09:35 – Barbara and I both had dentist appointments yesterday in Winston. On the way home, we stopped at Costco to pick up a few things.
When we pulled into the Costco parking lot, Barbara said, “No more flour, sugar, or rice!” I did pick up one teeny, tiny 50-pound bag of rice, but other than that I restricted myself to canned goods: another two dozen cans each of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup, a dozen jars each of Ragu spaghetti sauce and Mott’s applesauce, a dozen cans of tomato paste, and a few miscellaneous items.
We’d arranged to have a termite inspection done by a person recommended by one of our neighbors. She showed up late yesterday afternoon and did a walk-around of the exterior and interior of the house. Termites are much less a problem in our climate than they are down in Winston, but we still figured it was worthwhile to get the house under a pest-control contract. Apparently, pest-control companies no longer use chemical treatments to protect homes. Instead, they use biological warfare, treating the foundations with a bacterial slurry that infects any termites that come into contact with it. When they return to their nests, they spread the infection to all their buddies, who up and die.
While she was looking around downstairs, the inspector opened the door to what Barbara calls our water closet. She commented, “You’re storing water. Good for you.” I asked if she was a prepper, and she said she was and that nowadays anyone with any sense was preparing. She next looked at our food storage room, and again expressed her approval, saying that the more people who were prepared, the better. She also commented that prepping was the norm up here, and that many of the homes she visited had similar levels of preparation. My own experience up here confirms that. I’ve mentioned that many of the homes we looked at before we bought this one had large stocks of supplies. Pretty much no one up here thinks preppers are crazy. About the minimum level I’ve encountered is, “We really need to get better prepared.”
Barbara and I are still watching The Walking Dead, although the violence and despair is starting to wear on her. We just watched the last couple episodes of season two last night, in which multiple major characters were eaten. I think we’ll start limiting it to one episode per evening. I keep telling Barbara that this series is really about a plucky band of Normals facing down a huge crowd of Clinton supporters and Dead Lives Matter rioters, so we should be cheering every time one of those bastards is shot in the face.
I never made it past the first episode with the deputy who had the magic revolver with the never ending bullet supply. WTF is up with a revolver as a duty weapon anyway?
n
Give it a chance. Of course, in season two there’s a farmer who has an 87-shooter pump action shotgun, but it is TV.
I stopped in at a ‘living estate’ sale yesterday. That’s when the kids get together and say, “you gotta sell this shit now, ‘cuz we don’t want to deal with it.” and usually precedes a move to some sort of reduced living arrangement.
In this case, I found a manual for my shortwave radio, and went looking for the actual radio. As I’m poking around in the garage, the daughter asks what I’m looking for, and then calls Dad to see if it’s somewhere in the house. It wasn’t. He kept it. Daughter says “Dad was always ready for the apocalypse.” Among other things, he always wears a heavy gold chain that “he can sell one link at a time.” Unfortunately, he kept his LTS food. I asked. When I did, another woman piped up that her son has 6 months of food stored, and ANOTHER woman says her son (Marine) has a closet full of MREs. He loves them and will eat them as a snack!
According to the daughter, dad had stashes all over the house that needed to be recovered. She found him on a ladder, pulling a box out of the rafters. It had $30k in bearer instruments… He’d forgotten to tell the kids about that one. She thinks they’ve recovered it all, now before selling the house.
It’s not common for me to run into a prepper sale. In the last couple of years, there were only 3 times I found LTS food for sale. One was a couple of pallets of LTS in buckets, obviously one of those ‘buy this package and you’re set’ deals. One had a tub of FD meals, about a couple weeks worth, that weren’t actually for sale. And the last was the 60+ FD pouches I bought for 50c or $1 each. Considering I hit on average 5-8 sales a week, those are low odds. (It may be that sellers don’t consider the food saleable, and dispose of it, which would be a shame. But since most will sell half empty bottles, the contents of the pantry and spice shelf, and half used boxes of Kleenex, I bet they’re not throwing out LTS food if it’s there.)
