Heading north (actually NE) on I-275, heading into Tampa late yesterday, I hear a loud roaring and see a brownish smoke plume up ahead on the left. As I got closer, I looked left between the two buildings framing the south end of the St Pete International Airport and see three tail pipes of F-104 Starfighters, in a V-Formation set to roll. The flames from the flight lead’s afterburner still showing.

And me without the tools to make sure you don’t think this is but another “sea story.”

Quicksand film

Serving death and destruction worldwide, too!

NATO general: Iranian military bombs found in Afghanistan.

Gee…whoda thunk it?

Unbelievable…wish he was up for ValOUR-IT instead, but a lot of children who lost parents in the Marines of law enforcement will be the lucky ones…The Democratic “leadership” will fund precisely what they are against

Comment in the Little Green Footballs post on going over $2M…

#84 Kaintuck 10/18/07 10:14:01 pm reply quote report 3

News Flash!

Harry Reid offers withdrawal, defeat and redeployment letter on eBay.

Bidding started and ended at 50 cents, no buyers.

Floowed by:

#113 FlyingTigress 10/18/07 10:19:12 pm reply quote report 1

re: #84 Kaintuck

News Flash!

Harry Reid offers withdrawal, defeat and redeployment letter on eBay.

Bidding started and ended at 50 cents, no buyers.

It’s the fact that he has negative feedback that caused the problem. Consistently lousy product, often misrepresented item description, expensive and slow delivery.

Too in this jewel as a bonus:

#144 song_and_dance_man 10/18/07 10:27:23 pm reply quote report 2

I can see it now. Dan Rather will try to auction his TANG memo.

Too funny!

Update @ 12:54 EDT: Not funny: Harry Reid (D-NV) takes to the floor of the Senate of the United States of America and proclaims credit for raising money to support the children of those who died in battle. Since the MSM/HBM/Dinosaur Media didn’t bother to carry the story in the first place about the abuse of elected official power against a private citizen, directly in contravention with The Constitution of the United States of America, the old media will now report it and hail the magnificant manner in which the Democrats, 41 of them specifically, have done just like their icon, Bill Clinton, helped raise awareness for children in need and ain’t they just great? Merely a prediction, but I’m sure the stories will be released in less than a few minutes, when the auction closes…(in 50 seconds)

Just went back for the link…$2,100,100 right now….it was $2,000,100 just a few minutes ago and there are 5+ hours left…

Snooping around the web drummed up this: What a combat medic figured out:

Why We Serve: Combat Medic Saves Lives Using New Evacuation System
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12, 2007 – A veteran Air Force combat medic helped to transform the way wounded troops are treated and evacuated during a recent deployment to Afghanistan.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Mark A. DeCorte is participating in the Defense Department’s “Why We Serve” public-outreach program.  Tech Sgt. Mark A. DeCorte recalled the previous practice when unarmed battlefield medics were flown in to treat and evacuate injured servicemembers usually after an area had been cleared of the enemy.

However, DeCorte emphasized, “When you have a wounded soldier on the ground, they need help now.”
[…]

He took a little lead from previous wars and todays technology, to bring more detailed lifesaving techniques closer to the wounded…in fact, right on the field of combat, and on the way to the first hospital.

[…]
The concept of treating and evacuating injured servicemembers during the din of battle was tested during DeCorte’s tour of duty in Afghanistan from February to June 2006, the 13-year military veteran said.

The Army had requested Air Force assistance to improve its air-ambulance capabilities in Afghanistan’s austere, mountainous terrain, DeCorte explained.

Previous doctrine was to send in medical-evacuation helicopters after the fighting had stopped, he noted, but this practice meant that some troops wouldn’t survive the trip to the hospital. That procedure would change.

In Afghanistan, DeCorte was one of several military medics embedded with aerial combat-support units. Instead of using traditional rotary- or fixed-wing aircraft marked with red crosses, the new wave combat medics carried arms as they flew directly into the maelstrom aboard armored helicopter gunships.

The idea, DeCorte explained, was to treat the wounded as quickly as possible. And, when the concept was tested on the battlefield, it contributed to achieving a previously unimagined wounded-survivability rate of 90 percent, he said.

“We can now go in embedded (with combat units) and part of the operation,” DeCorte said.
[…]

Riding to the rescue in HH-60G armed Pave Hawks:

[…]
A servicemember’s odds of surviving battlefield-inflicted wounds go way up if he or she can be evacuated to a treatment center within an hour of being injured, DeCorte pointed out. In medical parlance that period of time is known as “the golden hour,” he said.

“If I can get you to surgery within an hour you most likely have a chance to survive,” DeCorte said.

The Minot, N.D.-born noncommissioned officer saved 36 lives during his 63 combat sorties in southern Afghanistan. “It’s very bad in that area,” DeCorte observed, adding that two of his fellow combat medics on other air-evacuation flights saved another 102 lives between them.
[…]

BZ, Tech Sgt Decorte!

Former Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, AMD William Crowe died today.

