H&I* Fires, 30 APR 2007

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.

You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

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From the Telegraph, via CAPT H, we offer this bit of fun reading:

Some joker has got his hands on of one of our aircraft. Unfortunately, that joker is me. I am at 36,000ft in an RAF Typhoon (aka the Eurofighter, cost £66.7 million), "flying" the result of Britain's most expensive and probably most controversial weapons project at almost the speed of sound above an unsuspecting part of Lincolnshire.

What is truly alarming is not the speed or the altitude or the cost, or even that I have just been asked to execute a turn, but the fact that to grip the control column, I have to detach at least one hand from the sick bag I am clutching to my chest.

My single-handed wobbling of the stick isn't the "right stuff" either. "Normally," muses Group Captain Al Mackay from the seat in front of me, "we would pull more than 1.1G - given that 1G is what pilots experience when they are sitting on the ground."

Read the rest here, in "The Fright Stuff."

Need a little "cute" (and I mean "CUTE") in your day? SWWBO sent just the thing.

Jules talks Turkey.

Heh. Changing topics... while pondering gun control issues and such (so as to have a wide range of things with which to chat with Representative Boyda and her staff, should the opportunity rise and we're all still talking to each other after the first 5 minutes) it occurs to me that there is an interesting dichotomy in the gun control debate. With cities and states like California, Illinois, New York, etc notwithstanding, at the state level, much of the gun-related lawmaking has revolved around extending the reach of concealed carry, and some protections of gun owners from predatory lawsuits and overzealous city councils and the like. And with all the broader reach of concealed carry, the gun-controllers fantasy of "Dodge City" (a badly overused metaphor trotted out by the two Kansas governors (a Rep and a Dem) to explain their vetos, and they should have known better) with gunfights due to road rage, and outbreaks of firefights in the shopping mall parking lots... well, that pretty much hasn't materialized. Anywhere. And where those events *do* break out, oddly enough, many of them happen in "gun free zones."

At the Federal level, it tends to *more* regulation, though not exclusively, to be sure. Even though most regulation only affects the law-abiding, as Representative Carolyn McCarthy's new AWB will do, punching holes, as it will, in some of the Arsenal's holdings, even. None of this is as simple as either side would make it out to be - but it seems the only solutions sought are simplistic. And usually ineffective. But let people off the hook because they "did something". Heh. Just rambling. -the Armorer

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No my good LTC, you don’t see them shot down in bucketloads. You see them cut down in drips and drabs. But because it’s drips and drabs, regardless of overall total, it’s all good. They get blown to bits in bucketloads though. Gassed? Si.

But not shot. So that’s all plus then, right?
ry
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Sony - what were they thinking? Good golly, the end of civilization just might be at hand... or at least any sense of restraint. -the Armorer

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Moving onto something more serious: The Battle for Afghanistan.
1) Hearts and minds.
2) Reconstruction efforts and effects.
3) Taking the fight to the enemy.
-ry (and as a gamer, what do you mean by maligning Sony's game launch party, John? Prudish some?(flees in terror of The Big Boot))
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Prudish? Hardly. It's quite apparent that I'm not their target demographic, either. But people my age are the parents of a good chunk of their target demographic, and one wonders if having a freshly slaughtered goat, still warm, for people to reach in and eat offal from by the handful, all while surrounded by topless chicks serving drinks isn't an example of marketing gone amok... You'll note I didn't call for regulation, I didn't call for a boycott (though, admittedly, I'll keep it in the back of my mind when making consumer choices) nor did I say you couldn't go. Though I'd be vaguely disappointed to find you speaking favorably of it, vice just pinging me. -the Armorer

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