What’s NOT uncommon is finding that other people prep, esp the kinds that are working in the ‘secondary’ economy.
nick
ADDED- funny that we were talking about freon this week. Old boy had a 30 pound bottle of R12 socked away. Unfortunately, it leaked out and the bottle was empty.
Rats. The two legged kind.
“‘The Crusaders’ was undone when one of its own turned informant and exposed plot to blow up an apartment building with a mosque and 120 Somali immigrants
New details have emerged in the case of three men accused of planning a terror plot in Kansas
Patrick Stein, 47; Gavin Wright, 51; and Curtis Allen, 49; were arrested last week and charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction
It has now been revealed that a member of their group became an informant when they became concerned about the plan
The men planned to blow up a Garden City apartment building which housed 120 Somali immigrants and a mosque on November 9
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3858156/New-details-emerge-case-3-men-accused-Kansas-plot.html”
Remember these guys? They got hung up on buying machine guns too.
n
It’s not time for that yet. I hope it’s never time, but I fear I may be wrong.
And on the personal security front, watch this short video.
It’s all over in 4 minutes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3858754/Terrifying-moment-gang-robbers-use-sledgehammer-ASSAULT-RIFLE-blast-way-house-family-sleeps-inside.html
Notice how sturdy the door is. It stood up to the hammering long enough for the homeowner to respond, and it looks like it was shot before it failed. Note too, only a small panel failed, not the whole door. Norway is cold, and I expect some of the sturdiness is related to energy efficiency.
Note that greeting armed robbers empty-handed is NOT a good idea.
The description, North African, is a euphemism for muslim.
So plus for the sturdy door, plus for the camera, minus for no gun, minus for OPSEC if they had insider info.
n
Bunch of preparedness guides for disasters here, paid for by your tax dollars, probably nothing new for those here, but might be worth passing on to the less prepared.
https://community.fema.gov/take-action/hazards
n
Last year I bought a couple of Baofeng UV-82 radios mentioned here for emergency communication. Using CHIRP I programmed one for the local PD and FD frequencies (transmitter turned off) and have been using it a basic scanner.
I’m finally getting around to testing it for 2-way comm. I don’t plan to use it regularly, I just want to know how to do it now, not try to learn in an emergency. I got the GMRS license from the FCC. But after googling around it seems like I can’t legally use these units for GMRS (or FRS) since they are not “type certified”.
My question to the brain trust: Why are they not certified? Is it because they are programmable and not fixed frequency? If I use them properly programmed and within power limits and allowed locations would anyone know the difference?
“My question to the brain trust: Why are they not certified? Is it because they are programmable and not fixed frequency? If I use them properly programmed and within power limits and allowed locations would anyone know the difference?”
FRS has requirements for fixed antenna, power, and frequency. If you stay within the guidelines the FCC wouldn’t be able to tell over the air. You would likely get away with it even long term. It is illegal and many HAMS are very skittish over people breaking the rules, because of a fear of loss of rights to the bands.
Pat Buchanan covers all of why the establishment is crapping it’s pants in his latest article. You gotta love tRump just for that.
I wouldn’t use any frequency outside the FRS/GMRS channel allocations, and I’d be very cautious about using higher power. But you should be okay substituting a real antenna for the “radial dummy load” that comes standard with the UV-82. Something like this:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KC4PWQQ
“My question to the brain trust: Why are they not certified? Is it because they are programmable and not fixed frequency? If I use them properly programmed and within power limits and allowed locations would anyone know the difference?”
Yes. No.
That is why they are not type certified. They have too much output power on FRS, and removable antennas. On GMRS I think they are within power limit, and I think removable antennas are allowed, (because Midland makes a mobile (car) unit, and there are repeaters set up.) The type cert costs money too, and the co has no reason to spend that money.
ARRL has tested a bunch of cheap radios and found them to be out of spec for interfering noise, but it seems to be down to model and what day of the week it was built. Google ARRL tests and you should get some links.
