Real Plane Pr0n

So…I was doing some cleaning up on the ‘puter (file maintenance, review-move-save-delete, you know…the usual) and I came across this ol’ pic I’d saved in the way-back (October 2003): REAL Plane Pr0n. Well, sorta.

I wonder what sort of uniforms the stews flight attendants wear on that blue plane?

Taxing Subjects and The Last Drip

OK…this is really politically incorrect. But, I agree.

Americans drink and Americans drive, and sometime they do both in the same evening. This can cause problems, although in the vast majority of instances it doesn't. That's why it's not against the law to drink and drive. It is against the law to drink too much and drive, as it should be. In other words, it's OK to drink and drive up to a point. The public policy debate centers on where that point is defined under the law.

Just a small part of a reasoned rebuttal to a hare-brained idea, to wit: Colorado Rep. Joel Judd’s (D-Denver), proposal to “…pull your license for five years for a first DUI offense and 20 years for a second - even if there were no damage or injuries involved.” Aside from rejecting Rep. Judd’s proposed bill the author discusses how the gubmint measures impairment:

It used to be set at a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.10 percent. Under political pressure from groups like MADD, the level was tightened to 0.08. Single-minded zealots, like MADD, would like to tighten the standard even more. (In Sweden, it's 0.02.) They argue that, "Even if it would save only one life, wouldn't it be worth it?" The rational answer to that question is, "not necessarily." There would be no end to paranoid, risk-averse, nannyist control of your life if that were the only criterion for any law or public policy.

I think the 0.10 percent is a reasonable standard. The wiki, for what it’s worth, defines a 0.10 BAC standard in this manner:

Number of drinks: 5… BAC: .10 -.15… Effect: Person obviously intoxicated, delirium.

And I have a problem with that, because that rather loose definition doesn’t specify (1) Five drinks over what period of time? (2) Five drinks consumed by a 225 pound male, or a 110 pound woman? And (3) the variance between .10 and .15 is huge, and “delirium” as a result of five drinks seems a bit hyperbolic! My objections to the wiki’s definitions aside, I still think 0.10 is reasonable.

Like the author of the Rocky Mountain News article, I’m not advocating drunk-driving. I’m simply saying there’s no rational reason to make a felon out of me if I’ve had two glasses of wine with dinner and a drink after… over, say, a three hour period of time…and then drive home. I’m not impaired at that level of consumption. And most other folks aren’t, either. If you “blow” 0.10 under those circumstances (making a DUI conviction technically feasible), should you lose your license for five years, assuming it’s a first offense? I think not. (I don’t really know if my example—two glasses of wine and a beer—would result in a 0.10 BAC; I’m assuming.)

Just sayin’.

Here’s an article worth saving…or at least the links herein are worth noting, especially if you’re in the job market: How Much Should You Be Paid? There are also a few fun facts:

PayScale, which gets about a third of the traffic that Salary.com does, says it has information on jobs not usually found in corporate salary surveys like pornographic film actor (average salary: $63,275), rabbi (average salary: $98,610) and crossing guard (average hourly wage: $9.21), but so far no chick sexers, mimes or bloggers are in its roster. “We don’t get many boiler makers, but we get the jobs that are out there in volume,” Mr. Giordano said.

Hmmm. The fringe benefits in at least one of those “jobs not usually found in corporate salary surveys” are considerable. But then, so are the risks. But I digress.

I know I left a considerable amount of money on the table when I took my first job after I got out of the Air Force. I also know it took me damned near five years to recover. When you start low, you remain behind the power curve, no matter how many raises you get. I only wish there had been web sites like Salary.com when I went looking for my first job out of the military.

Speaking of money…here’s an interesting article on the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is gonna start hitting a lot of folks in the very near future, unless Congress does something about it.

If April 15 looms before you like a bad dream, we offer this troubling insight – next year may be a full-blown nightmare. That is, unless Congress kills the alternative minimum tax.

This insidious tax hike will slap an average $3,000 onto the bills of 23.4 million mostly middle-class families this year. In 2006, it nipped just 3.5 million taxpayers, because lawmakers temporarily raised an exemption.

