BZ

[Once again, sorry, no politics today.]

Just for giggles, I tried an experiment.

Three days ago I clicked a wrong button on Blogger and disabled comments for two posts. I finally realized my error and it was reconciled. In the process, I tried this experiment:

In the area where I could limit comments, I changed the comments setting from “Registered Users” to “anyone” which would include every person or entity who might be anonymous.

In less than two days, my Blogger Spam locker built up to over 49 comments.

Luckily, Blogger recognized these entries as spam and shunted them aside.

One got through to my standard comments moderation area.

But, in essentially one day, I was (for me, at least!) bombarded with spam comments from who-knows-whom. It was as if I had ladled continual buckets of bloody chum into the waters off New Smyrna Beach, Florida (per International Shark Attack File, it is the shark attack capital of the world).

Question: how do Spammers know this and how do they manage to react so incredibly quickly?

BZ

. . . when the shit that you used to train (as Rangemaster) strains you in 93-degree weather.

I attended what my department calls AOT (Advanced Officer Training) recently. I was scheduled for the AM portion of the concomitant firearms training and I found myself floundering to keep up with the rest of the class. My magazine loading was behind, I forgot to get my second target, I ran out of rounds (luckily the kid next to me was in the same boat), I blew rounds to my left during the threat drill. On the other hand, I guess I should be grateful I didn’t kill any Good Guys (“Harry, you killed a Good Guy!”) But my horizontal threat scans were weak-assed at best.

In my favor, at least I could say I had a good Master Grip and took up proper trigger slack and reset.

Once loaded, I kept up with all the manipulation skills, dropped magazines, outage drills, tap-rack-go, side-stepping (okay, to a degree). But I just couldn’t reload a magazine as quickly as the bulk of the class. And I was generally slower.

By the end of the morning class my shirt was drenched, my crotch was drenched, my face and neck was drenched, my Levis were drenched, sweat ran down my face and forehead, and I felt dizzy, light-headed. My right knee froze up and my lower back clenched. Still, I took up a number of shotguns from Range 2 when asked to clear the range.

My T-shirt was drenched, my waist was drenched, my forehead was bathed in sweat, my sunglasses were slipping down my nose. I wondered if I could make it to noon. I found my pulse elevated and it never ran down. I could feel it thundering in my neck. Towards the end of the morning I was continuously panting like a damned dog.

The drills required knee training and range cleanup. My right knee just simply gave out. Boom. I don’t have any 4850 cases but I know when my broadcast day is done.

And, at my advanced age, I don’t sacrifice so much any more in the name of the King.

After the morning, I sat in my RAV 4 for a full 45 minutes with the air-conditioner fan set at full. And still I felt weak, light-headed and nauseous.

We resumed AOT where the content consisted of ground-fighting, carotid constrictions, GO familarizations,

BZ

[Again, sorry, I’m politicked out for today. -BZ]

For the engineers and nautical experts amongst you:

Look at the above photograph I took back in 2004 of Holland America’s cruise ship Zaandam entering Glacier Bay, Alaska.

When some of the greatest dangers a ship — any ship — can face are heavy seas with rogue waves and “nautical” weather, why is it that massive ships — in this case, civilian ships — are designed to be, essentially, “top heavy”? Still, these days, most ships in dangerous waters (commercial, civilian, military) are struck by capsizing, which is an issue of rolling.

Please note the width of this large ship as contrasted to its height. For notation’s sake, the draft of the Zaandam is 26-feet, not a huge amount of footage below the water, considering the overall 780-foot length and 60,906 ton weight of the ship.

Does it not appear that it is “over-tall” and “too narrow” for blue waters and heavy seas?

On this planet, a given object can react in only three dimensional ways: roll, pitch and yaw. These are respective rotational axes sourced from a defined equilibrium state in air and water.

My question is this: With a tall ship, narrow width, does that not make the Zaandam, for example, subject to greater amounts of roll in nautical weather than a lower, wider ship?

When it would seem to me that the equation in shipbuilding is lower height coupled with greater width, where is it that I “go wrong”? Is this not the issue with the creation of, for example, the catamaran quotient? And further, does this not become, all things considered, a matter of safety?

WWII destroyers of the US were, to make another example, tall, narrow and light. They also fared the worst in heavy weather. Check out the new non-fiction book “Down To The Sea” by Bruce Henderson in which Admiral Halsey ordered ships into a typhoon, which resulted in the smallest ships — destroyers — taking massive casualties. Three ships sunk, 28 ships damaged, 146 aircraft damaged, with 756 human casualties. Further, the three ships sunk had recent modifications which included additional war guns and armor to their superstructures. Which, in turn, raised their calculated centers of gravity. Plus poor ship-handling.

One additional book to consider: “The Wave” by Susan Casey, which indicates that heavy weather, coupled with a huge increase in so-called “rogue waves” results in a Lloyd’s of London estimation that most ships frequenting disaster are bulk carriers, with hatch problems, metal fatigue and poor maintenance. Yet, the trend is to continue building more massive ships.

That said, the IMO reported, from 1990 to 1997, a total of 99 bulk carrier ships lost.

In 1995, Sir Ronald Warwick, captain of the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth II (a 1,000-foot cruise ship!) encountered a series of 95-foot waves which smashed windows and part of its foredeck. He later went on to captain the virgin Queen Mary II because of his skills.

Lloyd’s of London currently estimates that 100 + ships sink per year due to heavy and/or unusual/loading conditions, but these statistics are highly guarded and mine are subject to confirmation. Which means, of course, they won’t be confirmed because the issue is too highly volatile. Some think that two large vessels sink weekly. I cannot confirm this.

Two large ships sink every week on average,” according to Wolfgang Rosenthal, of the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht, Germany. This equals out to about 100 ships per year, excluding small craft or docked ships sunk by hurricanes or storms, which could be in the thousands in a given year. Many sinks are attributed to rogue waves, but they are often accounted to ‘bad weather’ and so it is difficult to track.

Perhaps some of my expert readers can answer my primary question.

It would, of course, apply to the bulk of boats and ships produced as well.

BZ

by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

We need more Men in this world, and Men raising and mentoring boys into real Men.

We need more, not less testosterone in our nation.

BZ