July 2, 2014

Yesteryear
One year ago today: July 2, 2013, more summer research.
Five years ago today: July 2, 2009, unnatural beaches.
Ten years ago today: July 2, 2004, blue moon.

           Did you ever stop to realize why America has the most jails and the most people in jail of any nation in the world? Because it is big business, that’s why. Consider SmartWater. That’s the stuff embedded with microparticles that have a unique ID and glow under ultraviolet light. A thief gets sprayed with it and it remains detectable up to a week.

           Dan Lewis today mentions it, but that is not the news. The news is that it may soon become illegal to use it, which typifies what is wrong with our system. We are more concerned with getting everyone on file than in deterring crime.
           You see, if crime stopped, huge segments of our economy would go under. Police, courts, prisons, judges, and the whole parole board fiasco would rapidly become obsolete—and no way are they going down without a fight. That, grasshopper, is the real reason that thieves have more rights than you do.
           Pending legislation is not merely aimed at making the [SmartWater] evidence inadmissible, but also tries to declare its use as entrapment and akin to setting a “booby-trap”--making YOU guilty. Automatically. The burglar are presumed to be too dumb to carry their own ultraviolet light. Face it, the big business of “criminal justice” is rotten to the core and we are stuck with it. Now explain the silhouette of the guitar player on the back wall of the West Palm police station.

           Quick trivia. Here is the first new piston engine in 134 years. In the Second World War, the Germans shot down 8,625 British bombers and killed 55,573 airmen whose average age was 22. And here is that potato wrapped in meat [whoops, no picture here's the picture 6 days late] that every culture considers their own specialty. This version I bought at a display called “zrazy”, but the Internet says it isn’t.

           How goes the celestial navigation? Slow, because the topic is very susceptible to being taught piecemeal. And few authors give any analogies, which makes it hard to follow along. I can do the individual calculations up to the point of plotting but not past that point yet. I’ve got no practice charts yet. I’m also having trouble getting reliable sextant readings, which is probably lack of practice. But here’s the part they don’t tell you that I’ve figured out on my own.
           If you knew you were fifty miles from Dallas, you could be anywhere on a circle around the city. That’s what you get from the sextant—a large circle, but you could be anywhere on that circle. You need one more piece of information—in which direction is Dallas? That’s the tricky part. As near as I can figure, those massive books of tables are lists of where somebody has calculated in advance where the sun will be every minute of the upcoming year. And the moon and stars. Thus, if you use the sextant to find the height of three of these, you can triangulate what you find to the nearest known position of the sun in the books. Then you only need figure out how far you are from there.
           Part of the difficulty is the height and that is where training is helpful. You can’t just use the reading from the sextant. There are corrections that must be performed in sequence. Enough of them to drive you batty. Instrument error, eye height, refraction, semi-diameter, declination, you get the idea. I am confident that I could memorize the steps, so the big push is over. I’ll finish up when I get to it.

           Plus, after reviewing the facts on the Miss Delaware fiasco, I conclude that she is the only one telling the truth. The contest operators are such buffoons, they even tried to take back her award money. Fat chance. Keep the money, Longacre. At 24, it is highly unlikely she conspired to beat the rules for chump change. The contest committee failed to plausibly deny the charge that they had told her as long as she was under 25 at the time winning, she was good to do. It is their job to be vigilant and they failed. Most telling evidence—they were in possession of her birth certificate. I must side 100% with, in this case, the loser. Amanda, you’ve been humiliated by ass-clowns. Get a lawyer.

           Right now, I need to remodel my camper pod. Times a-wasting. My ultimate dream was to get out of Florida during the summers. I’ve decided to half-solve the problem by extending the camper length by 28 inches and sloping the “roof” to have 30” of headroom. The cost will be about a hundred dollars, so even if it is not the perfect solution, I lose little. I’m within budget and pleased—considering my original goal was just to not have to sleep on the cold, cold ground.
           While looking up aluminum welding info, I found this item on metal construction. If you look, you’ll also find a proliferation of “motorcycle camping” articles. Last year, I found little to go on and had to pretty much wing it. There’s considerable more mention of the rip-off hotel-motel pricing, but they tend to be as nice as possible about it. Not me, I patently dislike the entire US hotel-motel system. It's a rip-off because it does not allow low-end competition to prosper. There is also a larger selection of product [motorcycle campers] this year. Lowest prices for an unadorned metal or plastic shell run about twice what my unit cost. They are not that much prettier, either. Most involve setting up a tent, while my unit is ready to do. Open, crawl in, close, sleep. And my pod has been tested in rain, slush, and snow. Wood is quiet and warm.
           By 5:00PM I have the specs drawn up. I will have 9 more inches of headroom, including a 22” long cubicle where I can sit up inside the pod, making life generally more convenient. The lighting is changed to LED, the battery and control gear is shifted forward over the trailer tongue. There is a spare tire mount. The interior will be luxurious compared to a pup tent, and a lot cozier.

ADDENDUM
           I wish these stupid apes who keep calling Henry Kissinger a great American and a diplomat would all choke. Kissinger was a buffoon, and over-educated fat boy, a power monger, with the blood of 200,000 deaths on his hands. He supplied genocidal weapons to foreign dictators. For what little good he did in toning things down in Israel, look at what happened elsewhere. If you actually think that lunk-head should be praised instead of shot, please don’t say so over here. It is politicians, not celebrities, that need to be hauled into court and held accountable.

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