One year ago today: August 20, 2021, AZ audit, my eye.
Five years ago today: August 20, 2017, “sloppy” artificial intelligence.
Nine years ago today: August 20, 2013, all-girl zumba.
Random years ago today: August 20, 2009, some 600,000 visible here.
The coffee was too good this morning to work. Outside I mean, I took to testing the cables from last day and came back with two unwelcome answers. The cables test great. One, the problem is inside my guitar, which has one of those jacks that doubles as a strap. Very hard to fix. Two, something is wrong with my headset box. Which I cannot fix. Nor can I find either of those two expensive cables I bought in May. They’ll turn up, they were a matching set, but damn. I left a small trunk in Tennessee that I did not check right. Hello from Florida.
The only pic today is this single marigold. The plant spreads like a low shrub but produces only one blossom at a time. I don’t have the time to nurture any of the plants and anyway, the blooms are much smaller than shown on the package. Maybe later.
Wild horses in Turkey.
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I slept through Karaoke, which I had planned for weeks now. I’ve not been to the Saturday show since early May. I wasn’t ready for this zonk-out. It was a major shop and I intended just a nap. Next thing I know, it is Sunday morning. I’ve been reading up on the logistics part of recent desert wars. One curious feature is called “pre-positioning”. This amounts to stockpiling tons of supplies in the desert months before there is any talk of war. Supplies are perishable, so it means somebody knows well in advance where the wars will take place, but if the war doesn’t happen the supplies go bad.
Nor do I have much belief in claims of “precision air strikes”. Simply put, they lie a lot. They plaster the news with the odd time something does go right. Like that oft-replayed smart bomb going down the ventilator shaft of the AT&T phone office in Baghdad. I know darn well that was a lucky break carried out by hand-picked officers. I have another dozen questions all of which show my doubt that air strikes accomplish all that is claimed. The tactics and training are superb . Yet I’m fully aware of how often things go wrong with all the electronics and guidance systems.
We are also expected to believe the enemy is unaware of the shortcomings. The first thing I would do at an anti-aircraft base is position somebody well under the “radar horizon”. Nor would I have the old WWII system of ringing a loud alarm when a threat emerged and have everybody running around. I don’t have all the answers, but these are things I would at least consider. Also downplayed is the vulnerability of aircraft to small-arms ground fire.
The usual excuse is that the pilot flew too low and hit the ground. You’d think after Viet Nam, the air force would quit denying that a $50 million airplane can be brought down by a $1 bullet.
