The North Carolina Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement cited members of Willie Nelson's band for possession of moonshine and a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, officials said Friday. Say it ain't so, Willie!
Nelson, 76, was scheduled to perform in Kenansville at the Duplin County Events Center on Thursday night. Willie Nelson? Using drugs and guzzling 'shine? Inconceivable!
A message on Nelson's Web site said the performance was canceled because Nelson's hand, which he had carpel tunnel surgery on, was in terrible pain.'... A pain he could not relieve because they'd taken away his booze! [Insert musical "stinger" here]
In the past, Nelson has been arrested for drug possession and tax evasion. But,...but,....he'd turned his life around! He was clean! It said so in People magazine! I mean, if you can't depend on Willie Nelson to stay on the wagon....
Posted by: Mike ||
01/29/2010 17:43 ||
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A Portland police officer accidentally used pepper spray instead of a fire extinguisher on a man who lit himself on fire downtown near a fur store Wednesday.
Portland Police Bureau Chief Rosie Sizer said the officer was at a stoplight at Southwest 12th Avenue and Yamhill Street when she saw a man in flames.
When the officer went to get a fire extinguisher out of the trunk of her patrol car, she accidentally grabbed a large can of pepper spray used in riot control. Sizer said the pepper spray cans are red like a fire extinguisher.
The pepper spray was water-based, not oil-based, and nonflammable. Kim Kosmas of the Fire Bureau said the spray "didn't have any additional reaction with him already being on fire."
The man who set himself afire, 26-year-old Daniel Shaull of Dodge City, Kan., died at a hospital later Wednesday. His father, Warren, said his son had psychiatric problems and was living on the streets.
#2
As an aside, it was learned years ago that when electrical cable had just a slight current running through it, it both attracted coral growth, and caused accelerated coral growth, for unknown reasons.
So an experiment is underway off the east coast of Africa, in an area with barren sea floor leading up to the beach. A grid of cable was staked out, then a small current is run through it, using a car battery on the beach.
It is hoped that the grid will turn into a coral platform, which in turn will attract an abundance of sea life, eventually forming an extensive reef. If successful, such inexpensive offshore grids will start appearing along many coastlines of the world.
Ironically, the scuttling of US Navy ships to create artificial reefs is a big boost to maritime industries of both fishing and diving, which in turn is hoped will build a pool of recruits for the Navy in the future.
#4
Moose, it's probably the magnetic field the current creates around the cable. Weak magnetic fields are known to stimulate growth in various systems of living organisms, including human bones.
Cross-dressing is on the rise among young Qataris. The local press says that more tradition-minded locals are upset by the growing number of young women affecting a masculine style of dress, baggy trousers, short hair and deep voices. These women, who call themselves boyat, which translates as both tomboy and transsexual (and is derived from the English word boy), are being seen in schools and on university campuses where some are said to harass their straiter-laced sisters.
In an episode of a talk show on Qatari television, called Lakom al Karar (The Decision is Yours), a leading academic said that the "manly women" phenomenon was part of a "foreign trend" brought into Qatar and the Gulf by globalisation. Foreign teachers, the internet and satellite television have been blamed. So have foreign housemaids, for badly influencing children in their care.
The studio audience was divided over how to respond. Some called for the death penalty for cross-dressers, while others favoured medical treatment. A rehabilitation centre for Qatari boyat has been set up, but a local report says that as many as 70% of them refuse to give up their "abnormal behaviour".
The studio audience was divided over how to respond. Some called for the death penalty for cross-dressers, while others favoured medical treatment. A rehabilitation centre for Qatari boyat has been set up, but a local report says that as many as 70% of them refuse to give up their "abnormal behaviour".
It is not just Qataris who are rattled. A year ago the ministry of social affairs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched a campaign against "masculine women". The project, entitled "Excuse me, I'm a girl", involved workshops, lectures and television programmes, stressing the virtues of femininity and raising awareness of the presumed dangers of women looking like men. An emirates' foundation is helping to fund a research project on "gender identity disorder among Emirati youth".