No one will know unless they ask, and you tell. If you want to use a local repeater, the operator might ask, but there are very few GMRS repeaters out there.
And keep in mind, anyone can use any freq and mode if it’s a true emergency.
One last thought, like backfeeding your house with a portable generator, this is one of those things that brings out the fanatics, the internet warriors, and the barracks lawyers. Keep your power levels in line, keep your gob shut, and you’ll be fine using them on those freqs.
nick
–hams are especially bad/snobs/barracks lawyers on this issue which is a bit ironic in that hams don’t need type acceptance on THEIR radios and are encouraged to experiment and home brew.
Hams object because these are SDRs, with full functionality easily accessible even to complete beginners. And take anything ARRL or individual hams say about quality with a big bag of salt.
I’m having trouble getting to a site or two. Anybody else?
bill.com at all
instructables.com slow
No problem here.
Oprah with the stupidest Cankles endorsement:
“She’s not coming over to your house! You don’t have to like her,” she said. “You don’t have to like her. Do you like this country? Do you like this country? You better get out there and vote. Do you like the country? Do you like freedom and liberty? Do you like this country? OK. Do you like democracy or do you want a demagogue?”
Vote for Cankles even if you hate her ’cause tRump is a fukstik. How dumb are people going to be to fall for that. Oh, yeah, Boobus Americanus.
I just finished marking my sample ballot. At the State and below I’ve got a lot of “none of these candidates” checked. All lifers on the tax teat. Half don’t even have competition.
Might be the issue
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Major-DDoS-Attack-Causing-Headaches-on-East-Coast-138162
There is or was some kind of internet attack today, DDOS or whatever.
Oh, guess I cross-posted…
Second attack going on now.
@nick “keep your gob shut”
I can go full Sgt Schultz if necessary “I see nothing! I know nothing!”.
Doesn’t really matter since my radios and backfeed cable were lost with all my guns in the Bungay River.
Thanks for the info.
Ray and his wife just stopped by my office for an hour or so. We had a very nice visit. Nice pickup.
He is headed back north from here, cross the Brazos River, and then head due south. I told him there are about 40 to 50 traffic lights going south on highway 6 but I am not sure that he believed me.
I never made it past the first episode with the deputy who had the magic revolver with the never ending bullet supply.
I love that Colt Python .357 ! Almost as much as my S&W 629. The idiots at Colt should be making 10,000 of those a month.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/01/daniel-zimmerman/colt-will-never-build-another-python/
The nice thing about a .357 revolver is that it shoots .357, .38, and .38 +P cartridges.
Give it a chance. Of course, in season two there’s a farmer who has an 87-shooter pump action shotgun, but it is TV.
Huh ? You are taking about Hershel, right ? What is the 87 shooter pump action shotgun ?
http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Hershel_Greene_(TV_Series)
Pat Buchanan covers all of why the establishment is crapping it’s pants in his latest article. You gotta love tRump just for that.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/an-establishment-in-panic-2/
I am liking Buchanan more and more these days. I did not used to like him very much as I considered him whiny. I have now realized that the whiny sound was caused by the lone voice in the strong wind of progressives and social justice warriors.
There was a TWD scene in which a revolver was supposedly shot, off screen, and you hear the brass fall. Of course, spoiler, it could have been that somebody else fired the shot. They are pretty good on most details… but the endless ammo situation can be annoying.
“”87-shooter pump action shotgun””
I thought “870” meant 870 shots!
told him there are about 40 to 50 traffic lights going south on highway 6
There were. But we only got three that were red.
Nice visit and pleased I got to meet Mr. Lynn. Nice place he has and a nice operation. Much diffferent than I imagined. If I was looking for a job, lived in the area and was a whole lot smarter it would be good place to work.
FRS is limited to 1/2 watt output power. Most GMRS radios won’t go over 5 watts. Not sure if the last is a legal restriction or practical.
GMRS, IIRC, is limited to 25W.
Which teeth did you decide to have removed? You know, what with you living all up near Tennessee and stuff.
