Reading The Times

Take The Times (UK) lager quiz (in the right sidebar on this page)…and see how much you really know about beer. I scored 7/10. And I consider myself knowledgeable about beer…not a connoisseur, by any means, but knowledgeable. So, I suppose 70% is about where I should be. There are some fairly esoteric questions in this quiz, so don’t go laughing or making fun of me because of my relatively low score.

There’s a lot to interest beer lager drinkers on the linked page. I tend to drink ales almost exclusively, but even speaking as a non-lager lover, I spent more than a few minutes here.

How’s your taste? Are you tasteful? Or tasteless? Read the Brit definition(s) here… “Does your taste suck?” Excerpt:

Another word for this phenomenon is “grotesque”. That’s what a lot of our purchases, even our bodies, are becoming. Our cars have ballooned, our garages doubled, our houses have been extended, our muscles bulked up, our breasts inflated and our lips beestung. At the end of that we’ve had our teeth bleached bunny-rabbit white and hopped onto a sunbed. Is this new Texan-style sensibility necessarily bad taste, though? Definitions of good taste are notoriously difficult. It could be argued that the whole idea of good taste is in bad taste. Why do we need to be prescriptive? Isn’t that pretentious, divisive and arrogant? Well, yes, but it’s quite good fun.

Hmmm. What’s this “Texan-style sensibility” stuff? I assume the author is going for the “ever thang’s bigger in Texas!” stereotype. But he’s British, so one never knows. Good article, though, and I pretty much agree with all that’s said. But then again, I would. After all, I’m a man of remarkably good taste. (ahem)

Another passing…Art Arfons, who was something of a childhood hero of mine, died on December 3rd. And I didn’t see a single obituary in a US paper. How sad. But, as for Mr. Arfons…he had a major impact on my young life. The stuff he did, and the way he did it, made him a role-model for gear heads everywhere, especially young ones. That and the fact he was in the pages (if not on the cover) of Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding, and the like throughout the 50s and 60s. There was just something about The Green Monsters…in all their incarnations, but most especially the jet-powered ones…that captured the imagination of the pre-adolescent Bucky Pennington. And the young man that followed, too.

In 1952 he and Walt built their first proper vehicle, a three-wheeled dragster with an Oldsmobile engine, splashed with green tractor paint. The commentator at the drag strip called the creation “the green monster”, a name that adhered to all Art Arfons's projects thereafter, whatever their hue. The green monster proved somewhat slow at 85mph, but the brothers raised their game by switching to aircraft engines. The Green Monster 2 had a 2,000-horsepower Allison V1710 aircraft engine as used on the Lockheed P38, six wheels and a top speed of 145.16mph on the quarter mile, a drag-racing world record. It won the first drag racing World Series at Lawrenceville, Illinois, in 1953. Green Monster 6 was the first dragster to exceed 150mph; Green Monster II reached 191mph.

Both hungry for glory, the Arfons split up to duel amicably with each other on the drag strip. Walt was the first to develop a jet-engined dragster, for which he was required to invent the parachute as a stopping device. Art later refined a means to fire the parachute with a shotgun mechanism, and created a Green Monster with a J97 static thrust engine from a Lockheed F104 Starfighter, bought from a scrap dealer in 1967. A request to General Electric for a repair manual resulted in a government agent turning up to confiscate the engine, telling Arfons that components for the Starfighter — which had held simultaneous world records for speed, altitude, and climb rate — were still top secret. He was horrified that Arfons had repaired the engine without assistance.

Whatta guy, eh? Obituary here.

Photo credit: The Times.

It’s Been A Long Time Since They Rock ‘n’ Rolled….

…and a few folks think it should have been longer…like forever. First there was this sort of sour grapes carping from Diana West:

As for Mr. Plant himself, The New York Times said: "He was authoritative; he was dignified."

OK. I'll pretend I haven't seen concert pictures of Mr. Plant, his face contorted over his hand-held microphone and under his disheveled perm. In fact, maybe "authoritative" works, at least in the way a street person yelling at a bus is authoritative. But "dignified"?

