JamesSavik

The supermoon of 2011 was followed shortly by the Japanese tsunami and quakes. The supermoon of 2004 occurred just before the Christmas Tsunami. The great earthquake that struck Hati in 2010 and Christchurch, NZ in 2011 also coincided with supermoons. So... I wonder what the supermoon of 2013 will bring. http://www.livescience.com/33106-will-supermoon-cause-earthquake-storm-natural-disasters.html http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/supermoon-and-earthquakes-is-t/46883

I know a lot of navy people that have been stationed in Japan and Okinawa. According to people who should know, the sex industry in Japan offers more kink than even squids can stomach.

The human mouth is an astonishingly dirty place from a micro-biological perspective. It's a great place to grow bacteria with moisture, warmth and a variety of food sources plus the introduction of numerous alien bacteria while eating. There are thousands of tame bacteria that live there and a great many those can act badly if they move into another environment. My mother had a long running infection in her eyes that took over a year to clear with powerful anti-biotics. Many bacteria are developing resistance to anti-biotics because those drugs are being over used in the human population and the production of poultry and beef.

>>Whydo so many people hate twilight? Because it sucks.

OLD YELLOW

National InSecurity In the last week a whistle-blower exposed embarrassing revelations about the NSA. The National Security Agency is so secret that many federal workers that saw references to the "NSA" were told in no uncertain terms that as far as they were concerned that stood for "No Such Agency". NSA's bailiwick is an obscure branch of spook-dom called signals intelligence which has been around since people used to splice into telegraph lines and listen to the message traffic. In World War I, various parties wanted to listen to trans-Atlantic traffic bound for interesting embassies. Later, in World War II US codebreakers turned the Pacific War when they discovered that an attack was imminent on Midway island. Armed with that information, the US Navy was able to surprise the Japanese fleet and sink four of the six carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months before. In the Atlantic the capture of a German Enigma machine cracked the German Navy's codes which were used to coordinate U-boat activity. This gave the Allies a tremendous advantage and turned the Battle of the Atlantic. It was scoops like the Midway signals intercepts and breaking the Enigma codes that showed the Allies the real war-winning advantages of signals intelligence. Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Nimitz all made special efforts to expand and improve this vital capability. In the post war world, the US and the UK both knew the inestimable value of intelligence derived by signals analysis. Military and civilian leaders on both sides of the Atlantic knew and understood how vitally important these capabilities were. Even in the post-war build downs, they found the money necessary to retain and improve these capabilities. Once the the Cold War heated up, SIGINT became one of the very hottest areas of intelligence. The Soviets began looking for nuclear secrets well before the end of WWII. Stalin wanted nuclear weapons and was willing and able to flood the US and the UK with spies. In 1946 the US and UK broke a code used by Soviet embassies and discovered how big the Soviet spying effort really was. The project was known as Verona and was a joint US-UK effort. In 1947 the US and the UK signed a secret treaty where they cooperated in monitoring trans-Atlantic cables which became the first widespread surveillance of public communications media in peace time. There was a lot to like about Signals Intelligence. You don't have double agents. You don't have to bribe anybody. You don't have all of the problems that you do when you are running human assets. SigInt never sleeps. It doesn't lie and it never takes a holiday. A great deal of money was spent and it became the West's most powerful and durable strategic intelligence asset. The NSA's ancestor was the Armed Forces Security Agency. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) played a major role in the development of computer, networking technology and eventually even the Internet itself. Billions and BILLIONS of dollars were spent on R&D and the development of new capabilities and technologies. This even included the design, launch and operation of spy satellites with various capabilities like photographic recon, IR recon and the capture of faint radio signals. In fact in 1959 the US launched the Vela series of satellites to detect nuclear detonations. These satellites discovered by chance Gamma Ray Bursters in the distant universe and inadvertently gave birth to orbital observatories and astronomy beyond the visible spectra. In the mid eighties the US and UK brought a system online called Echelon which have the capabilities that we are now collectively freaking out over. It could electronically "listen" to signals and pick up on keywords and focus on individuals. These capabilities have only been improved and upgraded over the years. These systems did not arrive on 9/11. They did not creep out of the Patriot Act. They have been growing and evolving in the shadows for decades funded by literally trillions of dollars in black budgets that your congressman has never heard of. The reliance on SigInt has consequences. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, US intelligence agencies have become dependent on SigInt and allowed their human intelligence capabilities to atrophy. They called it "the Peace Dividend". There were huge defense and intelligence cuts and the US intelligence establishment had to chose. They hung onto their SigInt capabilities at the expense of allowing their human intelligence assets to dry up and blow away. It was human assets that we blew off in Afghanistan that turned around and bit us on 9/11. It was SigInt that was completely blind to hand delivered messages and couriers that Osama bin Laden used to run his networks. It is those human assets that the US has had to develop to fight the war on terrorism. We have purchased the capability with trillions of dollars and concentrated effort over many decades. There have been many, many technological spin-offs that have sparked our economy. Reacting hysterically is simple idiocy. This technological terror has been here for decades. Those of us in the tech business quit talking about it years ago because people labeled us conspiracy nuts and invited us to don tin hats. Our task is to find a middle way to live with the beast but refuse to allow it to devour us. That requires oversight and that's just the sort of thing that spooks hate.

