Guide vanes in the 19-foot Pressure Wind Tunnel at Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, form an ellipse 33 feet high and 47 feet wide. The 23 vanes force the air to turn corners smoothly as it rushes through the giant passages. If vanes were omitted, the air would pile up in dense masses along the outside curves, like water rounding a bend in a fast brook. Turbulent eddies would interfere with the wind tunnel tests, which require a steady flow of fast, smooth air. (March 15, 1950)

Much more here.

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil.

read the rest here

I’ve never owned a firearm, but did gain some proficiency with a weapon just like the one pictured above (albeit not so ‘cute’). I sympathise with the Sparks family but must say that giving a live gun to a 5-year-old is like handing that child the keys to the family car… criminally irresponsible. The NRA actively promotes this sort of ‘family enrichment’ behaviour.

When the Lenin Power Station / Chernobyl nuclear reactor #4 melted down and exploded on 26 April 1986 in the Ukraine SSR, it was days before the West knew anything was amiss in the “Worker’s Paradise”… When West Germany, Denmark and Sweden began reporting a huge plume of radiation wafting northwest from the Ukraine, the Soviet news services Tass and Pravda (‘truth’) finally published a ‘below the fold’ story about a ‘minor test mishap’ at Chernobyl. The truth of course, was far, FAR worse.

This docu-drama from the BBC conveys some of the horror and confusion of that accident… it literally sent chills down my spine in a couple of places. It also pretty graphically exposes the systemic flaws in the Soviet model of government: strict hierarchy, pathological denial, a ‘CYA’ mindset, and a deep, pervading SECRECY that stifled EVERYTHING. The courage and self-sacrifice of hundreds of individual Ukrainians and Russians nearly went for naught in the face of such monolithic turpitude. The Soviet Union died at Chernobyl IMHO.

Wikipedia: Chernobyl

Some salient snippets of scelluloid specially sliced from the scintillating scinema “V for Vendetta”. What a modern christo-fascist state might look like.

Remember, remember the fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot…

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

One gun-totin’ yahoo in Rachel’s piece above displayed a sign saying “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand?”… My reply is “What part of ‘well regulated’ don’t YOU understand?”.

Sadly, although admirably brief, the 2^nd Amendment is also distressingly ambiguous. Wouldn’t it be a delicious irony if some nut were to bust a cap in the ass of NRA firebrand Wayne LaPierre?

The New Yorker article to which O’Donnell refers is here.

While we watch the Supremes attempt to tiptoe around the issue of gay marriage, we also see the Senate’s champion of the far Right, one Ted Cruz (R-TX), making an ass of himself by doing an impression of the late and unlamented Joe McCarthy, joining former (and also unlamented) Florida Congressman Allen West in ridiculous and unsubstantiated accusations of ‘rampant Communism’…

read more…

OMFG. What a Rogues’s Gallery of delusional asswipes! We’re witnessing the torturous demise of that party… on a national level at least. They STILL can’t acknowledge WHY they really lost the last election… while it’s obvious to the rest of us. They STILL think the problem is with their ‘messaging’. Right.

The Gila Monsters represent laisse-faire Capitalism and christo-fascist social control, while Democrats, Liberals and Progressives are really ‘Democratic Socialists’ even if they (except for Sen. Bernie Sanders [I-VT]) tend to eschew that label due to the freighted ‘s’-word.

Bonus clip: The Duplicity of the Gilas is nothing new. Also on Rachel’s show last night:

►► MSNBC FULL VIDEO: Ed Schultz 47% Special

NEW YORK — The man who changed the 2012 election is named Scott Prouty. The 38-year-old bartender at the Boca Raton, Fla., fundraiser that doomed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign came forward Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz.

Prouty, a Midwest native, took his Canon camera to the fundraiser, thinking Romney might pose for photos with the event staff. Instead, he captured Romney speaking about “the 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”

source: Huffington Post

I watched the show. Mr. Prouty came off as a modest, savvy guy who did what he did for all the right reasons. He deserves every real Americans thanks for exposing the real Mitt Romney. You should watch it and judge for yourself. Many might have injected themselves into the story to get their ’15 minutes’ or for monetary gain.

Scott Prouty did NOT. Kudos.

I’ve posted (below the fold) an interesting programme on the Hisatsinom (‘Anasazi’) people of the Four-Corners region of the American Southwest, featuring ASU Prof. (emeritus) Christy Turner and his theory of cannibalism in the area. The evidence is pretty clear and conclusive by my lights (see also biblio below).

What chaps my hide are the very negative reactions of many modern-day Pueblo people (and sympathetic archaeologists who should know better) to Turner’s evidence… claiming that he is somehow out to post-humously smear their parent-culture’s reputation. My response is “Too bad. Get over yourself. It’s not as if I’m accusing YOU of cannibalism!” The facts are the facts. People do weird and terrible things. Stuff happens. And political ‘correctness’ has no place in science. Besides, I hear ‘Long Pig’ (or ‘Man Corn’) is quite tasty con salsa y cerveza!

In the context of the Southwest, this was nothing more or less than intimidation through terror. Terror squads. Sheesh – Some shit just doesn’t change. It makes me wonder if the ‘Mexican Connection’ isn’t even more profound than my own hypothesis and Turner’s rather similar one (see my ‘Hisatsinom’ post and the New Yorker article below). That society finally shuddered to a violent halt by mid-late 12th century [CE]. Is it coincidence that the ‘Mexica’ suddenly showed up in the Valley of Mexico several years later… after an ‘exodus’ from ‘Aztlán’ in the north to rise to empire as the bloodthirsty Aztecs? Hmmm. Remember, I theorised that the Anasazi ‘Lords’ were outcast Toltecs from that area in the first place. Hmmm. Was ‘Aztlán’ actually Chaco Canyon? Hmmm…

read more…