No doubt "dignified" is in the eye of the beholder -- in this case, the concert audience, some 10,000 strong. Among them was the Washington Post's reviewer, a self-described attorney "staring down the barrel of 40," who wrote of the "palpable sense of community" in the crowd around him, and more. "It appears that all the tickets to this concert went to couples who care about each other deeply," he wrote. "Fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters. Lifelong friends who bonded all those years ago to the music of the men onstage." I can hear the old song now: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, woman, you need it!"

I say “sour grapes” because one suspects Ms. West was among the 19,990,000 unsuccessful souls who participated in the ticket lottery. Or not, if you tend to believe her hippie-bashing. Which, of course, is the thing to do these days.

The Brits do snark the best, however. From Mick Hume, writing in The Times (UK):

So how come, long after they were buried, Led Zep can suddenly create “the longest ticket queue in history”? This is the age of the reunion, from the Spice Girls to (sadly) the Sex Pistols. It must say something about how tame youth music has become that the year's most talked-about gigs star a “girdle power” group and boring even-older farts who had a nice cup of tea afterwards.

Nostalgia clearly ain't what it used to be. Once it was the preserve of old people, focused on big events in their lives and times. Now we have middle- aged men, seemingly with guitar-shaped holes in their souls, banging on about the meaning of Zep or Floyd as their parents talked about the war.

Most depressing is the apparent desire of young people to be retro Zep-heads. A Facebook group entitled “And God said, Let there be rock. And there was Led Zeppelin” has 30,500 members; one called “Led Zeppelin SUCKS!” boasts just 49. Youngsters interviewed with their parents at the O2 gig were breathlessly excited about seeing “real” rock music and smug about their jealous mates.

Tip o’ the ice berg, that. Short, but sweet. Still and even, a very cursory look tells me they’ve still got it…

The fact that a bunch of guys in their early 60s (OK, Plant is 59) could take the stage and even attempt what is a young man’s game is cause enough for admiration. The fact that they succeeded (according to most accounts, the above are exceptions) is simply amazing.

More power to ‘em, more often.

Pertinent Video Comment

If you’ve been by Mushy’s place today, you’ve seen this. But it’s just too danged good NOT to post here at EIP.

Perfect. Just frickin’ perfect, innit?

I used to dread the onslaught of Christmas catalogs, back when they still were Christmas catalogs. I dunno exactly when the Official American Vernacular changed, but it was sometime in the last six or seven years, methinks. But Hey! Opportunities abound for great good fun with this phenomenon. I simply revel in the opportunity to respond to some clerk, manager, or other hapless employee (who’s been instructed to use the now-ubiquitous “Happy Holidays!” by his employer) with “Merry Christmas!” And yannowhut? The response, nine times out of ten, is a big smile and a “Thank You!”

Most of us Get It, regardless of what the PC-Police think.

Blather...Real and Imagined

In what’s turning into a semi-regular event here at EIP, here’s today’s Cannon AFB update, courtesy (once again) of the Air Force Association’s “Daily Brief:”

What Are Those Things?: Air Force Special Operations Command is beginning to move several units to its new western base at Cannon AFB, N.M., and this summer plans to send in a relatively new and low-profile airframe-the U-28A. According to Col. Tim Leahy, commander of the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon, the aircraft came out of the emphasis placed on special operations forces in the last Quadrennial Defense Review. Dubbed the "Non-Standard Aircraft" and called NSA, the small airlifter is a variant of the Pilatus PC-12 and joined the air commando fleet in August 2005. Filled with advanced communications and navigation gear and a host of classified capabilities, the aircraft is designed to provide intratheater support to special ops forces. AFSOC chose the U-28A specifically to operate from short and unimproved runway surfaces and even dirt strips. One reason for assigning them to Cannon is to take advantage of the nearby Melrose training range, where AFSOC is interested in practicing assault landings on one of the dirt strips, according to range chief Johnny Rogers. "The rougher the better," Rogers said during a tour of the range. The aircraft are currently operated by the 319th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

I find these lil tidbits very interesting. These news releases are small clues as to what sort of activities, and what sort of military personnel participating in these activities, are going to be taking place in and around Cannon Airplane Patch in the very near future. Methinks we’re going to get a lot more diverse in these parts. In addition to Air Commandos, I’m thinking we’ll be seeing folks from Marine Force Recon, Army Rangers, and such. And there may be SEALs, too, but I think not…those guys are pretty big on the self-contained, organic, in-house thing, including transport to and from the fight. Or they used to be. The current “jointness” trend might have overcome that tendency, so it wouldn’t surprise me a whit to see SEALs walking around Cannon. Maybe.

