Affentitten
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Posts posted by Affentitten
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Various MiGs and Yaks look promising with the MiG-3 coming closest to what I saw. Not sure where I would find information on how many are flying though.
Michael
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I remember doing the aerogel story back when I was with Beyond 2000. We were looking at how it was being used on sa satellite as a kind of catcher's glove for space dust.
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Just think of all that bogus Russian code you're pulling down.
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Also if you think about the bomb bay of something like the Heinkel, the bombs are stored vertically, tailfin downwards. When they drop (and there is footage of that) they start tumbling and dispersing the stick almost straight away. Total shotgun effect.
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That's really interesting. The first thing that struck me is that there doesn't seem to be any obvious patterns - no strings of bombs (which is probably due to the way each incident was reported and recorded), and no particular area(s) of concentration. It's like the GAF just flew over London dumping bombs at random.
Well they really were dropping them at random. They didn't have much in the way of bombsight tech, pathfinding tactics etc. It was get over there in the dark in a fairly dispersed box and drop. Nothing like the science the Brits made of it by 1944. Plus weren't they really trying to break morale rather than destroy specific targets?
You can see a bit of clustering along the docks out towards Greenwich. Just imagine how many are lying at the bottom of the Thames!
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So my daughter gets back from NZ last night and tells me she wants to go and live there.
Where did I go wrong?
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When I was a kid there were exactly three beers available: Lion Red, Lion Brown, and DB Draught. Now there are hundreds of craft and micro beers, made - and drunk - by folks who can't stand watery horse piss.
When you were a kid? I doubt it was even that long ago. When I was a student 88-91, pretty much every bar had two beer taps: Tohheys Old and Tooheys New. Add to that a selection of maybe 6 bottled beers like VB and maybe Tooheys Lite.
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Hey, even I am making an appearance in NZ in January. Just a few days in AKL though catching up with a mate while we are en route to the Cook Islands for a family holiday.
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Highlights for the NZers have been:
Slurpees at the Suvun Uluvun
A tour of the MCG and sports interactive exhibit there
Beating our school at soccer
A huge feast in China Town.
It's been a much bigger exchange for them in terms of difference than it wil be for our guys. Take a random family from our school and you have a 50% chance they will be French and a 50% chance they'll be Jewish. And maybe a 5% chance they will be Francophone Jews.
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What an annoying video! I think the only semi sane people in it are the drivers of the technicals. They, at least, are positioned to leave quickly!
Well when you are driving the land-based equivalent of a Bolton-Paul Defiant, there is really only one way you can be facing!
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Well I am on the last day now of having a NZer in the house. I have survived. Though we have had some fairly comical discussions about accents. (She is of the firm belief that she doesn't have an accent and everybody else talks funny.) It's been fun and now my kids are addicted to Beached As.
My daughter heads over to the land that timne forgot next week.
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Well basically I have 11 weeks to teach a unit on "The Politics of Terrorism". You can't do everything! The WU isn't so significant compared to the IRA, PFLP, al-Qaeda etc. I would say that even McVeigh is more significant, even as a single act terrorist, because he would be more representative of a certain, more current, ideology.
PS: The Baader-Meinhoff IS the Red Army Faction.
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Like I said, I'm no big expert. The WU gets about 5 minutes in a whole semester in the week where we look at some fringe "Western Terrorism". So they're just lumped in with McVeigh, Unabomber, anti-abortion nuts and the Euros like Baader-Meinhoff, Red Cells, Brevik etc.
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I actually mention the WU in one of the classes I give on terrorism. But I'm no expert. I do like to mention the fact that they were succesful in setting off a bomb inside the Pentagon.
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I'd add that the quality of manufacture and storage over time of the available ammo would be a contributing factor.
And Emrys, there are lots of them standing around in a gaggle. That's also why lots of them die.
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My neighbour (ex-RAF and RAAF) recalls that when he was in the RAF as an engineer they just used a whole dump of Mosquitos for souvenirs, spare parts and generally just ripping bits off to practice tinkering. He made himself a Scuba set from the oxygen supply system of one of them.
There is another one undergoing restoration at Point Cook RAAF museum here in Melbourne, but I doubt there are any plans to fly it.
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Sometimes your up and sometimes your down in the world : ) But all in all I think China has done better in the last 40 years than the US so in another 40 perhaps they will be the leaders in space. One thing the Chinese are good at is taking the long view of history.
And seeing as how they invented the rocket in the first place....
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I saw a clip a while back of some guys firing a Victorian era 2 bore (34mm) elephant gun. And this was a weapon designed to be fired from the shoulder in the field. Black powder too, so plenty of smoke to go along with the kick.
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I just always think of how he was feeling the FIRST time he stood there and did that. I mean, you'd see it done on dummies and stuff and be fairly confident it was going to stop the round, but in the back of your mind...
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I wouldn't put it quite that negatively.
Most countries require sufficient public support to carry on with wars of no national importance in third-world sh!tholes. Part of that is generated and sustained by the impression (real or manufactured) that what "our boys" are doing is significant, worthwhile, and meaningful. Guarding the ramp at Bagram airfield doesn't really tick any of those boxes. So people want to get involved in high-profile 'prestigious' operations so they can, ah, generate public support to stay in the third-world sh!thole and continue to get involved in high-profile 'prestigious' operations.
But, yes, there is also a certain amount of "well, hell, we got all these tos, let's go blow something up!"
Things were so much easier when you could just send out the Queen's Own Light Philanderers on a "punitive expedition" and be assured that the public would support it on the grounds of "civilising influence".
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I certainly don't doubt it, given that the USAF did not come into existence until after the war when it was created as an entity separate from the Army.
Pedantically yours,
Michael
Not to mention that the RAF (and Dominions) were dropping a fair bit of tonnage too.
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Diesel, your original link is not really a case of a fraudelent degree mill. They're not claiming to give degrees at all. They are a private educational college aimed at coaching people through high school qualifications. They use the name Oxford, but really they're not masquerading as a university.
As for what Emrys says, it's quite true. As a university lecturer I know that most of my kids don't care about learning, they just care about passing. With online marking, I can actually see that many of my kids get their essay back, check the grade, and then never open the actual feedback and discussion provided by the marker. Or at the moment I am inundated with emails from kids saying "You haven't handed back my paper and the exam is tomorrow! How will I know what I need to get in the exam if I don't know what I got in the paper?"
What they really mean is "If I got a good mark in the paper then I won't bother to study for the exam because I'm going to pass the semester anyway."
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Like "A level"?
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One of my students is doing his Honours thesis on Australian troops in Egypt and Palestine during WW1 and 2. Mainly to do with first person accounts of the way that they viewed the Arabs.
Just wondering if anybody knew of any Commonwealth military guides for soldiers serving there. That sort of "Never shag an Arab's sister..." advice for young men away for the first time. I found an American one here http://archive.org/details/PocketGuideToEgypt_251
There is soemthing called the Forces Guide to Cairo that is easy to find online, but it's mainly aimed at communicating the addresses of wholseome clubs and hotels. I was looking for something a bit more to do with sin and wickedness.
Any ideas?
Hey New Zealanders!
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
So I have just returned from a holiday in the Cook Islands. I also spent some time in AKL on the way through, including a visit to the famed breakers of Piha Beach. I have a couple of questions:
1) Why do you have a picture of Shane McGowan on your $5 note?
2) The Cook Islands - what's in for NZ? It seems that Cooks citizens enjoy all the benefits of NZ citizenship but that is not reciprocated. ie. NZers can't just up and move to Raro without a lot of hassle, and they could never buy land there etc.
3) After swimming at Piha, how is it that all of you aren't drowned?