Kudos to President Obama

I know that it would not be easy to give someone authority to kill another person, but when Somalian pirates took an American ship captain, Richard Phillips, captive, President Obama allowed the US Navy people on site make the decision to use force to rescue the American prisoner if they deemed the prisoner to be in imminent danger.

During tense negotiations, the Somali pirates were seen to have their AK-47s pointed at the kidnapped American ship captain.

From the nearby US Navy ship, snipers shot three pirates with guns pointed at their captive.

The captain was rescued by US Navy Seals.

Hats off to a gutsy call by President Obama to allow the Seals to do what they are trained to do.

Of course, now critics are whining and moaning and predicting a rise in violence, and indeed, the pirates still alive have promised to hurt American or French captives in the future, but they should understand that when you point a gun at someone, you have opened the door to having one used on yourself.

Can you imagine the skill of a person with a rifle who could pick off bad guys bobbing around on a boat, while themselves on a ship in the ocean?

There's no glory in killing someone, but when a terrorist kidnaps an innocent person and points a gun at this person, it's serious. In my opinion, by kidnapping and holding a gun on the kidnapped person, that man has opened the door to be killed himself.

I'm proud of our Navy, and I'm proud President Obama was able to make such a tough call.

Our Special Forces are heroes.

I think Obama and the US Navy did the right thing.

A Cool Place To Kill Some Time

Bored?

Tired of looking at the same old web sites?

Nothing good for sale on Ebay?

Like good photography?

Go over and see the archives at Life Magazine.

Their archive is searchable and there are millions of images there. You can look at everything from classic life photos up to present day images.

I personally tend to get a bigger emotional impact from the older stuff for some reason. (I have always loved National Geographic's photography too, except for articles on bugs and spiders.)

The site won't let you download anything, but you can link to photos.

Here are a few samples from WWII.

An Excellent Find

In the early 1980s, around 1983, I read a book called Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart.

When I was growing up, my parents would go to the local paperback book exchange and take in at least two paper sacks of books they had read, and come home with a couple of sacks of books that needed reading.

It was pretty much a genetic given, that I would love to read.

I didn't read much for pleasure until after I got out of high school though. I began to read more and more around the first time I was in college.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction for pleasure. I have to read so much technical stuff for work, and I buy engineering texts to help keep current with technology changes for work, so when I read for pleasure, I tend to read fiction novels. (I do like to read non-fiction about physics and mathematics, however.)

In one of my parent's sacks of paperbacks, I found and read Long Voyage Back.

It was my first post-apocalyptic novel.

Something about the story just struck me, probably because I had always been intrigued by "marooned on desert island" or "last man on earth" type stories and movies.

The book has as it's background, and all-out nuclear conflict between America and the USSR, but never gets very close to the actual bomb sites.

The main character is a US Naval Academy graduate, Navy veteran, and current captain for hire on rich folk's sailboats.

As the story begins, he's coming into Chesapeake Bay to bring a man his sailboat, when a flash occurs to the north. Washington has been nuked.

The story follows this man, the boat's owner and son, and others as they flee fallout to the ocean and for months as they try to survive.

The book has a good, hopeful ending, which I'm a sucker for, and it just really stuck with me.

Over the years I've read many other post-apocalyptic novels, and some were more intricate and complex than Long Voyage Back, but that one always stayed in the back of my mind.

Several years ago, I thought about the book, but couldn't remember the name or author, but since Al Gore was nice enough to invent this here internet thingy, I did a search and found that folks have whole web sites on post-apocalyptic novels.

One site I found had a list of one man's favorite books in this genre, as well as a brief synopsis of each book. I read through his list, and sure enough, he mentioned this book and I was able to relearn the title and author.

I always wanted a copy of this book, but it's out of print, and paperback copies of it that I had seen, can be $15-$20, so I never bought one.

But a couple of weeks ago, I found a web store called Alibris, which has a huge network of book stores and I was able to locate a very good condition hardback version of Long Voyage Back, with dust jacket, for a mere $10.

I couldn't resist. So for less than $15 with shipping, I finally got a good copy of this old favorite of mine. (I'm one of those people who likes to reread books I really like every few years.)

So for me, this was a fun, inexpensive score.

It was great to reread the book.

Some good post apocalyptic novels that I've read:
Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
The Stand by Steven King
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

I Needed A Laugh

Frank J., founder and fount of incredibly funny wisdom, at IMAO, had a blog post about dubious things that Europeans do and say, and had this final remark:

I’m just glad there is an ocean between us and Europe. We should fill it with sea monsters (like Predator X) to be on the safe side, though.

That just cracked me up for some reason. I got a mental picture of old drawings of sea monsters and stuff, keeping us from being contaminated by European ways.

Picture Post, Sunday April 5, 2009

Cars And Guitars

Kowabunga, Dude!

Several shots of a custom Dodge in front of Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I'm no surfer (too old, too fat, don't care), but I'd be proud to drive this ride around.



This inexpensive copy of a Telecaster Thinline was my present from Santa this past Christmas. I suck too much as a player to plunk down $900 for a "real" one with the Fender logo, but this SX brand copy is easily as good as Fender's Squier range of guitars. And at a mere $150, easy on the wallet.

The bridge area of an SX brand Stratocaster copy that I've had for several years. I guarantee this is the best $100 guitar you will ever find. (Yes, literally, $99.99) And the pickups are surprisingly good; this thing has great tone.

