Cats are lovely creatures that never fail to amaze us. They are full of quirks and often have a lot of spontaneous antics that keep everyone in the house amused. Cats have a cute little tush that they are proud to show off. They often like to wiggle and shake their hind quarters when they are about to pounce. It is cute and adorable, but why do they do that? Let’s look at cats’ wild cousins, the big cats. Wild cats such as tigers, lions, leopards tend to grind the ground with their hind quarters before they pounce. It is a way for them to get into position and brace themselves before they attack. Domestic cats share a similar feature – instead of grinding the ground with their hind legs, they wiggle their behind vigorously to attain balance and leverage.
It’s like runners pushing back against the starting block.
It said: “We can confirm that the Red Devil parachutists are both safe and sound. For the first time in 25 years they had a parachute fail.
“One team member caught his team-mate and brought him into Queens Dock. Our safety procedures worked perfectly and a huge thank you to Whitehaven Marina for getting them out of the water so quickly.”
………
“It’s a testament to the training and the skill of the British Forces and we are just happy that last night’s drama had a happy ending.
“Within ten minutes of landing the lads were tucking into pie and peas and a pint and there was an audible sigh of relief in the crowd when we were able to announce they were both safe.”
………
An Army spokesman said: “We can confirm that there was an incident during the Whitehaven Air Show, when a member of the Red Devils display team’s parachute failed to open correctly.
“A team mate assisted in his safe landing, both men were unharmed, and we are now investigating to find out the cause of the incident.”
Cpl Mike French, 34, was performing at the Whitehaven Air Show in Cumbria on Friday when the accident happened. His parachute wrapped around Cpl Wayne Shorthouse but they managed to land in the harbour. Cpl Shorthouse, 32, said he was no hero and both men had been trained for such a scenario. Cpl French said the plan had been for his parachute to be caught by Cpl Shorthouse as the first stage of building a formation. “As soon as I had made contact with Wayne from the back, I looked up and saw the parachute was a little bit wrapped around,” said Cpl French. “It was pretty much straight away you realise it’s not exactly how we planned to do it but then training kicks in and members of the Parachute Regiment, the British Army, we always train for every eventuality. “Display parachuting and especially canopy formation within display parachuting is a very difficult and dangerous aspect of sky diving so constant training is one of the things that kept us [safe], the communication and Wayne having a good parachute above his head.” Asked if he could repay his colleague, Cpl French said: “A pint of beer maybe.” Cpl Shorthouse, however, said he was “just doing his job”. Both men said they were looking forward to the next display.
Both of their responses are seriously bad-ass.
Cpl French should definitely get Cpl Shorthouse a pint of bitter.
Boeing has released a video of the Paris Air Show routine intended for its 787-9. (Facebook followers, click through to see it)
It is pretty impressive, but it is not as impressive as it appears:
First, it’s not climbing vertically. That is a function of camera angle and a long lens which creates a forced perspective that makes it look that way.
Also, the pilot is keeping the aircraft on the runway longer than is normal for the pull-up.
The 787-9 has an MTOW of 557,000 lb, and a operating empty weight of about 304,000 pounds. (Probably less, because they probably haven’t installed the passenger seats, etc. to make the aircraft handle more spiritedly.)
It has about 142,000 lbs of installed thrust, and at sea level and the engines specific fuel consumption is somewhere in the 0.3 lbs fuel/hr-lbs thrust.
For the airshow display, the aircraft will have 2-4 crewmen and perhaps about an hour’s worth of fuel, which means that it has a weight of about 350,000 lbs, and a thrust to weight ratio of 0.4:1, which is similar to that of a fully loaded F-4 Phantom on taking off.
I would also note that for this flight, the fuel is almost certainly not in the wing tanks, to keep down the rotational inertia so that it can roll more aggressively.
Any actor who played a definitive Dracula and Saruman in “Lord of the Rings” would surely be welcomed in the realm of heavy metal fans. But Sir Christopher Lee, the estimable British actor who died Monday, is a particular hero to fans of heavy rock.
Lee, a lifelong musician, had dabbled in vocal performance and recorded a track for the score of his 1973 film “The Wicker Man.” But Lee’s foreboding baritone and arch screen presence turned out to lend itself perfectly to a heavy metal setting.
The actor, beloved for his turns in both classic and B-movie horror, cut his first metal album at the age of 90: “Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross.”
The album, an operatic concept piece recounting the life of the first Holy Roman Emperor, remains a cult favorite in metal, and earned him a “Spirit of Metal” award at the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods award ceremony (presented by no less a figure than Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath).
Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, a fellow legend of British metal, told the site Loudwire that Lee was “a very metal guy, he embodies the whole spirit of metal.”
Lee followed it up with a 2013 sequel, “Charlemagne: The Omens of Death.” But Lee is perhaps most adored in metal for his exquisitely droll “A Heavy Metal Christmas” recordings, where he lent his gravitas to some magnificently silly holiday originals.
Lee’s stepfather served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps, but it is unlikely he had any influence over Lee’s military career. Lee saw him for the last time on a bus in London in 1940, by then divorced from Lee’s mother, though Lee did not speak to him. Lee mentioned that during the war he was attached to the Special Operations Executive and the Long Range Desert Patrol, the precursor of the SAS, but always declined to go into details.
“ I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden – former, present, or future – to discuss any specific operations. Let’s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like.
Larry Wilmore, who I had neglected to put on my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, (Since corrected) was rather put out by Donald Rumsfeld’s rewriting history on Iraq and claiming that he never suggested that he was bringing a stable democracy to Iraq.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it’s never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Over a decade after presiding over the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the country may not have been ready for a democracy.
In an interview with British newspaper the Times, the former Secretary of Defense reflected on America’s role in shaping the Middle East, and suggested expecting Iraq to seamlessly transition to a democracy was “unrealistic.”
“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories,” Rumsfeld told the Times. “The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”
Larry Wilmore rightly said the Rumsfeld is, “The only Donald worse than Trump.”
Community leaders in Cleveland, distrustful of the criminal justice system, said Monday that they would not wait for prosecutors to decide whether to file charges against the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year. Instead, they will invoke a seldom-used Ohio law and go directly to a judge to request murder charges against the officers. The highly unusual move is the latest sign that some African-Americans in Cleveland and around the country have lost confidence in a system that they see as too quick to side with police officers accused of using excessive force against blacks. The investigation into Tamir’s shooting was handed to the county prosecutor last week, but local leaders are skeptical because of how similar cases have ended. In New York, a grand jury did not indict in the death of Eric Garner, who had been put in a chokehold by a police officer. State and federal authorities said there was no evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Last month, prosecutors said a white police officer in Madison, Wis., would not be charged for killing an unarmed 19-year-old man. ……… Ohio is one of a handful of states that allow residents to request an arrest without approval from the police or prosecutors. It is difficult to know how the case will play out because there is little precedent for a citizen to request an arrest in such a contentious, high-profile case. ……… By going directly to a judge, community leaders are trying to circumvent that process. Ohio law allows anyone with “knowledge of the facts” to file a court affidavit and ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant. If approved, the arrest would be followed by a public hearing, and community members said that was preferable to allowing prosecutors to make the decision in secret. ……… Tamir was fatally shot in November while he played in a park. A 911 caller had reported that the boy was waving a gun that was “probably fake.” When officers arrived, they pulled their car into the park, next to the boy. Within two seconds, an officer, Timothy Loehmann, shot Tamir in the abdomen. The boy’s gun, it turned out, was a toy replica of a Colt pistol and fired plastic pellets.
It’s been 6 months, and not only have we heard nothing from prosecutors, Officer Timothy Loehmann, who burst from the car with gun blazing at a 12 year old kid, has not even been questioned.
It’s about time someone to file charges against the cops.
Jack Warner, a former vice president of FIFA, was arrested last week in connection with a sweeping United States Justice Department investigation that slapped 14 bigwigs with charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.
It comes from my choice for Democratic nominee for President, Bernie Sanders:
In the interview, Sanders also indicates that he’d like to see a 90 percent tax rate in the country. After he sarcastically referred to that rate existing under “radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Harwood asked him if he thought it was too high. “No. That’s not 90 percent of your income, you know?” explained Sanders, “That’s the marginal. I’m sure you have some really right-wing nut types, but I’m not sure that every very wealthy person feels that it’s the worst thing in the world for them to pay more in taxes, to be honest with you. I think you’ve got a lot of millionaires saying, “You know what? I’ve made a whole lot of money. I don’t want to see kids go hungry in America. Yeah, I’ll pay my fair share.”
I love the bit about, “Radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
The whole discussion (it’s informal enough that it’s more of a chat than an interview) with John Harwood, NBC’s Chief Washington correspondent, is well worth a watch.
