I'm just sayin.

That's a trucked radar in Juneau (just like the one we just deployed to Israel), an Aegis ship (just like the one that shot down that toxic spy satellite), the massive SBX Sea-Based X-Band radar, and a huge permanent radar in CA (older than the planned Czech radar) --- all working together and feeding the fire control. And speaking of fire control, get this...

This is the future of air defense. It used to be a gaggle of B-36s, and later 52s. On alert. Subs. North Dakota.

This is the new " MaryeÂ’s Heights".

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:13 PM | Comments (44)
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Anyone who says the "suits" are always ruining a writer's pristine, authentic original vision has to consider the sort of deranged and stupid crap that sometimes constitutes a pristine, though retarded, authentic original vision.

They only barely scratch the surface with Star Wars, by the way. If you pick up the Annotated Scripts for Star Wars, you'll see that George Lucas didn't "change" with the three sequels -- he was always retarded. Everything you like from Star Wars didn't come from him at all. It came from the two veteran screenwriters he brought in to make sense of his retarded gibberish.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (75)
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They met on the internet, incidentally.

A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea.

Scott Napper planned to pop the question to Leafil Alforque, 22, at a spot near Neskowin Beach that got its name from couples ready to marry.

Napper said the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk to it. He planned to propose and give her the ring he carried in his pocket.

About 10 feet from the rock, a wave around 3 feet high suddenly came toward them.

"I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it," Napper said.

By the time he turned to find Alforque, only 4-foot-11 and 93 pounds, she had been caught by the receding waters.

"She was about 30 feet away, getting swept away," Napper said.

The 45-year-old Silverton man tore off his jacket to get rid of any extra weight, and when he looked up again she was gone.

"That's the last I saw of her," he said Wednesday, breaking into tears.

Emergency personnel called by someone on the beach arrived within minutes. His own phone no longer worked after being exposed to the water.

Along with rescuers, he searched for any sign of Alforque.

"I yelled for her," he said. "I was praying to God."

...

Thick fog and dangerous water conditions hampered the rescue efforts before the search was called off Monday.

Locals hope to mitigate the damage done to the site's reputation, through rebranding. The town is debating changing the rock's name from "Proposal Rock" to "Xtreme Proposal Rock."

"It's just a matter of marketing and brand-positioning," one councilman said.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (127)
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A bullshitty excuse for deliberately offending all religious Americans.

RS McCain isn't buying it.

She continues attempting to be Maureen Dowd, minus the talent*:

In the several days since I first used the term in a column describing the Republican party’s “religious” problem, oogedy-boogedy seems to have entered the bloxicon. (New word invented right here, meaning: the blogosphere’s lexicon.)

Oh, God. What are you, thirteen? You really think ever stupid-cutesy notion that enters your head is pure gold, don't you?

Oogedy-boogedy, indeed.

* Which is a position that doesn't need filling, as we already have a Maureen Dowd minus the talent. We call her "Maureen Dowd."

Thanks to The Watcher.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (149)
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The second clip, showing a side-angle, shows the hit.

More details here.

That's impressive, but still a fair way from the goal: integrating this system on a vehicle and intercepting RPGs (or other threats) while on the move.

Now I would have thought that was pretty much impossible. But I guess it's not.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this is completely impossible, and while I dig the ambition, I can't help thinking that DARPA has better uses for its research dollars than developing a remote-control guided sniper bullet.

Darpa, the Defense Department's far-out research arm, announced a pair of contracts last Tuesday, to start designing a super, .50-caliber sniper rifle that fires guided bullets. Lockheed Martin received $12.3 million for the "Exacto," or Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance, project, while Teledyne Scientific & Imaging got another $9.5 million.

If the system works, it'll "provide a dramatic new capability to the U.S. military," Darpa says. "The use of an actively controlled bullet will make it possible to counter environmental effects such as crosswinds and air density, and prosecute both stationary and moving targets while enhancing shooter covertness. This capability would have the further benefit of providing increased accuracy and range while reducing training requirements."

"In other words," Danger Room's Sharon Weinberger wrote last year, "it would be the ultimate sniper round."

Come on now.

Maybe I just can't stop thinking of how stupid Gene Simmons' guided bullets looked. How fast were they moving? Sightly faster than a jogging man, it looks like.

Thanks to Maetenloch.

Hmmm... Robb Allen of Sharp as a Marble explains a way to do this that seems kinda doable.

I don't think they mean bullets that can turn 90 degrees and go around corners, they mean rounds with fins that can elevate or slightly correct yaw so that the round stays straight.

When doing long range shooting, you have to compensate for the drop in the bullet by aiming high and you have to compensate for wind. Unfortunately, at long distances, you can't tell what the wind is like, so you have to guess.