One official describes the "deviant behaviour" of the boyat as a "menace" to society. But others sound less fazed. An American university lecturer in the region says the short hair and gym shoes worn by these young women would look perfectly normal on an American campus. That is just what unnerves the traditionalists.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin was acquitted Thursday on charges of plotting a smear campaign against long-time rival Nicolas Sarkozy to sabotage his presidential bid.
The court ruled there were no grounds to convict the 56-year-old politician of complicity to slander Sarkozy in 2004, when the two men were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac.
The acquittal was an outright victory for Villepin and a slap for Sarkozy who had reportedly vowed to hang those responsible for the scandal by a "butcher's hook."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/29/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
But, he is guilty of slandering the USA in the UN.
John Hopkins was at a cocktail party chatting with a fellow physicist about electric guns when he had a crazy idea: a massive, kilometer-long cannon powered by hydrogen, submerged below the surface of the ocean.
It was at a cocktail party that Dr. John Hopkins, a fast-talking 54-year-old physicist who once worked at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, had a crazy idea.
As sometimes happens over a third martini, a colleague suggested that gas-powered guns are much more powerful than conventional guns: When ignited, a gas gun can shoot a projectile at insane speeds of over 11 kilometers per second -- or roughly 25,000 miles per hour.
And that got Hopkins to thinking . . .
What if he could build a massive, 1-kilometer-long cannon powered by hydrogen that could be housed below the surface of the ocean? The sort of device Jules Verne wrote about in 1865 in his novel "From the Earth to the Moon"?
And what if it turned out not to be a such crazy idea, after all?
Such a cannon could solve a nagging problem at NASA: how to send manned missions to the moon and Mars at a lower fuel price. Currently, it costs thousands of dollars per pound of fuel to launch stuff into space. Hopkins' cannon could reduce that price to a few hundred dollars per pound.
And that savings could be very lucrative to the person who made it happen, which is why Hopkins created and is drumming up support for Quicklaunch Inc., which he hopes will launch payloads into space within the next five years.
How would a space cannon work?
The basic concept behind a space cannon is simple: A hydrogen explosion shoots the payload -- Hopkins is concentrating on delivering rocket fuel at first -- up the lengthy tube. The tube's mouth sits just above the surface of the water, and when the payload emerges, it's aimed directly into outer space.
Re-positioning an underwater cannon would be easier than moving one on land, and the sonic boom would be nearly eliminated due to a concept called impedance mismatch, which predicts that over 90 percent of the explosion's ear-deafening sound would be reflected into the atmosphere.
"It's a very simple idea in principal," Hopkins told FoxNews.com. "Hydrogen has a low molecular weight, so it can launch things much faster than ordinary guns can."
Translation: highly packed gas makes a bigger bang than gunpowder or an electrical current.
"It takes 100,000 pounds of propellant per person to land on the moon from low-Earth orbit," Hopkins says. Today, it costs $5,000 - $10,000 per pound to launch those propellants. The space cannon would allow NASA and other space agencies to send fuel for future space missions directly into space, where spacecraft could fuel up at dramatically lower costs. In the future, Hopkins says, colonization of the moon might mean sending 100 people at a time or more.
"I think the space cannon idea could be developed into a reliable and low-cost method of placing small payloads into orbit," science-fiction author Ben Bova told FoxNews.com. "The major problem that I see is that it would take a fairly considerable effort of time and money to make it viable, and it's in competition with existing rocket launchers. People tend to go with what's already available and demonstrably reliable, rather than investing in new technology, whatever the long-range benefits might be."
But there is already a history to the cannon. Hopkins built a massive gas gun, called the SHARP (Super High Altitude Research Project), while working at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. While the project was a functional proof of concept, Hopkins never found the funding to proceed with his work. The new cannon, he says, will kick-start the comatose space program, which he says has faltered since the last manned mission to the moon.
"There has been nothing significant since Apollo," he says. "I know the astronauts are going to come after me for this, but fortunately they are all elderly so they won't be able to catch me."
