People, Places And Probably More – Quiz Day!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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People and places feature a lot in today’s quiz so if you’re good at those then you are in with a good chance of scoring well.

You will also find out what the CIA has been up to with your tax dollars. Makes you proud!

As usual, if you get stuck, you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!

Enjoy and good luck.

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quiz confused1

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Q.  1.  A ‘Beluga’ is a type of what?

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Q.  2. In what country did the game of ‘Chess’ originate?

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Q.  3.  In 1983 the District of Columbia petitioned to become a state, if the petition had been successful what was the new state to be called?

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Q.  4.  The popular ‘Volkswagen Beetle’ car was developed under whose direction?

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Q.  5.  What drug did the CIA hand out in order to bribe warlords in Afghanistan?

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Q.  6.  What began as a winter resort for the British aristocracy in the late 1700s and now hosts 50% of the world’s super yachts every year?

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Q.  7.  What two men wrote the first and the final drafts of the American Declaration of Independence? (A point for each correct answer.)

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Q.  8.  What percentage of the water on Earth is saltwater?

            a)  17%          b) 37%          c) 57%          d)  77%          e) 97%

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Q.  9.  What mountain range is sometimes known as “The Backbone Of England” ?

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Q. 10.  What was the last major landmass on earth to be populated by humans?

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Q. 11.  What is the name given to a young female cow that has not given birth?

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Q. 12.  What famous gourmet insured his taste buds for £250,000 in 1993?

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Q. 13.  ‘Duplicatus’, ‘intortus’ and ‘perlucidus’ are among the varieties of what?

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Q. 14.  What well known city in Australia used to be known as ‘Batmania’ ?

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Q. 15.  What King of England was famous for having six wives?

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Q. 16.  And how many of his six wives did this King have executed? (A bonus point for each one you can name correctly.)

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Q. 17.  What is the more common name for the fictional character ‘Kal-El’ and where is he supposed to be from? (A point for each correct answer.)

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Q. 18.  What is the famous steeplechase horse race run at Aintreee in Liverpool, England every year?

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Q. 19.  What well known classical music composer has the initials ‘W.A.M.’ ?

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Q. 20.  And finally for today another name. Columbo is one of the most famous ever detectives to appear on television but what is his first name?

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ANSWERS

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Q.  1.  A ‘Beluga’ is a type of what?

A.  1.  Whale.

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Q.  2. In what country did the game of ‘Chess’ originate?

A.  2. Chess originated in India during the Gupta Empire (almost 1,400 years ago)

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Q.  3.  In 1983 the District of Columbia petitioned to become a state, if the petition had been successful what was the new state to be called?

A.  3.  New Columbia.

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Q.  4.  The popular ‘Volkswagen Beetle’ car was developed under whose direction?

A.  4.  Volkswagen Beetles were developed by Hitler because he wanted to manufacture a cheap, affordable car for his roadways.

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Q.  5.  What drug did the CIA hand out in order to bribe warlords in Afghanistan?

A.  5.  Viagra.

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Q.  6.  What began as a winter resort for the British aristocracy in the late 1700s and now hosts 50% of the world’s super yachts every year?

A.  6.  The French Riviera.

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Q.  7.  What two men wrote the first and the final drafts of the American Declaration of Independence? (A point for each correct answer.)

A.  7.  Benjamin Franklin actually wrote the first Declaration of Independence. Eventually, however, Thomas Jefferson was chosen to write the final draft.

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Q.  8.  What percentage of the water on Earth is saltwater?

            a)  17%          b) 37%          c) 57%          d)  77%          e) 97%

A.  8.  The correct answer is e) 97%.

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Q.  9.  What mountain range is sometimes known as “The Backbone Of England” ?

A.  9.  The Pennines.

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Q. 10.  What was the last major landmass on earth to be populated by humans?

A. 10.  New Zealand.

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Q. 11.  What is the name given to a young female cow that has not given birth?

A. 11.  It is known as a heifer.

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Q. 12.  What famous gourmet insured his taste buds for £250,000 in 1993?

A. 12.  Egon Ronay.

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Q. 13.  ‘Duplicatus’, ‘intortus’ and ‘perlucidus’ are among the varieties of what?

A. 13.  They are all the names of clouds (cirrus duplicatus, cirrus intortus and altocumulus perlucidus to be more precise.)

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Q. 14.  What well known city in Australia used to be known as ‘Batmania’ ?

A. 14.  The city of Melbourne used to be called ‘Batmania’.

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Q. 15.  What King of England was famous for having six wives?

A. 15.  Henry VIII.

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Q. 16.  And how many of his six wives did this King have executed? (A bonus point for each one you can name correctly.)

A. 16.  Henry VIII had two of his wives executed, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

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Q. 17.  What is the more common name for the fictional character ‘Kal-El’ and where is he supposed to be from? (A point for each correct answer.)

A. 17.  His more common name is Superman and hs home planet is Krypton.

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Q. 18.  What is the famous steeplechase horse race run at Aintreee in Liverpool, England every year?

A. 18.  It is called the ‘Grand National’.

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Q. 19.  What well known classical music composer has the initials ‘W.A.M.’

A. 19.  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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Q. 20.  And finally for today another name. Columbo is one of the most famous ever detectives to appear on television but what is his first name?

A. 20.  His first name is “Frank”. It can be seen on his police ID, for example, in the 1971 episode “Dead Weight”, when Columbo introduces himself to General Hollister. So now you know!

Columbo-Signature2-bright

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Whatever Happened To Right And Wrong?

 “Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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A bit of politics today.

The Iran deal – if there in fact is one, nobody seems certain – is causing a lot of angst within the Republican Party. Maybe they know the reason for their concern, but somehow I doubt it.

Don’t worry I’m not going to go into a big analysis of the deal, not yet anyway. As I said, no one is sure that anything has really been agreed.

iran nuke deal cartoon

But the details of the deal aside, what this and many other happenings over the past few years has clearly highlighted is that political parties – and not only in America – have become obsessed with the “if he’s fer it, I’m agin it” mentality.

The facts don’t count.

The reasons don’t matter.

The benefits are never logically weighed up.

Nor are the faults.

It is always just a knee-jerk reaction with no analysis whatsoever. You could write the headlines even before the event it is all so depressingly predictable.

And these pompous parties and politicians have the gall to call it ‘democracy’ and to try to foist it on other parts of the world that don’t want it and haven’t asked for it.

reaction to iran nuke deal cartoon

Somehow we have deteriorated to the point where a country full of politicians who don’t know what’s best for their own people, now think they know what is best for everyone else. Self-delusion, arrogance, call it what you like, there are many words that could be applied to describe it, none of them very complimentary.

An example is Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who has clearly learned nothing from what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, because he now boasts that a U.S. military campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities would only take “several days” of bombing.

Apparently in his head there would be no consequences. The Iranians will just sit back and take their medicine then wise up and never do it again.

On the other hand, of course, if Obama was against a deal with Iran I bet you Sen Cotton would be all for it.

That’s the real depth of his analysis, and there are (too) many others like him.

Whatever happened to right and wrong?

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Forty-Four Mouth-Watering Facts About Curry.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I’ve done ‘peanut butter‘ and ‘chocolate‘ and ‘coffee‘ in other posts. Today it is another fasab food favorite, the curry.

A curry, properly made, has to be one of the most delicious foods in the world.

I have spent many happy evenings with friends enjoying this delicacy in one form or another. Personally I like it with some naan bread or sometimes with rice. Either way is socially acceptable and extremely tasty.

Mouth watering already?

Very good, let’s get straight to the facts.

Enjoy.

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dishes of curry

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The word curry comes from a Tamil word ‘kari’ or ‘karil’, meaning spices or sautéd vegetables.

