Thor’s Hall

Hi folks!

A surprise post over at Mr. Completely’s place. He had a few kind words that are appreciated.

Well this weekend is Boomershoot, and I am no where near ready to participate and very jealous of all the folks destined to practice their long range rifle skills tomorrow, and connect with those reactive targets. But the plan was (and is) to pull the things together for next year at the earliest. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull that together.

NFL Draft – Incredible the amount of coverage that has revolved around this event over the past few years. The NFL has an incredible marketing machine and it shows.

As you can see remodeling of the blog is underway. Some of the things don’t all work yet, and I lost some of the video clips when I switched servers around and so on. Rebuilding those posts, and tweaking the visual aspects of this as I have time. Hang in there I should get things stabilized soon. Although, I just received an upgrade notice on the base WordPress software that may set me back a bit, if I install it. Gotta love the software industry.

It seems that there was been a lot of discussion about global warming, fact or fiction. I won’t pretend to have all the data for an intelligent discussion here. I would encourage you to get out there and look at the science of this issue, and make your own decisions. There are some interesting points being made across the board.

Of course we should all be aware of the work done by Al Gore on publicizing and championing the issue of Global Warming. Much of this was done in conjunction with the film an “Inconvenient Truth”. Today we learn that, at least some of the documentary film was CGI animation from a Hollywood movie. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

It seems to me that some folks have a different set of principles than I, as if I didn’t already know that.  This just drives it home.

An interesting piece appeared on the BBC earlier this week. It starts out showing Darwnism taking a strange twist, and then proceeds into a very interesting perspective on guns in the United States.

What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.

Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.

Go give the whole article a read. I found it to be an unusual perspective for a European, if you count the UK as Europe.

Ed Morrisey published a piece on Ethanol earlier today. It was interesting to me that I was having a very similar conversation with one of my fellow Kyuki-do practitioners the other night. I think Ed made some outstanding points throughout his article so I won’t rehash them here, just encourage you to go read them at the source.

Recognize for a moment that I have spent a few years in the ethanol industry recently doing some business process, and systems consulting. Many of the practices and the material losses would amaze you.

One point that I think was missed in his article, is the by-products that are produced in corn based ethanol production. Most of the “waste” stream can be converted to other uses, the exception being the water. But, the “beer stream” can be dried and converted to yeast that then goes into animal feed. Both wet and dry solids from the process are used primarily as cattle and pig feed. One of the examples of this relationship can be found in the Aurora Co-op in Nebraska where the corn is hauled in for ethanol production, and the waste solids hauled back to the Co-op as animal feed.

In my thinking, once the demand for ethanol has reached the point that we are no longer using “surplus” corn to support the industry but reaching into the harvest for material that would directly feed humans, something is wrong with the equation. On the flip side of that, I have seen a huge number of corn fields that were just not harvested in previous years because the market for corn was so low. Finding the balance is key.

I do whole heartedly agree that ethanol is not the sole answer to the global energy appetite, and that our enthusiasm is having unintended consequences.

After a brief hiatus I’m back up and running. I’ve got some work to do here but, I think I will have a bit more flexibility here to do more with the site than I was able to before. Of course it might have just been user learning curve too.

Now to tweak the theme around and get back to business.

UPDATE:  I have come to the conclusion that I am going to want to build my own theme.   I think that I can live with this one for now (as long as I can change the header).  But, I have to build one that fits me a bit better.

Every so often you run across something that is refreshingly blunt. Mark Steyn has a post up that is one of those. It is a refreshing comparison of the United States relative position within the G7 group. It does some interesting compares of relative happiness within the group of nations, and postulates on why there is a difference.

Europeans did “vote for their own best interests” — i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc — and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that’s left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they’re being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day.

More importantly, it is one of those articles that allows for some clear comparisons of the possible results of the US government changing to emulate the governments and societies of other G7 nations. It is a very clearly opinionated post and in some respects is humorous given the extreme positions.

Give it a read, have a chuckle, and then think about it.

I especially liked the quote from Keith Reade. While it is an extreme position, this is not an unusual European view of the US.

I think everyone recognizes that the glamour that surrounded the space program of the 60′s and 70′s pretty much gone.  The imagination that the program triggered in people during that period has been replaced but what is “more real” from the Hollywood special effects group.   I mean come on flying an X-Wing fighter in the trenches of the Death star, easy stuff no orbital mechanics, no zero g, no high g, no worries about fuel states, or exotic materials.  Re-entry, piece of cake R2D2 is there to manage and monitor malfunctions and prevent catastrophic failures.

Unfortunately, reality is a bit different.  Rocket Science is truly rocket science, and it is tough stuff.  Just the flight operational stuff is pretty heavy physics with all of the orbital mechanics involved.  Precise thrust and burn calculations, attitudes, hitting that re-entry window and making sure that the angle is just right.  It’s dangerous and complicated but, the perception is that it has become routine.

If you start to really look at the mechanics of designing, building and maintaining a orbital delivery system (spacecraft)… WOW.  You might think aircraft are complicated, spacecraft even more so.

Take all of that background as context and start to work your way through Barack Obama’s platform position on NASA.

“As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform [CEV] to ensure that the United States’ reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period.”

Ignoring for the moment that the CEV is designed for delivery of crew to lunar orbit or surface, essentially the way that I read this is that we will be reliant on foriegn space delivery capabilities. I can see it now, “New US Naval Reconnisance Satellite Destroyed During Launch – US reconnisance capabilities took another setback overnight as the Chinese launch vehicle carrying two US satellite’s was destroyed during the primary boost phase.  Chinese officials said that the vehicle’s telemetry indicated that the rocket was off course and would not make orbit, thus necessitating the abort command and self destruct sequence on the rocket.  This marks the sixth Chinese launch of US or UK assets that has met with catastrophic failure, in the last eight attempts… ”

Folks, take a really hard look at the candidate’s positions this fall before you vote for president.  You will likely not like every position that these folks espouse.  You may not like most of their positions but, there are some fundamental common sense things that you should expect a US President to have.  Find the one that you think has the most, and let’s hope that one does the least damage to this nation.

American Thinker has a more detailed discussion of this issue if you are interested.

Over at Legion’s Fate there is a nice little post about killing sprees.  This as a result of the recent act that was prevented in NC.  Some pointed reminders about what really comes into play when a large number of homicidal acts is perpetrated by a single, or small group, of individuals.

The cliff note’s version is that guns are generally not the primary weapon.

So many people think that firearms are the only tool that enable one to kill, but this is flawed logic. There are more efficient ways to mass murder, and the materials are readily available to anyone.

Go give it a read.

… is also Lenin’s Birthday.

Hmm…interesting coincidence or something else?

Lenin’s political philosophy knew nothing of morality, he once said that, “There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.” Some environmentalists take this to heart as well, placing metal spikes in trees so that when these trees get to lumber mills the spike will ruin the saws and have in some cases injured or even killed mill workers.

You decide.