Quicklaunch reality check
Representatives at NASA, who declined to comment for this story, have already done the numbers on future missions to the moon and Mars. The trips will be exceedingly expensive. The Orion vehicle currently being tested as a reusable spacecraft is designed to keep costs as low as possible. In 2007, Boeing proposed fuel depots at low-Earth orbit to help make rocket propellants easier to manage.
"The question with a system like this is how long will it take to build," says Chuck Gannon, a professor at St. Bonaventure University and a space advisor to the Discovery Channel and Homeland Security. "I may be wrong, but I think a ground-based version is going to be a lot easier to construct, repair and learn from than a sea-based portable version."
"The challenges of a mobile, kilometer-long, submerged launching tube system that has to bear the stresses of the depths, and thermal gradients and currents while maintaining an absolute ramrod straight tube...." Gannon mused, trailing off. "well, let's say I think you could do it but I'll bet you've got a decade or two of trials and kinks to work out of that system."
With the Quicklaunch cannon, there are also questions about the physics of the actual payload rocket, possible weaponization and the environmental impact of a space cannon.
In a widely-circulated talk Hopkins gave at Google headquarters, the physicist explained away many of the chief concerns -- that a two-stage rocket would be used to attain speed and altitude, that payloads would be heavily insulated to withstand atmospheric pressure and drag and so on.
Possible weaponization is an interesting topic. Hopkins says the cannon would be too long and too obvious to be used as a weapon -- it would be an easy target. That said, Saddam Hussein had developed a space cannon concept during the first war with Iraq. Hopkins himself was involved with the "Star Wars" missile defense program under Ronald Reagan and has a background in weapons.
Quicklaunch is currently in a phase-one stage, looking for funding. The next stage is to use the cannon to obtain a world altitude record for a payload launch. Then the company plans to launch a two-pound satellite into orbit before shooting the first rocket propellant into space by 2015.
"Technically, building a cannon over a kilometer long is feasible," says Barrett S. Caldwell, PhD, an associate professor of Industrial Engineering and Aeronautics and Astronautics and the director of the Indiana Space Grant Consortium at Purdue University.
"I'm not sure where in the world's oceans you'd put it so that the cannon remains aligned," he mused. "Remember, at the exit speeds described, extreme precision of alignment is required, in a variety of wind and water conditions. This would be a very large target, and if placed in international waters -- where you need at least 700-800 meter depth, given the angle of the cannon -- ownership and guardianship is questionable."
Speaking of the ocean, environmental impact is a non-issue, says Hopkins. A typical shuttle launch releases an enormous amount of acid rain, and Quicklaunch's cannon is much safer. And the sonic boom would quickly dissipate in the depths, he notes.
"We have no plans to infringe on the whales or the pinnipeds or the crustaceans," Hopkins says with a chuckle, discounting the green-tech issue. "We love them all equally."
#4
Personally, I'm still interpretng NASA's cancellation of a formal US return to the Moon in 2020 [PoTUS Dubya], + its comment "We/USA doesn't need to go back to the Moon" [budget constraints], as meaning THE USA = POTUS BAMMER WANTS OUR ALLIES = "REST OF THE WORLD" TO GO THE MON WHERE THE USA JUST SHARES IN ANY ANY NEW DATA OUTCOME.
Good international dipomacy, but as an Amer I still would like to see the US per se go back to the Moon, iff only to "clean/get the rust out" of NASA-JPL's deep-space rocket, exploration techs.
Its also GOOD PR DIVERSION espec iff Americans = Amerikans are going to go thru a Decades/Scores-long US-GLOBAL RECESSION-DEPRESSION as per the MSM-Net + Various Perts, for SSSSSSSHHHHHH OWG-NWO THAT NO AMER HAS YET VOTED FOR.
IMO also read, USA-versus-FUTURE-NUKULAAR/NBC-CBRN(E)MILITANCY-TERRORISM 2010-2020/2025.
* FYI NEWS KERALA [India] > [IIRC]OBAMA: THE USA WILL NOT ACCEPT BEING WORLD'S NO.2 AS INDIA, CHINA RACE TO BECOME WORLD'S NUMBER ONE, or Artic-Title to that effect.