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The meaning changed when Portuguese traders used it for the sauces with which rice was served.

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Essentially, the term curry was invented by the English administrators of the East Indian Trading Co. and later continued by British government employees.

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The British army in India further changed the meaning as its liking for hot sauces introduced the modern idea of curries being hot.

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Surprisingly, the term ‘curry’ isn’t used very much in India. There are many types of curry-style dishes, which have their own characteristic regional variations.

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Curry Powder is a mix of spices, rather than a spice in its own right. It usually consists of turmeric, coriander, cardamom, cumin, sweet basil, and red pepper.

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Some of the most common types of curry are ‘Korma’, ‘Massala’, ‘Dhansak’, ‘Phall’, ‘Rogan Josh’, ‘Dopiaza’, ‘Madras’ and ‘Vindaloo’.

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Curry is said to have a number of valuable health benefits, including the prevention of cancer, protection against heart disease, reducing Alzheimer’s disease symptoms, easing pain and inflammation, boosting bone health, protecting the immune system from bacterial infections, and increasing the liver’s ability to remove toxins from the body.

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In addition to being an established and firm favorite in Britain. and increasing popular throughout Europe and the United States, curry forms a major element of the diets of several Asian countries including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Maldives, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan and Fiji.

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Chili (or Chilli) is the most popular spice in the world and can help combat heart attacks and strokes and extends blood coagulation times preventing harmful blood clots.

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Contrary to common western belief, curries are not always ‘hot’, they can be mild, medium and hot.

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curry with rice

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The earliest known curry was made in Mesopotamia in around 1700 BC, the recipe for meat in a spicy sauce appearing on tablets found near Babylon.

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The Scoville scale is the measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chili peppers or other spicy foods.

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The ‘Bhut Jolokia Chilli Pepper’ (also known as the ‘Naga Jolokia’), is the hottest pepper in the world, accompanied with its own health warning! This pepper is also known as the ‘Ghost Chilli’ or ‘Ghost Pepper’, and is grown in the Indian states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur.

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The first commercial curry powder appeared in about 1780.

In Britain Indian food now surpasses Chinese food in popularity, with Indian restaurants outnumbering Chinese restaurants by two to one.

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The word ‘balti’ means bucket. Balti is more a style of cooking than one particular curry.

In specialist ‘Balti Houses’ the balti is a meal in itself which contains both meat and vegetables and is eaten straight from the karahi using curled up pieces of naan bread. In standard Indian restaurants the balti is more of a stir-fried curry containing plenty of fried green peppers and fresh cilantro (also known as coriander).

South Indian food is more spicy than North Indian food.

The first curry recipe in English appeared in Hannah Glasse’s ‘The Art Of Cookery’ in 1747.

The world’s biggest ever curry was a 13 tonne Biryani, including 187lb of chilies and 6600lb of rice. It took 60 chefs to make in New Delhi in June 2008. And required three cranes to move the container and a 3ft high furnace to cook it!

In Western Europe and the U K, curry powders available contain more turmeric than anything else, and tend to be toned down to palates used to bland food.

curry with naan bread

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The tallest poppadom stack in the world stands at a massive 282 poppadoms. The record was set by a chef from the Jali Indian Restaurant in Blackpool.

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In 2008, Bath and North East Somerset Council advised a man to sprinkle curry powder on his wife’s grave to keep squirrels and deer away.

Tim Stobbs, aged 42 years, currently holds the world record for munching an impressive 15 poppadoms in 5 minutes! The annual World Championships, in aid of Cancer Research UK Scotland, is held every year at St Andrews University.

There are about 10,000 Indian restaurants serving curry in the UK, the vast majority of which are run by people from Bangladesh, not India.

To make a ‘hot’ curry mild, just add some coconut milk.

The word ‘masala’ means spice mix.

In 1846, William Makepeace Thackeray wrote ‘A Poem To Curry’, as part of his Kitchen Melodies.

Britain’s first curry house, called the Hindustani Coffee House and located in London’s Portman Square, opened in 1809. Now there are more curry houses in London, England than in Mumbai, India.

Chili can help combat heart attacks and strokes.

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One of the hottest curry dishes ever made is known as the Bit Spicy 3 Chili Phall which is even hotter than the infamous ‘Chicken Naga’, made with a high volume of Naga pepper seeds. More than 100 times hotter than jalapeño peppers!

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People crave a curry because the spices arouse and stimulate the taste buds.

curry powder

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Vindaloo was originally a Portuguese dish which took its name from the two main ingredients which were ‘vinho’, wine/wine vinegar, and ‘alhos’, garlic. Over time it was spiced up, hotted up and otherwise changed by the indigenous peoples of the ex-Portuguese colony of Goa.

The ‘Big Jim’, a large chili hailing from New Mexico, currently holds the world record for the largest chili ever grown. This plant frequently produces chilies that are over a foot in length, which is hugely impressive considering that the plant itself never grows more than two feet!

The town of North Curry is in Somerset while West Curry is in Cornwall.

Madras and pathia are both hot and sour dishes. Kashmiri a more subtle and creamy dish usually made with lychees or bananas – or both.

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Scientists at Nottingham Trent University have discovered that people begin to crave for a curry because the spices arouse and stimulate the taste buds.

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One in seven curries sold in the UK is a chicken tikka masala, making it the most popular Indian restaurant dish in the UK. It is thought to have originated in Britain after an enterprising Indian chef had the idea of adding a tomato and onion paste to the grilled chicken to satisfy the British preference for food that isn’t dry.

The largest naan bread ever made was a whopping 2.75m in diameter and contained meat dumplings – the equivalent of 167 normal sized naan breads. The bread took over ten hours to finish and required twelve chefs, 30kg mutton, 125kg flour, 16kg onion and 90kg of water to cook it.

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Southeastern Asian cultures have always mixed a number of spices to flavor their dishes, usually according to recipes handed down from generation to generation.

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A common way to categorize Thai curry is by the color of the curry paste used to make the curry dish. Green and red curry paste are the most typical. Yellow and sour curries (also sometimes known as orange curry, gaeng sohm) are also well known. Each has its own particular combination of herbs and spices to make up the curry paste that makes it unique.

‘Panang’ and ‘masaman’ curry are probably the most popular Thai curries in the West, because of their rich tastes.

Finally, if you are eating a curry which is just too hot for you, don’t drink water, that only makes it hotter!

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Dirty Harry? It Must Be Fact Day!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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No dirty facts here. That’s someone else’s job.

Just good clean fun with another selection from the fabulous fasab fact file.

Enjoy.

..Oh, and spare a thought for poor Betty Stobbs who for one split second thought she had made it.

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facts 03

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Dirty Harry’s badge number is 2211.

Dirty_Harry_Badge

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Frisian, a language native to the Netherlands,

is considered the easiest foreign language

for English speakers to learn

Nord friesische Dialekte

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The amount the U.S. military spends annually

on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.

Keeping their cool

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The Milky Way has four spiral arms, not two.

Milky Way galaxy

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The main ingredient for chocolate are technically cacao beans,

but they are known throughout the cocoa industry as cocoa beans

because of a misspelling.

Cacao beans and chocolate

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Cacao has been around for millions of years and

is probably one of the oldest of nature’s foods.

cacao beans

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It has been calculated that in the last 3,000 years

there have only been 240 years of peace in the world

peace-time-war-time

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During the An Lushan rebellion in China in the mid 700s

nearly 40 million people died.

This was 1/6 of the world’s population.

An Lushan rebellion in China

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Your brain is the fattest organ in your body at around 60%

fat-head

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Curfew comes from a combination of two French words

– “couvrir” and “feu”. Literally this means to “cover fire”.

curfew-photo

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In 1999, Betty Stobbs, 67, of Durham, England,

took a bale of hay to feed her flock of sheep

on the back of her motorcycle.

