gunnergoz

Years ago a friend of mine was going through the garage of a man who'd passed away and his wife was selling off everything in the garage. He looked up and saw a tubular gray affair suspended across two attic joists. He recognized it for what it was and asked the lady if she'd take $10 for that rusty piece of pipe. She said sure. He walked out with a WW2 German hand-held rangefinder in nice condition. I saw it myself and had no reason to disbelieve how he got a hold of it. But I'm not sure I respected his method; although the seller was responsible for knowing her property's value, I can't help but feel he took advantage of a widow's grief. I stopped hanging out with him after that.

Too bad your stay is so brief, otherwise you might have made it to the Russian tank museum at Kubinka. I've not been there but seen many photos of it and it is on my must-see-before-I-kick-the-bucket list. http://www.tankmuseum.ru/ http://www.threewhales.ru/t25.html

What amazes me is when runs of photos like these are found intact or relatively so...clearly, someone's photo album or possibly a roll of negatives has been located. After the chaos of war and the postwar diaspora of people and rebuilding, the fact that these sorts of collections are still around to be found is what I find a wonderful surprise.

We had a lot of sample engines to play with but no foreign ones, unfortunately. This was in the US of course. In the 1980's they were still teaching us about wood and fabric repairs, more so that fiberglass and composites.

OK, that explains it. I was at one time a trained airframe & powerplant mechanic and learned how the US P&W/Bendix prop speed mechanisms work instead - they are internal to the big dome you see on the center of US props of the era and are dependent upon centrifugal force working upon two counterweights. This German type is a new wrinkle for me and apparently the design did not survive the war or if it did, it was not in common use when I went to aviation tech school.

Good question - I've never seen it either, Michael. You know, the only thing I can think of is a generator power spinner...but why coaxial with the main prop? Seems unduly complicated to me.

I would go for Basel, based mostly upon visiting some of the other places on your list. I suspect that the quality of life there would be the best of the lot. Pricey, but what isn't these days?

You WOULD play the race card, you cad!

Where's Slim Pickens when you need him? The inventor of the PGM.

Ah, but you mistake the covert CIA Fido Flea Flipper, a black project, for the Mark VIII. The highly advanced Flea Flipper was canceled by the cowardly Carter administration when it was made clear in computer simulations that there was no way to protect innocent civilians on the ground from ejected supersonic poo.. er, debris. The protective anti-radiation sunshade of the Flea Flipper was adapted to the super-secret Catamount XR-9 surveillance craft, but that is a different discussion.

Clearly a Fido Foo Fighter Mark VII. The Mark VIII had windscreen wipers.

It looks like a Mirage F1M to me. But I wonder if this is not a montage. The soldier's foot closest to the left side does not seem to leave a shadow as he walks, only on the right side do we see a shadow.

JonS, sure it would work, if you also had regulations in effect controlling ad purchases with electoral influence objectives. I'm not saying it is a perfect plan, but it is a damn sight better than letting special interests rule the country and dominate the voting through skillful manipulation.

I can't speak for other countries besides the USA on this, not being very conversant in their politics, but as far as the USA goes, my belief is that citizens stand to lose the republic if there is not some change in election funding laws. As it is, powerful industry, corporate and privately wealthy interests can hire experts and create "vote gathering machines" to bully, intimidate or outright mislead voters into voting one way or the other and for one candidate versus another. The only solution I can see is to make all election campaign funding totally anonymous and pooled, then equally divided up between qualified registered candidates.

I say, turn the criminals over to the locals...not the government, the real locals. Problem solved.

So have you guys lined up my 24 people yet? :D

So have you guys figured out my next lotto numbers yet?

And every country in the world at the same time? Come on! Given the amount of detail required to run a satisfying simulation, you are asking for a CPU-stopper. The game tries to do too much and be all things to all people. What's more, it is so heavily biased towards land warfare that it barely is able to encompass air and especially sea warfare. One gets the feeling that the designers don't really get the latter in particular - certainly not WW2 in the Pacific and the role of carriers and carrier air power. I had high hopes for this one but it turned out to be more of the same. Time for a new paradigm but they seem stubbornly wedded to their game engine and concept.

No that's what they do to starlets, not amphivans. Get your toys straight, man!

(Gags at the thought of actually quaffing said "blend.")

I have to say that I'm still a sucker for new wargames and buy them even if they don't sound quite "well baked" yet...and invariably they end up being trashed off the HD and never opened again. I have managed to not buy E:TW largely because of what I consider an obnoxious agent (Steam) and the reviews of that game to date have made me glad I did not spend the bucks. So perhaps I am learning. HOI 3 was my last major mistake and I don't plan to ever buy from that bunch again, no matter how tantalizing the prospects seem to be. No amount of beer and scotch can make me like those games. Oddly enough, now I mostly play variants of Civ4, including FF2 (and variants) and H3K. The new Tropico 3 piques my interest, I must say though.

Pretty simple and clear cut to me. Most single parent homes have a mother present and a father absent. Male children in those homes fairly automatically fill the absent father's role with their own testosterone and all that that implies. Female children in homes with absent fathers look around for their own share of vicarious testosterone, seeing as mommie doesn't have any and daddy ain't there. Next question, doctor?

dieseltaylor, don't get me started on those guys...it can get ugly pretty fast! :D

Well, when Rome finally gets its legions back from the forest savages, maybe they'll get around to demanding repayment for bringing some hint of civilization to you brutish blue-arsed louts.

With those excellent period photos of the Devil's Den to use as reference material, the Park Service could have done a much better job of recreating the period feel to the site. As it is, it looks like its ready for a tea service and some potted plants along that perfectly straight stone barricade. That's what you get for hiring "decorators" rather than "historians" to do your site planning, I guess.