Dropping by on a sleepless, poll-heavy night to remind you morons and ettes out there that 270towin.com's America's Electoral Map Contest is rolling along, and entries made before Saturday qualify you for three rounds of drawing for the cash prize of $500. The information tabulated also impacts the overall prediction, currently Obama 284 Romney 254, wherein Romney was making sizable gains until, curiously, today. I guess that was before folks saw the latest Mitchell poll out of Michigan showing the race a dead heat yet again. Anyway, you're up, you're bored, you're probably done fapping, why not take 60 seconds to make some scratch?

Posted by: CAC at 12:02 AM | Comments (37)
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Remembering Neil Armstrong

He was the most famous astronaut of all yet also the quietest, least well known of them.

In The Right Stuff he was portrayed as being a bit boring in his personality and perfection compared to the original Mercury 7. You get a deeper view of the man in Andrew Chaiken's A Man On The Moon where it's clear that he was very, very good and well-liked and respected by his fellow astronauts but didn't particularly crave public attention or enjoy being famous.

And despite being a Navy pilot in the Korean war, a NASA test pilot, and later an Apollo astronaut he always considered himself to be mainly an engineer who flew:

"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow."

So it's no surprise that his main post-NASA career was as a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

But make no mistake - he was a test pilot par excellence who flew over 200 types of aircraft and managed to cheat death with his ability several times before he ever got to the moon.

Armstrong's quiet engineering demeanor was perhaps best demonstrated after a flight in the Lunar Lander Training Vehicle (LLTV). Affectionately known as the "flying bedsteads," the LLTV was used to train astronauts who would be making approaches to the lunar surface and was basically a large jet engine pointed downward and small thrusters that could control the attitude of the vehicle during flight.

It was considered a very difficult, and dangerous aircraft to fly. On a LLTV flight in 1968, Armstrong lost control of the aircraft due to a propellant leak and windy conditions. He ejected only moments before it crashed in a fireball. According to James Hansen's biography, an hour or so later fellow astronaut Alan Bean returned to his desk after lunch and found Armstrong at his own desk simply "shuffling some papers." Bean didn't believe what others had told him about the crash so he asked Armstrong who replied, "I lost control and had to bail out of the darn thing."

And then there's the time he saved himself and Dave Scott during a Gemini mission:

During Armstrong and Dave Scott's Gemini VIII mission, the spacecraft malfunctioned and set itself into a roll (starting around 19'00? in the video above), with a rate approaching 60 RPM (1 revolution every second). At roll rates such as this the danger of humans blacking out becomes very real. Armstrong, as the Command Pilot, kept his cool and managed to stop the roll by activating the Reaction Control System, and then orienting the Gemini craft for a perfect emergency landing into the Pacific Ocean.

When I say perfect, I mean perfect. The craft came down exactly where it was supposed to be, and exactly when it was supposed to be there. Between RCS activation and re-entry, Gemini 8 completed another whole orbit around the Earth with Armstrong at the controls. He then had to manually pilot the capsule into re-entry attitude at just the right moment in order to land in the right spot.

Later during the Apollo 11 mission it was only his last minute manual flying that prevented a moon landing abort.

It was his piloting skills, technical ability and absolute unflappability during an emergency that made him a favorite of the NASA brass. Godspeed Neil Armstrong.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:19 PM | Comments (548)
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Good evening, Morons and Moronettes, and greetings from the AoSHQ Weather Desk. Moron kbdabear coined the term "Geraldo Cantore", and in relation to this storm, he is sooooo right. People have been beating the drum about this (so far) garden-variety storm, and they're not helping anything. So let's get this above the fold and then we'll take it from there.

This storm is not Katrina, redux. So don't panic if you're in its path.

Thank you. More below the fold. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:28 PM | Comments (263)
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A new music video chronicling the SCOAMF's misadventures appears below the fold.

One of my favorite Photoshops by our gal across the pond is at the 1:37 mark.

UPDATE: iTunes: The Voters, Electile Dysfunction, or if you prefer, here's the link to Amazon. more...

Posted by: andy at 01:17 PM | Comments (297)
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On August 25, 1950 President Truman ordered the US Army to take control of the nation's railroads, in anticipation of a crippling railway strike. Two months after North Korea sent seven infantry divisions, 150 medium tanks, 200 aircraft, an armored brigade, a separate infantry regiment, a motorcycle regiment and another batch (brigade) of crazy Border Constables across the 38th parallel into South Korea and launched the Korean War.

