dun blow'd real gud!

idiots.

shop teacher use to yell at us for horsing around the acetylene torch tanks. told us how dangerous they were. then relayed a story about how he and friend(s) would put oxygen tanks out in the middle of nowhere and get far far away from it and do what these knobs just did in the video. hit it just right and it'd take off like a rocket. the shot should be part of the fun.

https://www.quora.com/How-far-will-the-bullet-from-a-50-BMG-rifle-travel-What-is-the-maximum-distance?share=1

Thank sweet zombie Jebus you were wrong on all counts with your predictions.

I'm usually the biggest cynic in the room, so I couldn't exactly deny your theory, but I am incredibly glad civil adults did get the reigns of the country back, and that America did end up deciding black lives do matter, at least a little bit when our noses are rubbed in our murderous racism.

How's the visa fight going? Does getting vaccinated make a difference? Good luck over there....I've never had any desire to visit France, but I'm a weirdo. My perfect vacation is a secluded house on a secluded warm beach in the middle of nowhere and seeing only family all week....I'm not into culture or large groups of people. Give me unspoiled unpopulated nature instead please. Last January we did exactly that outside Mahajual, S Mexico. It was heaven for me except when we went to town.

So what happened to all the people who were in those cars? Seems like it is in the middle of nowhere.

Yep, the name comes from Dakar, Senegal (In Africa), when the race, the Dakar Rally, was originally ran from Paris to Dakar. It's now held in South America, yet retains the legacy name.

These are specially built off road vehicles, Kamaz is the manufacturer in this example. Like many races, there are different classes of trucks that compete in the Rally, alongside dirt bikes, quads and cars.

It's basically Mad Max and I encourage folks to check out highlights of it, or the similar Baja 1000 race.

Interestingly, the truck class includes support trucks that don't actually compete, but assist competitors stranded in the middle of nowhere.

This Red Bull sponsored Monster (energy drinks!) has right around 1000hp and a 265 gallon fuel tank if I recall correctly. Road trip!

Italy:
Renzi is creating the conditons for a new bubble? Through deficit spending on... what? Unless they start building highways in the middle of nowhere like they did in Spain, I don't see any form of bubble coming out of deficit spending in Italy. The country's been in a major recession for quite some time now, with no light at the end of the tunnel and a massive shortfall in private spending. But meaningful deficit spending requires Renzi to tell Germany and the Eurogroup to pound sand -- not sure his balls have descended far enough for that just yet.

Referendum in Switzerland:
"Vollgeld". That's the German term for what the initiators of this referendum are aiming for: 100% reserve banking. It's monetarism in disguise, and they are adament to not be called monetarists. But that's what it is. Pure old-fashioned monetarism. Even if you don't give a jar of cold piss about all these fancy economic terms and theories, let me ask you this: the currency you use is quite an important part of all your daily life, isn't it? So why would anyone in his or her right mind remove it entirely from democratic control (even constitutionally)?
If you want to get into the economic nightmares of it, here are a few bullet points:
- no Overt Monetary Financing (printing money for deficit spending) means no lender of last resort and complete dependence on the market, S&P can tell you to fuck off and die as they did with PIIGS
- notion that the "right amount of money in circulation" will enable the market to keep itself in balance -- as if that ever worked
- notion that a bunch of technocrats can empirically determine this very amount in regular intervalls
- central bank is supposed to maintain price stability, nothing else -- single mandate, works beautifully for the ECB, at least if you like 25% unemployment
- concept is founded in the notion that the financial economy is the source of (almost) all problems of the "real" economy, thereby completely ignoring the fact that decades of wage suppression have simply killed widescale purchasing power of the masses, aka demand

Visegrad nations:
From a German perspective, they are walking on thin ice as it is. The conflict with Russia never had much support of the public to begin with, but even the establishment is becoming more divided on this issue. Given the authoritarian policies put in place in Poland recently and the utter refusal to take in their share of refugees, support might fade even more. If the Visegrad governments then decide to push for further conflict with Russia, Brussels and Berlin might tell them, very discreetly, to pipe the fuck down.

Turkey:
Wildcard. He mentioned how they will mess with Syria, the Kurds and Russia, but forgot to mention the conflict between Turkey and the EU. As of now, it seems as if Brussels is ready to pay Ankara in hard cash if they keep refugees away from Greece. Very similar to the deal with Morocco vis-a-vis the Spanish enclave. As long as they die out of sight, all is good for Brussels.

I would add France as a point of interest:
They recently announced that the state of emergency will be extended until ISIS is beaten. In other words, it'll be permanent, just like the Patriot Act in the US. A lof of attention has been given to the authoritarian shift of politics in Poland, all the while ignoring the equally disturbing shift in France. Those emergency measures basically suspend the rule of law in favour of a covert police state. Add the economic situation (abysmal), the Socialist President who avoids socialist policies, and the still ongoing rise of Front National... well, you get the picture.

Regarding the EU, I'll say this: between the refugee crisis (border controls, domestic problems, etc) and the economic crisis, they finally managed to convince me that this whole thing might come apart at the seams after all. Not this year, though, even if the Brits decide to distance themselves from this rotten creation.

