Scientists have discovered huge, fast moving clouds of gas that are streaming out of galaxies and possibly taking away from their ability to foster new stars.

Reports point to a few possible processes that are causing these galaxies to emit gas at such a rate, including shock waves from exploding stars.  Personally, I blame inter-galactic kimchi.

May the kraut be with you!

A man in Florida, who was apparently a little too lubricated, entered the wrong house, cooked himself a snack, and passed out on the couch.  He was discovered and arrested the next morning by the real owners. Luckily no-one was hurt, although I can’t promise I’d be calm enough to just call the cops if I found a guy passed out on my couch.

I’d laugh at this if I hadn’t been on the receiving end of just such an incident.  Well, OK, I did laugh a bit, even at the memory of what happened to me.

As I’ve said before, life at the language school I attended early in my Army life was a mixture of hormones, stress, and alcohol.  A lot of young people, under a lot of pressure, blew off a lot of steam with a lot of booze.

One Friday night, a night during which I must point out that I was stone cold sober, I went to bed early.  Imagine my surprise when I woke up at dawn on Saturday morning to go for a run, and found my classmate Peter sleeping at the foot of my bed!

Peter was dating one of the young women who lived down the hall from me.*  When she decided to go to sleep that night, she and her roommates kicked Peter out and sent his blind drunk butt home.  Peter lived in the barracks two buildings down the street from me, but his room was on the same floor and door number as mine.  Coincidentally, his bed in his barracks room was in the same place in the room as mine.  Hey, it’s the Army, they’re anything if not consistent.  He apparently left our floor, walked down three flights of stairs, wandered around a while, walked back up three flights of stairs, somehow got back on our floor, and then let himself into my room.  Apparently my roommate had gone out for a late night run and had left the door unlocked.  As drunk as he was, he thought he was in his own room.  He found his way to my bed on the far side of the room, and passed out.  Thank Cthulhu he went unconscious before he had a chance to undress.

So there I was, a 19 year old hooah kind of guy, waking up to go for a run down at the beach, and there’s this hairy Italian guy sleeping in my bed!  I kicked him in the back a couple of times and demanded he explain himself.  To his credit, Peter immediately woke up and realized just how badly he’d screwed up.  We ‘calmly’ talked the situation over, and he left.

Thing is, our talking woke up one of my roommates, who heard me talking and initially thought I’d brought a girl home the night before.  Then he heard Peter’s deep voice, and started freaking out because he was convinced I’d brought a guy home.  This was 1990, so that kind of thing was a no-no.  Luckily, Peter explained the whole thing on his way out, and my roommate and I never discussed it again.  Of course, within a few days, everyone in the company knew about it, but Peter was the object of attention, not me.  Well, mostly not me.

So let this be a lesson to you:  Always lock your door.  You never know who’s going to come calling after having one too many.

*Yes, I lived in a co-ed dorm barracks.  I noticed this about 15 seconds after getting to my room the night I arrived from Basic when I saw one of my neighbors floating down the hallway in a negligee.  I knew at that moment that I loved the Army.

Oleg Volk has a good picture of the Coonan .357 automatic in use by a small-framed woman.  Performance by the gun was reported to be extremely accurate, and by the picture at the link above, you can see that the shooter was able to get back on  target while the brass from the last round was still in the air.

I saw and handled the Coonan when I was at NRA last weekend, and I really liked the way it felt in my hand.  Like I said, it’s a solid chunk of metal, so I’m not surprised that muzzle flip and recoil were so easily manageable.  It’s definitely going on my list of guns to add to the collection.

H/T to William the Coroner.

For two weeks, no one has, despite Hannah’s years of service in the Navy, despite an honorable discharge, despite calls and a letter to the U.S. Military Retirement Pay Division. Bureaucracy and privacy concerns (ironic for a man whom no one has claimed) bog down the process.

Pass this down the chain.  Someone knows this man, and he deserves better.

Borepatch hits one out of the park, across the bay, and into Oakland.

My favorite:

I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some tweed-jacket egghead had said I was Cum Laude, people would put me away!