God-hood is an exceptionally ephemeral state. It does not take long to find the feet of clay and that being omniscient is an exceptional pain in the ass.

they really are a cute couple of pups.

if you drink enough, every movie is funny.

GAAAH! It's too hawt to eat. Too much humidity. 96 degrees (35.5 C). What have you got for summer vittles?

There are hard limits on what we can do with robotics and artificial intelligence. So... if SkyNet is really smart, they'll wait a while to kill all humans while we shore up some key technologies.

Whats under those hills can make a big difference too. Big iron and other deposits of heavy metals can skew the local gravity. If you look at the lunar distribution, you might see that some craters line up with the gravitational anomalies. One of the theories is that impact events enriched those sites.

Only the dead have seen the end of war. Only the mad desire it.

After seeing an article that was embarrassingly and egregiously full of crap, I created a much more relevant 10 tips... James Savik's 10 tips for young men 1. Pull up your pants so you don't look like a prison punk. 2. Know exactly what those Chinese characters mean before they become your tattoo. Unless you read and write Mandarin, you really wouldn't know the difference between "wisdom and strength" and "little bitch". 3. Know what to do in a fight. Kick balls or clock somebody with a brick. The object is to get away without scars, not to win an MMA trophy. 4. Know how long to take shit and when to say "up yours". 5. Own a knife. 6. Know the basics of handguns. Ignorance kills. 7. Have some idea of what you will do if the shit hits the fan. Don't wait until you are covered in it and the fan is sitting there slinging it across the room. 8. Wear the right shoes in the right size. Looking Cool doesn't mean SQUAT when you are on your feet all day. 9. Sometimes you just have to have the steak. 10. Never, ever, even accidentally have sex with one of your significant other's siblings.

James Savik's 10 tips for young men (I'll make more if you're hot) 1. Pull up your pants so you don't look like a prison punk. 2. Know exactly what those Chinese characters mean before they become your tattoo. Unless you read and write Mandarin, you really wouldn't know the difference between "wisdom and strength" and "little bitch". 3. Know what to do in a fight. Kick balls or clock somebody with a brick. The object is to get away without scars, not to win an MMA trophy. 4. Know how long to take shit and when to say "up yours". 5. Own a knife. 6. Know the basics of handguns. Ignorance kills. 7. Have some idea of what you will do if the shit hits the fan. Don't wait until you are covered in it and the fan is sitting there slinging it across the room. 8. Wear the right shoes in the right size. Looking Cool doesn't mean SQUAT when you are on your feet all day. 9. Sometimes you just have to have the steak. 10. Never, ever, even accidentally have sex with one of your significant other's siblings.

Agreed. The less said about Fred Figglehorn ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Figglehorn ) the better.

Ray Manzarek Dead: (one of) The Doors Founding Members Dies At 74 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/ray-manzarek-dead-the-doors_n_3308853.html Ray Manzarek, most known as a founding member of the '60s rock band The Doors, is dead. According to a message posted on the the bands facebook page, Manzarek died of bile duct cancer while in Rosenheim, Germany, on Monday, May 20. He was 74. Wife Dorothy Manzarek and brothers Rick and James were by his side. ___________________________________ Ray Manzarek was the highly influential and and innovative keyboardist for the Doors in the late sixties/early seventies. The following clips show Manzarek's use of the organ in "Light My Fire" and the electric piano in "Riders on the Storm". When so many bands were power trios, the Doors and others showed that if you were innovative in their use, keyboards could and did add serious depth and strength to any line up. RIP Ray. You will be missed. -JS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvVCCMG-JoQ

Earth would be as beaten up as the moon if it wasn't there. What doesn't hit our moon is often deflected by the geometry of the gravitational differential between the earth and the moon.

I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact I think that I have. I call the re-makes regurgitation- something the Hollyweird people barf out to cash in on someone else creativity. If you are going to re-imagine a movie, do what was done with Judge Dredd. Make it much, much better than the original.

