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This is equivalent to saying that he "mathematically beat the tossing of a coin" i.e. the statement makes no sense.

You must get out a little too much if you haven't seen this

Scroll down a little to where it says "Beat the Wheel". They did, in fact, mathmatically beat roulette. Here's the blurb from The History Channel, for those too lazy to click...

Vegas cheats come in all shapes and sizes: hardcore mechanics who devise gadgets to manipulate slots and mathematical geniuses who count cards in blackjack. But in gambling's history, no one had created a system that could guarantee a win on the roulette wheel--until Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard came along. In 1975, two childhood friends and physics geeks embarked on arguably the most ambitious Vegas-cheating project of all time: to deconstruct the physics behind the motion of a roulette ball, and build a miniature computer system that could surreptitiously predict the outcome of a roulette game. The project soon became an out-of-control obsession, consuming a whole commune of brilliant hippie-physicists...and ended in a landmark contribution to modern-day Chaos Theory. Features candid interviews with Farmer and Packard, as well as teammates Ingrid Hoermann and Letty Belin.

Let's get this straight.
To protect airports from fast, flying things we will employ lasers to shoot them down.
Airports are places where LOTS of flying things gather.
Presumably, since the bad flying things are so fast, and since we need to activate this when the bad things are not too far away (since the cost goes up with distance while the effectiveness goes down), we will require rapid, accurate target recognition, acquisition and tracking.
Hmmmm....am I the only one seeing the possibility of accidentally shooting down airliners like this http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/military_bl unders/mb_iasd.html or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_flight_800.
Now that I think about it though, if it did happen the military would likely claim that the incoming missile hit the airliner and this would be parrotted by the media enough to drown out alternatives, so the risk - for those implementing the system - is actually pretty low.
Somehow I don't feel at all comforted by the thought of this system.

Direct link to the page about the dog-thing invention (Quick-See). http://www.historychannel.com/invent/?page=semifin alists_crutchfield

And here is the page on the History Channel's website about the invention for cutting dogs' toenails. A story about it is here. No website yet.

here is the real link without any of the middlemen leeching pageviews off a 100 word summary and 100 adverts per page (and they wonder why people block adverts)

http://www.historychannel.com/invent/?page=winner_ ward

While a lot of TV is trash, try concentrating your search on The History Channel and The Discovery Channel. The plethora of educational content is amazing. Try checking out this coming Monday at... 9ish? History Channel is running a special about George Washington's military life called Washington the Warrior.

I get that some people don't like TV, but this is education about your country's founding, it's wars and triumphs, etc.

To me, this is great TV no matter who you are. But that's just MHO. ;)

"I was looking for UFOs."

Judging by the look on his facecould he be one of them?
Of course he lost the Extradition case, we can't even transport to Mars let alone Alpha Centauri.
This whole mess could have been avoided if he had only tuned in regularly to the History Channel.

and so-called 'Free Energy' technology

You're right, at $3 a gallon in the US for gas, I can see why a plan for Free Energy would be deemed devastating to our economy.
Or maybe it would be a great thing to share this Free Energy plan as a wonderful and kind benefit to all mankind, as well as the health of our air, water, land and seas? LOL maybe that will happen.

The History Channel had a UFO Files documentaryon Alien Engineering last night with 'alien' technology they theorized could exist. An anti-gravity, super speed, silent hovering flying saucer. Maybe they have all the schematics and plans for this, but won't release it because us puny humans simply couldn't use it properly.

it was the history channel http://www.historychannel.com/global/listings/seri es_showcase.jsp?NetwCode=THC&EGrpType=Series&Id=88 26020

"What I saw in the Xerox PARC technology was the caveman interface, you point and you grunt. A massive winding down, regressing away from language, in order to address the technological nervousness of the user. Users wanted to be infantilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition in the using of computers, and the Xerox PARC technology's primary advantage was that it allowed users to address computers in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I have not changed my mind about that."

I recalled this from a History Channel show and dug up a link:

http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?catego ry=oldwest&month=10272956&day=10272985

Basically, some miners were striking to improve living conditions so they and their families were evicted from their company owned homes. When they took up residence in the hills and continued to strike, they were fired upon by private detectives hired by Rockefeller. When that didn't work, Rockefeller got the governor of Colorado to send in the National Guard who fired on the camp. The women and children hid in ditches dug in the tents to stay safe from the bullets.

One of the strike leaders headed out to negotiate with the mining company but was shot dead instead. Then, under the cover of darkness, the National Guard snuck in set fire to the tents. More troops on the hilltops fired upon the people who fled from the burning tents. Sixty six men, women and children died and not a single person was charged with a crime.

I'd call that a pretty big abuse of government power.