I’ve taken to calling them Brainless Lives Matter, to keep the acronym the same. Unfortunately, I haven’t pissed anyone off. People either agree it’s appropriate or they’re too stupid to figure out the “movement” is being insulted.
OK, Ray, moment of truth time: what is Lynn’s total number of eyes and eyebrows? And, more important, what is the numerical distribution between eyes and eyebrows? Followup question, what is the spatial arrangement of the eyes and eyebrows?
“First new US nuclear reactor in 20 years goes live”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/us/tennessee-nuclear-power-plant/
Finally. I guess that this brings the USA back to 100 operating nuclear power plants. We should have 200 for energy security.
We should have a plant in every county, if not a baby reactor in every neighborhood.
And in this case can the power really be cheap when there were billions in cost overruns and redesign?
@jlp, of course you need to stay off the ham bands until you get your license. Which you can easily do, if there is an exam near you.
I’ve posted extensively on getting your Technician, and General, in the same day. That way you can be ready for HF as soon as you get the radio.
n
I got my Technician and General in the same day. If Laurel VEC is the sponsor of the exam, you can even take the exams for free.
The really sad truth with Nuclear Power is that even though all new reactors are of proven designs each new plant has to be approved as if the whole thing is a brand new untested design.
BTW, the “design flaws” mentioned in the article were really construction and fabrication mistakes/sloppiness. The supply of competent crafts to build nuclear plants is extremely thin. In addition we are having to use inferior Chinese material. The special alloys required for the reactor vessel and primary piping seem to be beyond the comprehension of the Chinese. Thanks gooberment.
BTW, here is the latest EPA outrage: http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/breaking-epa-going-rogue-again-this-is-nuts
This is all designed to totally eliminate the family farm and even home gardens, just to make us more dependent on the gooberment.
Of course it is okay for KIllary’s bus to dump shit in the road.
And in this case can the power really be cheap when there were billions in cost overruns and redesign?
Not cheap but competitive. And nuclear power does not freeze up in the winter like natural gas does, does not take away from home furnaces like natural gas does, does not pollute like coal does, etc, etc, etc.
And if we built five or six nuclear power plants a year in the USA, they would be much cheaper to build. We would also have more competent builders. I got to see the work that Brown and Root did at Comanche Peak SES back in 1983, that was shameful with the Volkswagon Bug sized voids in the containment building concrete. We tried to pressurize the containment building up to 65 psig and the voids blew out.
I like fuel diversity in the power generation for the three electrical grids in the USA. Makes it more difficult to take everything out at once.
We would also have more competent builders. I got to see the work that Brown and Root did at Comanche Peak SES back in 1983, that was shameful with the Volkswagon Bug sized voids in the containment building concrete.
Union workers being paid p’prevailing wage’ of course
I took my Mom to a doctor’s visit this morning. While waiting, a young Black couple came out. The guy was wearing a black windbreaker with the words in large white script on the back, “niggah ain’t shit”. Also on the front over the heart. I almost blurted out “What it is muh niggah” but thought better of it. I was wondering why he didn’t have on earbuds blasting “Cop Killer” so loud we could hear it.
Vice President Fukstik at his Biden-est:
VP when asked if he wants to debate Trump: “No, I wish we were in high school and I could take him behind the gym”
Yet, Redumblicans are the party of violence. They’re the party of Dumb, dipshit!
BTW, here is the latest EPA outrage: http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/breaking-epa-going-rogue-again-this-is-nuts
This is all designed to totally eliminate the family farm and even home gardens, just to make us more dependent on the gooberment.
I thought that the FDA and Congress told the EPA to stay out of the agriculture business ?
Messing with our food supply needs to be careful, very careful. Just because we have an excess of food today does not mean that there will be an excess tomorrow.
Damn! There go the CanklesPhones before she’s even elected.
A group of thieves stole over $13,000 in iPhones from the Apple store in the Natick Mall in a “flash mob” robbery.
Why no mention of their Race, I wonder?
