Insert Nelson Muntz Laugh Here

 

I'm giggling right now.

I bet if they showed more stuff like this, our kids would be smarter

I certainly didn't learn this in school.  I had to search it out after I graduated.  But this would be junior high level stuff back when it was put out.

I'm going to do what this guy does

After all, why take chances when you have an example like this?  At age 111, America's oldest Veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey.

Hell, if I make it to 80 I'll be ecstatic.

Too friggin' cool

Launch a rocket, dispense a few satellites, land rocket again safely.

Every time something like this happens, we get another step closer to the Moon.  Or Mars.

Kewl

So Missouri Meerschaum is now making churchwarden pipes to coincide with the release of the last Hobbit movie.  They're calling them "Cobbits".

Yes, I ordered one.  Of course I did.

Got a spare million dollars?

CMBlake links to one of the coolest things I have seen in a while, and I know just where I'd put it.  I just need about a million and change.  Anyone out there feeling rich?

And just because

Waaaaay back when Dave was just a wee sprout, he played the violin for a year before turning to the drums in Jr. High.  Had someone showed little Dave this video, he may have ended up with a cello instead.

How to make mead

First thing you need to know is this - if you ask five people how to make mead, you're going to get five different answers.  So all I'm going to do is give you a basic description, because anything after that is going to cause various other winemakers to snort and say "That's not the way to do it!  THIS is how it's done!"

Mead is a honey wine.  It's the earliest form of alcohol, and probably the simplest form of alcohol to make. You need honey, water, and yeast.  And something to ferment it in.  And gas locks (bubblers).  And sanitizer.  Lots and lots of sanitizer.  So, the process goes like this -

First, you sanitize anything that's going to come in contact with your mead.  Yeast, while really really good at turning sugar into CO2 and alcohol, it's not that much of a fighter.  So other bacteria, viruses and fungi who also love to eat sugar will crowd out the yeast if they get half a chance.  Therefore, don't give them half a chance.  We use an alkaline sanitizer that we buy at a local home brew shop.  It'll turn organic matter into goo if it sits for a while, so use gloves.  Or use a different sanitizer, but we like the alkaline stuff.

You need large bottles.  We separated our batch into five different gallon bottles, but if you want you can ferment the entire batch in one big container.  The reason we separate is that we like to mess around.  The Ragin' Mrs. made a container of pomegranate mead this time.  One container we used honey that had separated, so it has a different flavor.

(FYI, mead with fruit added is called a "melomel")

Once you sanitize the bottles, you add the honey and water.  Mix it first, trust me on this.  You don't want to spend your day shaking bottles full of honey and water trying to mix it up.  The ratio is roughly three or four pounds of honey (a little over one quart) to each gallon of water.

Yes, this means you're going to end up with about six gallons of honey/water mix.  It's called "must".

Once you have your must in it's sterilized fermentation container, you add the yeast.  Again, we got it from a local home brew shop.  We used Sherry yeast for this batch, which means we'll get an alcohol content of about 15%.  Once we reach that level of alcohol, the yeast die off, so it's pretty much self regulation on that score.  There are a ton of different kinds of yeast out there, and they'll all give you a different alcohol level, different flavors, yada yada yada.  If you can find a home brew shop, talk to 'em.  Better yet, if you can find a home brewing or wine-making club, talk to THEM.  Chance are they'll not only give you more advice than you can use, but they'll have lots of equipment they might let you borrow.

While the yeast is fermenting, it's going to let off a lot of CO2.  That's what the gas lock is for.  Oxygen is alcohol's enemy, so you want something that will let the CO2 escape while keeping oxygen out.  When the yeast is fully working, the gas lock will actually bubble.  You let the mix sit in it's bottle and ferment for about two weeks.

After two weeks, you siphon it out of one bottle and transfer it to another and let it ferment all over again.  This is called "racking".  It re-energizes the yeast, helps remove sediment and prevents the mix from getting....  well, really bad flavors from all the dead yeast sitting around in it.