But like a zombie, the tax is back, lurching toward the middle class to reverse the Bush tax cuts. And this levy loves children: It kicks in at $52,000 for couples with five kids. That's just a notch above San Diego's median income of $46,000, by the way. Childless couples escape the tax until their income reaches $75,000.

If this seems unjust, blame the stale Democratic war on the “rich.”

The article goes on to say it’s ironic that the current Democratic-controlled Congress are the ones who will have to do something to relieve Americans, middle-class Americans, of this egregious and unparalleled-in-the-Western-World tax. And, as one might suspect, the editors aren’t hopeful that change will actually happen.

Which reminds me: I gotta start thinking about taxes. April 15^th happens next month. Aiiiiieeee!

Today’s Pic: Another view of that oh-so-fascinating drip (to me, anyway, but as all y’all should know by now: I’m easily amused). This pic is 100% resolution but considerably cropped. I told you I took 17 pictures of this thing. But this pic will be the last one I’ll post. Aren’t you glad?

Click for larger, of course.

Nostalgia Attack

In today’s Bleat…a tip o’ the hat to the late, great, gone— but most certainly NOT forgotten— Strategic Air Command:

They're having a big Peace Prize assembly in a week, and asked if any parents would like to design the T-Shirts. I volunteered.

Alas, My domestic associates nixed the first design:

Hey, peace is their profession! Oh, all right. (grumble.) So I came up with the generic Earth with the word PEACE in Copperplate, since that’s the typeface the school uses for all its newsletters, but it looked rather stark, and seemed to imply OR ELSE. I did not use a peace sign, which has too many irritating connotations.

I liked James’ first draft better than the final design, which you can see at the link. And the "Peace is their profession" bit? Comes from the old SAC motto: "Peace is Our Profession." And it most certainly was. Moscow lived in absolute frickin' fear of SAC's heavy bombers and ICBMs, back in the day.

Has it really been 15 years since SAC absorbed its sister command, TAC, and morphed into Air Combat Command? Why, yes. Yes, it has been that long. And actually, if truth be told, TAC did the acquiring, not SAC—the proof is in the ACC organization coat of arms, which is nothing more than the old TAC patch with “Air Combat Command” in lieu of “Tactical Air Command.” The ascension of the Fighter Mafia, and all that. And I won’t even mention ADC, since they were essentially non-players in the grand scheme of things, what with being folded into TAC in the late ‘70s. (Note: I use “Fighter Mafia” not in this sense, but in the context of fighter pilots who became senior USAF officers and prevailed in the budgetary wars, as opposed to the generals in the manned bomber/ICBM community. Money equals power, ergo TAC won out over SAC. Just keepin’ things clear, ya know.) (Further parenthetical nonsense: if you chase the ADC link, you’ll learn something about where I spent the greatest part of my military career. But not near enough. The many radar sites I was assigned to during my career were…ahem…under the radar, for the most part. Most people in the Air Force, let alone the population at large, were unaware of their existence. I toiled in obscurity…)

{sigh} I’ve turned into an old man, waxing nostalgic for what once was. Sometimes it bees like that.

Another Late, Late Night/Early Morning

So. I found this last evening in a comments forum at RP, of all places:

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Here we go...

If you're here, you probably know what I am about to do, but here's the synopsis:
- From Aug 1 - Oct 9 2006 I will ride a motorcycle around China
- I'll be traveling with George Bourassa, Mike Barkelew, and David Poh
- George convinced a Chinese motorcycle company, Qingqi, to sponsor this ride
- Our route begins and ends in Jinan, Shandong province and will likely stretch as far west as Sichuan, on the Tibetan plateau
- Qingqi wants our photos and footage to turn into an advertising campaign
- I hope to post to this blog regularly to keep people apprised of our progress
...stay tuned!

The first entry on the blog is above; the last entry is on October 6, 2006. In between there are lots of photos and a very interesting narrative! Four guys, four dual-purpose bikes, China, and Tibet. Now there’s an adventure for ya!

Would you believe it’s 1140 and I’m just now finishing that first cup? S’true, Gentle Reader. Another one of those late, late nights, which ended around 0400 this morning. This time I was up into the early hours reading the blog, above. Time well-spent, in this case. T’isn’t always so.