Yep, that’s it all right.
What are you talking about? Saint Hillary herownself said the US can’t even feed itself without international trade. Unless you’re about to raise the ludicrous suggestion that she lied, I think you have to concede that The Smartest woman in
Americathe worldthe entirety of the space-time continuum isrightleft and you’re wrong.@MrAtoz said: “Why no mention of their Race, I wonder?”
You know how those surveillance cameras are, they make every one look black.
@lynn said: “I thought that the FDA and Congress told the EPA to stay out of the agriculture business ? “
There you go thinking again. That will definitely not be allowed if KIllary is anointed.
“…
windbreaker… hoodie” There, fixed for you.BTW when I go on my final rampage anything with a hoodie or a face/neck tattoo will immediately get a double tap, no questions asked.
Edit: WordPress will not allow the pistol emoji I tried.
Uh-oh. I wear a hoodie.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/19/sonia-sotomayor-says-she-would-have-bashed-scalia-with-a-baseball-bat/
I would never have thought Sotomayor would be a Negan wannabee. I wonder if she named her bat ? Or if she wrapped it with barbed wire ?
Uh-oh. I wear a hoodie.
Me too. It is the only thing that keeps the bitterly cold 40 F Texas wind from going down the back of your neck.
Nice visit and pleased I got to meet Mr. Lynn.
OK, Ray, moment of truth time: what is Lynn’s total number of eyes and eyebrows? And, more important, what is the numerical distribution between eyes and eyebrows? Followup question, what is the spatial arrangement of the eyes and eyebrows?
The play date was too short. Ray’s wife talked with my wife for an hour and kept the stop watch running on Ray. We had three world problems solved and were working on the fourth when she made him go back out to the truck.
@Ray, we forgot to talk about Alabama and TAMU tomorrow. I am fairly sure that TAMU is going to beat the 17 point spread. But, I highly doubt that TAMU is going to walk away undefeated. But, the TAMU quarterback beat Alabama when he was at Oklahoma so one never knows.
“those surveillance cameras are, they make every
one[criminal] look black”– FIFY.n
Just because we have an excess of food today
What are you talking about? Saint Hillary herownself said the US can’t even feed itself without international trade. Unless you’re about to raise the ludicrous suggestion that she lied, I think you have to concede that The Smartest woman in America the world the entirety of the space-time continuum is right left and you’re wrong.
She lied.
We received a warning on Monday from the FBI that a new bot-net was being built exploiting unsecured devices on the Internet Of Things (IOF) and were asked to verify our printers and smart TVs were not using default admin passwords. Looks like once they were discovered they decided to use them.
We received a warning on Monday from the FBI that a new bot-net was being built exploiting unsecured devices on the Internet Of Things (IOF) and were asked to verify our printers and smart TVs were not using default admin passwords. Looks like once they were discovered they decided to use them.
Everything on the intertubes should be behind a NAT box. IPv6 needs to be modified to allow NAT boxes.
Internet o’ Fings is what it’s called in the more vibrant parts of the nation.
“Uh-oh. I wear a hoodie.”
Mine is red, a fine zip up the front Carhartt. And no it doesn’t have anything written on it.
@nick, thanks for fixing that for me.
WRT the DDOS attack on DYN from the IOT, what kind of conspiracy theories can the fine folks here come up with?
Is there a book in there somewhere? (Actually, I think I already wrote it back in 2002. But it’s a bit out of date, with talk of modems and phone lines and such. Was fun/interesting to write, though.)
[snip] Even though all new reactors are of proven designs each new plant has to be approved as if the whole thing is a brand new untested design. [snip]
Florida does much the same thing with school designs. The county can’t turn a shovel of dirt until the state has approved the plans, which takes (or did a few years ago) about 36 months. If the county then turns around re-submits the plans to build a duplicate on another site, the turnaround time is cut to 18 months! It happened here.