Her hungry sheep, however, charged her bike and

knocked her into a deep ravine.

She survived the fall but was killed

when her bike landed on top of her.

Betty Stobbs

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Andrew Jackson was involved in as many as 100 duels,

most of which were fought to defend the honor of his wife.

Not surprisingly he was shot multiple times during his life.

Andrew Jackson duel

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Alexander the Great is famous for a spying technique still used today.

He had all his soldiers write home to their families

and then intercepted the letters.

Whoever didn’t have something nice to say was executed.

Alexander_the_Great

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If you are referred to as a “treasured guest”

in Disney don’t get carried away.

That means you’re an asshole and

workers are being warned about you

Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney

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The voices of Yoda and Miss Piggy

were done by the same person.

His name is Frank Oz.

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Shock Headline – The President Agrees With Me!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

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I’ve been saying it for a long time – and now the President of the United States agrees with me – he doesn’t know WTF he’s doing!

Obama on Syria - we don't have a strategy yet

I can’t say as I take much satisfaction from his admission though.

The US President is the most powerful man in the world and he has at his disposal the most powerful military organization in the world.

Yet he doesn’t know what to do with it, when to do it, or even who to aim it at!

A bit of it, belatedly and half-heartedly, is now pointing at ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. Yes, you’re right, they are the very same Islamic terrorists he was funding for a while in Syria! He says he wasn’t, but in practice he was.

Confused?

You should be.

Because the Obama Administration certainly is!

Indeed Obama’s team of idiots have confused themselves to the degree that they don’t know what to do and are afraid to do it even if they did!

The situation is not being helped by the noise coming from the equally ill-informed politicians in the Republican camp either. Some cynics would say they are doing a lot of it with the November elections in mind!

Political Elephant and Donkey Cartoon

As I’ve said before on this blog, America has never been good at foreign policy. There are so many examples over the years to prove this beyond any and all doubt (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, now Syria). But this latest debacle could turn out to be foreign policy failure on a grand scale.

This is simply down to the fact that, even yet, the Obama administration clearly does not understand the severity of the problem. They haven’t managed to process the long term threat that a well armed, well supported and well funded group like ISIS can become.

Everyone – except the President and his people apparently – knows that these terrorists will not be content even if they are allowed to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state in the Middle East. Their hatred of anything and everything in the West is total.

In fact, as we have seen in Iraq and Syria, their hatred even extends to fellow Muslims who they do not consider to be ‘militant enough’ and they have attacked and murdered them in just the same ways as they have attacked and murdered Christians.

In Syria, which is none of our business, the Obama team thought they wanted the Assad regime removed, and to get that done they thought they could support ISIS (or the anti-Assad fighters of whom ISIS were always destined to be a big part).

Now the US may well find itself on the same side as Assad in a fight against the terrorists. And that may be the crux of the US Administration’s problem. They made the wrong move, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, for all the wrong reasons and correcting the mistake will require a major volte face and sizeable portion of humble pie.

Are they big enough to swallow it?

We’ll see.   

humble-pie

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Iowa? IOWA? Oh, no, NOT IOWA!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

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I read a strange thing on the internet the other day.

Not much unusual there, you could do that every day.

This was a study that found that Americans’ attitudes about whether the US should intervene in Ukraine is correlated with their ability to find the country on the map.

And even more strangely  –  perhaps  –  it was the Americans who COULDN’T find the Ukraine on a map who were more in favor of intervention!

Apparently  –  and I kid you not  –  some of the respondents thought that the Ukraine was in Iowa.

maps Ukraine Iowa
Europe with Ukraine highlighted USA with Iowa highlighted

Unfortunately the guys that think out American foreign policy are these sorts of people. The kind who just don’t know what they are talking about. The kind of bureaucrats who rub Preparation H on their elbows  –  if you see what I mean!

Recent history proves this beyond all reasonable doubt.

To add insult to injury so to speak, these know nothings who advise the President on foreign matters try to spin every situation by telling everyone that, even though it has massive debt already and is effectively bankrupt, the US must still be the world’s policeman and uphold democracy.

The world according to America

Why?

What business is it of ours?

And if we are so hell bent on ensuring democracy exists throughout the world why aren’t we intervening in one of the biggest dictatorships of them all, Saudi Arabia which was also the home of most of the 9/11 terrorists and of course Bin Laden’s mother country? But no, lets attack Iraq and Afghanistan instead!

For more than half a century American foreign policy has been dictated by a mindless mantra that “if the Russians are for it, then we’re against it”.

The rights and wrongs of any particular situation are not analyzed or discussed. The facts are never examined. The truth is not even looked for.

That is why US foreign policy has been such a shambles throughout the world and will continue to be so until basically the people directing it wise up.

As for the Ukraine?

First of all it is NOT in Iowa.

Second, the US has spent (wasted) $5 billion and more during the past twenty years on “democratization” programs in Ukraine, including efforts from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Third, yes there were elements within the Ukraine who did not like being subservient to Russia, but what happened in the Ukraine was that a democratically elected president, Yanukovych, was overthrown in February in what amounted to a coup d’etat.

Students of history will remember what a funk America was in when the Russians started to “assist” Cuba way back in the early 1960s, yet they can’t understand why Russian leader Putin doesn’t want a fully nuclear armed Ukraine as anything other than an ally on his doorstep.

Why can they not see that the strategy of absorbing Ukraine into NATO and stationing missile defense systems there, is bound to piss the Russians off in exactly the same way as events in Cuba did for the Americans?

The fact is, of course, that they probably do see that. And they don’t care. The name of the game here is not upholding democracy at all. Such a laudable goal is only a smokescreen. The name of the game is to try to curtail Russia by having Ukrainian missiles pointed towards Moscow instead of Washington, or Washington’s allies.

It’s a game plan that Putin sees quite clearly. To think that he will sit back and not respond is just a fantasy. Let’s hope that the idiots in Washington don’t land us with yet another catastrophe.

With their past record I wouldn’t count on it though!

US-Foreign-Policy cartoon

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Gas Bags And Gas Prices

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

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Back at the end of July in a previous Sunday Sermon I wrote that:

“Troops are being sent to Syria and soon we’ll get bogged down in another mess that’s none of our business and will probably take many years and many lives to get us disentangled from – leaving behind chaos and confusion and a worse situation than the one we tried to fix.”

Obama-Peace-Prize

Of course it’s still being denied by Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama and his administration, but there is little doubt now that Syria is next on their war hit list and we are indeed about to be bogged down in another bloody mess.

Already naval and ground forces are being positioned, for example, the cruise missile laden USS Gravely, USS Ramage, USS Barry and USS Mahan are all in the eastern Mediterranean.

The only remaining part is to con-vince the American public, who do not want another Middle Eastern debacle, that they are wrong and that a strike on Syria is essential for their future well being.

chemical weapons

The pretext that is going to be used this time is ‘evidence’ of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against the rebels. And the people that are being relied on to provide that ‘evidence’ are the very same people who provided false ‘evidence’ that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Everyone now knows and accepts that the WMD excuse for getting embroiled in Iraq was a deliberate deceit – otherwise known as a ‘lie’ – so the track record of the ‘evidence’ providers is neither good nor credible.

Already government apologists are making statements about how Syria had “used them [chemical weapons] before”, which is untrue. UN investigators charged the rebels, not Assad’s government’s forces, with use of chemical weapons in Syria earlier this year. Strangely (or perhaps not) Obama did not feel such a moral necessity to send a missile or two towards the rebels, instead he gave them more support. 

Now add to that another good pinch of hypocrisy.

In fact make that two good pinches.

The first, because the rebellion now taking place within Syria would not have happened without the financial and military assistance of the US, along with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The hypocritical part of it all is that these three nations are in fact supporting people who, if successful, will become even more bitter enemies than the Assad regime.