After two more weeks, you siphon once again (and filter it if you want) and then put it in it's last bottles, where it'll sit for anywhere from three months to a year.  If you've got a good bottling system, you can let it sit for a couple of years.  This isn't a red wine here, you don't let it sit for decades.  Once it's a year old, it's drinkable.  Hell, depending on the sugar content and the yeast you use, you could drink it in three months.

As long as you keep everything sterilized before you use it, you should have no problem.  And there you have it.  It sounds a lot more complicated than it is.  The biggest things to remember is keep everything sterile.  The more honey you add, the sweeter your mead will be.  And different yeast will give you different results.  Don't go buy bread-making yeast and dump it in.  You won't get the flavor you want.  You can find sherry yeasts, champagne yeasts, you name it and it's there.  The shop we use has about twenty different kinds of yeast for sale.

That's the basics.  Everything else is negotiable.  You can infuse your mix with tea leaves, mint, fruit, extracts, pure fruit juice, or anything else you think you might like the flavor of.  You can use different yeast.  You can change the ratio of honey to water.  All of that will give you different flavors.  You can serve it different ways as well - you can put it in a crock pot and warm it up with a sachet of clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice to get mulled mead, which flat out rocks on a cold winter night.  For those of you in more southern climes, chill it and serve it with a good tart fruit that'll cut through the sweetness.  Maybe some good really dark chocolate.

Any questions?

Supreme Court limits reach of Voting Rights Act

This is a step in the right direction. I'm all like tingly and stuff:)

In a 5-4 decision, the court said officials need not consider race when drawing districts for state legislatures, county boards, city councils and school districts, so long as blacks do not make up a voting majority in a particular area.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court, said the law can "hasten the waning of racism in American politics" by making race less of factor in drawing electoral districts.

In today's decision, the justices rejected a move to draw a "cross-over district" in North Carolina where an area that had a 39% black population elected a black representative to the state's General Assembly.

State lawmakers believed the Voting Rights Act required them to draw districts that would give black candidates a realistic chance of winning.

Family for auction on Ebay

An Austin man is hoping to raise at least $50,000 by "selling" his family to a corporate sponsor.

This guy got laid off only a few days after he put his family up for auction. They are willing to represent any "family oriented" product for the right price. In the comments he gets a lot of flac for not being willing to step out of that box. I think this is great.

Bank is giving back $361M

TFC Financial is giving back the money from the stimulus because they do not want to be considered as one of those banks with shady dealing.

Good news about Iraq

The combat withdrawal will take three months longer than he promised. It is now be to completed by the end of August 2010, 19 months after Obama's inauguration. Though what Obama emphasized most as a candidate was his determination to bring about a quick end to the war, in the fine print of almost all his statements was a twin commitment to flexibility. One administration official said Obama was never wedded to the timeline encased in his overall public pledge.

_The withdrawal will not happen at an even pace of one combat brigade per month, as he had repeatedly said. Instead, it will be backloaded, so that the force posture for this year and into the first few months of 2010 likely will be essentially the same as it would have been under Bush. Under Obama's plan, troops will start leaving in large numbers probably only next spring or summer, though the president intends to leave the pacing decisions up to field commanders.

_Even after the combat drawdown, a very large force of as many as 50,000 troops will remain — an element of the withdrawal strategy that has caused heartache among anti-war Democrats who wanted a fuller pullout.

This residual force will have a new mission, of training Iraqis, protecting U.S. assets and personnel, and conducting anti-terror operations. While those are technically noncombat tasks, the soldiers and Marines will remain in harm's way and engage at times in some form of fighting.

Understanding how Obama, his aides and his generals came to this plan must start with how the candidate arrived at his campaign promise.

I read this and was immediately excited. It means that we are actually *supporting* Iraq instead of *abandoning* them. That this is being done despite the uproar from the Leftists makes it all the sweeter.

Cinderella's Closet

Bucks Co. Students Unveil 'Cinderella's Closet'

FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. (CBS 3) ―

Conwell-Egan students turned a cafeteria into a shopping wonderland Wednesday evening.

