last a day after the modern idiot in chief decided to suddenly and without warning or forethought, withdraw. How many suckers stayed to the end thinking that they could just hang on and beat the Taliban by persistently refusing to accept reality?

So, anyway we now have in place a 'security agreement' with Zelensky. I have to wonder if it has already met with the seal of approval any Treaty is required to have before it goes into effect and if it will even be submitted to the Senate. So many of these supposedly binding treaties we seem to be parties to are never submitted to the Senate for approval. You'd think people would wake up to that and grow at least a little upset at finding themselves living in a thoroughly corrupt and lawless land.

The United States Constitution provides that the president "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur" (Article II, section 2). Treaties are binding agreements between nations and become part of international law. Nowadays and since Obama was elected we have a government and media that seem to believe that a President has the sole power to bind us to international treaties unless he is a republican.

I was reading this morning that the whole Ukraine issue may be going away soon since the rate of human reproduction in Ukraine is something less than 1. This implies an absence of Ukrainians in the future. If they don't care enough to make enough Ukrainians to survive why should we worry about the borders of Ukraine?

ALL NOW IS IN PLACE FOR WAR

 The EU Commission and the NATO Council are made up of the most elite of elites. These ignorant but deeply entitled nobles of Europe sincerely believe that they can define and redefine anything they want to match the reality they are propping up. So, as we see leaders of Ukraine not just hint but overtly state that they mean to leave some of their new F-16 fighters based outside of Ukraine so that they are 'immune' from Russian attack, the knife's edge creeps closer to a 'sudden unexpected outbreak of War between some of NATO and all of Russia. War is always sudden and unexpected to these committed socialists who dictate the policy all Europeans are forced to live under.

A long time ago one of the things we used to give the Russians credit for was a very deep and intense intelligence and interference capability far beyond what the West could get away with. If the idiots running NATO and EU think they can get away with attacking Russia and hide behind the United States and NATO, have they asked themselves what happens when armed pirate drones appear in their skies and start to drop incendiary and explosive bombs on fuel storage and energy infrastructure? What about when they appear over airfields and just bomb any old plane they see? 

I mean, who can say it's the Russians doing it? It could be the IRA or Basque Separatists, pissed off Dutch, French and German farmers; I mean the list of people who really despise what the EU is doing is getting longer every day and as the recent elections just showed, they are sick and tired of it.

I remember too how we used to think the mines of August found their way into the Red Sea overnight seemingly. It's not too hard to visualize their counterparts drifting around all over the place. I don't see any reason for Russia to avoid asymmetrical warfare if they think they can get away with it after being pushed to the brink by the brain-dead morons surrounding idiots like von der Leyen and Biden.

NO FUTURE WITHOUT WAR

 I think that the war cabinet in Israel held together for so long because they could all see that the end of fighting with hamas would just be the end of the beginning. Any sign at all of weakness or any eagerness to negotiate from anything except a position of towering strength would see the rest of Israel's enemies jump in and start swinging machetes.

I know our politicians don't see beyond the end of their noses and they would instantly poo-poo the idea that Israel has anything to be afraid of, after all, the United States would 'guarantee' the safety of Israel. I also don't have anymore regard for the State Department than I do for the weasels and lickspittles running the U.S. Military.

If the enemy of Israel sees any real weakness at all in Israel they will continue the attack with the next round launching from Lebanon and you will see the contrails of a hundred thousand rockets on their way to cities in Israel. The pundits and elites here will gasp in horror and proclaim that there must be an immediate cease-fire. Yes, yes, how could I know this? Well, it does seem to happen every single time anybody attacks us or Israel doesn't it?

We used to have Statesmen that could see that much of the world is interconnected below the surface and weaknesses shown in one hemisphere are quickly presumed to be universal weaknesses. Nothing our leaders have done in their putrid behavior under our Viceroy and Generals in Iraq or the pusillanimous skedaddle from Afghanistan has done much to strengthen our image as a frightful enemy best left undisturbed and truthfully, watching the Yemenis attack everything that moves in the Red Sea with complete impunity is not helping at all.

The amazing thing is that a handful of people understand what the Israelis are up against and understand that only through the most drastic methods have they culled the enemy from within their own borders. We on the other hand have let in up to 30,000,000 enemies and WE KNOW IT.

Civilizations are difficult to destroy but they can be worn away by time, internal revolt, external enemies or a combination of those. People have no idea how vulnerable their power supplies or water supplies are and won't until it stares them in the face. All that Katrina farce in New Orleans that was meant to tear down President Bush was nothing but a prop for that purpose. However, what they were trying to show us every day in their stupid vicious lying press reports on Katrina can really happen if evil men work to bring it about. It's surprisingly easy to drop a crucial bridge, cause a dam to collapse, poison an aquifer forever or cause a reactor meltdown.