Given the stakes, an entire Army mobilizing to move into the fight, Harry was in no mood to eff around.

In a public statement that day, Truman insisted that "governmental seizure [of the railroads] is imperative" for the protection of American citizens as well as "essential to the national defense and security of the Nation." He used the same justification for seizing control of steel plants when the United Steel Workers union struck later in the year.

The three unions involved in the strike that came to pass, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, the Order of Railway Conductors and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen eventually threw themselves into the war effort after 21 months of telling the nation to "please consider our important needs" while American troops fought and died in the field.

This is how it was, in 1950. They haven't changed their stripes at all. Sometimes we need a reminder that this recent unpleasantness between the country and unions didn't just spring up yesterday.

Harry Truman is not exactly a beloved former President by us conservatives, and I'm not giving him a pass on carrying FDR's domestic policies. But there was a time when Democrats were willing to take on the unions for the good of the country, and that's worth noting.

Also, thanks for smacking PATCO Ronnie. "We're on strike," "That's illegal, and you're all fired."

He knew the score.
more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 10:32 AM | Comments (242)
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Zakn here to go through some Gaming Stuff!

Afternoon/Evening M&M's! I hope you had/are having a great weekend. I ended up working alot this week, so there's not alot from me this week.

First off, I would like to encourage everyone that has a game (or games) they play to do a write up of things that are going on with the stuff you play, and send it to me at aoshqgaming at gmail dot com. I'll help you with any editing that is needed and we'll get it up with Attribution.

Luckily I was able to watch a decent amount of the WCS Korea Nationals (Star Craft 2), but more on that later from our resident E-Sports Expert. Despite the debacle that happened at Streetfighter X Tekken (And what happened at Eve Fanfest this year), It's really cool to be able see streams/Casts really go mainstream for just about every game. Although with that greater amount of coverage, goes greater amounts of scrutiny, visibility, and accountability to the larger Gaming Community. We are going through some growing pains, but alot of this is required as Gaming further enters the larger cultural Mainstream. I even saw stories about what happened at StreetFigher X Tekken in my local paper. Granted it was a two month old story at that point, but still. (If you don't know what happened, Google/Bing is your friend)

More below the fold. more...

Posted by: Gang of Gaming Morons! at 09:22 AM | Comments (78)
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Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the underdone, yet overly spiced Sunday Morning book thread.

Movies That Were Actually Better Than The Original Books

We all know that Hollywood has a legendary reputation for taking good books and f*cking them up. Occasionally an "adaptation" is so egregiously bad that the author takes the studio to court to have his name removed from the film credits. Lousy adaptations happen because

(a) the writer is wrong-headed and/or an idiot
(b) the director is wrong-headed and/or an idiot
(c) the producer is wrong-headed and/or an idiot
(c) some combination of (a), (b), and (c)
(d) the book is such that it can't really be adapted;

So when the opposite happens, when Hollywood takes a lousy book and turns it into something really good, it's a much more rare occurrence. But it does happen.

I have three examples.

Jaws: This, of course, was Steven Spielberg's first blockbuster hit. The book it's based on was written by Peter Benchley, the son of legendary humorist Robert Benchley. With a pedigree like that, you'd think that it would be pretty good. It's not. I found a paperback copy in my high school library and, it's a turgid mess, and not worth reading

Forrest Gump: The movie is by no means my favorite, but it got rave reviews when it first came out and it was certainly competently acted and directed. Also, I thought the fake historical scenes were cleverly done. I saw a new copy being sold in an airport bookstore just before a long flight and at first I thought it might be the screenplay turned into a book, but it turned out to be the other way around. So I figured I could waste a few bucks on a cheap read, and "waste" is a good way to describe it. It was so bad, I couldn't finish it and just left it on the plane. It was mind-numbingly dull, and when I got to the part where the main character is playing in an international chess tournament (in the book, Gump is a chess genius) and the chapter starts out something like this, "My opponent played the Ruy Lopez Opening, so I countered with the Sicilian Defense", that was when I threw the book down and said to hell with it. If the author is so lazy that he's not going to do even simple, basic research into the basics of the subject matter he's writing about, he's not worth reading. But it wasn't just this one failure, the whole book up to that point was just sucky, and wasn't enough to make a long, boring business flight bearable.

