Overnight Open Thread (18 May 2013)

War News Updates is a very good news aggregator for all topics military but they do cover other areas at times. Here's their take on the IRS coverup that is ongoing:

I am not an American .... just a Russian national who is now a Canadian citizen looking from the outside in .... and I am just shaking my head. There is something terribly wrong in the U.S. right now .... when the IRS has been politicized to go after a specific political group, it does not take a 'political scientist and historian' to know that you are entering a very dark place .... and being one who grew up in such a place (the former Soviet Union) .... trust me on this one .... it is a place that you do not want to find yourself living in.

Femen Hates Barbie

Giant Barbie doll house opens in Berlin amid protests.

Beware the yellow light

I expect this to occur in more communities across the country as municipalities need more revenue. Florida quietly shortened yellow light standards and lengths, resulting in more red light tickets for you. Not a very safe thing to do to drivers.

But there are few tangible safety benefits to short yellow lights. In fact, they appear to have the opposite effects; according to the USDOT and FHA, short yellow lights raise crash rates.

"A one second increase in yellow time results in 40 percent decrease in severe red light related crashes," the report said.

Jim Walker said shortening a driver's window for reacting to a yellow light creates more difficult split-second decisions, which can lead to more rear end collisions too. And he contends most serious accidents aren't coming from the "innocent driver" who gets caught by a short yellow. They're caused by blatant red light runners who will run a light regardless of yellow light length.

Death Star Destroys The Enterprise

I can already see the J. J. Abrams influence. Needs more lens flare though.

MSM Humor

Of course it involves CNN. CNN anchors do satellite interview with each other while sitting only 30 feet apart. The news, where they make shit up like it's a movie or something.

Producers at CNN apparently thought viewers wouldn’t notice that anchors Nancy Grace of HLN/Headline News and Ashleigh Banfield of Newsroom were standing no more than 30 feet way from one another as they manipulated the footage and placed Grace on Banfield’s right instead of her left.

The blatant visual gimmick aired Tuesday morning as the two correspondents reported on the latest details behind the horrific Cleveland kidnapping story and pretended they were conducting a remote interview, as the Atlantic Wire pointed out soon after.

Aviation Stuff

Earlier this week over in Britain, they held a ceremonial flyover celebrating their audacious dambuster raid that occurred 70 years ago. Click here for a close up of the above graphic detailing the Dambusters Raid. Pretty sweet to see a Lancaster bomber still flying.

The Aviationist has video as seen from the cockpit of the Lancaster as it does its flyover.

In other news, the US Navy made history by launching the X-47 from the USS George H. W. Bush. The first ever UAV launched from an aircraft carrier.

Air Force In The Dark

Sequester forcing major Air Force base to work in the dark. OK. Really. Just a bit of hyperventilating here. Yes commands are turning off lights and micromanaging the air conditioning to save a few bucks but c'mon, if sequester is causing this, just wait then until real cuts hit. BTW, where's all that green energy stuff that is free like wind and solar that the military has been spending billions on?

The Sun

Keep an eye on this site over the next few days as the sun as been particularly active this past week. Sunspot 1748 is now in a position that if it were to have a CME associated solar flare, it would most likely be Earth bound. Some folks in the northern latitudes got some nice aurora borealis last night from a CME that brushed past us from an earlier solar flare from that sunspot. Another CME is expected to brush past us tomorrow. You can see here the visibility probability of seeing aurora borealis.

Cat Video

Heh. The 300 soundtrack was a nice touch.

Tonight's ONT brought to you by:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maet or CDR M. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

posted by CDR M at 09:58 PM

| Access Comments