Consider using a laser to pinpoint the path you wish the bullet to take. The base of the bullet has fins that, so long as the base of the bullet is directly in the path of the laser, none of the fins are illuminated. As soon as the bullet starts to veer off that path, the energy from the laser is absorbed by the fins, causing them to force the bullet back towards the laser (through flexing or something. I'm not a DARPA guy and have trouble with safety scissors).

By compensating the bullet's path by changing it's shape, you can keep a shot on target regardless of conditions. Heck, even a light angle change should be feasible, meaning the shooter doesn't have to be the guy aiming the laser thus making it harder to pinpoint where to return fire.

HOWEVER... If they don't get Gene Simmons to demo this, I'll be pissed.

Bonus: I've linked the video of the combo AR-15/chainsaw before, but here's a good picture where you can actually see the thing.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (84)
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Wrist slaps all around. Cover ups are also no big deal.

We pretty much already knew this -- she's said it before -- but she's saying it again, as Ohio lawmakers look at tightening up a law previously believed to be pretty tight.

Don't go snooping on political rivals. Apparently that was too vague for some.

The state worker who unwittingly ran an improper child-support check on the man known as Joe the Plumber told lawmakers yesterday that a deputy director later "dictated" how she was supposed to cover it up.
Vanessa Niekamp, an administrator for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services' Office of Child Support and a 15-year state employee, said that when Deputy Director Doug Thompson came into her office, "He appeared very upset, his neck was bright red, and he was shaking. He closed my door."

Thompson told her she must write an e-mail to the agency's information-security officer, and then "dictated word for word" what she wrote, Niekamp said. He also reminded her that she could be fired at any time, she said.

"Within an hour, I took the rest of the day off -- again using my vacation time -- and went directly to the office of the inspector general. I told them everything I knew about what happened."

Niekamp took another day of vacation yesterday to testify before the House State Government and Elections Committee about legislation that calls for the firing of any unclassified state employee who improperly accesses confidential personal information.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (42)
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I was going to put this in the headlines but people are starting to talk about it in other threads, so here you go.

It's on Fox and probably some other networks right now.

Stand by for the numbers.

According to Roger Cossack on ESPN, Simpson gets 15 years (parole eligible after 5 years) then he gets a 1-6 years on a gun enhancement charge and then a 1.5-6 years on another charge tacked on after he serves whatever part of the 15 he does. Cossack says under the best case scenario for Simpson it's likely 8-10 when it all shakes out (that assumes he gets parole on the first shot in 5 years).

FTR-OJ is 61.

Hardest hit by this sentence...scumbag hanger-ons and the search for the 'real killer'.

Can we now forget about this piece of shit?

Posted by: DrewM at 09:16 AM | Comments (139)
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Once again people are shocked that the business cycle hasn't been outlawed. Combine that with a financial sector meltdown and this is what you get.

Skittish employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, catapulting the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, dramatic proof the country is careening deeper into recession.

The new figures, released by the Labor Department Friday, showed the crucial employment market deteriorating at an alarmingly rapid clip, and handed Americans some more grim news right before the holidays. The net loss of more than a half-million jobs was far worse than analysts expected.

As companies throttled back hiring, the unemployment rate bolted from 6.5 percent in October to 6.7 percent last month, a 15-year high.

"These numbers are shocking," said economist Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economics Advisors. "Companies are sharply reacting to the economy's problems and slashing costs. They are not trying to ride it out."

The unemployment rate would have moved even higher if not for the exodus of 422,000 people from the work force. Economists said many of those people probably abandoned their job searches out of sheer frustration. In November 2007, the jobless rate was at 4.7 percent.

I'm not buying into the whole 'this is the second Great Depression' stuff but it's clearly going to be a tough couple of months or more.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:48 AM | Comments (95)
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Good morning, darling hobo rustlers. It's FiAF again. Long week, eh? It's always like that after a holiday.

This week seems to have lasted forever. Feels like ages ago that I was eating sweet potato pie with the fam and knuckle-smackin' my red-headed cousin upside his big stupid orange head.

Tipster eddiebear sends this rancid puddin' cup to us:

Apparently “plump boobs and hot thighs” were too much for the 54-year-old pornography customer’s heart, who died while watching porn in one of the video-booths at the sex-shop on Bischofsplatz, the paper said.

---------------------------------------

A call to emergency services came too late to help the man. Though authorities suspect he died of a heart attack, the doctor on the scene could not determine the cause of death at the time, and the corpse was handled over to police.

Strategic misspelling in that last para. Sorry. My bad.

Hey, it's no one's fault that there's funny ways to die. The best we can do is try not to crack up during the eulogy.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:56 AM | Comments (75)
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Happy Repeal Day! Does this mean I can drink on the job?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:26 AM | Comments (37)
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