Sans Contemplation

MARE, the Michigan Area Radio Enthusiasts held a DXpedition this last weekend. I first heard of the group a few years ago, but finally got to meet the guys (and gal) this weekend. Held at Brighton State Park, in one of their wilderness cabins. I felt at home with the propane heat & the appreciation of multiple wires strung throughout the cabin. They had a bunch of antennas set up in true field day manner, long wires, folded dipoles, random wire even a beverage. I knew I was amongst friends as soon as I pulled up with the jolly roger proudly strung from a nearby antenna.  I was finally able to put a face to several names I’ve heard bantered about the shortwave family for the last several years. A great bunch of guys and something I plan on returning to next time I get a chance.  Thanks to Neil, Harold, Jerry, Ken, Karl and Liz for making me feel right at home. The only thing that concerned me was the apparent lack of bourbon, but I’m sure that was just an over site.

rd

In 2012, Vega will carry ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle into space. The vehicle will then return to Earth to test a range of enabling systems and technologies for atmospheric re-entry.

IXV_Preparing_Return_for_Future_Missions.wmv

IXV will be launched in 2012 from Europe’s spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, using the new Vega small launch vehicle. After re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere and being slowed down by air drag, IXV will descend by parachute and land in the Pacific Ocean to await recovery and post-flight analysis.

Luckily? I bought my house in mid 1999. When did youi buy yours?

This is just cool. Take a look at all 20 photos of your nearest star.

I found this on Dvorak’s blog. This is an actual photograph, taken from the Utah desert of our milky way galaxy, and Jupiter.

“The spiral galaxy, which cannot be seen with the naked eye, was captured by photographer Wally Pacholka using a 35mm camera and 50mm lens on a tripod with a 30-second exposure - long enough to collect the light but not to see the stars moving. He said: ‘I had to drive 800 miles each way five times to get the shot right. And I had to hike two miles to the cave and back again at night, getting lost each time I came out.’ His photo shows the Milky Way - estimated to be 100,000 light years in diameter and 1,000 light years deep - and Jupiter (to the top left), the biggest planet in the solar system with a diameter 11 times that of Earth’s.”

I think our ancestors had better TV watching than we do.

rd

OK, I dont promote violience against women but, really, who hasnt wanted to punch a 16 year old girl in the face.  I saw this on Gegg Henson’s blog.

but take a look at this story and video of a man with a young child in line at a McDonald’s in South Central Los Angeles.  The man and a young girl argued over who was first in line when the old man had had enough and slapped her up with a couple of well placed punches to the face.

Yes, it is wrong, I know but how many of us have wanted to beat the living crap out of some smart ass kid while we were out and about?  Come ‘on, can’t you just see this young girls head bobbin’ to and fro as she unleashed a stream of expletives in front of everybody at the McDonald?  We’d have all liked to have the dome the same thing, but our upbringing and sense of right and wrong would have prevented it.

And talking about Punching people in the face..  Dick “It Wasn’t My Fault” Fuld, the CEO of bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers,  was apparently punched in the face while working out in Lehman gym on the Sunday following the bankruptcy, according to CNBC’s Vicki Ward.

“From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source – that he went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I’d have done the same too.”

OK I admit I went down a dark path in the mid nineties. Survivalism,  Ayn Rand, I even started aligning myself with the burgeoning militia movement that started in these parts. But I realized that self reinforcement of ideas can lead down a dangerous path. I mellowed, took a pragmatic look at the situation and began cutting my own path. Radical Objectivism turned to Libertarianism, survivalist skills morphed into various hobbies such as shortwave and long distance target shooting, but I still have an ear to the ground for TEOTWAWKI. (that’s- the end of the world as we know it.)