I highly doubt the police officer would have even tried to have a conversation at first (it was hardly an interrogation) if the camera guy wasn't deliberately pointing a camera at the officer in the middle of nowhere. The officer first asked (twice) politely how the camera guy was doing.

I'm certainly not saying that the camera guy doesn't have the right to film, but I am almost certain he was trying to provoke a reaction and was very likely pleased with the eventual outcome. Yay for him I suppose by escalating it so.

I agree with your general point.

I personally would never consider 'replacing' the A10 with the F35.

But I still think you don't design weapons for what you need now, but to be ready for what you could need in the future.

Su-35 / Mig35, pak-fa, J-10, J-20, fighter tech is moving along in the world. The goal of systems like the F35/22 is to remain superior in any theoretical/potential future conflict. The only thing the F22/35 have to do with today's conflicts is the possibility to be shoehorned into dropping bombs on some scare crows in the middle of nowhere.

Sure, people pick on the F35 for being fat and happy - but fighters are more than turn turn turn turn shoot. They are systems to sense/detect, share info, build a battle field picture, jam opponents, strike the opponent's sensors, build situational awareness while denying the opponent his own SA. They build an environment where your forces can maneuver around enemy forces, strike key locations, and leave (without an actual fight), so that the enemy eventually finds himself with nothing left to defend, and they just quit without ever fighting. Modern fighters are an information system as much as a weapons platform.

Even in WW2 the powers learned the lesson that a good fighter is not necessarily a good pure dog fighter. The zero was the best turning fighter of the war - and it sucked. US planes would just not bother dogfighting with it. US planes would fly high above, dive down onto a zero, shoot at it, fly right by, and zoom back up. They didn't have to dogfight, because they had more speed and altitude, and the zero was helpless, it was a fighter stuck playing defense in air to air combat.

Times changed, today's tactics are not speed and altitude, they are situational awareness and detectability. It's the kind of fighting the F35 is tailored for, and it's not worth being too hard on it for not being ideal for more classical combat applications.

-scheherazade

As a kid, I was really into astronomy, but was always bugged by the fact that books would talk about seeing the Milky Way at night, and about the thousands of stars in the night sky. I figured there was something wrong with my eyes or something, because I could never find the Milky Way, and while I never counted the stars, I thought there were only about a hundred at best.

Then when I was about 12, we went camping and on a night with a new moon, I went outside the tent after dark. I looked up at the sky and literally got dizzy at the stunning revelation that was the real night sky.

Nowadays, I always try to plan family camping trips around the new moon so my kids get a chance to see the real sky, but even out in the middle of nowhere it is getting increasingly difficult to find a spot without at least one glaring streetlight or security light.

Yay, Sierra City -- the nicest middle-of-nowhere you'd ever want to visit!

The December update highlighted an issue that has been driving me insane for years now, an issue that makes me want to punch my fellow citizens right in the kisser for not looking beyond the facade.

His illustration of the price you pay for a t-shirt can be applied, without alteration, to our energy sector in Germany. The old, centralised infrastructure, primarily coal/gas/nuclear power plants, were subsidized heavily over the years, both directly through interest-free public loans and the privatisation of the energy grid as well as through indirect means, such as tax/insurance exemptions, R&D financing. Hell, the clean-up at Sellafield in the UK alone is expected to cost just shy of £100B. All this outsourcing of costs made it possible to keep the price of energy comparably cheap.

Meanwhile, all the subsidies for renewable energy are added on top of the energy price for consumers. No smoke screens, no outsourcing, no legacy costs. You get the price tag on your energy bill. A decent level of transparency, at last. But now people get pissed at the high prices of energy and demand a stop to the renewable energy program, which ironically pushed prices to a record low on the energy exchange. On-shore wind and solar are now cheaper than heavily subsidized coal and gas. My home town in the middle of nowhere generates wind power at 0.08€ per kwh, all year long, with minimal operating costs. Even solar works splendidly, despite the abysmal central European weather.

I think I might just try his Walmart explanation on some people, it's much easier to understand.

So cheers again for pointing out this wonderful series of lectures.

Whoa! Tarmac removal in Whitehorse, biggest news all summer there huh? In Pagosa Springs, Co. their airport has a 100' wide by 8000' long air strip and once I watched a C-130 Hercules on approach headed down. Teensy mountain resort town with mostly private small jets landing daily....quite a sight to see one of the largest planes ever coming-in low in the middle of nowhere!

I have seen this, not out in the middle of nowhere, but through an office window in Waltham, Massachusetts. The hunter was a mother fox with three kits, and she seemed to come up with a mouse more often than not. Wish I could remember which direction she jumped in ...

I'm sorry, did I simplify my internet post a bit too much? Obviously law is a complex subject and speaking about it in broad terms will not be exact. Let me reword my statement. If refusing a search is reason to search, then we never had the right to refuse a search in the first place.

These DHS stops are already spreading to other states and modes of transportation, and they're not just looking for illegal immigrants. And they're no different from regular police check points, they're just another agency to deal with. I understand that stops like these are required to be advertised, but when I'm driving 100 miles I have no idea how to check the entire path that I might take to avoid a stop in the middle of the night, in The Middle of Nowhere, Georgia.

And when the Patriot Act was enacted, I was bitching about it and being ashamed of my country. And no, I don't fly.