Thursday, December 31, 2015

Get on and ride


High art


Hillary's accomplishments in the Senate.

They are impressive, according to the Daily Caller.

During her eight years in the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton sponsored just three bills that eventually became law.

The first piece of legislation S.3145, designated a portion of U.S. Route 20A, located in Orchard Park, N.Y., as the “Timothy J. Russert Highway,” after the former “Meet the Press” host.
The second piece of legislation S. 3613, renamed the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2951 New York Highway 43 in Averill Park, New York, as the “Major George Quamo Post Office Building.”

The third piece, S. 1241 made the brick house of 19th century female union leader Kate Mullany a national historic site.

Looking at these accomplishments another way, while a senator, Clinton sponsored 703 pieces of legislation and with only three bills that became law, she had a .004 average.

That's the kind of leader I want at the helm, someone who knows how to get things done. 

High and wild


I'm looking forward to the summer.

Old time bad ass


Joseph Early Little, Sgt, Co B, “The Calhoun Sharpshooters,” 5th Alabama Battalion

A glimpse back to when Willie Nelson was clean cut and wearing a suit and tie.

Nancy Boyce: The first female Caterpillar field mechanic in Alaska



The first leg of her trip, to Ketchikan, landed just as a storm blew in. A tiny float plane had been booked to shuttle her to the island, but the small aircraft couldn’t fly safely in the whipping wind. Boyce, however, didn’t have the luxury of waiting for calmer weather.
“When you’re a field mechanic, you can never say ‘no,’” she said. “You figure it out.”
She would take a ferry instead. A mile from the dock, she started walking—in the pelting rain, lugging a turbo engine and almost 100 pounds of tools. Hours later when she got off the boat, in the tiny town of Craig, the first person she met introduced himself as “Two Stabs.” Mud oozed over her boots with each soggy step as she made her way to the logging camp.
Boyce spent nearly a week in Craig, fixing the excavator as well as a garbage truck, a diesel generator and a rock crusher. She worked around the clock, taking cat naps on the rubber tracks of the rock crusher when she didn’t have time to decamp to her hotel room.
“Probably at 10 different times on that trip, I felt like I would die,” she said.
She finished the repairs just in time to get home by her deadline. On her flight back to Juneau, Boyce didn’t notice that she was too tired to sit up straight. Instead, she reveled in the satisfaction that, thanks to her, an entire lumber company was back up and running. She was the hero.
She was also hooked.
“It has become my addiction to the job,” Boyce said of the feeling of heroism that follows a job well done.


Taking the Tonka toy to the top


Those cables are really under a load!

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

My eyes hurt


The wife's kitten.

I didn't think anyone could employ a more pig ignorant staff than CNN.

But I was wrong.

Time magazine, in it's headlong rush to create alarm over non existent anthropogenic global warming, published a now corrected article that screamed hysterically that temperatures on the North Pole were   (OMG!) 50 degrees warmer than usual.

Too bad the author of the article confused the actual north pole with North Pole, Alaska.


The corrected article.  Note their quiet little mention that the article originally misidentified the reading belonging to the north pole.  Dumb.  Shits.   All of them, fact checkers and editors, in all their many and multicolored layers, included.

The original, uncorrected article said this:

Stormy weather in the North Atlantic has brought balmy weather to the world’s northernmost point.

The temperature in the North Pole hit 42 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday morning, which Discovery News says is 50 degrees higher than average for this time of year. Storms over Iceland and Greenland, fairly common in winter, are pushing warmer air to the Arctic.

Follow the link there to appreciate the industrial grade of stupidity displayed by the article's author.  


Brandberg Massif, Namibia


Chief Kenawash - Chippewa


Moves: he has them!



Plus, that den is rank.

Very restful

Cabin/Library Porn


Virtue signalling selfie photo goes all wrong

They didn't really want or need your "help," and in fact it was all about you from the start.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Atsina Warriors, Montana, 1909



Bomber “dogfights”


Early on in the American Solomon Islands campaign during WW2, there were several instances of American and Japanese long range patrol aircraft encountering each other over vast expanses of the Pacific ocean.  The Japanese H6K flying boat proved to be inadequate against the more heavily armored and armed American B-17′s and B-24′s.  During these encounters, “dogfights” would ensue between the bombers, with gun positions designed for defense firing at each other while the pilots tried to maneuver their cumbersome aircraft.  


Heh


President Hillary ponders the important issues


At the tail end of its service career, the F-106 Delta Dart served as a chase plane for the testing and development of the Rockwell Collins B-1B Lancer.


Fossil hunters flock to Jurassic coast after cliff fall



A landslide on a Dorset beach has attracted dozens of fossil hunters in search of relics. 
Some 200 enthusiasts combed the beach in the village of Charmouth, on the Jurassic Coast, collecting scores of ammonite fossils. 
The majority are said to have picked up ammonites, extinct sea molluscs prized for their intricate spiral shells, which measure from 2cm to 2ft and were washed out of the mud and shale by the sea.
Very cool, if you like such things.   I know good examples sell to collectors for a tidy price.