We all know that we have a prison camp for captured terrorists at Guantanamo, and maintain detention facilities at other locations worldwide.  These people come from a plethora of countries, a lot of whom we have at least semi-friendly relations with.

What do we do if the governments of those countries, when they learn that we have captured their citizens and are detaining them in a state that’s not really criminal, but not POW, demands access to them, or even demands that a representative from their diplomatic corps be present when that person is questioned?

Let’s change the way we look at this.  Let’s say that a British subject is in our country on a work visa, and is arrested on suspicion of rape and murder.  Since those crimes are pretty heinous, and he’s a flight risk to return to Great Britain, we hold him without bail.  Can the British ambassador demand access to him and provide counsel for any interrogation and and have a reasonable expectation that we do as asked?  We could demand the same thing for one of our citizens, so would we turn down their request?

What if that British subject was arrested for espionage for a third country, say China?  Would our response to the Brits be any different?

Now, let’s say this British subject was captured in Afghanistan.  He’s suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda, and is being interrogated by our intelligence services.  How do we react if the British ambassador in Washington demands that a British diplomat be allowed access to him at Guantanamo and be present during any interrogation?  Update:  A quick Google search shows that this has happened in the past, but it looks like a case by case kind of thing, not a blanket notification to home countries and almost automatic access to a citizen by diplomats.

What if the detainee is from Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or Russia?  Or say he was a German citizen, a country that might not look as favorably at our interrogation techniques as some of our other allies? We can expect a German diplomat to object strenuously to our applying harsh interrogation techniques to one of his citizens.

I know that we need to interrogate these prisoners and keep them away from the outside world as much as possible.  Sometimes our interrogation methods, while legal and justified, can go beyond simple question and answer sessions.  I’m a former intelligence soldier; I know how important the information gained in these interrogations can be.  But the implications for international relations and how our own citizens are treated if arrested or captured are huge.  I’m interested to know if anyone has any insight on how this is handled, and to hear y’all’s opinions on whether or not we should allow foreign diplomats to access their citizens while they are in our custody.

This evening, while driving her home from her mom’s house, Girlie Bear rocked out to songs by the following groups, among others:

AC/DC
Metallica
Queen
Judas Priest

Not only did she know the words to all of the songs, but she appropriately applied both air guitar and head banging!

I’ve never been so proud.  My little girl knows good music when she hears it!

OK, I’m really just a big kid.  I grew up watching Sesame Street and the Muppet Show.  Kermit the Frog is one of my favorite characters of the 20th century.

On this day in 1955, Kermit made his debut on TV.  He looks pretty good for 56.

Here’s one of my favorite songs, done very simply and well:

Don’t get excited.  No-one’s pregnant.  And no, we didn’t get another puppy.

I’ve introduced you all to Irish Woman’s alternate identity, Gopher Girl.  She takes on this guise when she indulges in the irrational need to dig up the yard, garden, or pond.

Well, that trait appears to follow her bloodline.  This weekend, BooBoo transformed into Captain Chaos!.*    The transformation apparently began while I was at the NRA Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, but became very evident on Saturday.

He’s discovered superheroes, and marketing works.  He’s begun wearing towels and sheets as a cape, racing through the house, climbing to ever-increasing heights, and jumping from them.  This was very evident when he played at the zoo’s playground on Sunday.

So far, this new obsession hasn’t caused any injuries that required more than a kiss.  However, he may be causing damage to his mother’s cardio-vascular system as it goes from normal to oh-Lord-he’s-climbing-the-curtains-again and back several times a day.

Hopefully, Captain Chaos! will be a rare visitor to the house.  He’s a good guy, but he can be a bit destructive in his enthusiasm.  Oh well, at least he’s not fixated on professional wrestling.

*The exclamation point is part of the name, like when you say Blackhawk!.

Sometime in the next few days, I’ll be cutting down the blog roll a bit.

Basically, if you haven’t posted in the past six months, you’re going to roll off.

If you maintain a blog, but haven’t posted in a long time and want to stay on my blog roll, drop me a comment and I’ll make sure to keep you on it.

If you notice that I got overzealous with the pruning shears and someone inadvertently gets whacked, feel free to squawk at me and I’ll correct the mistake.