Have you ever wondered what life is like for the rank and file aboard an aircraft carrier? A deployed aircraft carrier, on station in the Gulf? And by “rank and file,” I mean the guys who work on the jets and get them ready to do what must be done, not the high-visibility guys who do the flying. Those fly-guy stories are well represented and well-told…most notably here. But it’s the support troops who rarely get the press, and even more rarely tell their stories. One such story is being told here… in “Post Cards From Deployment: In the Gulf.” (This is but one installment in a series... I suggest you read them all!)

Wonder no more. And a BIG tip o’ the hat to SJS for doing the blog-hosting chores for Southern Air Pirate.

So…I was catching up on my Lileks last evening and came across a wonderful 1953 Harley ad James had so kindly and thoughtfully posted in the “Advertising” sub-section of his site, along with his trademarked piquant commentary.

There are lots and lots of adjectives that come to mind when thinking of J. Lileks…like “prolific,” “erudite,” “witty,” and “talented.” But the only adjective that adequately describes his knowledge of motorcycles is “lacking.” And why is that, you ask, Gentle Reader? Because one doesn’t drive a bike, one rides. And one rides on a motorcycle, not in one (just how would you get “in” a motorcycle, anyway?). Both usages are the tell-tale signs of a person who may admire motorcycles but has rarely ridden one, if ever. Take my criticisms with a grain of salt, because the ad is great. You should go.

Yes, I am nitpicking. It’s simple jealousy at play, that’s all. Sheer, unadulterated jealousy.

Long-time readers of EIP may wonder about the lack of political fodder around these parts of late. Well, I’m going through yet another of my periodic “screw-it” episodes, wherein I wash my hands of all things political. Which, of course, is necessary from time to time, if only to keep what’s left of one’s (my) sanity. And besides that, it’s The Holidays…and who needs MORE idiots at this time o’ year?

Still and even, I’m going wade back into the morass to bring you this lil interesting installment of point-counterpoint political dialog, otherwise known as the “Jane, you ignorant slut!” school of intellectual exchange. From The Times (UK):

Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, launched a very public attack on Washington today blaming American officials for the failure of this week’s United Nations climate change conference.

The United States refused to sign up to emissions targets as the Bali conference on global warming limped to an acrimonious conclusion today.

Mr Gore, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year for his work on climate change, was clear in his denunciation of President Bush’s attitude.

“I am not an official and I am not bound by diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth: my own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali,” he said, to the applause of delegates.

As Charles Krauthammer remarked, rather pithily, on FNC’s Special Report last evening (transcript not available; quoting from memory): “It’s global warming, not ‘American warming’.” Krauthammer’s point is the two nations with bigger problems than the US (China and India)…when it comes to emissions… are excluded from the Kyoto Protocol and other future climate change proposals. And the US is absolutely, positively correct in refusing to accept the economic burden(s) of Kyoto without similar concessions from those whose problems are larger than ours…and getting worse. That’s just one lil anecdote. There are others, such as this, from Christopher Monckton:

As a contributor to the IPCC’s 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate’s alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year’s Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.

[…]

If we take the heroically stupid decisions now on the table at Bali, it will once again be the world’s poorest people who will die unheeded in their tens of millions, this time for lack of the heat and light and power and medical attention which we in the West have long been fortunate enough to take for granted.

If we deny them the fossil-fuelled growth we have enjoyed, they will remain poor and, paradoxically, their populations will continue to increase, making the world’s carbon footprint very much larger in the long run.

And this:

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.

Well now. I’m in no way dissing the Pope (but it sure does look like it, since I’m invoking the pontiff’s name in conjunction with Algore), but it seems odd to me that one High Priest is in serious disagreement with another (real!) High Priest. I dunno about you, Gentle Reader, but even in this day and age I’ll wager the Pope has more moral authority than Algore.

In his little finger.

Thus endeth today’s lesson.