And the second, because in an alleged effort to encourage ‘democracy’ in Syria, ‘democracy’ in America and Europe is being ignored.

For example, 64 percent of the French people have said they don’t want to get involved, but as in America the ‘people’ don’t have a say on the final outcome.

In Britain the Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron got a very embarrassing slap in the face in Parliament when he tried to emulate the lies of previous Prime Minister Tony Blair but lost a vote on military intervention in Syria. His spin doctors will be working overtime to cook up a good story for the next debate.

British Prime Minister David Cameron

And it is plain that the majority of ordinary Americans do not want the President they elected on the promise of getting their troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, plunging them into another conflict which could prove to be as bloody if not bloodier. So plain in fact that until late Friday Obama had planned bypassing Congress obviously trying to avoid a similar embarrassment to that which was suffered by British PM Cameron.

Think this time it will only be a few missiles and drones and that troops won’t be involved? After all Obama has said “We’re not considering any boots on the ground approach”.

Then you need to think again.

Sure, at the outset Obama will try to fool the public by limiting attacks to missile strikes, but these alone won’t be enough. Even in today’s high-tech world you can’t wage wars without those boots on the ground. And in those boots are brave, but misled men and women, some of whom will lose their lives or be maimed as a result.

Boots On The Ground Fallen Soldier

The doomsday pundits are saying that all this posturing and war mongering by Obama could spiral into something worse. Possibly even be the start of WW3. Unfortunately grandiose claims like these only serve to lessen the credibility of those who are arguing against another foreign intervention.

Putin seems to have more sense than Obama. The Russians have already made their mistake in Afghanistan and are unlikely to do it again. Even less do they want to start or become involved in, a major conflict – not at the moment anyway.

China has little interest in getting involved in a conflict in the middle east either. They will take the long view, and, as they did with Iraq, they will let the US waste billions more dollars blowing things down and building them up again and then they will step in and secure more oil supplies for themselves.  

If it does get down to the nitty gritty one possibility that is more realistic is that the conflict could spread to other nations within the Middle East.

Iran for example has a mutual assistance pact with Syria. It also knows it is next on the US hit list so the longer the US is focused on Syria the longer it will postpone an attack on itself. It is not beyond imagination therefore that Iran could send arms and even troops to assist Assad.

Neither is it unreasonable to imagine that, if missile strikes on Syria result in retaliatory Syrian missile attacks on Israel, Israeli troops will also be sent into Syrian territory, with US forces backing them up shortly thereafter.

That is boots on the ground, no matter what denials you currently hear.

However it pans out, two things are certain. ‘Evidence’ or no ‘evidence’ Uncle Sam will stick his nose in once again. And if it all goes pear shaped, as it most likely will, then UP is the only way your gasoline and heating oil prices will be heading.   

Happy winter!

gas and oil prices

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The Uninformed Elect The Uninformed

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Another rant cunningly disguised as a Sunday Sermon.

Some people say we should be grateful we get told anything at all nowadays. We certainly can’t rely on our governments being honest with their people. In fact, as we have discovered recently, they would rather spy on us and gather secret dossiers on our activities. Much more reminiscent of Stalinist Russia than the Land Of The Free.

government hypocrisy and lies

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A big part of the problem is that in what passes for ‘democracy’ in Western nations, the people are told they have the power to elect whoever they think will be the best rulers, but they are not allowed the tools to do so effectively.

People are encouraged to vote party lines, rather than think about which candidate has the greatest ability.

ACME political poll - choose a party

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The Western media compounds the problem by drip feeding information to us on a “what THEY think WE need to know basis”. In doing so they censor and simplify, and more often than not sensationalize that information to the point of it being almost useless.

choice of candidates

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Naturally the politicians love it that way. An uninformed population makes uninformed decisions at election times, casting their votes for the candidate who has the nicest shirt or some other reason unrelated to political policy and philosophy.

That’s one of the reasons you got the government that is in power – so if you voted them in you did so without knowing all the facts – or maybe any of them! 

obama-agenda-in-one-cartoon1

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Not that there was much of an alternative. And it doesn’t matter what country you happen to live in either. Politicians worldwide, like bureaucrats, seem to be cut from the same cloth.

But that’s only part of the problem.

Bad enough that uninformed people make uninformed decisions and elect the wrong people. But worse is the fact that the people they elect are equally badly informed, their lack of knowledge becoming very clear quite quickly after they are elected.

Take America for example. Not the only culprit by any means, but the biggest one because of its size and the power and influence it wields throughout the world.

We all know that the economy is in a horrendous mess, with the administration seemingly clueless as to how to get us out of it. We’ve talked about that before and no doubt will do so again.

Obama economic advisors

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But if we were giving out grade marks for America, the ‘F’ minus with at least two exclamation marks would have to go to its understanding of foreign affairs. It’s not a case of ‘could do much better’ but more of a case of ‘couldn’t do much worse’.

Recent history is littered with foreign debacles. Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now North Korea, Syria, and Iran are just some of the places where America, and sometimes its allies such as Britain, have tried to interfere only to make things far worse.

To the insult of causing the needless deaths and horrific injuries to the brave souls who put themselves in harm’s way because of these political idiots, they add the bigger insult of trying to excuse their foreign ‘crusades’ by lying to their own people.

Saddam Hussein used to be a ‘friend’, even being granted the Keys to the City of Detroit because of his charitable gifts. Then a few months later they made up blatant lies about his having developed weapons of mass destruction and he became the arch demon of the Middle East. Saddam was no saint that’s for sure, he was an evil man, but he had no weapons of mass destruction and he had nothing to do with Al Quaeda or the  9/11 attack, yet the US Administration went gung-ho to invade Iraq and take him out. Result – a bigger potential threat for the future.

cartoon-Iraq_10th_Anniversary

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All the years Col. Gadaffi was supporting terrorist attacks in Israel and Britain and Ireland he wasn’t touched, apart from the odd cruise missile sent his way more for publicity than any lasting affect it had on him or his country. Then when he became an ‘ally’ in the war against terror he was killed, leaving behind a country in a complete mess and opening the way for radical groups to take over. Result – a bigger potential threat for the future.

obamas-libya-mess

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You could say exactly the same thing for Egypt or Syria or almost anywhere else where noses have been stuck in where they aren’t wanted.

Far from winning friends and influencing people, it’s almost as if America’s leaders want to create enemies and store up trouble for the future. Either this is a deliberate covert policy or it is the result of chronic stupidity.

Whatever the reason, it is costing the country far too much, both in terms of lives and money. Our politicians need to be told to get a grip on things in their own country before interfering in foreign lands where they clearly do not understand the damaging consequences of their ill-advised actions.  

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Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today The Number Is Sixty-Four 64

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Another significant numbers day.

In case you are wondering these numbers are picked quite randomly. Only after it makes itself known does the search start for things associated with it.

Sometimes there is a lot, sometimes not so much. Sixty-four seems to be a well used number so a lot of information below.

If you are into numbers, enjoy.

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The Number Sixty-Four  64

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64

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In religion

  • The 64th word of the King James Version of the Bible’s Old Testament Genesis is “light”;
  • King David prays for deliverance from his enemies in the 64th Psalm;
  • The 64 Dakinis or Yoginis are 8 Mother goddesses each with 8 attendants in India religious traditions; each of the 64 can be further correlated to the currents or winds of the human “etheric” body;
  • The Lord Shiva has 64 forms or manifestations.

