Category Archives: Because I Can

Perfect 9-dart 501 run

Adrian Lewis accomplished a rare televised perfect nine-dart finish at the 2015 PDC World Darts Championships this week.

24, count ’em…

24 C-130 Hercules transports buzz-sawing their way down the runway at Dyess Air Force Base during the USAF's latest Joint Forcible Entry Exercise.

24 C-130 Hercules transports buzz-sawing their way down the runway at Dyess Air Force Base during the USAF’s latest Joint Forcible Entry Exercise.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

William Rapaport of the University of Buffalo (naturally) devised the construction in 1972. How can it possibly be correct? First, let’s look at the sentence with his original capitalization:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Esther Inglis-Arkell of io9 unpacks its meaning:

“So, buffalo who live in Buffalo (e.g., at the Buffalo Zoo, which does, indeed, have buffalo), and who are buffaloed (in a way unique to Buffalo) by other buffalo from Buffalo, themselves buffalo (in the way unique to Buffalo) still other buffalo from Buffalo.”

The sentence relies on a few tricks. The first is that “buffalo” is a verb as well as a noun and the name of a place. To buffalo someone is to confuse or fluster a person. There’s also a missing “that.” Under normal circumstances, we can sometimes drop a “that” from a sentence, as long as the nouns still make the meaning clear. For example, “things I knock down don’t get back up,” and “things that I knock down don’t get back up,” are equally clear. All-buffalo sentences muddle it up a bit.

Rapaport wrote it for a philosophy class experiment when he was in graduate school.

Happy Birthday, J.R.R. Tolkien

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

JRR Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and of English language and literature, also at Oxford, from 1945 to 1959.

JRR Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973)

Happy Birthday, Isaac Asimov

All hail the birthday of Dr. Isaac Asimov, born this day in 1920.
Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992)

 Wikipedia Link

Dr. Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American Jewish author and biochemist, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov’s most famous work is the Foundation Series, which was part of one of his two major series, the Galactic Empire Series, later merged with his other famous story arc, the Robot series. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of non-fiction. Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 volumes and an estimated 90,000 letters or postcards, and he has works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy. Asimov was by consensus a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered to be one of the “Big Three” science-fiction writers during his lifetime.

Most of Asimov’s popularized science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going back as far as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often gives nationalities, birth dates and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms.

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or Three Laws) are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov and later added to. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story “Runaround”, although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories. The Three Laws are:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Happy Birthday, Roger Miller

Roger Miller

Roger Dean Miller (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992)

Roger Miller was an American singer, songwriter, and musician.
 Wikipedia Link

SOAR

Funnycar on Snow

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, Charlie Brown

No resolutions for me…

No Resolutions

World’s Oldest Airworthy Jet Returns To America

Oldest F-86A Sabre

This North American F-86A Sabre built in 1948 is back on U.S. soil after a 22 year hiatus in Europe. The airplane is the only surviving “A” model rescued from a scrap yard in the ’70s and is the oldest flying jet in the world.

Read the rest of the story…

 

Back to normal…

Downloading the Internet

Political Correctness

“Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”

Merry Christmas

Christmas Tree

Littlest Driver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IsL5AMqLMY

Carson’s mom Karen told KRDO that they’d been getting special formula delivered via UPS since the kid’s birth because he can’t drink anything with “milk protein in it.” Apparently Carson “loved trucks in general” and was always fired up to see the UPS box rig.

The family had built a relationship with the route’s driver, “Mr. Ernie,” who surprised Carson with a kid-sized delivery truck of his own and a few packages to bring to the neighbors.

The event is tied in with UPS’s “Wish Delivered” campaign which basically makes cute moments like this happen for kids. UPS donates $1 up to $100,000 to The Boys & Girls Clubs of America, The Salvation Army or Toys for Tots Literacy Program for every “wish suggestion” submitted on social media with the tag #WishesDelivered.

50th Anniversary of 1st flight of SR-71 “Blackbird”

SR-71 "Blackbird"

No other plane in history has captured the hearts and minds of the American public quite like the SR-71 Blackbird, providing the West with an unprecedented look behind the Iron Curtain during its 33 year operational career. But before it was cracking the skies over Russia at mach 3.3, the Cold War spy plane had to prove itself during a series of test flights. The first of those took place on December 22, 1964.

Designed by the venerable Lockheed “Skunk Works” group, the SR-71 grew out of the earlier A-12 program and was built to replace the older, slower U-2 spy plane. The Blackbirds, of which 32 were built in total, were tasked with high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance missions for the US Air Force, usually flying at around 85,000 feet (high enough to require pressurized suits) and traveling at more than twice the speed of sound. This was no easy feat, and over the course of their 33 year operation, a dozen SR-71s were lost.

After the USAF retired the Blackbirds in 1999, two were donated to NASA for use as high-speed test platforms, while the remainder have found their ways to various aviation museums around the country. It remains, however, the world’s fastest airplane.

Christmas Kitties

Christmas Kitties

NORAD tracks Santa

NORAD tracks Santa

In 1955, a Colorado Springs-based Sears store ran an advertisement encouraging children to call Santa Claus on a special telephone hotline. Due to a printing error, the phone number that was printed was the hotline for the Director of Operations at the Continental Air Defense (CONAD). Colonel Harry Shoup took the first Santa call on Christmas Eve of 1955 from a six-year old boy who began reciting his Christmas list. Shoup didn’t find the call funny, but after asking the mother of the second caller what was happening, then realizing the mistake that occurred, he instructed his staff to give Santa’s position to any child who called in.

Three years later, the governments of the United States and Canada combined their national domestic air defenses into the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), but the tradition continued. Now major media outlets as well as children call in to inquire on Santa’s location. NORAD relies on volunteers to help make Santa tracking possible. Many employees at Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base spend part of their Christmas Eve with their families and friends at NORAD’s Santa Tracking Operations Center in order to answer phones and provide Santa updates to thousands of callers.

In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robetson took over the program and expanded it to the Web where corporate donated services have given the tradition global accessibility. In 2004, NORAD received more than 35,000 e-mails, 55,000 calls and 912 million hits on the Santa-tracking website from 181 countries. In 2005, more than 500 volunteers answered questions. The site now gets well over 1 billion hits.

Christmas Blood

Christmas Blood

Clarification Needed

For my Democratic Friends:

“Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted new calendar year, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.”

 

For my Republican Friends:

Here’s wishing all of You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !!!!!!!