Monday, December 28, 2015

German pilot von Eberhard Seel & plane Albatros D. V


Alaska bush pilot and plane and pilot show how it's done.

Granite exfoliating naturally near Twain Harte, California

Motor Porn


Yes


Elizabeth L. Remba Gardner, of Rockford, Illinois, Class 43-W-6 WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilot) at the controls of a Martin B-26 ‘Marauder’ medium bomber. Harlingen Army Air Field, Texas. 1943 (Aged 22)


F-106 “Red Baron” test bird assigned to AFFTC at Edwards AFB, CA.


Snowy cabin porn


Yes


Mondays, they're like that.


Sunday, December 27, 2015

“Gun Pony” Comanche - W. P. Bliss - c.1885


Fascinating.

Suh - weet!


I presume .308, but I don't know.

Alexander Hamilton's powder horn up for auction.

Beginning price: 10,000 hard American dollars.  Expected sale at 25,000 to 35,000 clams.


Born in Charlestown, the capital of the island of Nevis in the British West Indies, the illegitimate son of Rachel Faucette Lavien, an unhappily married woman who had fled her husband, and James Hamilton, one of many lesser sons of British nobility who had left home to seek his fortune in the Americas, Alexander was abandoned by his father and two years later lost his mother to fever when he was 11 or 13 years old. (His year of birth is uncertain, either 1755 or 1757). Young Alexander was left with nothing but a couple of dozen books, so he went to work as a clerk for an American shipping company. The future Secretary of the Treasure, founder of the Bank of New York and engineer of a new country’s monetary system was so good at the business that he was left in charge of the firm for five months in 1771 while still a teenager.


Hamilton arrived in New Jersey in 1772 and, after a year of college preparatory studies, enrolled at King’s College (modern-day Columbia University) in New York City in the fall of 1773. 
He quickly became involved in the hot political topic of the era and earned a reputation as a lucid and effective advocate for the patriot cause. When armed conflict broke out between the British Army and colonials at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, Hamilton volunteered for the New York militia. 
The powder horn has multiple elements of the arms of the Hamiltons of Grange. There’s a unicorn — the symbol of Scotland also seen in several Hamilton crests — with a five-petaled flower on its hip. The more stylized, geometric version of a five-petaled flower, the cinquefoil, is on the Grange coat of arms. A roundel engraved on the horn has that formal version of the cinquefoil. It’s too faded to be sure, but it looks like it’s not just a plain cinquefoil, but a cinquefoil ermine (dotted with black shapes that represent the black-tipped tail of the winter stoat). The Hamilton of Grange arms use cinquefoil ermine.

It could have been by his side above the banks of the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey, when the man who was the nation's first treasury secretary was mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804 and died at age 49.

The Hamilton family was deeply in debt when he died in the duel, and his family had to sell many of his possessions.
So, if you need a true American icon to use in your black powder reenactment, this is your chance to drop a pile on Alex's own powder horn, hand carved by the guy on the ten dollar bill.  Check your bank accounts and see if this cool item can should be yours!


Saturday, December 26, 2015

Once again the internet rocks it! Hallelujah Chorus -Quinhagak, Alaska

Let the people have the power, and something wonderful like this comes out of the most unexpected places.



Naturally, something hugely uplifting like this comes via American Digest.

Hallelujah Chorus -Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade - Quinhagak, Alaska
www.kuinerrarmiut.com
"Wow!! The village of Quinhagak is glowing because of them. The amount of views is mind blowing!! Considering this video was intended for an audience of about 200. "Thank you also for pointing out the apostrophes! I now have a very teachable moment once we start school again. One they will never forget!! I'm just glad I spelled "Hallelujah" correct.
"Thank you on behalf of Quinhagak, Alaska!! Merry Christmas!!"

Motor Porn - GPW Jeep engine







In deep

Good thing he has a snorkel. 



Wow


Perfection in mobile fishing camps


Cabin Porn

Hard to heat, the bears are busting in any time they want, but awesome none the less.


Motor Porn


I get this way every year at this time.

When I can't go trout fishing, that's when I pine to do it.

That just means I'll have to make plans, check my gear, and study maps with great care. Maybe look over some old pictures




Friday, December 25, 2015

Wild lynx yearns to be a pet and eat kibble.



I guy I know here in Sonora, California had this exact type of porch visit by a bobcat (our version of a lynx).

Interesting.


Airplanes and other fixed-wing aircraft produce wingtip vortices as a result of their finite length. Rotor blades, like those on helicopters, produce the effect as well. Both wings and rotors generate lift by trapping low-pressure air on their top surface and high-pressure air below. At their tips, though, the high-pressure air can sneak around the wing or rotor, creating vortices like the ones visualized above. Here smoke from a wire is entrained by the rotors’ inflow and twisted into a tip vortex. The line of vortices drifts downward due to the rotor’s downwash. (Image credit: M. Giuni et al.source).


Perspective



Via APOD

Now that's the start of a decent snowpack!


Friday - Christmas Day - Open Road