Spouting off about stuff you know nothing about is traditionally considered unwise. But as the Republican war on science intensifies, ignorance has started to become not only less of a handicap, but a point of pride. In the face of expertise and facts, being belligerently ignorant—and offended that anyone dare suggest ignorance is less desirable than knowledge—has become the go-to position for many conservative politicians and pundits. Sadly, it’s a strategy that’s working, making it harder every day for liberals to argue the value of evidence and reason over wishful thinking and unblinking prejudice. The strategy of holding out ignorance to be the equivalent of expertise and simply daring your opponents to try to do anything about it was epitomized recently in the Ohio legislature. Republican state legislator John Becker introduced a bill that would ban all insurance plans in the state from covering abortion. It was a horribly misogynist and intrusive bill, but Becker didn’t stop at just trying to outlaw abortion coverage. He also insisted that IUDs, the most effective contraception available, be outlawed from insurance coverage. His reasoning was that he believes IUDs cause abortion, because he believes they work by killing fertilized eggs. He is, of course, factually wrong in multiple ways. An “abortion” is a procedure that stops a pregnancy, and if a fertilized egg fails to implant—and about half fail to implant, regardless of a woman’s choices—then you were never pregnant in the first place and therefore cannot get an abortion. But it’s also factually wrong that IUDs work by killing fertilized eggs. Like nearly all other forms of contraception, IUDs work by preventing sperm from meeting egg. When confronted with the facts, Rep. Becker just blew them off. “This is just a personal view,” he said. “I’m not a medical doctor.”
Well then, sir, by all means. Let your random “view” pulled directly out of your hiney supersede the actual opinions of people who are considering the evidence before drawing conclusions.
There is just one problem with the article, no musical accompaniment, so I have posted an appropriate music video.
Jon Stewart interviewed Judith Miller, one of the most egregious propagandists in American journalism, and he took her apart.
You need to watch the whole thing, but Stewart’s statement to towards the end of the interview gives one a sense of how Stewart gave Miller a bad time:
We’re obviously never going to see eye-to-eye on itI appreciate you coming on the program. These discussions always make me incredibly sad because they point to institutional failure at the highest levels and no one will take responsibility for it, and they pass the buck to every individual but themselves. It’s sad.
Miller came off as pathetic and evasive, which pretty much matches her career as a “Journalist”.
Stewart actually makes a remarkably cogent argument for the case that Dick Cheney has been giving more aid and comfort to the Mullahs in Iran than any other American official:
He goes through Cheney’s history, including his disastrous tenure as the CEO of Halliburton (Dresser Industries acquisition and asbestos), and shows how almost every action and statement that Cheney has made in any official capacity with regard to Iran has provided aid and comfort to that theocracy.
Yesterday, I was kvetching about being in New York City because I was in the culinary center of the Hemisphere, but because it was Passover, and day 7, one of the 4 Yom Tovim of Pesach, so by the time we got to the City, even those few Kosher restaurants that were serving over Passover, were shutting down.
We were there for an audition for Natalie with the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, a prestigious acting school (in fact the oldest acting school in the English speaking world).
It has a 2 year conservatory program.
Well, she got a call from them today, and she’s in!
Much happiness all around.
Here is a video of her reaction.
Note, however, that this is about 10 minutes after the call, so she had already calmed down by at least a factor of 10:
In the immediate aftermath of the call, she was way more euphoric.
Here is a note for discussions of this sort, whenever some moron claims that the crap that they want to dump into the environment is safe enough to drink, give them a cup of said crap, and say, “Bottoms up!”
Bowdon’s comments are best described as obsequious, and unfortunately for him, it was caught on video:
This is courtesy of Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism, who’s been following the strange story of SEC Examination chief Andrew Bowden’s evolving position on financial corruption for a while. That story blew up recently in a remarkable public appearance by Bowden, in which the would-be enforcement official cravenly compliments the industry he supposedly polices and then — get this — jokingly puts forward his own son as a candidate for a job in private equity. On video. You won’t see a more brazen example of regulatory capture anywhere. Some brief backstory. Just a little under a year ago, Bowden, the SEC’s Director of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, gave a speech that was remarkably, unusually critical of the Private Equity field. Bowden had conducted a study of the Private Equity business and found that over half of the companies they looked at were guilty of ripping off their clients:
By far, the most common observation our examiners have made when examining private equity firms has to do with the adviser’s collection of fees and allocation of expenses. When we have examined how fees and expenses are handled by advisers to private equity funds, we have identified what we believe are violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time.