[snip] Vice President Fukstik at his Biden-est: [snip]
Earlier this week, I heard a piece on NPR with the current Veep. (Yes, NPR is wildly leftist, but so are the other media, and the quality of the news is pretty good.) Biden flatly denied ever having heard, in the context of a locker room, the vulgar word that Trump used, and further said that if he had heard such a thing he would have admonished the speaker. I would suggest that if one is in a room with 30 grown men in various states of undress and *doesn’t* hear Mr. Trump’s word of choice for the female genitalia, the room is a gay bath house, not a locker room.
IPv4 and the DNS and the email protocol and even fuckin’ finger I can forgive, because they were designed 30 or 40 years ago by academics who never dreamed there’d be more computers than people, nor that there’d be deliberate attacks other than nuclear attacks on the wiring between nodes.
IPv6 and peer-to-peer protocols and the moronic and moronically-named Internet of Things have no such excuse. More to the point, the imbeciles who designed them have no such excuse. IPv6 is the work of a committee, with (so far as I know) undisclosed amounts of funding from governments and corporations with their own agendas. It could have been made more attack-proof but, for reasons left to the imagination of the reader, was not. P2P largely grew from hobbyist work and preventing deliberate abuse was a tertiary concern.
IOT grew partly from entrepreneurs trying to develop a market for a new type of product and partly from name-brand appliance manufacturers trying to add features to justify their higher prices for commodity items. The startups probably let security considerations slide because everything always takes longer and development schedules slip but consumer product show dates do not, and doing secure programming costs more and takes longer. It’s understandable if not forgivable. The bigger appliance manufacturers don’t have any excuses at all. If they can spend a million dollars for design specialists to get the curve of the refrigerator handle just perfect, they can spend a hundred thousand for a couple of security specialists to point out the vulnerabilities in putting an unsecured appliance out on the internet, or the idiocy of hard-coding the same password in every device.
Even worse than the IOT makers are the router makers. As Lynn implies, the router is the first and often only line of defense against world-wide attacks. Consumers and businesses rely on their routers for security. Their reliance is misfounded. Network appliance manufacturers as a matter of course include “maintenance” backdoors which get around any passwords or port restrictions put in by the devices’ “owners”. There are also regular claims that special backdoors are put in to allow government eavesdropping. These claims are always furiously denied by Cisco and other company execs but, er, maybe it’s not just paranoia. (The NSA put the bugs in only routers headed for overseas buyers. And I have a bridge to sell you.) Considering the higher level of trust put on internet-facing routers and similar devices, and the greater importance of those appliances being trustworthy, I don’t have any qualms about severe penalties being imposed on anyone, in industry or in government, who is involved deliberately weakening that security. Severe penalties.
@pcb_duffer — given my career in ‘the theatre’, I’d say you are as likely to hear that word in a bathhouse, probably proceeded by “F my little” and followed by “you b!tch.”
That said, Biden is a champion liar and the king of inappropriate comments. Wasn’t it Biden that said Obammy was “well spoken for a negro?”
Ol’ foot in mouth Joe is a bit like the classic SNL skit, where they are interviewing America’s first black president at the end of his second term. The interviewer asks how he survived it, given the racism and assassination risk. He replies “Well, like my predecessor, I kept Dan Quale as my VP…..” ba*dum*bum.
nick
Ray’s wife talked with my wife for an hour and kept the stop watch running on Ray.
Indeed. Made it to former MIL home in about an hour, only got three red lights on the entire route. Spent about three hours there then headed out on the journey. Stayed south of Houston and got on 146 north. Then on to Slidell LA at about 11:30 PM. Long day from San Antonio to Slidell. Wanted to stay in Baton Rouge but with LSU playing tomorrow all the rooms in my price category were taken.
I am fairly sure that TAMU is going to beat the 17 point spread
Don’t know about that. TAMU had a tough time with UT (TN) and only prevailed in the second overtime. Alabama roughed TN up by about 39 points. I expect TAMU to also be roughed up by 30+ points.
Thanks for taking the time out of your day to visit and show me your place. Very nice digs indeed.
what is Lynn’s total number of eyes and eyebrows?