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In mathematics

  • Sixty-four is the square of 8, the cube of 4, and the sixth power of 2;
  • Sixty-four is the smallest number with exactly seven divisors;
  • Sixty-four is the lowest positive power of two that is adjacent to neither a Mersenne prime nor a Fermat prime;
  • Sixty-four  is the sum of Euler’s totient function for the first fourteen integers;
  • Sixty-four is also a dodecagonal number and a centered triangular number;
  • In base 10, no integer added up to its own digits yields 64, hence it is a self number;
  • Sixty-four is a super-perfect number – a number such that s(s(n))=2n.

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  • Base64
  • Base64 is a group of similar binary-to-text encoding schemes that represent binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-64 representation. The term Base64 originates from a specific MIME content transfer encoding.
  • Base64 encoding schemes are commonly used when there is a need to encode binary data that needs to be stored and transferred over media that are designed to deal with textual data. This is to ensure that the data remain intact without modification during transport.
  • Base64 is commonly used in a number of applications including email via MIME, and storing complex data in XML.

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  • Graham’s number
  • Graham’s number, named after Ronald Graham, is unimaginably larger than other well-known large numbers such as a googol, googolplex, and even larger than Skewes’ number and Moser’s number.
  • The number gained a degree of popular attention when Martin Gardner described it in the “Mathematical Games” section of Scientific American in November 1977, writing that, “In an unpublished proof, Graham has recently established … a bound so vast that it holds the record for the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof.” The 1980 Guinness Book of World Records repeated Gardner’s claim, adding to the popular interest in this number.
  • Specific integers known to be far larger than Graham’s number have since appeared in many serious mathematical proofs (e.g., in connection with Friedman’s various finite forms of Kruskal’s theorem).

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In Computing

  • 64-bit
  • In computer architecture, 64-bit computing is the use of processors that have datapath widths, integer size, and memory addresses of 64 bits (eight octets) wide. Also, 64-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. From the software perspective, 64-bit computing means the use of code with 64-bit virtual memory addresses

64 bit is the future

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  • Commodore 64
  • The Commodore 64, commonly called C64, CBM 64 (for Commodore Business Machines), or VIC-64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International.
  • Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595.
  • Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM, and had favorable sound and graphical specifications when compared to contemporary systems such as the Apple II, at a price that was well below the circa US$ 1200 demanded by Apple.
  • For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC compatibles, Apple Inc. computers, and Atari 8-bit family computers.
  • Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodore’s founder, said in a 1989 interview “When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years.”

C64 computer

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  • Dragon 64
  • The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., in Port Talbot, Wales, and for the US market by Tano of New Orleans, Louisiana.
  • The model numbers reflect the primary difference between the two machines, which have 32 and 64 kilobytes of RAM, respectively.

Dragon-64 computer

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In science

  • Sixty-four is the Atomic Number of Gadolinium (Gd), discovered by Jean de Marignac 1880 (Switzerland), and named after the mineral gadolinite;
  • Sixty-four is the Atomic Weight of Copper (Cu).
  • There are 64 codons in the RNA codon table under genetic code.

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In space

  • Messier object M64, is a magnitude 9.0 galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, also known as the Black Eye Galaxy;
  • The New General Catalogue object NGC 64, a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus;
  • WOH G64 is a red hypergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. With 1540 times the radius of the Sun, it is one of the largest known stars and the largest known in the LMC. The physical parameters are still poorly known due to the distance, visual faintness, several solar masses of shrouding dust, and the possibility of a bright hot companion.

WOH_G64_Particular

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  • STS-64
  • STS-64 was a Space Shuttle Discovery mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 9 September 1994, to perform multiple experiment packages.
  • STS-64 marked the first flight of Lidar In-space Technology Experiment (LITE) and first untethered U.S. extravehicular activity (EVA) in 10 years. LITE payload employs lidar, which stands for “light detection and ranging”, a type of optical radar using laser pulses instead of radio waves to study Earth’s atmosphere.
  • On day five of the mission, the Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy-201 (SPARTAN-201) free flyer was released using the Remote Manipulator System arm.
  • STS-64 was the first mission to see the use of the new full-pressure Advanced Crew Escape Suit, which eventually replaced the partial-pressure Launch Entry Suit.

sts-64-patch

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In politics

  • Department of State Form DS-64 is the one US Citizens need if they lose or have your passport stolen;
  • Department of Labor Chapter 64 regulates the employment of workers with disabilities at special wages;
  • In the United States presidential election of 1964, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964, Democratic candidate and incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson who had come to office less than a year earlier following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, and who had successfully associated himself with Kennedy’s popularity, won 61.1% of the popular vote, the highest won by a candidate since 1820.

United States presidential election  1964

  • In Chinese the “Six Four Incident” refers to Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

tiananmen-square-1989

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In sport

  • There are 64 teams participating in the NCAA Basketball Tournament;
  • In chess or draughts, there are a total of 64 black (dark) and white (light) squares on the game board;
  • The Knight’s Tour of a chessboard is a sequence of moves by a knight so that each of the 64 squares is visited only once. The numbers of the knight’s moves form a magic square where each row and column adds up to 260;
  • 64 is the name of the premier Russian chess magazine;
  • NFL Hall of Famers with jersey #64 include Dave Wilcox, Linebacker (Boise Junior College, Oregon) and 1964-1974 San Francisco 49ers; George Blanda, Quarterback-Kicker, 1949, 1950-58 Chicago Bears, 1950 Baltimore Colts, 1960-66 Houston Oilers, 1967-1975 Oakland Raiders; Joe Delamielleure, Guard, 1973-1979, 1985 Buffalo Bills, 1980-1984 Cleveland Browns; Randall McDaniel, Guard, 1988-1999 Minnesota Vikings, 2000-01 Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Y.A. Tittle, Quarterback, 1948-1950 Baltimore Colts (AAFC/NFL), 1951-1960 San Francisco 49ers, 1961-1964 New York Giants.

Y A Tittle

  • In the National Hockey League, jersey #64 is used by James Robert McGinn IV is a Canadian professional ice hockey player currently playing for the Colorado Avalanche.

James McGinn

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In books, movies, music and TV

  • The $64,000 Question is an American game show broadcast from 1955–1958, which became embroiled in the scandals involving TV quiz shows of the day. The $64,000 Challenge (1956–1958) was its popular spin-off show.
  • When I’m 64 is a song by John Lennon & Paul McCartney from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album (1967).


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In militaria

  • HMS Vansittart
  • HMS Vansittart was an Admiralty modified W class destroyer built for the Royal Navy. She was ordered in January 1918 from William Beardmore & Company with the 13th Order for Destroyers of the Emergency War Program of 1918-19. She was the second Royal Navy ship to carry the name which was first used in 1821 for a hired packet.

HMS_Vansittart (D64)

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  • HMS Beverley (H 64)
  • Completed in July 1920 as USS Branch (DD 197) for the US Navy, on 8 Oct, 1940 she was transferred to the Royal Navy and renamed HMS Beverley (H 64).
  • On 9 Apr, 1943, during WWII convoy duty in the North Atlantic, HMS Beverley had been seriously damaged in a collision with the British steam merchant Cairnvalona and had taken station in the rear of the convoy. When it was subsequenty attaced by a German U-Boat, U-188, 30 hours later she was hit by torpedos and sunk. HMS Clover (K 134) (Lt P.H. Grieves, RNR) later picked up five survivors and recovered two bodies, but one of the survivors later died on board.

hms_beverley

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  • HMS Fencer (D64)
  • The USS Croatan (CVE-14) (originally AVG-14 then ACV-14) was transferred to the United Kingdom on 20 February 1943 under lend-lease where she served as HMS Fencer (D64). As an anti-submarine warfare carrier, Fencer escorted Atlantic, Russian and African convoys, even participating in a strike on the German battleship Tirpitz before being transferred to the Pacific.
  • Following World War II, she returned to the United States 21 December 1946, stricken for disposal on 28 January 1947 and sold into merchant service 30 December as Sydney.
  • The ship went through a series of renamings, first to Roma in 1967, then Galaxy Queen in 1970, Lady Dina in 1972 and finally Caribia in 1973 before being scrapped in Spezia in September 1975.