Scanning through the list I noticed that Richard Stallman started coding for GNU in 1984. I mean 1984.... the sober worm is going to finish what he started! Or the book, remember the book. It MUST have a meaning... somewhere

Other link of what happened, like the dreyfus affair, to remain on topic.

It's also the day that Buddy Holly released his last album. What the hell does any of this have to do with anything. Sheesh.

Another example is the "Magic Bullet" experiment from the Kennedy assasination. They assumed the "Magic Bullet" was made out of ice.

I regret to inform you that you are incorrect. The ice bullet episode had nothing to do with the Kennedy assasination, and I think was based on a scene from the movie Most Wanted. I don't believe that the Mythbusters have ever done an episode involving the Kennedy (at least not according to a basic search of their episode guides on tv.com). You may be confusing it with a special that the History Channel ran.

You forgot the International XT family. :P

http://www.internationaldelivers.com/site_layout/X TFamily/index.asp

Bill Goldberg will be test driving one on the History Channel today at 2pm Eastern.

http://www.historychannel.com/automaniac/

That was "The Counterfit King" episode of Breaking Vegas on the History Channel. It is a series where they highlight different ways that people have cheated casinos out of money.

It was the History Channel. Breaking Vegas, Counterfeit King episode.

The Italians are the ones who fucked up thinking they could play "cowboy", and run into a war zone and sneak somebody out

Yeah, sure .
I believe the entire world is tired enough of seeing those stupid armed rambos protected by their own government.
Let me guess, you want the freedom to bomb a country for no reason whatsoever and the ability to screw foreign people around without being responsible?

Dude, decades of military and economic power have deeply changed your values: now you have become the bad guys. Did you realize that?

Speaking of safety, the 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster was two days ago (April 26 1986). Here is the a summary of the events from This Day in History: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month= 10272956&day=10272991&cat=10272946 - wantknowledge

Speaking of safety, the 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster was two days ago (April 26 1986). Here is the a summary of the events from This Day in History: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month= 10272956&day=10272991&cat=10272946 - wantknowledge

Nice to know our boys can smoke a C-172 with 30+ millions of dollars of hardware and training. I feel better now. Really.

Tell me, which country has that many pilots, including our reserves who are currently flying combat missions in 2 countries, and testing their opponents equipment not only in mock engagements, but on their own test ranges ?

Correct, no one but the good 'ol USofA.

You watch Fox News a lot, don't you?

Also, you may want to think for two seconds before opening your piehole. We have every version of every Soviet fighter ever made (they, or someone else, will sell them to us, East Germany gave us a ton, they German airforce still uses them!). You don't think Russia would sell us a nice shiney new aircraft, maybe, maybe not? What about if they sold it to Israel, would we get a copy? Yup, we would.

R. Lee? Is that you? Well, either way you should probably know that I do not doubt that we have Russian hardware (or Former Soviet States if you prefer). Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

We practice against them all the time.....do they have copies of F-22's to practice against? Didn't think so.

Well since they're not going to even reach operational capability until December of this year, I doubt our guys have even practiced against them.

Also, the F-15 is 1970/1971 technology, with some computer/radar & AAMRAM upgrades. Not too shabby, considering it'll kick the crap out of anything in the sky (from BVR and assitance from other support aircraft, thats how we fight). And yes, the US won't dogfight, because we'd probably lose some aircraft. That would be stupid, like you.

So, the whole whole point of my post was that the US shouldn't be too cocky about its fighters because in a dogfight, we could still lose. Which, you agree with shortly before calling me stupid. Wow. Looks like I wasted the arrogant hubris line a little too soon.

If you look at warfare you will see that there are really only two groups- the infantry and those who support them. Aircraft, tanks, artillery, and ships can inflict tremendous amounts of damage. They can deny territory to your enemies and engage in all sorts of offensive and defensive missions. But they cannot hold territory or captured enemies. Only infantry can do that.

What that means is that at the end of the day, whether or not we win or lose has more to do with the grunts on the ground than the airdales flying overhead. By placing so many resources and energy into single hugely expensive platforms we are potentially setting our selfs up to fail. Just because no single nation can stand up to us doesn't mean that we cannot cause our own demise.

When your equipment becomes to valuable to risk losing in a war, I think you have already headed down that unfortunate path. The war against terror is an entirely different kind of war. They are not trying to invade us with hoards of fighters and massive amphibious landings on the coasts. They are infiltrating us and using simple improvised weapons against us. An F-22 is no protection against a checkpoint car bombing.