MOSCOW A stealth jet fighter intended to match the latest U.S. design made its maiden flight in Russia on Friday, an important step in the country's efforts to modernize its aging Soviet-era arsenals.
The Sukhoi T-50 prototype took to the skies for a 45-minute flight from an airfield at the company's production plant in the Far Eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur on Friday, Sukhoi spokesman Alexei Paveshchenko told The Associated Press.
Russian officials have spent two decades trying to build the so-called fifth-generation fighter and hope the T-50 can challenge the U.S. F-22 Raptor, which first flew in 1997. The Russian project has been veiled in secrecy and no pictures of it had been released before the maiden flight.
If the prototype bearing a close resemblance to the Raptor goes into production, it will be the first major new aircraft design built in post-Soviet Russia. Officials have expressed hope that the T-50 will enter service in 2015.
A Sukhoi statement quoted test pilot Sergei Bogdan as saying the craft was "easy and comfortable to pilot."
Friday's successful test of the plane, developed in partnership with India, comes as a relief to Russian government officials. A series of failures on high-profile weapons projects has blighted Russia's attempts to modernize its rusting arsenals.
But observers said it was early to celebrate.
Alexander Golts, an independent military analyst, said the T-50 is running on old engines, and the only major technological breakthrough was designing the airframe making the jet more difficult for radars to spot, in keeping with its U.S. counterpart.
The specifications and design of Russia's new fighter have keep secret, and Friday's statement offered few details.
Aviation officials have said the new craft will meet the fifth-generation requirements, including a supersonic cruising speed.
Sukhoi said in a statement that the plane has advanced stealth capabilities.
"This allows a significant increase in military effectiveness," the company's statement said. Advanced control systems help fly the aircraft and "allow the pilot to concentrate on tactical tasks," it added.
Russian news agencies reported the highly maneuverable plane has a 3,400-mile range. The Raptor has a range of about 2,960 kilometers 1,850 miles, according to official U.S. data.
#1
AviationWeek
Doesn't look very stealthy. Looks like an SU-30 with a nose and boob job. SU-30 type straight line from intakes to engines. Partially filled the center line between the engines for a missile bay. Still looks like a radar trap. Slight chines on the nose cone. Not impressed.
Posted by: ed ||
01/29/2010 7:55 Comments ||
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#2
More importantly, WHAT is it made of? One of the reasons the US was never overly worried about the Soviets getting a hold of an F117 was that they didn't have the technology to replicate the materials it was made of. Has that changed?
#3
First the shape, then the materials.
A hi-res image (1.3MB).
Posted by: ed ||
01/29/2010 8:38 Comments ||
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#4
Usually, so I've heard, it's the engine tech area the Russian's have the most problem with. If the engines aren't also more efficient, then range is limited and may throw out IR like a blow torch.
#1
FTA: "Before those experiments can even begin, however, the target chamber must be prepared with shields that can block the copious neutrons that a fusion reaction would produce."
My ignorance know no bounds but this also sounds like another way to do a neutron bomb. They better be really good with that shielding.
#3
The main problem is the waste gas it produces. Helium will cause everyone to talk in a funny high voice. When the pres gives a speech everyone will laugh, not just me.
#4
The main problem is the waste gas it produces. Helium will cause everyone to talk in a funny high voice. When the pres gives a speech everyone will laugh, not just me.
Helium will escape to high atmosphere and, in fact from distant memories, it is like hydrogen too light to stay there for long and will escape into outer space. Of course we will have a green movement telling that we are polluting the solar system and predicting gloom, doom and disappearance of doritos due to the helium in space.
#5
I don't fully understand this but I understand enough to suspect that a practical and economically viable inertial confinement fusion plant along the lines of this device is a long, long, way off.
The specialized systems in this experimental device would be incredibly difficult to mass produce.
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/29/2010 8:28 Comments ||
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#6
lord garth - it's an R&D device. It's gathering data. That's it. But, if it achieves fusion in the process that's more than they hoped for.