To fully explain what Bowden is talking about here would require a much longer article, but the basics go something like this. Private Equity reptiles like Mitt Romney make their living borrowing huge sums of money, millions and billions, from investors called “limited partners.” They then take that borrowed money and acquire companies with that cash, sometimes with the company’s consent, sometimes without it. The ostensible object of the exercise (at least, this is the way folks in the Private Equity business would describe it) is to make money for the limited partners by acquiring flawed firms, turning them around, and channeling the profits from the reborn target firm back to the investors. However, from another point of view, the more immediate object of the exercise is to make money for the Private Equity firm. This can be achieved in virtually countless ways once these takeover parasite-pirates have latched on to their target. But the most reliable way of making cash is to soak the acquired company for huge masses of fees, both legit and not. ……… Anyway, last year, Andrew Bowden at the SEC found that over half of the PE/LBO firms he looked at were doing something wrong with fees. ……… The scam here, as Yves Smith points out, is that the investors think that the Private Equity firm is paying for these managers, while in fact they’re being paid for by the acquired company. As Smith says, this scheme essentially robs the investors:
From an economic perspective, every dollar that comes out of a portfolio company this way is effectively stolen from the limited partner investors, since they would otherwise have the first claim on the portfolio companies’ cash flows.
All of which is a complicated way of saying the following: Takeover Artist Jerks use hidden fees to rip investors off. Last May, Bowden, a senior SEC official, described this problem as almost epidemic. The SEC looked at 150 companies and over half were guilty of something. A year later? They’re not so worried. It raised some eyebrows over the course of last summer and fall when the SEC did not follow up on Bowden’s remarks. Even some Private Equity trade publications began to wonder aloud where the beef was, noting that “there hasn’t been much additional commentary” from the SEC since Bowden’s aggressive speech last May. Bowden himself seemed to walk back some of his comments in an interview last September. “Anecdotally,” he said, “I would say there have been some changes in the behavior on the part of funds and investors and that’s all for the good.” Anecdotally? It is a very odd thing to hear a regulator in the middle of a granular, industry-wide examination say that he’s heard that things are getting better. Regulation by rumor is not your typical enforcement MO. By this month, Bowden had achieved a complete 180, telling a conference of PE professionals that their business was just “the greatest.” This is Bowden on March 5th, on a panel for PE and Venture Capital issues at Stanford. Check out how he pooh-poohs the fact that his SEC has seen “some misconduct,” before he goes on to grovel before his audience: ……… Not the usual posture you’d expect from an enforcement official. He likes the Private Equity business! They make a lot of money! They help people! And that thing about half of those businesses committing fee abuses, that’s just “some misconduct” we found last year. No big deal! It got worse, though:
Bowden: And so my view on the small ones is, I still think this is one of…I tell my son, I have a teenaged son, I tell him, “Cole, you want to be in private equity. That’s where to go, that’s a great business, that’s a really good business. That’ll be good for you.” So for me personally, as we share our opinions… Questioner [interrupting] I’d love to hire your son, by the way. That’s a deal.
Bowden’s comments certainly raised a few eyebrows. The LA Times wrote quite critically about them, as did a few other outlets. There are some people who will say it’s easy to overreact to something like this. If you listen to the tape, Bowden makes his comments in a joking manner, and everyone laughs. It’s not like he brought his son onstage and had him hand out resumes after the speech. But no government regulator with his or her head screwed on correctly would ever go near a joke like that in public. Even if it’s not what it very much appears to be, it sounds incredibly bad. And, worse, it reveals an attitude that’s absolutely poisonous among regulators, this fawning worship of people on Wall Street who maybe break a few rules, but that’s okay, because they make tons of money! Can you imagine Elliott Ness giving a speech gushing over what nice cars Al Capone drives? It’s revolting. It’s not necessary for regulators to hate the greedy bottom-liners who go around toying with peoples’ jobs and livelihoods using borrowed money. It’s not even necessary for regulators to hate those same rich takeover artists for paying half the taxes of most ordinary people, because our bought-off government refuses to close the loophole that allows Mitt Romney to call the money he makes “carried interest” instead of income. We don’t need regulators to be out to get anyone. But is a healthy indifference too much to ask? Do we really need for even the regulators to slobber over these people?
Even if what he said was a joke, the fact that he could make this statement in a room full of potential targets for his investigations, it is a slam dunk for regulatory capture.
I don’t know if Andrew Bowden is particularly good at his job.
At this point, I don’t care.
His head needs to be metaphorically put on the end of a pike as a warning to others.
Have you ever wondered why cats wiggle their butts before pouncing?