I'm not pretending to know all of the answers to the US's foreign policies and wars anymore than I claim to be an expert on modern air to air combat tactics. However, I do think that we are investing money to protect us from threats that may no longer exist at the expense of threats which we do not yet fully recognize. Sarcasm aside, if you think about nothing else that I have written, at least ponder that one for a bit.

Lets start with: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_national_story_skin/46 9987%3Fformat=html
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3 1&art_id=qw1106022963550R131
http://boards.historychannel.com/thread.jspa?threa dID=300034074&messageID=300411450

Showing the southpole has been holding steady temp: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/update/csci/show_ station.py?id=700890090000&data_set=2

It's a good thing Slashdot doesn't have this problem.

You forget, though, that Al Gore conceded to GWB the night of the election, and then retracted that concession.

This is a good quote to hear from time to time as it helps to remind you, as you say, that there is no point in fearing that which you do not control.

As far as the big database dragnet goes, I'm not sure that it would have helped 9/11 - policing those whose visas had expired would have likely done more good. This database dragnet might do more good in stopping things like the Oklahoma City bombing where a couple of rednecks (who didn't farm) bought enough chemicals and fuel to run a farm and made a big bomb out of them.

I also think that the Senate saying "let it be done" and it actually being something that could be done in a meaningful way are two different things.

Please excuse me while I get my bid ready to go. I think that I'll be asking for (insert Dr. Evil voice) 1 trillion dollars...

So, Iraq hadn't been flouting the terms of the 1991 cease-fire? Good to know.

That wasn't the reason Congress voted to authorize the threat of force. Congress authorized the threat of force because Bush said that if we waited we'd have a "Mushroom Cloud over Manhattan"

Other than the fact that Saddam would have been in violation of the cease fire terms by possessing nukes, the fact that he was in violation of OTHER cease fire terms is entirely beside the point of why America supported Bush's war. The fact that even their last shred of evidence has now been debunked, the aluminum tubes, means that BUSH LIED. Deal with it.

Yeah, about 30 seconds of American Idol or Paris Hilton makes me feel like I have been lobotomized. Thank god for http://www.historychannel.com/ and http://www.comedycentral.com/.

By the way, love your beer :)

For people who *don't* know the historical significance and have to look it up, click here.

No, the first drug wars of the U.S. were when the U.S. and Britain sent gunboats into China to protect their importation of opium into China.

For some reason, it seems that the more companies stress how much they "welcome feedback", the less likely you are to actually get some sort of response.

[or when you do, it's some sort of form letter, telling you that you're very important to them, and they'll look into it, but from the wording of the form letter, it's obvious that they've misunderstood what your issue was]

If they have a feedback mechanism, but don't go out of their way to over-hype it, then you might have a chance at getting a response from a real person. [eg, you have to go through the automated FAQ on The History Channel to get to the link for freeform comments. Although, the response to asking why they're always showing programs about Hitler still seemed like a form letter -- but it was at least a relevent response to the question.]

Band of Brothers doesn't end until the 19th. Oh yeah, and Thursday's out too because Kingdom Hospital is on.

Of interest is how the truckers must travel at a certain speed when traveling over lakes and rivers. Seems that the truck's presence deflects the ice in such a way that creates pressure waves in the water underneath, such that if the truck approaches the shore too quickly, the pressure wave can actually blow out the ice in front of the truck as the wave hits the shore.

---PCJ

Ok, I'm a dork.. Guess that's a danger of watching late night TV. It probably was the Nov '65 blackout, but I thought at the time it was last years; I wonder what I really saw. Thanks!

What he was nailed for was the disappearance of a videotape filmed by his navigator.

In this case, there would most definitely have been a show trial in Italy, although the appeals would probably have eventually, quietly resulted in acquittal. Probably. However, under NATO rules, the U.S. already had jurisdiction by treaty.

although he was found guilty at a second trial because he and his co-pilot destroyed a tape made during the flight, not for the actual deaths they caused!

Who is actually recording television anymore?

I am. Occasionally I like to learn stuff.

And when I don't, it's for Scrubs, CSI, and "Whose Line Is It Anyway?".

Imagine the police are trying to find a serial rapist. They pull up the surveillance tapes for the areas surrounding the crime scenes and compile a list of everyone who was in the right places at the right times. Anyone on that list, whether they are actually the rapist or not, is going to be subjected to VERY close scrutiny. Once you get on the cops radar, it's pretty likely that they're going to keep digging until they find SOME dirt on you, even if it's something totally unrelated to the original case. If you think that being mistakenly identified as suspect in a major case isn't traumatic, I'd suggest you review the case of Richard Jewel

Tactical to Pratical

on the history channel had a special kinda relating to this. The episode What sank the armada? had a scientist researching why the spanish were not prepared for a naval battle (defeat of the spanish armada). The scientist was researching the log books and trying to recalculate areas of low and high pressure. pretty interesting.