A 1947 Naval Academy graduate and a submariner, Crowe served as an assistant to President Eisenhower’s naval aide, as executive officer of the Tang-class diesel/electric submarine Wahoo, captain of another Tang-class boat, the Trout, and then a string of other command and staff assignments, culminating with his appointment in 1980 to be commander in chief of allied forces in Southern Europe and his appointment in 1983 to be commander in chief of U.S. Pacific Command.

President Reagan tapped him to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1985, a position in which he served until 1989. During his tenure Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, a sweeping measure that unified many aspects of a then-disconnected military and formally made Crowe, as Joint Chiefs chairman, the senior-most U.S. military officer.
[…]

He later served as our Ambassador to England, as well. The funeral will be held Oct 31st at the Naval Academy.

Get a load of this (Copyright 2002):

Chapter 1
“Best Laid Plans”
“Men are useless.” A shortish blond woman, in roughly the same shape as the office she occupied, leaned back in her chair. She plopped her size tens on what was otherwise an elegant mahogany desk. Madam President wasn’t happy this morning. She squinted at the eagle carved in the ceiling and continued to rant: “I’ve had it with the lot of you.”That was true in more ways than one. The first woman to hold the office, she had arrived on the backswing of the political pendulum. The previous occupant of this noble house had been devoted to family and faith, a man of simple ideas. But this President had divorced her husband, albeit after the election, and within days of her inauguration had shocked the nation by announcing she was a lesbian. Tough as steel and just as cold, this new breed of president seemed to have faith in nothing but her invincibility, and to fear nothing but anonymity.”
[…a paragraph down…]
Ever fickle, the American people had elected a dove, a peacemaker, or so her campaign had promised. She was schooled in political correctness and all manner of new-world-order solutions. Everything she said sounded so reasoned, so civilized. Well, in front of the cameras, anyway…
[…]

Had to make a shortstop at the Dr’s office the other day and took two books, you know, in case they made me wait…the one almost done and this other one I had purchased at a used book store, in excellent condition, from the Political/Military section so labeled. Thought it was a non-fiction book, and after polishing off “The Truth About Muhammed” by Robert Spencer (most excellent read, BTW), I moved on to open “Tea with Terrorists: Who They are – Why They Kill – What Will Stop Them” by Craig Winn and Ken Power. The above text opened the book, which in the forward explains, while it is a novel, it is founded on very real research and documentation.

So…think these boys have a time machine in their garage? Actually, I hope not, but I sense they are being true to what are very plausible real life situations, as they stated in the Forward.

The Amazon reviews are quite complimentary, saying this is good reading for those who won’t pick up non-fiction books…but love their novels.

Put your links to your best (or…well…anything you have) here…The sights at sea are amazing, and some one a few will witness, unless they look for them.

So, you call yourself a sailor, and you don’t believe in “the Green Flash?” Do you consider your fellow mariners who boast of such siting as more (maybe a lot more) or less on the wrong side of sanity for a moment or a lifetime?

Well, I have seen the phenomena, and now, you can know I’m quite sane, if you are an unbeliever, but at least I saw it in person a few times…

The “why/how” is here.

More real sitings captured here.

Facts and fiction about same…

Do you believe me now, shipmates?

Watch the video. Read the description of the precise Mecca orientation of the design which the press and others have been denying.

The exact Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 Memorial

A person facing directly into the giant central crescent of what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace will be facing 1.8° north of Mecca. Defenders of the crescent have used the inexactness of its Mecca orientation to dismiss concern.

•Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, argues that the giant crescent cannot be seen as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of its Mecca orientation would be “disrespectful to Islam.”•Both major Pittsburgh newspapers are denying that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca.

•The internal investigation conducted by the Park Service denies that there is any such thing as “almost”:

…mihrab orientation either points to Mecca or it does not … [it] cannot be off by “some” degrees. [From page 2 of report summary. Page 1 here.]

All of this willful blindness about the simple orientation of the crescent structure has been effective in keeping public inquiry from reaching a second startling fact: that the crescent design also contains a hidden exact Mecca orientation, corresponding to architect Paul Murdoch’s own description of how the crescent structure should be interpreted.

Physical crescent tip vs. thematic crescent tip

What points not quite exactly at Mecca is the physical Crescent of Embrace structure (every particle of which remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign). Connect the most obtruding tips of the physical crescent, form the perpendicular bisector to this line (the bisector of the crescent), and it points 1.8° north of Mecca:

Click for larger images. The green circle with “qibla” direction marked is from the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. “Qibla” is Arabic for “prayer direction,” which Muslims calculate as the “great circle” or “shortest distance” direction to Mecca.

But Paul Murdoch has also given a thematic explanation for the crescent structure, indicating how the thematic or “true” upper crescent tip should be understood. In Murdoch’s description, the flight path breaks the circle, turning it into a giant crescent. Thus the thematic upper crescent tip is what is left of the crescent structure after the parts that are “broken off” by the flight path are removed. Take away the parts of the Entry Portal Walls that extend out beyond the flight path, connect the most obtruding tips of the remaining structure, and a perpendicular to this line points within a couple hundredths of a degree of Mecca (i.e. it points exactly at Mecca, as far as can be determined given the pixel resolution of the graphics).