HMS_Fencer_D64

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  • HMS Scorpion (D64)
  • HMS Scorpion (D64) was a Weapon-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy. Originally named HMS Centaur, the ship was renamed Tomahawk and finally Scorpion (in September 1943) before her launch.
  • Scorpion was the only Weapon-class ship fitted with the Limbo depth charge mortar rather than the older Squid.
  • In 1953 she took part in the Fleet Review to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

HMS Scorpion D64

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  • HMS Theseus (R64)
  • HMS Theseus (R64) was a Colossus-class light fleet aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, launched on 6 July 1944.
  • Theseus was laid down to serve in the Second World War, but was not completed before peace was declared in 1945. She was utilized as a training vessel until the outbreak of the Korean War when she was deployed to Korea, commencing standard carrier operations.
  • In 1956, Theseus was used as an emergency commando carrier, along with her sister-ship Ocean, during the Suez Crisis. From November to December, helicopters from Theseus transported troops ashore, as well as evacuating wounded soldiers. Compared to her actions during the Korean War, her role at Suez was relatively quiet. The following year she was placed in reserve. She was subsequently broken up at Inverkeithing in 1962.

HMS Theseus (R64)

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  • USS Wisconsin (BB-64)
  • The USS Wisconsin (BB-64), “Wisky” or “WisKy”, is an Iowa-class battleship, the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. She was launched on 7 December 1943 (the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor raid).
  • During her career, Wisconsin served in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where she shelled Japanese fortifications and screened United States aircraft carriers as they conducted air raids against enemy positions.
  • During the Korean War, Wisconsin shelled North Korean targets in support of United Nations and South Korean ground operations, after which she was decommissioned.
  • She was reactivated 1 August 1986, modernised and participated in Operation Desert Storm in January and February 1991.
  • Wisconsin was last decommissioned in September 1991, having earned a total of six battle stars for service in World War II and Korea, as well as a Navy Unit Commendation for service during the January/February 1991 Gulf War.
  • She currently functions as a museum ship operated by Nauticus, The National Maritime Center in Norfolk, Virginia. .

Uss_wisconsin

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  • USS Constellation (CV-64)
  • The USS Constellation (CV-64), a Kitty Hawk–class supercarrier, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the “new constellation of stars” on the flag of the United States and the only naval vessel ever authorized to display red, white, and blue designation numbers.
  • One of the fastest ships in the Navy, as proven by her victory during a battlegroup race held in 1985, she was nicknamed “Connie” by her crew and officially as “America’s Flagship”.
  • She was launched 8 October 1960 and delivered to the Navy 1 October 1961, and commissioned 27 October 1961, with Captain T. J. Walker in command. At that time, she had cost about US$264.5 million. Constellation was the last U.S. aircraft carrier (as of 2010) to be built at a yard other than Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company.

USS_Constellation_CV-64

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  • USS Gettysburg (CG-64)
  • The USS Gettysburg (CG-64) is a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser in the United States Navy, built at the Bath Iron Works in Maine and named for the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.
  • With her guided missiles and rapid-fire cannons, she is capable of facing and defeating threats in the air, on the sea, or ashore, and underneath the sea. She also carries two Seahawk LAMPS multi-purpose helicopters, but mainly for anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
  • She is based in Mayport, Florida.

USS_Gettsyburg_(CG-64)

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  • U-64
  • The first U-64 was a Type U-63 class submarine in the Kaiserliche Marine that served during World War I. She was built in 1916 and served in the Mediterranean Sea.
  • On 19 March 1917, while on patrol in the Tyrrhenian Sea, U-64 torpedoed and sank the French battleship Danton 30 miles south of Sardinia, with the loss of 296 men. She herself was lost on 17 June 1918.

u_64_u_63_type_u_boot 1915-1918

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  • In 1937 another German submarine U-64, a Type IXB U-boat of the Nazi German Kriegsmarine, was ordered in July 1937 and launched in September 1939.
  • This U-64 had a very short career and sank no enemy vessels. Having left her home port of Wilhelmshaven for her first war patrol on 6 April 1940, she was intercepted by Allied aircraft seven days later off the coast of Norway during the invasion of that country and was sunk by a bomb from a Fairey Swordfish aircraft of HMS Warspite. Of her crew of 46, eight men died and 38 escaped from the sinking submarine.

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  • K-64
  • The K-64 Designation was first given to the first Alfa Class Submarine, launched on April 22, 1969.
  • In 1972, the submarine suffered a major reactor problem in the form of a leak of liquid metal coolant. The superheated metal solidified on contact with the colder outside air, freezing and damaging internal components of the reactor. She was removed from service and towed to Severodvinsk.
  • The K-64 designation was again given to a Delta IV class submarine launched on February 2, 1986 as the fourth ship of its class, entered in service in the Russian Northern Fleet. The sub was laid down in December 1982 and was built at Sevmash plant in Severodvinsk.
  • This ship is still in active service.

Soviet submarine K-64

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  • P-64
  • P-64 was the designation assigned by the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) to the North American Aviation NA-68 fighter, an upgraded variant of the NA-50 developed during the late 1930s.
  • Six NA-68s ordered by the Royal Thai Air Force were seized before export by the US government in 1941, after the Franco-Thai War and growing ties between Thailand and the Empire of Japan. These aircraft were used by the USAAC as unarmed fighter trainers.
  • Seven NA-50s were purchased by the Peruvian Air Force, which nicknamed it Torito (“Little Bull”). The Peruvian NA-50s subsequently saw action during the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War of 1941.

na_p-64

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  • The Grumman G-64/111 Albatross
  • The Albatross is easily the largest of Grumman’s series of utility amphibians, and was the only one originally developed specifically for military service.
  • The Albatross resulted from a late 1940s US Navy requirement for a general purpose amphibious transport. The first Albatross prototype flew for the first time on October 24 1947, with more than 400 production HU-16s subsequently delivered to the US Navy, US Coast Guard and 12 other nations. Military Albatross missions included general reconnaissance, maritime patrol, anti submarine warfare (in which role it could be armed with torpedoes and depth charges) and search and rescue.
  • In the late 1970s, Grumman and major US flying boat operator Resorts International began work on a program to convert the Albatross for civil airline service. The conversion incorporated numerous changes to the basic Albatross, including a 28 seat passenger interior, a galley and provision for a flight attendant, upgraded avionics and other improved systems.
  • In all only 13 aircraft were converted, 12 for Resorts International, and 1 for Conoco Oil/Pelita which operated from Singapore. Several of these are still active, together with ex military examples.