I mean, look at what two guys did with nothing but matches to USS BONHOMME RICHARD and USS MIAMI.

We are not looking at the downstream effects of our actions or inactions and only seem to gut ourselves over the moment and what the next news cycle will say. People controlling the fate of the nation should be forced to think a little harder and act a lot more responsibly.

THE FUN YOUR PHONES COULD HAVE

 It says here that Elon Musk would have all iphones/idevices locked away in Faraday cages if Apple shifts its operating system to one based on openAI because that would present too great a security risk to be allowed to roam around in his facilities where they would be actively probing to learn more than would be allowed by prying into everything within reach. 

If I was in charge of the Faraday cages I would arrange to have the devices bathed in an environment teeming with juicy unverifiable and ridiculous stories so the AI would be left to bask in a full surround field of fantasy, myth, voodoo and legend. I'd make sure that CNN was playing in all the cages.

I also think I'd have to come up with something for my phone at home. I used to leave it in my car but that was way back when and it was just a flip phone and to be honest, I parked in my garage at home so I wasn't too worried about it. 

We are getting some experience with the Merlin Ap. For those who don't know, Merlin uses the Cornell bird call database and it listens very very hard using your phone's microphone for everything and it rapidly tells you what birds are calling in your neck of the woods. It's actually a very nice Ap. On the gripping hand, it gives you an idea for how 'well' and intently modern phone microphones are listening to you and everything else.

I remember back in the Cold War, one of the nice touches was an intercept capability so refined that it could detect the difference in charge levels made by striking different keys on a keyboard miles away. For an idea how to carry things like this to ridiculous extremes you are encouraged to read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. A good book, highly recommended. 

I don't need an endless ear hanging on every word or sound in my house and filing it away in the deep electronic seas of Apple's data repositories. You probably don't either.

TYPICAL

 I hear that this is being scraped from the internet by powers unknown. So here it is, the truth about climate change.

ANOTHER DAY ON MARS

 Out with friends today and had a good time. I was left at the end of the day wondering how anybody could sincerely believe that Joe Biden is running this country after seeing the moron in action at any time over the last 3 years (30) and it struck me again that they watch and read just one source of news and automatically disregard and deny every other source if they even acknowledge their existence. They see only what the mainstream media presents and disregard the rest.

It's not that they deny the evidence of their eyes, it's that they literally never see anything that contradicts their beliefs. 

When you think about it, that's a rather sad way to go through life but it's who they are and what they want to be.

INCOGNIZANCE

 It came up last weekend and it was one of those moments when you realize that you totally missed noticing something that didn't happen. I think that's the nature of missing things that stop happening. I remember the first time I was hit with this was when the Chief Engineer asked the young Auxiliaries officer where he had been last night. The ship then being underway in the Persian Gulf I replied that I had been asleep. His pointed question, "you didn't notice the lights going out?" left me without a clue what he was talking about. Turns out the ship lost power when we lost the electrical load and my Emergency Diesel Generators spun up to meet the sudden loss of power demand. Well, one of them did. The other spun up and was tripped by the overspeed governor. Several times. In fact it never came online which made recovering the plant somewhat more intricate.

How do you notice the lights going out when you're asleep? Well, the fans also cut off and you can hear the intakes and fans running 24 hours a day on a warship underway. Their absence is what cues you to wake up now. It's funny though, after that first time I always woke up when we lost the electrical load underway which served me well enough when I was a chief engineer.

What has happened to stop it I do not know but the non-stop screaming by little girls at the K-4 elementary school across the street stopped. It seems to have stopped for quite some time. I got used to screaming 6 and 9 year old girls who step out of the school and hit the playground already screaming at the top of their voices. There was never any meaning, it was just high pitched screaming. 

It's gone. As I look back, I think it stopped when classes and schools resumed after Covid. I just didn't notice its absence for awhile.

HOW REMARKABLY OBTUSE OF THEM

 Reading or watching the news is a bit like reading X these days. It's not good for the soul. On the other hand, how else would one find gems like this one?

I mean these people seriously mean to convince other people that they follow and report the news and now in a feature about their truly dismal and awful performance they wonder how this non-American resident could get a visa and work in this pointless and stupid make-work job at the Washington Post. Do these idiots somehow think that all the tens of millions of illegal residents we now have in America have to get visas in order to get a job?

On the other hand, the same stupid sack of crap are now all atwitter about this new lack of diversity and want to ignore how as usual, nothing gets better by increasing or even maintaining diversity. Business, unlike Academe, Government and NGOs have a bottom line and if that is ignored in favor of myth, voodoo and legend, the business is kaput.

We can see how essential diversity is to America simply by looking at the Biden Cabinet made up of only the most truly talented and gifted members of society. 

A Winning Cabinet for Putin!!!