You cant help but marvel at the mess the bankers of Wall Street have gotten us into. You can almost hear the hum of the gold hoarder and colloidal silver crowd. Now even John and Jane Doe is looking nervous. Personally I wonder If I will have 40% of my 401k by this time next year. Possibly not. The government has a plan though, nationalization of the economy. They don’t call it that though but people are starting to see it that way. I see the question as this; “Will you trade away our free markets in the slim hope of averting a recession?” Recessions are fleeting, the loss of rights is permanent. Congress started this week opposeing the plan on what I believe was nothing more than a power play, they will let the FED bail out the bankers IF congress get a little (or a lot) more power. However I think that’s starting to change, congress may have to tell the Fed NO. The people are getting nervous, and mad.

An interesting Zogby Poll came out last July.  22% - believe that any state or region has the right to “peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic,” The level of support for the right of secession was consistent in every region in the country. Also asked was “I would support a secessionist effort in my state” and “I believe the United States’ system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections” with 18% and a whopping 44% agreeing respectively.  That’s impressive and as Christopher Ketcham noted in his op ed in the L.A. Times that the 22% of Americans that think its OK to succeed from the union is “about the same number of American Colonists who supported revolt against England in 1775”

Interesting.

And to the Bankers on Wall Street…. jumpers!   We want jumpers!

I always like Newt Gingrich. A true technocrat. He was interviewed on NPR on the ongoing Wall Street “Crisis”. Once again I find that he is echoing my own views, fears and mistrust of government. Why is it in this country we are always governing by crisis? why is that??

This $700 billion bailout plan, this potential 20-year mess that you’re talking about, comes from a Republican administration, comes from your own party. What’s happened to Republican faith in small government and free markets?

Well, I think you have a Goldman Sachs chief of staff to the president and the Goldman Sachs secretary of the Treasury. And they convinced the president that the American people ought to send $700 billion to Wall Street, which I think is a very, very bad idea, and I would argue is a very un-Republican idea. I don’t understand what they think they’re doing.

But Mr. Gingrich, a lot of the Republicans in Congress seem to be saying this needs to go forward.
Well, I think they’re just wrong. I think we need to slow down, take a deep breath, hold public hearings, have experts testify, understand exactly what the agreement would be, where the money would go, how we would account for it. I don’t think the taxpayers should be socked for $700 billion for welfare for Wall Street. I think it’s fundamentally wrong, and I think that it is very likely to create a bureaucratic control of our financial system in a way that will cripple us for 20 years.

What are you saying the incentive would be for, say, Secretary Paulson or Ben Bernanke to be rushing something through if it weren’t urgently needed? What would their motivation be for that?
A couple of things — first of all, they’re probably genuinely panicked. And I think that’s real. I think they’re tired; I think they’ve been consistently wrong, and now they’re looking at a precipice that’s very frightening. I think, second, that they have a very Wall Street-centric view of the world. And I think that rather than saying, ‘What are the big, profound changes we need to fix America?,’ they are saying, ‘What are the immediate quick fixes for Wall Street?’ — which I think, in the long run, just makes us weaker and sicker.
I think, third, they know that if they don’t rush it through, it has no hope, because as the American people learn the details, they’re just going to scream at their House and Senate members.

As the latest Piratesweek was churning away converting to MP3 I was watching the Sunday talking head shows as I typically do. Allan Greenspan was on “This Week“. As I respect Mr. Greenspan I paid more attention than I typically do. Greenspan said several things I found thought provoking. Notably; “When Bear Sterns was bailed out, it drew a line under that level of firm, implying that anything that was larger than that firm was capable of getting federal assistance,” i.e. anything bigger than Bear Stern starts to falter it is implied that the government will bail them out to. Allan went on to be uncharacteristically forthcoming by further saying the chances of escaping a recession was “less than 50 percent.”
“I can’t believe we could have a once-in-a-century type of financial crisis without a significant impact on the real economy globally, and I think that indeed is what is in the process of occurring.”
What I am now starting to notice, and nobody seems to be discussing, is that there is a lot of rushed, government sanctioned, mergers of huge financial firms.  Just like the consolidation of the media firms a few years back, the consolidation of the financial sector can not be a good thing for us.

RD