Grumman albatross

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  • AH-64 Apache
  • The Boeing AH-64 Apache is a four-blade, twin-engine attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement, and a tandem cockpit for a two-man crew.
  • Originally, the Apache started life as the Model 77 developed by Hughes Helicopters for the United States Army’s Advanced Attack Helicopter program to replace the AH-1 Cobra, and was first flown on 30 September 1975.
  • The AH-64 was introduced to U.S. Army service in April 1986.
  • The AH-64 Apache features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night vision systems; is armed with a 30-millimeter (1.2 in) M230 Chain Gun carried between the main landing gear, under the aircraft’s forward fuselage; and has four hardpoints mounted on stub-wing pylons, typically carrying a mixture of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rocket pods. The AH-64 has a large amount of systems redundancy to improve combat survivability.
  • The first production AH-64D Apache Longbow, an upgraded version of the original Apache, was delivered to the Army in March 1997. Production has been continued by Boeing Defense, Space & Security; over 1,000 AH-64s have been produced to date.
  • The U.S. Army is the primary operator of the AH-64; it has also become the primary attack helicopter of multiple nations, including Greece, Japan, Israel, the Netherlands and Singapore; as well as being produced under license in the United Kingdom as the AgustaWestland Apache. U.S. AH-64s have served in conflicts in Panama, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Israel used the Apache in its military conflicts in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip; both British and U.S. Apaches have seen deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

AH-64D_Apache_Longbow

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  • Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane
  • The Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane is an American twin-engine heavy-lift helicopter, the civil version of the United States Army’s CH-54 Tarhe. The S-64 Aircrane is the current production version, manufactured by the Erickson Air-Crane company.
  • Erickson Air-Crane purchased the type certificate and manufacturing rights in 1992 and since that date they have become the manufacturer and world’s largest operator of S-64 Aircranes. The Aircrane can be fitted with a 2,650-gallon (~10,000 litre) fixed retardant tank to assist in the control of bush fires, and it has proved itself admirably in this role.
  • Erickson is manufacturing new S-64s, as well as remanufacturing existing CH-54s, with each being assigned an individual name, the best-known being “Elvis”, used in fighting fires in Australia alongside “The Incredible Hulk” and “Isabelle”.
  • Other operators, such as Siller Brothers, have followed with their Sikorsky S-64E, Andy’s Pride. The Erickson S-64E nicknamed “Olga” was used to lift the top section of the CN Tower into place in Toronto, Canada.
  • The S-64 is the first helicopter built with a rear-facing pilot’s seat—this allows the pilot to watch exactly where the load is being placed as he’s flying the helicopter. The feature came in handy in 1993, when an S-64 removed and replaced the Statue of Freedom from the US Capitol building during a renovation. When transporting a big load like that, the S-64 uses an anti-rotation rigging system that prevents the aircraft from twisting and swaying.

Sikorsky S64

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  • T-64
  • The T-64 is a Soviet main battle tank, introduced in the early 1960s. It was a more advanced counterpart to the T-62: the T-64 served tank divisions, while the T-62 supported infantry in motor rifle divisions. Although the T-62 and the famed T-72 would see much wider use and generally more development, it was the T-64 that formed the basis of more modern Soviet tank designs like the T-80.

T-64 tank

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  • W64 nuclear warhead
  • The W64 nuclear warhead was the Los Alamos Laboratory’s entry into a brief competition between Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and Los Alamos to design an “enhanced-radiation” nuclear warhead (i.e., a “neutron bomb”) for the United States Army’s MGM-52 Lance tactical surface-to-surface missile.
  • The Los Alamos design, the W64, was canceled in September 1964 in favor of Livermore’s W63. In November 1966, the W63 was canceled in favor of the W70, the model that finally entered production.

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  • L64
  • The L64 was an intermediate calibre British bullpup layout prototype assault rifle developed in the 1970s. The British Army had considered bullpup designs with intermediate calibre rounds in the 1950s, and officially adopted one of these as .280 British in 1951 in the EM-2 and Taden gun. However, US intransigence during NATO standardization efforts, and Winston Churchill’s interest in standards above all, led to the adoption of the significantly more powerful 7.62×51mm NATO round and the British and Canadian armies adopted the L1A1 SLR, a licensed version of the FN FAL, itself originally designed for the .280.
  • In the late 1960s a new L64/65 “Individual Weapon” was developed, outwardly similar to the earlier EM-2, but adopted a firing mechanism very similar to ArmaLite’s latest AR-18 design. The first examples were available in 1972.
  • By 1976, NATO was ready to standardize on a small calibre round, and testing of the various rounds head-to-head started in 1977. As designed, the British round out-performed the standard US 5.56 mm. However Fabrique Nationale’s entry based on the 5.56 mm, the “SS-109” performed as well as the British cartridge. In the end it was selected largely due to its similarity with existing US ammunition.
  • The L64 pattern was later developed into the SA80 family of weapons, which entered service with the UK in the 1980s.

L64-Enfield_bullpup_prototype

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  • P-64 Pistol
  • The P-64 is a Polish 9mm semi-automatic pistol designed to fire the 9x18mm Makarov cartridge. The pistol was developed in the late 1950s at the Institute for Artillery Research, which later became the Military Institute of Armament Technology.

P64 pistol

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In other fields

  • Cities situated on longtitude 64 degree west are:  Charlotte Amalie,  US Virgin Islands; Hamilton,  Bermuda; Road Town,  British Virgin Islands; and Córdoba, Argentina.
  • Cities situated on latitude 64 north are:  Fairbanks, Alaska; Skellefteå, Sweden; Anadyr and Arkhangelsk, Russia; Nuuk (Godthåb), Greenland; and Reykjavík, Iceland.
  • There are 64 gems in total number in a standard Bejeweled game board.
  • 64 is the code for international direct dial calls to New Zealand.
  • There are 64 Braille characters in the old 6-dot system.
  • Since 1996, the number 64 has been an abbreviation or slang for Nintendo 64 (though N64 is more common) along with the games Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 and more.

Nintendo_64_Logo

  • 64 is the maximum number of strokes in any Chinese character.
  • There are 64 hexagrams in the I Ching.
  • There are 64 sexual positions in the Kama Sutra.
  • There are 64 demons in the Dictionnaire Infernal.
  • There are 64 classical arts listed in many Indian scriptures. They include: singing, dancing, painting, poetry, playing cards, making arguments, making flower garlands, etc.
  • The 64th French department is Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
  • Unsurprisingly it is the number of crayons in the popular Crayola 64 pack.
  • 64 is the maximum stack size in the popular game Minecraft.
  • 64 (dog) is a character in the Donald Duck comics universe.
  • Number of golden disks in the myth of the Tower of Hanoi.
  • The S64-1.25 MW has a well-suited ratio of rotor diameter to generator for most sites in a medium wind speed regime. The wind turbine concept is based on robust design and is efficiently handled by the Suzlon controller. These technologies are all well-known in the wind power industry and have proven themselves over time.

Suzlon_S64-1.25-MW

  • PARALOID B-64 solid grade acrylic resin provides an outstanding combination of hardness, flexibility, and adhesion to various substrates. This general-purpose resin permits wider latitude in formulating in solvents that are suitable for specific applications.
  • Group f/64 was a group of seven 20th century San Francisco photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharp-focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western (U.S.) viewpoint. In part, they formed in opposition to the Pictorialist photographic style that had dominated much of the early 20th century, but moreover they wanted to promote a new Modernist aesthetic that was based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects.
  • 64 is the slang term referring to a 1964 Chevrolet Impala, often configured as a lowrider, a popular subject among early-90’s gangsta rap.

1964_chevrolet_impala_ss_convertible front_view

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US Politics & Foreign Policy for Dummies

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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A bit of a change from numbers this Friday.

I found this piece which purports to explain and enlighten us about US politics.

It is in the form of a conversation between a father and his child and as children do, some very telling questions are asked to which the answers are to say the least confusing.

Some of it is a little bit dated, but the basic principles hold good today. It highlights yet again the deeply flawed thinking that is still behind the decisions that affect us all.

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foreign policy for dummies

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Q: Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?

A: Because they had weapons of mass destruction honey.

 

Q: But the inspectors didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction.

A: That’s because the Iraqis were hiding them.

 

Q: And that’s why we invaded Iraq?

A: Yep. Invasions always work better than inspections.

 

Q: But after we invaded them, we STILL didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction, did we?

A: That’s because the weapons are so well hidden. Don’t worry, we’ll find something eventually.

 

Q: Why did Iraq want all those weapons of mass destruction?

A: To use them in a war, silly.

 

Q: I’m confused. If they had all those weapons that they planned to use in a war, then why didn’t they use any of those weapons when we went to war with them?

A: Well, obviously they didn’t want anyone to know they had those weapons, so they chose to die by the thousands rather than defend themselves.

