May 29, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 29, 2018, no excitement today . . .
Five years ago today: May 29, 2014, notice to Singapore.
Nine years ago today: May 29, 010, the textbooks scam.
Random years ago today: May 29, 2015, she played a cuatro.

           Ah, we have one sort of picture of the victory garden. It’s a still from the video, but that enough to see the plants and nametags. And the lprecious little flag, why Sammy there would salute if he could. Note how the boys manage to make friends with every pretty woman they possibly can. I wonder where he gets that from? What looks like wee crosses are the names of the plants, as in the species, and not names like Nick or Arnold. I had to clear that up in case I have any readers from Miami-Dade.

           Yes, Bowling Green is a university town. It’s home to one of four Western Kentucy U campuses, one of which is in Fort Knox. This tidbit effectively doubles the knowledge I have of Kentucky. I like the place now, but it has just never been a big destination. I’ve driven through corners of it on the way elsewhere. Other than like Davie Crockett and that guy who invented that knife that is too big, too heavy, and gets in the way, my scope of the state is pretty narrow. The branch in Ft. Knox, with the price of a degree these days, that plain makes sense.

           But what I did see, which was absent from Tennessee, was real backwoods cabins. Traffic was too heavy for pics. I’ll look into it and I also noticed prices are considerably less across the state line. I had a donut and coffee for $1.93. The cheapest around Hermitage is close to twice that. And I found a bank branch I may open an account just to get the prestige of a monthly statement showing up at my mailbox.

           Last for this morning, got the heads-up of a dog flu virus making the rounds. We should be fine, I minimize their contact with all canines due to Sparkie’s unpredictable behavior. Apparently this stain is serious enough to warrant vaccines, and I seriously don’t want to be the one taking them in. It’s a virus, so I’d rather avoid doggie parks and walk them mostly on windy days in such parks. It mimimizes aerosol infection, because outside of their host environments, viruses are fairly fragile. No infections, not on my watch. See, I told you I was smart ,sometimes.

           As for the numerous requests for the place with great coffee, you’ll want to go to Spencer’s Coffee. I like their imaginative advertising, so this might help out. They refer to coffee as the most affordable luxury in the world. I’m on their side. Lucky you, I found a better snap of the garden. I know that’s what you really wanted to see, instead of that lady and the doggies blocking the view in almost every shot. I guess she doesn’t know that, today at least, this is the most famous garden in the whole of Dixie. At least 1,800 people will look at it. Do the arithmetic.
           And y'day's Last Laff has been updated.

Picture of the day.
Bottle cap floor.
(Honk if is this a repeat.)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Looking into property prices in the area between Bowling Green and Lebanon shows there are quite a number of rundown shacks for sale. The trick there might be to find one that is structurally sound and put in just enough to make it livable. Nothing impressed me. I looked at manufactured houses and mobile homes, neither of which I have any problem with. My strategy is unchanged. Now that I know banks won’t lend against cabins and such, the trick is to have a pile of money ready to swoop down. Go get another pile of money if you want turtle food. This jar I’m holding was $15 by the time they rang up everything. But, that’s Englishman logic, if you got enough money for pets, you got enough to pay taxes.

           Taking a hint from the dogs, I took the afternoon off and read up on Fritz X. It was a smart bomb the Germans were using way back in 1943. It had a distinctive profile, looking like a bomb with all kinds of fins and vanes. It was radio-guided and reputed to be 80 times more accurate than free-fall bombs. When it was used in combat against warships, it hit what it was aimed at. That says it all. I am unsatisfied with the official explanations why the Germans simply dropped the project. Here was a weapon that with a couple thousand hits could have changed the outcome of the war. It was meant to sink warships.