Links:
Big Dig Photos
Big Dig Operations Center
The History Channel on the Big Dig
Official Big Dig Site

= 9J =

WELLES SCARES NATION

In 1998, UN inspectors found evidence and in fact found biological agents in Iraq. They were shortly after ordered by the UN to leave Iraq because the Iraqi government had stopped "cooperating" with them (according to the inspectors) and the US was going to bomb Iraq in response.

Shortly after this, the head of the inspectors (Richard Butler) gave an account of the "incident" where they came to a base to inspect and saw trucks leaving through the rear gates. Some googling turned up this article:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5 942,6545273,00.html

Although his conclusion is odd, considering the content, this is what it comes down to: If there are not currently WMDs in Iraq, where are they? We know that they had them, and all Iraq needed to do was prove that they had destroyed them. There would be witnesses, evidence that the destruction had taken place. But Hussein's government was not willing (or able) to fulfill this requirement.

Also, here is an article from the History Channel: http://boards.historychannel.com/threadedout.jsp?f orum=73&thread=8608

To top it off, the nearly 18 months of delay caused by the UN gave the Iraqis plenty of time to either hide, destroy, or give away their weapons. Had the US not essentially forced the inspectors out, they would have continued to "inspect" forever. In 1998, Iraqi intelligence had infiltrated the UN inspectors, according to Richard Butler. The fact that the inspectors were not turning anything up in 2002-2003 is not surprising in the least.

Anyway, the cease-fire agreement with Iraq simply stated that they had to show exactly what they had and that they had destroyed it. Iraq did not provide the list, and when they finally did, it was missing many things that were already known about. In short, the Iraqis lied repeatedly about what they had. Even if they did destroy all of the items (which is doubtful) they could have shown evidence of it. But they did not even show what they had, much less suggest they had destroyed it.

Sorry, can't do that... Daltry's busy on the History channel!

"A suspected terrorist could be released, free to leave the country, or worse, before the trial," Mr. Bush said. "This disparity in the law makes no sense. If dangerous drug dealers can be held without bail in this way, Congress should allow for the same treatment for accused terrorists."

Despite Mr. Bush's concerns, Justice Department officials said they knew of no specific instances in which a person charged in a terrorism case had fled after being granted bail.

(snip)...Mr. Bush's proposal, he said, "means that there are no effective checks and balances. It's very worrisome."

Civil rights lawyers, defense advocates and some former prosecutors say they see no need to broaden the Justice Department's powers so markedly. Under current law, they say, terrorism investigators can typically get a subpoena in a matter of hours or minutes by going through a judge or a grand jury.

"[L]aw-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge's sign-off."

You know how Teddy Roosevelt was so against the trusts (megacorps that were above the law and beyond mere monopoly, a la Standard Oil) because they were more powerful than the government in so many ways, hence offending his own megalomaniacal sensibilities? Apparently, the U.S. Government today is disappointed about the fact that modern megacorps had taken on the role of Big Brother via image recognition, data mining, and monopolistic practices. In the face of such competition, they apparently feel the need to get their anti-Constitution on. Pull out the big guns!

I'm done debating the competency of our current Presidential administration or the legitimacy of the Presidential office. In the face of this perpetually double edged sword, I just want to keep both the terrorists and the government in check.

If anyone would like to learn more about how technologies originally developed for the miliary have found their way into everyday civilian use, the program Tactical to Practical premieres tonight on the History Channel, 9PM Eastern.

The History Channel is running a new series,
Tactical to Practical, which shows military to civilian crossover applications of equipment.

Do you know the reason the Amish use hook and eye fasteners rather than buttons on their coats? Buttons were originally designed for military uniforms. There are countless examples of military research crossing over to civilian life, including the obvious, The Internet.

The best picture I could find was this one on HowStuffWorks.

MOD PARENT UP Insightful!

Actually an "atlatl" is not technically a "spear-like device", but it is a device used to launch a light spear more accurately and powerfully than by hand. Kind of like a sling conceptually, but for a spear (dart) instead of a rock.

A good site about the atlatl.

And the History Channel has an EXCELLENT show called "Conquest" that did an episode that included the atlatl (I think it was "Stone Age Weapons").

MOD PARENT UP Insightful!

Actually an "atlatl" is not technically a "spear-like device", but it is a device used to launch a light spear more accurately and powerfully than by hand. Kind of like a sling conceptually, but for a spear (dart) instead of a rock.

A good site about the atlatl.

And the History Channel has an EXCELLENT show called "Conquest" that did an episode that included the atlatl (I think it was "Stone Age Weapons").