 

Q: That doesn’t make sense Daddy. Why would they choose to die if they had all those big weapons to fight us back with?

A: It’s a different culture. It’s not supposed to make sense.

 

Q: I don’t know about you, but I don’t think they had any of those weapons our government said they did.

A: Well, you know, it doesn’t matter whether or not they had those weapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.

 

Q: And what was that?

A: Even if Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invade another country.

 

Q: Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade his country?

A: Well, for one thing, he tortured his own people.

 

Q: Kind of like what they do in China?

A: Don’t go comparing China to Iraq. China is a good economic competitor, where millions of people work for slave wages in sweatshops to make U.S. corporations richer.

 

Q: So if a country lets its people be exploited for American corporate gain, it’s a good country, even if that country tortures people?

A: Right.

 

Q: Why were people in Iraq being tortured?

A: For political crimes, mostly, like criticizing the government. People who criticized the government in Iraq were sent to prison and tortured.

 

Q: Isn’t that exactly what happens in China?

A: I told you, China is different.

 

Q: What’s the difference between China and Iraq?

A: Well, for one thing, Iraq was ruled by the Ba’ath party, while China is Communist.

 

Q: Didn’t you once tell me Communists were bad?

A: No, just Cuban Communists are bad.

 

Q: How are the Cuban Communists bad?

A: Well, for one thing, people who criticize the government in Cuba are sent to prison and tortured.

 

Q: Like in Iraq?

A: Exactly.

 

Q: And like in China, too?

A: I told you, China’s a good economic competitor. Cuba, on the other hand, is not.

 

Q: How come Cuba isn’t a good economic competitor?

A: Well, you see, back in the early 1960s, our government passed some laws that made it illegal for Americans to trade or do any business with Cuba until they stopped being Communists and started being capitalists like us.

 

Q: But if we got rid of those laws, opened up trade with Cuba, and started doing business with them, wouldn’t that help the Cubans become capitalists?

A: Don’t be a smart-ass.

 

Q: I didn’t think I was being one.

A: Well, anyway, they also don’t have freedom of religion in Cuba.

 

Q: Kind of like China and the Falun Gong movement?

A: I told you, stop saying bad things about China. Anyway, Saddam Hussein came to power through a military coup, so he’s not really a legitimate leader anyway.

 

Q: What’s a military coup?

A: That’s when a military general takes over the government of a country by force, instead of holding free elections like we do in the United States.

 

Q: Didn’t the ruler of Pakistan come to power by a military coup?

A: You mean General Pervez Musharraf? Uh, yeah, he did, but Pakistan is our friend.

 

Q: Why is Pakistan our friend if their leader is illegitimate?

A: I never said Pervez Musharraf was illegitimate.

 

Q: Didn’t you just say a military general who comes to power by forcibly overthrowing the legitimate government of a nation is an illegitimate leader?

A: Only Saddam Hussein. Pervez Musharraf is our friend, because he helped us invade Afghanistan.

 

Q: Why did we invade Afghanistan?

A: Because of what they did to us on September 11th.

 

Q: What did Afghanistan do to us on September 11th?

A: Well, on September 11th, nineteen men, fifteen of them Saudi Arabians, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them into buildings, killing over 3,000 Americans.

 

Q: So how did Afghanistan figure into all that?

A: Afghanistan was where those bad men trained, under the oppressive rule of the Taliban.

 

Q: Aren’t the Taliban those bad radical Islamics who chopped off people’s heads and hands?

A: Yes, that’s exactly who they were. Not only did they chop off people’s heads and hands, but they oppressed women, too.

 

Q: Didn’t the Bush administration give the Taliban $43 million dollars back in May of 2001?

A: Yes, but that money was a reward because they did such a good job fighting drugs.

 

Q: Fighting drugs?

A: Yes, the Taliban were very helpful in stopping people from growing opium poppies.

 

Q: How did they do such a good job?

A: Simple. If people were caught growing opium poppies, the Taliban would have their hands and heads cut off.

 

Q: So, when the Taliban cut off people’s heads and hands for growing flowers, that was OK, but not if they cut people’s heads and hands off for other reasons?

A: Yes. It’s OK with us if radical Islamic fundamentalists cut off people’s hands for growing flowers, but it’s cruel if they cut off people’s hands for stealing bread.

 

Q: Don’t they also cut off people’s hands and heads in Saudi Arabia?

A: That’s different. Afghanistan was ruled by a tyrannical patriarchy that oppressed women and forced them to wear burqas whenever they were in public, with death by stoning as the penalty for women who did not comply.

 

Q: Don’t Saudi women have to wear burqas in public, too?

A: No, Saudi women merely wear a traditional Islamic body covering.

 

Q: What’s the difference?

A: The traditional Islamic covering worn by Saudi women is a modest yet fashionable garment that covers all of a woman’s body except for her eyes and fingers. The burqa, on the other hand, is an evil tool of patriarchal oppression that covers all of a woman’s body except for her eyes and fingers.

 

Q: It sounds like the same thing with a different name.

A: Now, don’t go comparing Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are our friends.

 

Q: But I thought you said 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were from Saudi Arabia.

A: Yes, but they trained in Afghanistan.

 

Q: Who trained them?

A: A very bad man named Osama bin Laden.

 

Q: Was he from Afghanistan?

A: Uh, no, he was from Saudi Arabia too. But he was a bad man, a very bad man.

 

Q: I seem to recall he was our friend once.

A: Only when we helped him and the mujahadeen repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 1980s.

 

Q: Who are the Soviets? Was that the Evil Communist Empire Ronald Reagan talked about?

A: There are no more Soviets. The Soviet Union broke up in 1990 or thereabouts, and now they have elections and capitalism like us. We call them Russians now.

 

Q: So the Soviets – I mean, the Russians – are now our friends?

A: Well, not really. You see, they were our friends for many years after they stopped being Soviets, but then they decided not to support our invasion of Iraq, so we’re mad at them now. We’re also mad at the French and the Germans because they didn’t help us invade Iraq either.

 

Q: So the French and Germans are evil, too?

A: Not exactly evil, but just bad enough that we had to rename French fries and French toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.

 

Q: Do we always rename foods whenever another country doesn’t do what we want them to do?

A: No, we just do that to our friends. Our enemies, we invade.

 

Q: But wasn’t Iraq one of our friends back in the 1980s?

A: Well, yeah. For a while.

 

Q: Was Saddam Hussein ruler of Iraq back then?

A: Yes, but at the time he was fighting against Iran, which made him our friend, temporarily.

 

Q: Why did that make him our friend?

A: Because at that time, Iran was our enemy.

 

Q: Isn’t that when he gassed the Kurds?

A: Yeah, but since he was fighting against Iran at the time, we looked the other way, to show him we were his friend.

 

Q: So anyone who fights against one of our enemies automatically becomes our friend?

A: Most of the time, yes.

 

Q: And anyone who fights against one of our friends is automatically an enemy?

A: Sometimes that’s true, too. However, if American corporations can profit by selling weapons to both sides at the same time, all the better.

 

Q: Why?

A: Because war is good for the economy, which means war is good for America. Also, since God is on America’s side, anyone who opposes war is a godless un-American Communist. Do you understand now why we attacked Iraq?

 

Q: I think so. We attacked them because God wanted us to, right?

A: Yes.

 

Q: But how did we know God wanted us to attack Iraq?

A: Well, you see, God personally speaks to George W. Bush and tells him what to do.

 

Q: So basically, what you’re saying is that we attacked Iraq because George W. Bush hears voices in his head?

A: Yes! You finally understand how the world works. Now close your eyes, make yourself comfortable, and go to sleep. Good night.

 

Q: Good night, Daddy.

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politics for dummies

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