Smokin'

U.S. Army Cpl. Jacob Bath enjoys a cigarette during a break on Forward Operating Base Farah, Farah province, Afghanistan on April 7, 2009. U.S. Air Force photo by Jonathan Lovelady.

I was stunned when I came across this photo on Military Photos dot net. It was the first time on that site that I had ever seen a member of the US military smoking.

System console for the AN/FSQ-7 computer system, circa 1960. It includes the OA-1008 Situation Display with a light gun (at end of cable), cigarette lighter, and ash tray (left of the light gun). 

The AN/FSQ-7 computer system was part of the Defense Department's early warning radar network. Photo by Joi Ito.

Today I'm looking at US radar systems and I come across this photo of a radar operator's console from 1960, where the cigarette lighter and ashtray are standard equipment. What a difference 50 years makes.

Now that you mention it, it's kind of funny that new cars still come equipped with ashtrays and lighters. The ashtray in my nemesis, the Chrysler Sebring, fits in a cup holder, and is removable, so maybe even the auto industry is changing.

Let The Spirit Move You

Fun with Tires

Blowing Up an Airplane Tire | I Didn't Know That

The video of the IL-76 skating on ice got me to thinking about how hard the ice must be and how big the tires were, which led me to this video from National Geographic. They use water now.

The tires on big aircraft are big (about four feet in diameter), but not a lot bigger than they used to be. We had a big, tractor towed chemical sprayer on the orchard and it rolled around on a couple of big aircraft tires. I imagine that the materials used to make these tires have gotten a lot better.

Orchard Sprayer

Update April 2021 replaced missing photo and dead link.

Anti-Spam Turing Test

I dunno if it's my eyes, or my monitor, or whether these cryptic decoding tasks are getting harder, but some of them are almost impossible to decipher. I failed the first one over at Tam's just now, so when the next one popped up, I said screw this and brought the hammer down. Press Print Screen, which sends a screen image to Picasa, which I leave running most all the time, switch to Picasa, Enlarge and increase the Fill Light and here we have something that, while still nearly illegible, I was at least able to correctly guess the correct values. In the original image the '3' in 3409 was totally obscure.
     To get this image here I had to repeat this process, because Picasa's Export function will not enlarge images even though I clicked Resize to 800 pixels. So I took a screen shot of the enlarged image (yes, a screen shot of a screen shot) and cropped that, and that's what we have here.

P.S. The Turing Test is old idea proposed by Alan Turing for determining if you have an intelligent machine. If you can't tell whether your corespondent is human or not, it passes the test. Since we do not have any intelligent machines yet, if you can decipher these characters, you must be a real person.

Google, the Big Fat Jerk

MY header image disappeared a couple of days ago, so I complained on the Blogger help forum. This morning I got a response, of sorts:

The circle and dash (in this case elongated circle) is an indicator of a permissions problem with an image. Where did you get the image? Is it your own uploaded from your computer? In that case, check the albums at www.picasaweb.com where our uploaded images are hosted and make them public. If the image is from a source other than your own, then you apparently do not have permission to use it.

WTF?!?! Doesn't someone have to complain first before they start with this kind of ham-handed crayola? Anyway, I looked on Picasa, and I couldn't find it. Of course now that they've opened this box they are probably going to complain about all the pictures that I liberated from the clutches of the evil internet. So look while you can, before the thought police start busting heads.

Anyway, I reloaded the header picture. We shall see how long it lasts this time. Jerks. I should go take a new picture. This one is old. The place is twice as big now.

Fun on Ice with the Giant Russian IL-76 Air Freighter

We are operating in Antarctica on an ice runway. Empty, this plane weighs about 100 tons. Loaded, it weighs about 200 tons. It seems to have 20 wheels, which means each wheel is carrying between 5 and 10 tons, which is like 5 times as much as each wheel on a large 18 wheeled semi-truck. This clip only shows 3 minutes out of the middle of the video. Click on the YouTube logo to watch the whole thing (16 minutes).

April Fools

A few days ago we had this:

DAEJEON, Republic of Korea - March 26, 2013. Military leaders at a memorial ceremony for sailors lost in the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan. 46 Sailors died when the ROK warship was destroyed by a North Korea submarine three years ago in the Yellow Sea. U.S. Navy photo by Joshua B. Bruns.

Now we have fatso saying that North Korea has entered "a state of war" with South Korea a day after he threatened the United States because two American B-2 bombers flew a training mission in South Korea.

Why are the soldiers on either side of him holding his arms? If it was just this one photo I wouldn't think too much about it, but I have seen several other photos that are similar.

I really like the high quality boat he is using here. Does this mean he is a man of the people?

For comparison, here is a ship being loaded with rice in South Korea.

Where's the rice going? North Korea. OK, picture is six years old. Still.

For some reason I thought the North and South Korean military were in constant state of high alert, which would exclude any kind of trade or movement of people. That doesn't seem to be the case, witness this scene at a border crossing.

Looks more like the border crossing between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

Many Koreans would like to see their country reunited. These ribbons hanging on the border fence bear this sentiment.

Photos from Military Photos dot net.