Archive for September 30th, 2004

I got a “sea story” posted!

September 30th, 2004 by

I found a blog a few weeks ago written by an active duty Navy Captain, and posted a comment to one of his remarks about refueling at sea. He posted it out for the general readership!

My first ship was a fleet replenishment oiler and our job was to drive along, all 40,000 tons of steel, 6 million gallons of diesel fuel and 600 tons of ammunition and spare parts, at about 12 kts on a steady course and have ships from aircraft carriers to small combatants to come up beside us, at about 120 to 160 feet (yes, feet!), at which point, we’d send over fueling hoses and hydraulically tensioned span wires for passing cargo. A short “alongside time” was about 20 minutes, which was more to keep proficient at maneuvering alongside, but we had some ships alongside for hours. For the ship coming alongside, they had to match our course and speed precisely for the entire time. It is a real exercise in relative motion.

Not only did we do it with one ship, but we had the manpower to have a ship on each side at one time. Oh, throw in that we carried two cargo helicopters, which would take off, then hover over the deck (while we went thru the ocean) to pick up pallet loads of cargo or ammunition/bombs on a hook under the “bird.” So, rigs “flying” to ships port and starboard, plus helos swooping in over the fight deck aft was just another day at the office for the 450 of us aboard the USS MILWAUKEE (AOR-2). You wouldn’t have know it be how smoothly the operation is executed, but death lurked all around. Between the incredible power of nature, and the frail nature of human engineering, mixed with moments of inattention, and it’s a recipe for disaster, but I never saw a serious accident on either side of that eveolution in 9 years of sea assignments, only two of which I was on the ship that just sat in the middle, with everyone else having the hard ship handling work. For 7 years of sea assignments, I was on the other side.

If you’re mildly curious about what I told Chap, then it’s at My post on Chapomatic. I’ll warn you, it’s sort of full of Navy language, but it should be understandable. If you need it clarified, just ask…..

Category: "Sea Stories", History, Military, Navy | 6 Comments »

Should Dan Rather go?

September 30th, 2004 by

If you would like to make a statement to CBS about firing Dan Rather, here’s a link to an online petition: Fire Dan Rather.

I’d like to see him go. For many years, I have skipped over his news, as it long ago was proven to me that he was grinding many axes and not reporting. This whole issue of the forged documents and his reaction show he lacks integrity, morals and wants grace for himself, yet he offers no quarter to those he is attempting to discredit or malign.

I learned something very powerful in 9 months of Naval War College: It’s always dangerous to set a precedent. The catch is you never know when you may have to live by the rule you put in place. Dan Rather was all over blaming the President of the United Sates for the acts of those who pulled some pretty stupid stunts in the prison in Iraq. The crys of how it went all the way to the top, and how the President was responsible were all over the media, including CBS Evening News for weeks. Stop a minute and take off your partisan hats (or tin foil ones) and consider real life. Is it reasonable in your world to blame any president for the acts of someone in the lower and middle grade ranks of the govenrment? Nope, it’s not and we all know it. The US Military alone is larger than the largest corporation on the planet, let alone consider the President is “responsible” (under the Rather and Democratic party model mentioned above) for all the rest of the people who are employed or contracted to the US Government. That’s an extremely huge number of people and we all should be amazed at how smoothly the machinery of our Federal Government works most all the time.

Here’s the final connection to Dan Rather using the foreged documents, then trying to cover it up, and the President and Abu Gharib: If George Bush is responsible for Lindey and her friends, all that way down the chain of command, then Dan Rather is responsible for the work of his supporting staff. Hey, fair’s fair! Dan Rather set the precedent, and now it’s time for him to be a man and stand up, as he expected the President to do. Oh, that’s right, he didn’t. He blamed his employees, so it’s too late for him to regain any minute portion of my respect.

Go with these words carefully stored in your memory: It’s always dangerous to set a precedent!

Category: Political | 1 Comment »

Who will decide this election?

September 30th, 2004 by xformed

I’m hopeful, but there’s this feeling I have that we are on the verge of seeing a change in how we have elected officials seated. There was a foreshadowing of it in Oct/Nov 2000, but this time, we’ll have it in spades.

The reason I believe there is a realistic opportunity for this to happen is because we have become a pretty sue crazy society. If it’s not how we like it, forget about sitting down and discussing it and don’t even consider looking at the bigger picture outside ourselves, to possibly find out it is beeter for all for us to take a second place, or even back seat, in order that a greater good be fulfilled.

With the introduction of electronic voting systems, there is a possibility they can be tampered with, and there are already indications some analysts/consultants have shown it can happen. Picture this: In a tight race, there are no hanging chads to joke about, and that, my readers makes it no joking matter. There will be no reliable way to reconstruct the actual “will of the people.” What then? If we settle for the “recorded” and for the sake of this discussion, and contested contest? That would certainly suit the winner of the moment, but, I submit, here’s where we get into trouble. The “loser” has a legal right to challenge it, due to the known vulnerabilites of electronic voting. Now, how will anyone possibly be able to pull togehter the program code and be able to replicate the voting to a degree that is reasonable, without redoing the actual election over again? Trust me, it will be so close to impossible that our puny little heads would explode from either 1) the massive technical issues involved in re-creating the votes, or 2) the millions of dollars someone would have to spend to do this properly.

Ok, so the bad news is electronic voting might provide such results that we need a judge to be the arbitrator.

Actually, if that wasn’t bad enough, pitting humans (who aren’t taught real math any more, let alone digital logic and related topics, required to not be completely cluless – another topic to be discussed later on how we have failed to teach real life things in our schools) against computers, how about the extreme hatred that will pit humans against humans? I can see it now, accusation and counter accusation about this and that group being “disenfranchised” in the process, so off to court we go. That’s going to be the downfall, when “we the people” have our votes questioned in court.

“Activist” judges. Yep, they exists. Not all judges are appointed for life. Some are elected. Since they are elected, they will try to model the behavior of the people that elected them, and that can go either way in party affiliation, to be fair about it. How will we feel when a judge rules a few thousand votes should have been this instead of that? If that tips the scale, and now its advantage to the moments before loser of the election, how will we react/

That’s a rhetorical question, of course, but think about that. I’ll pray we won’t have to deal with this, but with all the slimy maneuvering in the election, I think we will.

Category: Political | Comments Off on Who will decide this election?

Copyright © 2016 - 2024 Chaotic Synaptic Activity. All Rights Reserved. Created by Blog Copyright.

Switch to our mobile site