Been A While / Venting About Obama

Just working and not much else.

Last week I went in and had a procedure done on my back where they cauterize nerves on each side of my lower spine. This burning of the nerves can lessen pain. Though the procedure and the soreness from the procedure are no fun, if the pain reduction works, it can last a year. It's worth the gamble. Two weeks of soreness from the procedure, and then, hopefully, a year or so of relief.

Well, a week into this, I have to say that I am having some relief of the pain in my lower back. I hurt in my lower back, much as if I was having a migraine in my back. I also have pain in and down my left leg, though that is not affected by this procedure.

The migraine in my lower back feeling, has been lessened. So at this point, I'm glad I had the procedure done.

I wish I had some amazing stories to tell, humor to share, SOMETHING, but I don't. I have just felt so bad that I had no desire to be witty, erudite, or even just plain spoken.

The whole Obama as president thing is a bummer of incredible magnitude. (If you love Obama and what he's doing, then do not read any further.)

We have gone mad and elected a MadMan as our president, and he's surrounded himself with other madmen.

For someone who was supposed to be a great orator, Obama says "uh" and "um" more than any other human I've ever seen. Bush couldn't open his mouth without people calling him stupid, but Obama makes Bush sound like a genius by comparison when Obama isn't on a teleprompter or if they haven't set up a large TV in the back of the room for him to speak from. I went to Louisiana public schools and Louisiana and Georgia public universities, but even I know that you are not supposed to say "uh" and "um" in public speaking. Listening to Obama answer press questions is painful for me. Obama says "uh" so often that it makes Bush's occasional use of "NOO-kyoo-ler" sound quaint and sweet.

Obama gives the Prime Minister of Great Britain a set of DVDs as a gift, and if that isn't the perfect example of the MOST LAME GIFT, EVER, GIVEN BY ONE HEAD OF STATE TO ANOTHER, then I don't know what is. But it gets better; the DVDs are coded for use in North America. Gordon Brown cannot even watch his lame gift if he wants to. Stupid idiot.

Then, for the G20 summit, Obama gives the Queen of England an ipod. Yep, an ipod. But it gets better as well. The Queen already has an ipod, well publicized, so there was no excuse. It gets better still, Obama has already loaded the ipod with things he, in his infinite conceit, thought the Queen should be listening to. But it gets ever more better, Obama has also loaded audio of his own speeches on there too. He's so frickin' egotistical that he actually believes the lies that people love his campaign speeches. Whoop-tee-doo. The man can read from a teleprompter. He hasn't had an original thought in his life, certainly never voiced anything new in any of his campaign speeches, but because he's not Bush, he's loved.

Now while these gift items aren't really important in the scheme of things, it's a telling look at what a low-class schmuck Obama is. Even a nobody like me knows those were two mega-lame gifts.

All I can say is, as much fault as I found with many of Bush's policies, I miss him, because Obama is plain scary. Dangerous, unbelievably egotistical, and nowhere near as intelligent as his fawning followers believe.

Mr. Obama promised the most ethical administration ever, and he just nominated his fifth income tax cheat as his choice for high office. What a liar.

Mr. Obama promised there would be no lobbyists in his administration, but he's appointed several to important positions. Liar again.

Overall, Mr. Obama's promises of change and high standards have fallen under the onslaught of his penchant for putting corrupt cronies in high position.

And through it all, a fawning national media give him a free pass on everything.

It's all pretty sickening.

Don't get me started on his 3.5 trillion dollar budget that Obama submitted. We cried foul and thought the Bush administration and the Republican held Congress spent like drunken sailors; Obama and the Democrat held Congress' spending make Bush and the Republicans look like penny-pinching misers.

I'll try to come up with some more stories from my youth, and more positive things.

Getting back into the habit and thought process of remembering things that I'd like to write for posterity, and creating the mood to write by sitting my rear end in a chair and starting typing, is difficult.

There's a lot of inertia to overcome.

Hope I can do it and start posting here again on a daily basis.

God Bless America.

Over and out.

The Cause of Gray Hair, or, Scientists Is Stoopid!

This proves that researchers and scientists can be dumb as rocks.

Read:

Why Hair Goes Gray
Study Blames a Chain Reaction That Makes Hair Bleach Itself From the Inside Out
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Feb. 25, 2009 -- Scientists may have figured out why hair turns gray, and their finding may open the door to new anti-graying strategies.

New research shows that hair turns gray as a result of a chemical chain reaction that causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.

The process starts when there is a dip in levels of an enzyme called catalase. That catalase shortfall means that the hydrogen peroxide that naturally occurs in hair can't be broken down. So hydrogen peroxide builds up in the hair, and because other enzymes that would repair hydrogen peroxide's damage are also in short supply, the hair goes gray.

Putting the brakes on that chemical chain reaction "could have great implications in the hair graying scenario in humans," write the researchers, who included Karin Schallreuter, a professor clinical and experimental dermatology at England's University of Bradford.

The study appears online in The FASEB Journal; the FASEB is the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

That's just silly.

EVERYONE knows that children are the cause of gray hair.

Buncha dummies.

So much for me thinking that scientists and researchers are smart.

I'm glad there were no engineers mentioned, I'd hate to have been lumped in with this know-nothing bunch.