PensionersRants

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The Making of a Superpower

I read some bad news the other day, I had a hard time believing. It seems the Ameicans are running out of big rocks. Yes, its hard to believe, but it appears to be true. I am referring to the big rocks, they make monuments from. They do make a lot of monuments, sort of like the Victorian era in England, when they made a lot of statues. It makes me wonder if this carving up of rocks is another sign of the end times.

Rome made lots of statues, momuments and buildings, then plop, down the drain. England, the same way, plop, down the drain. The Martin Luther King statue is the latest. I don't have anything against M.L.K. But the thing is, they bought the rock from China. I don't know about you, but to me it just doesn't seem right. I can see if they bought the rock in Africa, that would be okay.

It also appears, they have no more artists in the U.S, capable of making that sculpture. Maybe it just falls in line with the policy that they have to give all their jobs to someone else. Not only do we (them and us) send all the jobs to China (& India) we also send the factories. Remember the movie "Terminator"? The end has a hand crawling through a steel mill. Do you know where that steel mill is now? It was chopped up and taken to China. They did the same with a steel mill in Sydney and a oil refinery her in Dartmouth.

Sound like good policy? It might be a good policy for greed. After all, the upper class figure they can buy their way out of anything, so might as well grab as much as you can.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

How Jackie Got His TouchPad!

Last Friday I was discussing the iPad with my son. I told him I wasn't interested in an iPad, all I needed was an eReader. Lately I have been checking them out. Finally, I decided to wait till the new Kindle came out. It's supposed to be in color, etc, etc. So he told me about HP getting out of the Tablet market, and maye some of the people who bought them will freak out, and want to sell theirs. Then, maybe I could get one on Kijiji, maybe $150. Okay, that sounds like a good plan.

Next morning, I see my son with a wide grin. "Guess what? I checked the Staples website this morning, and they have the HP Tablet for $99. & $150. I ordered three." An hour later confirmation came that he had two of them, one of each. So, we each have one. Since then, everyone is going crazy trying to get one. Store lineups, etc, just to order one.

So now I have my eReader and it cost $99. Of course I use it for more than reading books. The eReader only didn't last long. Love those Apps. The one that impresses me the most is the Google App. Just say the name of something and up comes the information. Or you can take a photo of something and it brings up items closest to it. Really Star Trekkie.

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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Royally Speaking

When I joined the air force in 1961, it was the Royal Canadian Air Force. Then some dummy got the bright idea to join all the services, so I ended up in Air Command. The navy got Maritime Command and the army was Land Command. (Original eh?) That was in 1968 and we were given new uniforms, badges. etc. Most people hated it, especially the navy. In the late 80's, the air force got their uniforms back, sort of. I don't think the army and navy did. Now they are going back to The Royal Canadian Air Force, The Royal Canadian Navy, and The Canadian Army. The army doesn't have royal in front because it is made up of different regiments, like The Royal Canadian Regiment, The Royal 22nd. Regiment, etc. I would be even happier if they went back to air force ranks instead of army.

The French population of Nova Scotia will now be able to get vanity licence plate. Nova Scotia in French and English and the Acadian flag on the side. Sounds all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the $50.00 cost to get one. They call it a donation. Wonder if you can get one without a donation. I shouldn't talk, I have a Veterans plate. It cost me $5.00 extra.

On the front page yesterday, they told us about civil servants getting bonuses. They call it Merit Pay. Of 1700 workers, over 1000 receive it. The purpose is so they don't want to lose good people. Give me a break. With their fringe benefits and pay that is 50% higher than the street, no one is going to leave. What do you take us for?
The top business leaders say the same thing. Give me a 10 million bonus or I'll leave. Yeah, right!

There is this Mayor in a village in Quebec, who gave his ex-wife a birthday present yesterday. They were divorced a year ago. He has a construction company and in the middle of the night, he brought a 17 tonne bolder and put it in her driveway. He said that she always wanted a big rock.


Jack Sakalauskas
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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Horses Ass



RAILROAD TRACKS The US standard railroad gauge
(distance between the rails) is
4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an
exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built
them in England and English
expatriates designed the US railroads.



Why did the English build them like
that?
Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways and that's
the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the

tramways used the same jigs and
tools that they had used for building wagons,
which used that wheel spacing.


Why did the wagons have that
particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other
spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long
distance roads in England , because
that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.


So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long

distance roads in Europe (including England )
for their legions. Those roads have been
used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the

initial ruts, which everyone else had

to match for fear of destroying their
wagon wheels.


Since the chariots were made for
Imperial Rome , they were all alike in
the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of
4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.


The next time you are handed a
specification/procedure/process
and wonder 'What horse's ass
came up with this?', you may be
exactly right. Imperial Roman
army chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate
the rear ends of two war horses.
(Two horses' butts.)
 


Now - the twist to the story:
A Space Shuttle sitting on its

launch pad has two big booster
rockets attached to the sides of
the main fuel tank. These are
solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol
at a factory in Utah .

Engineers who designed the SRBs
would have preferred to make them
a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be

shipped by train from the factory
to the launch site. The railroad line
from the factory happens to run
through a tunnel in the mountains,
and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.



The tunnel is slightly wider than the
railroad track, and the railroad track,
as you now know
, is about as wide
as two horses' behinds.

 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of
what is arguably the world's most advanced
transportation system, was determined over
two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass!
And you thought being
a horse's ass wasn't important!