I remember when the eye of Katrina moved over us. We thought it was all over. The skies cleared, rain stopped and the winds stopped howling. Electricity and comms were out so we didn't know that we were in the eye. We were in for another 16 hours of 100mph winds, storm, lightning and random tornadoes. The scary part of it is that you you can see the other side coming toward you at some point and it doesn't look at all friendly. Katrina wasn't the most powerful storm ever. What it lacked in wind velocity, it made up for in its slow speed of advance. Most hurricanes blow through relatively quickly. Because a front in Arkansas slowed Katrin's speed of advance, that bitch hung around for 36 hours.

Lately there has been an emphasis on the field part of my job as a field engineer. I have been driving quite a lot. I've been listening to audio books. Some I've read, some I haven't. Dune, Frank Herbert Ender's Game- Card Foundation- Asimov Cryptonomicon- Stevenson Ubik- Dick Red Storm Rising- Clancy Out of the Dark- Weber There's something I really like about audio books. Hearing the spoken word does something for a novel. It's something as a writer that I've taken note of. Now as I've writing something, when I finish a section I read it aloud to hear how it sounds. I think that makes a GREAT difference. There are profound differences in how we write and how we speak. It's off topic but it is something that writers really should pay attention to if you want to find that elusive thing called your voice.

Orson Scott Card had to make a big concessions to make Ender's Game. Ender isn't the little kid that he was in the book. In the movie, he's more like ~16 and it's a hanging point that Card had twice shot down projects over. They have compressed the time that he's in battle school from years to months. It was just too hard to get a kid that age with the appropriate acting chops and they couldn't make a movie eight hours long.. I recently listened to the audio book version of EG while driving a LONG stretch on a recent job. As much as I detest Card, I hope the Hollyweird crowd (a bunch that I don't care for for their cynical disregard for making GOOD movies) doesn't whore out his classic.

Neither were nice people. Both abused the power of their position.

OSS recruiting for operatives focused on Americans with European backgrounds- immigrants who spoke the language and were conversant enough with the culture to fit in. Many, many families got out in the late thirties when things were going bad in Germany. There was also a rush of people as the various European states fell- Poland, the Scandinavian states and France. There were also a number of Russians that bailed on Bolshevism and that started after the Russian Revolution (1917) and continued as a trickle on to the end of the Cold War. There was a legendary OSS agent that was born Russian, spoke English, Russian, German and French fluently. He was sort of a spymaster on the ground for the OSS and was inside occupied Europe for most of the war. OSS agents knew very little so if they were captured, they couldn't betray much. Their operations and missions were very specific in nature and relied heavily on the underground for support. They traveled on stolen or forged documents (expertly done). Ordinarily they carried nothing that would betray them like weapons, papers or exotic equipment. Things that they needed for missions were either air-dropped or provided by resistance contacts. OSS agents and their resistance counterparts were often given coded orders, requests or instructions by BBC broadcasts. For instance: John has a long mustache was the code phrase that the Normandy Invasions were on within 24 hours. Certain songs had significance. If the BBC played Tchaikovsky and then followed it up by Mahler, that might mean that the Allies needed information on which U-boats that were in port. All sorts of coded information was passed in this manner. Getting into occupied Europe was accomplished by numerous methods. It all depends on where they needed to go. The movies do air drops a disservice: they were exceptionally dangerous in daylight or dark. Even an expert might wait too long to pull the rip cord in the dark. They were used but not nearly as often as you might think. Many operatives were inserted by boat or submarine. Norway's coast made it exceptionally easy to get in. This was also the case in the Med where Italian and Greek fishermen were often helpful for bribes of gold or weapons. France was by far the easiest are to get on the continent because the Marquis (French resistance) was so pervasive and capable. Nazi Death/Concentration Camps were mostly located in Poland- deep inside of occupied Europe. Their real operations were kept a deep secret. There were inklings of what were going on but it wasn't until the the camps were actually liberated that the Allies knew the extent of the Holocaust. There were other types of camps- primarily labor camps where LGBT people were used for hard labor like construction, building defensive positions in France and repairing bomb damage to factories. Look up Organization Todt. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_Todt). Todt units were everywhere and were often given a great deal of freedom and treated far better compared to others because of their usefulness. A 17 year old in Hitler's Germany would have a very difficult time. If one was seen out just walking around with no good explanation for why they were there, it might be assumed that they were a deserter. Deserters were often shot on the spot. Even people with severe physical limitations were used somewhere in the Reich. No one was allowed to travel freely. It was very much a paranoid police state. For obvious reasons, OSS agents used indigenous weapons because by using a weapon like a .45, he might as well leave a note that says an American was here. Typical handguns in the Reich would be pistols by Walthers and the ubiquitous German Luger. Typically OSS agents were HIGHLY trained in the use of silent weapons like knives or garrote.

If they had just been willing to come off some money, they would still have Brett Farve.