The flight path is represented in the Crescent/Bowl design by the Entry Portal Walkway, which comes down from the NNW. The Walkway passes through the Entry Portal Walls and projects out into the crescent:

Take away the parts of the crescent structure that are “broken off” by the flight path, and the remaining crescent structure is oriented exactly on Mecca.

[The above graphic was created by laying the Crescent of Embrace and the Bowl of Embrace site plans on top of each other. This was done to accurately capture the one real change that Murdoch made in the Bowl of Embrace redesign: the lengthening of the Entry Portal Walkway. (See “Memorial riddle #2: Why did Paul Murdoch lengthen the Entry Portal Walkway?) So that the new Walkway length can be seen, the low resolution Bowl of Embrace site plan is enhanced by overlaying it with the high resolution Crescent of Embrace site plan.]

The 44th inscribed translucent block on the flight path

At the end of the Entry Portal Walkway (marking the thematic or “true” upper crescent tip, according to Murdoch’s own description), sits a large glass block, inscribed with LAFD Captain Stephen J. Ruda’s dedication: “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”

This will be the 44th inscribed translucent block emplaced along the flight path, matching the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists. 40 will be inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes (despite Tom Burnett’s demand that Tom Jr.’s name not be used). Three more will be built into a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent (the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag). These three blocks will be inscribed with the 9/11 date. Thus the date goes to the Islamic star. The date goes to the terrorists.

By having the 44th glass block mark the thematic “true” upper crescent tip, and by having that thematic crescent tip create a hidden exact Mecca orientation for the giant crescent, Murdoch is able to tie his Islamic and his terrorist memorializing design features together into a perfect bin Ladenist embrace.

TACKLE THE BARE NAKED HIJACKER!

After all, it does not get much more naked than this:

Or this:

Or this:

The Walkway riddle: When Paul Murdoch extended the Entry Portal Walkway, he was doing more than just perfecting the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. This slight adjustment in the placement of the 44th block also perfected two other terrorist memorializing elements of Murdoch’s mosque. Anyone who can figure out either of these elements before looking at the answer wins a glorious prize.

—————

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.

Crescent of betrayal/surrender Blogburst Blogroll

1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech
A Defending Crusader
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever
And Rightly So
Big Dog’s Weblog
Big Sibling
Cao’s Blog
Chaotic Synaptic Activity
Error Theory
Faultline USA
Flanders Fields
Ft. Hard Knox
GM’s Corner
Ironic Surrealism II
Jack Lewis
Kender’s Musings
My Own Thoughts
Nice Deb
Ogre’s Politics and Views
Part-Time Pundit
Right on the Right
Right Truth
Stix Blog
Stop the ACLU
The View From the Turret
The Wide Awakes
Thunder Run

Listen to this podcast

Hmmm…reminds me of “Conspiracy Theory” but with HMDs. “Drawing on air” but oh, so cool…

Artists ‘draw on air’ to create 3D illustrations
By Lisa Zyga

By putting on a virtual reality mask, holding a stylus in one hand and a tracking device in the other, an artist can draw 3D objects in the air with unprecedented precision. This new system is called “Drawing on Air,” and researchers have designed the interface to be intuitive and provide the necessary control for artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects.
[…]

Pretty cool stuff….but you need the HMD of your choice…

Look at this:

The Sensics piSightâ„¢ products are the world’s most immersive head-mounted displays, ideal for numerous applications including virtual prototyping, training, data mining and more. The panoramic, upgradeable, high-resolution piSight displays offer:

Panoramic field of view that delivers full 3D immersion: from 82° to 180° diagonal, depending on model
A modular, upgradeable design that fits a very wide range of performance and budget requirements
High resolution: Up to 4200×2400 pixels per eye (2400×1720 effective)
Ease of use: weighing less than 1 kg (2 lbs.), piSight HMDs feature an open-frame design that is comfortable and stays cool

More specs:

ProductspiSightâ„¢ Specifications

The following table shows key performance parameters common to all the piSight panoramic head-mounted displays. Please visit the available configurations page for the information about specific configuration.

Field of view
(depending on model) 82° to 180° diagonal
58 ° to 179 ° horizontal
29 ° to 84 ° vertical

Binocular overlap 29° to 82° depending on model

Resolution 20 pixels/degree
2.9 arcmin/pixel throughout entire visual field

Color 24 bit color
75% of NTSC gamut
>800:1 contrast

Frame Rate 60 Hz

Eye relief 18 mm

Interpupillary distance 55 mm minimum
71 mm maximum

Headsupported weight 1.5 to 2 lbs (0.7 to 1 kg) depending on model

Tracking Compatible with most motion trackers and many eye trackers

Toss in, some most likely very, very pricey (today) Sensics PiSight Full Immersion 3D displays and what a virtual experience you’ll have…like IMax, without having to find a parking place…or the each time excessive ticket prices.Now…how to get into the I/ITSEC conference in November in Orlando to check the Sensics products out…Between that and holographic displays, a whole new word of visual delights await us.

SkyGod.com. I’ve met a few who thought they were…anyhow…aviation quotes by category…