           A few examples were captured by the Allies and every one of them had the electronics ripped out. Nobody knows how the Germans did it in the era before chips and printed circuits. The Fritz X was free-fall and the bombardier in the airplane kept the crosshairs on the target. He was aided by a flare on the base and worked spoiler-fins controlled by a joystick and radio link, but the Germans already knew that system was vulnerable to countermeasures. They had the solution on another weapon, the X-4. It was guided by the bomber via wires spun out by bobbins on the bomb itself. The story is that the German air ministry canceled the project because resources were scarce. This does not mesh with fact, as bombs are about the easiest and cheapest weapon ever devised. Using an on-line inflation calculator reveals a comparable 500 pound bomb in 1943 money would have cost just $203.43. The Germans used over 600 units just for experiments and training.
           The other reason given is that the Fritz X was “too good”, that the bomb fell so fast that the warhead plowed through the target before exploding. This is accompanied by a rumor that the bomb reached supersonic speed. With a 700 pound warhead? I don’t think so. It probably reached 300 mph. Besides, that problem was not shared by the 12,000 pound British Tall Boy. As for the delayed explosion, a simple stand-off probe fitted to the nose was already used by other rockets for that purpose. Why was this weapon discarded? The cover story is beginning to stink. These flimsy cover stories are all based on the Allied contention that the entire German manufacturing sector was ruled by maniacs who could not get along. Why the big cover up? I wonder. Time after time, a war-winning weapon was canceled at the last minute. I’m not buying the theory that it was always interference and incompetence.

           The reason I looked at the Fritz X was that I feel it was on the verge of mesh networking, something that today is just beginning to emerge as a field with micro-controllers. I contend the Fritz was meant to be used in large numbers, to attack flotillas or possibly entire fleets to overwhelm the defenses. It could not possibly have escaped notice that if these weapons could talk to a controller, they could also talk to each other. Germany had no shortage of engineers at the time. It was a free-fall guided bomb. Some sources refer to a rocket motor, but that was a different weapon, the Hs 293, which was for attacking merchant shipping.
           My thinking is somebody hit on this same idea. In 1939, the British Navy had around 100 major warships. For all the press over battleships slugging it out, such encounters were rare. The prime directive of the fleet was to prevent Germany from sinking merchant shipping, thus strangling the home islands. One surface raider, if it got into the shipping lanes, could do more damage that all the u-boats combined. There were 7 aircraft carriers and 15 battleships, that is, only 22 targets that were bottling up Germany’s fleet. There were also 66 cruisers, but these were stretched world-wide policing a collapsing and increasingly restive empire.

           The launch aircraft was vulnerable, as it had to fly straight and level. Each Fritz X had to have a dedicated operator—but that would change if the bombs could communicate. Battleships are not easy to move, making a harbor a somewhat static target. Imagine if one single highly skilled bombardier could target one warship. An attack by 300 bombs at night could self-guide themselves onto the pattern the ships were parked that afternoon. Anyway, that’s how I’d sink the British Fleet for a cost of around $61,500. Return tomorrow for a quick description of how these radio links might work. Nowadays it is called “mesh networking”.

ADDENDUM
           Turtle tales. I’ve got one for you—the only blog to do so today in the universe, I might add, but won’t. First you get a photo of the guy attacking the foot monster that invades our kitchen every morning around daybreak. Back to the tale. There I am, at the kitchen table, working the crossword. JeePee, a meter or so away (JeePee is metric) takes an interest in my pen. (Got that, movie-script lady-hopefuls, I do the X-word in pen.) What’s this then? I take him out of the cage, placing him arm’s-length from my hobby. He walks directly to the pen nib. I pick him up and reset him back. He surges forward again in turtle high gear, now there’s a metaphor.

           Why, I think, this is great exercise for the guy. I just reposition him over and over, except, he’s getting a little faster at it every time, and maybe eight minutes later he is all over me like a herd of, wait, I’m not going to say that. Is he focused on my pen? Or do I have a cerebral turtle in addition to one who can dance? I lean back and let Nature run wild. Why is JeePee after my crossword puzzle? Do I have the world’s first turtle intellect?
           Nope. He got half-way acrost my page and did a big soaking turtle pee-pee all over my down-clues.
           And because of the uniqueness of that situation, I have to admit it here, in writing, that I got peed on. Blog rules.

Last Laugh