It’s best kept a secret.
Biden flatly denied ever having heard, in the context of a locker room, the vulgar word that Trump used, and further said that if he had heard such a thing he would have admonished the speaker.
Isn’t Crazy Uncle Joe known for being kinda “handsy“?
@Lynn: As far as IPv6 and NAT, while you could do it, I used to agree with you, but I’ve come to understand that it really is not necessary. An IPv6 firewall disallows connections by default (which is the effect you get from IPv4 NAT). You then allow the connectivity that you want; the equivalent of port-forwarding under IPv4.
Both of these – IPv6/Firewall and IPv4/NAT – generally allow *outgoing* connections by default, and that is frankly the larger problem with IoT devices.
Also, as SteveF says: crappy routers/firewalls are a problem. These are everyone’s essential first-line-of-defense. There is no excuse for them to have major security flaws, and companies providing crappy products ought to be liable for damages.
As far as the current DDoS attacks: I think we are seeing groups experimenting, to see what their capabilities actually are. The next step, likely already under way, is likely to be ransom demands to businesses. “Pay us, or we take your site down just when you need it most.”
DadCooks wrote:
“In addition we are having to use inferior Chinese material. The special alloys required for the reactor vessel and primary piping seem to be beyond the comprehension of the Chinese.”
Similar problem here in South Oz. Some transmission towers here blew over in strong (but not *that* strong) winds. A former Electricity Trust of SA engineer said it was due to cheap Chinese steel used in the towers.
Lynn wrote:
“…Comanche Peak SES…”
Wow. Started 1974, switched on 1990. That’s a bit slow.
If we are talking about the word I think we’re talking about, I heard Steve Martin use it in a comedy routine I used to listen to on 8 track tape.
She had the best looking ____ I have ever seen. (Audience reaction of shock.) Hey come on now, I’m talking about her cat. (Then after a pause.) That cat was the best _____ I ever had.
Nick: I’ll defer to your knowledge of these things via osmosis. I’ll admit to regularly using the B word towards my male friends when on the golf course – ‘Want to try to get your three dollars back today, bitch?’ I think it was Biden who said that of President Obama, but given Biden’s well documented status as a plagiarist I’d doubt that he said it first.
Ray lives in the South, but those readers not fortunate to do so should pick up on one important point. When traveling in the fall, it’s vital to check the college football schedules. On the other hand, in a college town where the football team is out of town, there will be plenty of easy opportunities to stop & visit, etc.
Dave: Yes, that’s the word I’m thinking of, and I do remember that Steve Martin routine. I also remember my folks getting upset at their two youngish (but not so young as to have never heard that word before) kids hearing it. As I recall, in that era, most parents, including mine, were terrified of Richard Pryor. But my dad’s vocabulary was such that even Pryor might have said ‘Damn, mister, you ought to tone it down!’, although my dad wasn’t prone to ridiculing ofays.
I’m sure that Biden was not the first to call Obama a little bitch.
Hey Ray, I’ve got good friends in Slidell. After Katrina, they had all the damage stripped out and repaired in a couple of weeks (material was hard to come by) and even found a way to prosper (while helping with) the recovery effort.
Contrast that with the parasites that had to be physically removed from their FEMA provided lodging a YEAR later.
n
Lynn wrote:
“…Comanche Peak SES…”
Wow. Started 1974, switched on 1990. That’s a bit slow.
And cost $11 billion to complete. The major problem was that both containment domes had voids in them. Tough to pour concrete with four foot thick walls with 3/4 inch rebar on six inch centers. Even tougher to jackhammer out the voids.
But check this out:
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/wpps-municipal-bond-default-whoops.asp
Five nuclear power plants canceled and $3 billion default on bonds. I am not sure how many nuclear power plants were construction started and then canceled in the 1960s to 1980s but it might have been as many as 100. Several were converted to natural gas after the natural gas new construction ban was lifted by Reagan in 1983.
There are four nuclear power plants under construction in the USA now.