Also, this provides a good example of something that Hollywood does that drives me nuts, and even though it kind of goes against my thesis, but I'm going to talk about it, anyway. We all remember the pull quote from Forrest Gump, right? "Life is a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get." In other words, life is wonderful and full of wonderful surprises. But the first line of the book is, "Let me say this: bein' an idiot is no box of chocolates." In other words, life is hard, and contains much suckitude. So the screenwriter took the words of the author, twisted them around, and caused them to mean something exactly the opposite from what the author originally intended. If I were an author, I can't imagine how angry I'd be if that were done with something I had written. It'd be like like making a good guy a bad guy in the movie (which, coincidentally, is something that douchebag director James Cameron actually did in his overrated and bloated version of Titanic and ended up having to apologize to an entire Scottish town for it).

And don't get me started on Starship Troopers.

Princess Bride: Written by William 'Lord of the Flies' Goldman, this nook is another one I just couldn't finish. I surprised to find that unlike the movie, it was mean-spirited and ugly. For one thing, I couldn't bring myself to like the book version of Westley, who was kind of an unpleasant dickhole and at one point he actually slapped Buttercup and proceeded to insult and ridicule her. And Goldman's long interruptions of the actual story were irritating rather than interesting or amusing. Looking back on it now, I think Goldman intended it to be a big, ironic joke at the reader's expense, and I either didn't get the joke, or didn't like it. Or maybe both. What a contrast this steaming pile of poo is to the wonderful movie that they made from it, which I've seen dozens of times and which never seems to get old.

Update: William Goldman did NOT write 'Lord of the Flies'. Thanks to the morons for correcting me. I really need to start fact-checking every thing I say in this thread. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:49 AM | Comments (419)
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My advice to Dems and liberals planning on attending peaceful demonstrations at the RNC; they will not be peaceful. Someone else on your side already planned them otherwise. You will get hurt. It's been baked in the cake, by your own organizers, whose intent, absolutely, is to cynically abuse you.

Brandon Darby was tweeting about this the other day and I'm glad to see a full-length explanation of what he's talking about.

Mr. Darby's involvement helped stop the bomb plot at the 2008 RNC. When he infiltrated the protests at the last RNC, he found that both the peaceful, mainstream Dem protesters and the violent douchebags who were trying to shut down the convention were directed by the same organizers. A key to their strategy is that the mainstream people were unaware of the true goal of these organizers.

They divided territory and people into groups. They picked an area to stage from; an area that when taken over and blocked would stop the flow of people to the convention.

Yellow group= the ones who were willing to get arrested; these are the people who would chain themselves into a barricade to stop the convention.

Green group= mainstream Dem liberal protestors who came for a peaceful protest. These people were swarmed into an area to slow down the police while Yellow was setting up its blockage.

Red group= violent black-bloc shitheels who break things and attack the police.

And they would send the red group in to attack the police and then the red group would flee and then that would give the yellow group enough time to lock down and shut the RNC down. Well what was interesting about it, is that when the red group fled then the police would treat the protesters—because they’re all one protest—they would treat them as though they had just been attacked, because they had been. Well then the green group would look like they were innocent protesters who were getting attacked and in their minds they were because they didn’t realize that Lisa Fithian and the leaders were using them as part of this effort to violently attack police and attack conservatives.

So the buses that did get through when they were held up by the yellow group, then the red group would come back and the red group threw bricks and flagstones through the windows, they slashed the tires of the buses, they threw bleach and urine in the delegates faces and they attacked the buses and the people on the buses. And thatÂ’s what theyÂ’re going to do this time.

They also intend to disrupt communications systems used by emergency medical personnel, and seem to have the means. It only looks like a bunch of punks at ground-level. Please go to the article and read the whole thing. Very enlightening. There's a good video there too.

Thanks again to John E.

Posted by: LauraW at 05:42 AM | Comments (232)
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Batten down the hatches, gulf coast morons.

Posted by: andy at 04:05 AM | Comments (132)
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Pssst. Remember ACORN? Well, it's not really dead. It's Back With 174 Rebranded Affiliates. I'm sure the media will join Breitbart in looking at this. Yeah right.

These newly renamed organizations are like career criminal who adopt aliases without changing their criminal lifestyles.” At the end of Righteous Indignation, Andrew Breitbart wrote, “It’s not over yet.”

Posted by: CDR M at 05:52 PM | Comments (752)
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