High school students in Bucks County who refused to let the economy ruin their prom turned a cafeteria into a shopping wonderland Wednesday evening.

Two best friends at Conwell-Egan High School decided to take matters into their own hands.

"They were actually going to change our prom into a semi-formal which would make us not be able to wear normal gowns because of the economic crisis," organizer Alyssa Slemmer explained.

Slemmer and junior classmate Keri Richards solicited local clothing stores who donated nearly 200 dresses.

New dresses are being sold for at least 50 percent off, while previously worn gowns are going for even cheaper.

"It goes to tuition assistance because a lot of us know girls and guys that are going here on tuition assistance that can't afford to come here and this money is going to benefit them," Richards said.

There is a full catalog of affordable gowns and accessories that are available in what is being called "Cinderella's Closet."

"The girls thought if they had this sale, then it would get the school to change their mind because they were saving money and it worked," teacher Peg Cargan said.

Conwell-Egan's junior prom is in March, but they intend to open up "Cinderella's Closet" for other schools and students this spring.

They are planning on opening Cinderella's Closet for other schools as well.

Holy cow!

Rachel Lucas is back!


YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!

I love Korea

No, I really do. When I was stationed there I had a damn good time, and I managed to get out of the barracks and into the country a bit. I love Korean food. Hell, before I got married I would have stated that I love Korean girls, but we all know that since I'm married, there's no other woman for me but the one with my ring on her finger!

So it's without further ado that I present you with this little bit of Korean advertising:






Yowza. Hey, every guy has to have his fetishes, right? I also have a thing for single malt scotch, although, yaknow, not in THAT way. I mean, I'm not going to be walking down the street holding a bottle of The Glenlivet in one hand and a genuine blue-steeler in the other, right?

Besides, I prefer a good Islay malt rather than a Highland.

Anyways, I found this over at Sondra's place.

Acceleration

My father sent me this email, and I thought it was kind of cool. For all you gearheads out there:

ACCELERATION PUT INTO PERSPECTIVE

* One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500.

* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 11.2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.

* A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to merely drive the dragster's supercharger.

* With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.

* At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.

* Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.

* Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.

* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.

* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.

* Dragsters reach over 300 MPH before you have completed reading this sentence.

* In order to exceed 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4 G's. In order to reach 200 MPH well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8 G's.

* Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!

* Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.

* The redline is actually quite high at 9500 RPM.

* THE BOTTOM LINE: Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, & for once, NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000 per second.

The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter-mile (10/05/03, Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 MPH (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run (09/28/03, Doug Kalitta).

Putting this all into perspective:

You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter twin-turbo powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged & ready to launch down a quarter-mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the 'Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line & pass the dragster at an honest 200 MPH. The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that moment.

The dragster launches & starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums & within 3 seconds the dragster catches & passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter-mile away from where you just passed him. Think about it - from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 MPH & not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race!

That's acceleration!

Hot diggity!

The very name should make people happy: Pin-ups for Vets.

*drool*

Found at Cold Fury.

Tell me when there's a problem

Dutch women. With large breasts. And the percentage of Dutch women with larger breasts is growing.

I'd blame the Democrats American Communist Party, but this is one thing I don't want them taking credit for.

If I were single, I'd be heading to Europe as soon as possible.

I am officially impressed!

Anyone who wonders of military pilots earn their pay need to look at this:

The above-displayed photograph of the precarious-looking rooftop landing by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter (which began circulating via e-mail in December 2003 and started making the rounds of the Internet again in August 2006) was taken during that operation by U.S. Army Sgt. Greg Heath of the 4th Public Affairs Detachment.

Although the text that accompanied copies of this image sent via e-mail in 2006 suggested the activity shown therein was part of an effort to evacuate wounded coalition soldiers, the photo actually captures the Chinook helicopter touching down to receive Afghan Persons Under Control (APUC) captured by members of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division.

Go check that photo out. Unreal. That pilot has balls of solid brass.