Today’s Pic: The Roosevelt County courthouse in the dead of night. Or would that be in the wee small hours? Choose your favorite term for 0330 hrs in the morning, coz that’s when I took the pic. Most places are “eerily quiet” at this hour; Portales is much, much more so. I wandered around in the middle of the street (literally) for half an hour taking pictures, with neither a car nor a soul to drive one to be seen or heard…anywhere. For other views of the courthouse taken during this early morning outing, go here and here.

July, 2005.

Potty Mouth

I know. I said I was going. But there’s that last cup of coffee to finish and whilst doing so, I came across this:

So how much more does the Left use Carlin's "seven words" versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

Suspicions confirmed! The Left wins the potty-mouth-in-print derby, by a wide margin. And there's blog-by-blog word counts, too. I (heart) technology!

More Gore and... Trolls!

Gore Redux… Gerard:

Many in the last few days have been at pains to point out THE HYPOCRISY! of private jets, mega-mansions, international rock concerts that save the planet by polluting it, and the myriad other sins against the Holy Gaia (Blessed be Her Name, amen). But if you do, pace please, you do not have the long view of a future Waterworld worse than the movie of the same name because there shall be no Kevin Costner in it. Your mortal sin is only that you have not quaffed from the shroom cup and had "the vision."

Our New Saints have had this vision. It has been extracted from their Book of Climate Revelations like crystal meth from cold pills, and we should not gainsay it simply because their generation absorbed enough pyschoactive chemicals over the decades to gobstop a pod of blue whales. What if they did? What if all this is some bizarre vision; some acid-flashforward? Is it any less a vision for having "consensus science" behind it.

I say that we should honor their shared hallucinations, that we should not take away one iota of a scintilla of a jot of their monumental self-esteem. After all, the rich, famous and deranged have feelings too. Besides, we no longer institutionalize people who "see dead planets." We just check them into rehab for the afternoon.

OK, I’ll get off this subject, eventually. But Gerard is just so damned eloquent on the subject! I’d be remiss if I failed to link. And you’ll be remiss and a lil bit poorer if you don’t go…

I said I’d get off this eventually. But not before pointing you to Iowahawk, who has the answer:

Earn Eco-Salvation the Quick and Easy Iowahawk Way

Are you concerned that your profligate personal lifestyle is harming the environment? Losing sleep over the long-term ecological damage resulting from those greenhouse gases constantly emitted by your family, your cars, your pets, and your shrubbery? Do you want to become carbon-neutral, but just don't know how?

Well rejoice, sinner! Carbon atonement is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Malibu set -- with the Iowahawk EcoPals Network! This unique new system lets you, the average Joe planet rapist, cleanse your tortured psyche of the stain of enviro-guilt for as little as $9.95 per year! If enough of you follow this simple three step program, we can save the world for our children -- who will soon be frolicking with healthy polar bears atop Earth's reforested glaciers. Act now before it's too late!

Lotsa good links, too, including some previously encountered right here at EIP. But, I’m not nearly as funny. Don’t forget to download one of the bumper stickers, just to make sure everyone knows you’re environmentally-correct. It’s the least you can do.

Trolls Beware! We know who you are…or we can damned well find out! The troll phenomenon is one of the more interesting annoying things about blogging. Trolls are nearly always anonymous. Trolls are very nearly always rude, at best. At their worst they can be deranged. The interesting thing, to me, is how stupid trolls are in their presumption of anonymity. In other words, the simplistic and very fallible logic is as follows: “If I use a pseudonym, no one will know who I am.” Wrong, Sparky. Just follow the “find out” link above and see just how much one can uncover about anyone…just by looking.

I get very, very few trolls here at EIP (Thank God) because I’m very, very small in the whole scheme of things. Small is good, sometimes. (h/t: Lex, who had an interesting encounter with the subject über-troll.)

Very abbreviated rounds today. I have to go run some errands, and the day grows short. So I’d best “get with the program,” as we used to say back in the day.

Whatzit?

Wha’izzit? (click for larger)

A (badly) hand-blown wine goblet, perhaps? Something else? Scroll down…

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…

…

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Nope! It’s just a bubble-drip, for lack of a better term. I thought it was pretty cool, which may or may not be a reflection on the quality of my life. You decide.

And now it’s off to make the rounds. Back in a bit.