Everybody expected it to fail.
#7
I worked next to this behemoth for two years, and got a few tours noting its progress. A very complex system. Howard Patton many years ago worked on its predecessors, Shiva and Shiva Nova. This is more like the death star in complexity. It is and always was intended solely as a proof of concept, as it is incapable of taking the next step; actually using the neutrons produced. I think it is one of the worst examples of big box physics, a kind of welfare for physicists. That said, the outcome was hardly in doubt. It was a matter of scaling.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
01/29/2010 8:52 Comments ||
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#8
That's mutatis mutandis what the fusion people been saying as long as I can remember.
#12
The main problem is the waste gas it produces. Helium will cause everyone to talk in a funny high voice. When the pres gives a speech everyone will laugh, not just me.
It could always be diverted into several very large dirigibles secreted away under the wh and the congress.
#14
Correct me if I'm wrong, my ignorance of the real world by-product of this process, but could the Helium be harvested from the reaction?
I, too, am ignorant of the real-world processes, but I did love the Jetson's and this thought evoked images of a lighter-than-air green vehicle tooling around above the snarling traffic backed up on the freeway.
#16
My Dad, (A Civil Engineer) Answered the same question about 35 Years ago
He said "Airborne vehicles like the Jetsons give FAA Nightmares"
this was before computers but still?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/29/2010 12:48 Comments ||
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#17
Saw ashow the other evening about the rift valley in Arizona, NM, etc.
Lots of little hot-springs all bubbling with helium. Wonder if anyone captures it?
#18
I do not know what the bruhaha is all about. We've had portable fusion power for decades, witness Mr. Fusion:
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/29/2010 16:28 Comments ||
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#19
Wait til the Watermelons learn this process creates miniature hydrogen bombs. The deuterium-tritium reaction is the easiest and most efficient. And this tritium "Green fuel" is made in fission reactors.
Posted by: ed ||
01/29/2010 16:46 Comments ||
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#20
If helium 3, then it will be useful. If helium 4, less so. Depends on the reaction that takes place.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
01/29/2010 16:49 Comments ||
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#21
The nice thing about this approach is that semiconductor-based lasers have been making incredible progress over the past decade or so. The driver system for whatever they decide to build based on this technology will continue to get better regardless of whether it receives a boatload of money or not.
Rre-elected Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa will soon dissolve the country's parliament and call for legislative elections.
The date of the proposed election is unclear; however, the current parliament's term will be up in April.
The announcement came a day after the 64-year-old politician won his second war in a year, crushing an electoral challenge by former army chief General Sarath Fonseka who broke ranks with him just months after they claimed victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Fonseka, who claimed the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent president, said at a news conference in Colombo on Thursday that his name was blacklisted.
He said authorities harassed members of his political team and arrested some of his associates.
Information Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, however, denied Fonseka's claims that the authorities had put his name and passport number on a blacklist, preventing him from leaving the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/29/2010 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The North Carolina Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement cited members of Willie Nelson's band for possession of moonshine and a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, officials said Friday.
Cross-dressing is on the rise among young Qataris. The local press says that more tradition-minded locals are upset by the growing number of young women affecting a masculine style of dress, baggy trousers, short hair and deep voices. These women, who call themselves boyat, which translates as both tomboy and transsexual (and is derived from the English word boy), are being seen in schools and on university campuses where some are said to harass their straiter-laced sisters. 
[Al Arabiya Latest] Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin was acquitted Thursday on charges of plotting a smear campaign against long-time rival Nicolas Sarkozy to sabotage his presidential bid.
John Hopkins was at a cocktail party chatting with a fellow physicist about electric guns when he had a crazy idea: a massive, kilometer-long cannon powered by hydrogen, submerged below the surface of the ocean.
The basic concept behind a space cannon is simple: A hydrogen explosion shoots the payload -- Hopkins is concentrating on delivering rocket fuel at first -- up the lengthy tube. The tube's mouth sits just above the surface of the water, and when the payload emerges, it's aimed directly into outer space. 
