Over the last decade, there has been a pronounced slowdown in North Korean work on underground air bases. Part of this may be the result of growing energy shortages up north, and the frequent blackouts. It’s not just electricity that’s been in short in North Korea over the last decade, it’s everything. That includes construction equipment, especially the specialized stuff needed for digging tunnels into the sides of mountains. But work continues, slowly, mostly with manual labor, to expand the network of underground parking and maintenance facilities for aircraft, as well runway extensions. These sheltered air bases begin underground, then exit the mountain and continue outside. Apparently the North Koreans have figured out that the Americans have now developed weapons that could quickly shut down these underground facilities, and keep them inoperable.
One of the key weapons for doing this is the U.S. Air Force 129 kg (285 pound) Small Diameter Bomb (SDB). The official story was that this GPS guided smart bomb was needed for urban warfare. The smaller blast (17kg/38 pounds of explosives, compared to 127 kg/280 pounds for the 500 pound bomb) from the SDB resulted in fewer civilian casualties. Friendly troops can be closer to the target when an SDB explodes. While the 227, 455, 911 kg (500, 1,000 and 2,000 pound) bombs have a spectacular effect when they go off, they are often overkill. The troops on the ground would rather have more, smaller, GPS bombs available. This caused the 227 kg (500 pound) JDAM to get developed quickly and put into service. But the smaller SDB was always a mystery, with many produced, but few actually used.
But the SDB also has a hard steel, ground penetrating, front end, that can penetrate nearly two meters (six feet) of concrete. Not much use for that in urban warfare. But such a capability is very useful for taking out underground installations, particularly the entrances and air intakes. North Korea, for example, has twenty airfields with underground hangars for the aircraft.
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Apple Ends Google’s Four-Year Run as Most Valuable Brand “The strength of the iPad has pushed Apple ahead of Google for the first time as the most valuable brand in the world, according to Millward Brown’s 2011 BrandZ study of the most-valuable global brands. Apple ended a four-year run by Google at the top of the brand ranking. But the study by the WPP research unit also showed a changing of the guard among top brands in other sectors and an influx of new entrants from the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — which collectively accounted for seven of the 11 newcomers to top 100 brands. While the eight top global brands are still U.S. based, China now has 12 brands in the top 100, up from seven a year ago.”
The Dubai World Cup has the distinction of being the world’s richest horse race. The sixth race of the event has a prize of $6 million. – Provided by The World Almanac 2011
We remember John Brown (1800 – 1859), a radical abolitionist who was not content with talk and passive resistance in the face of violence perpetrated by Southern pro-slavers. Lincoln considered Brown a fanatic and condemned his methods, and Brown for his part certainly did not have much use for the federal government or its methods.
In 1859 he led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, intending to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Brown’s subsequent capture by federal forces, his trial for treason to the state of Virginia, and his execution by hanging in Charles Town, Virginia were an important part of the origins of the American Civil War, which followed sixteen months later.
Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on.
VIA.
I find stuff like this interesting and always worth looking at and reading about. Do check this out!
Bryn sez, “My cousin recently put some previously unpublished photos of his great grandfather’s trip to Moscow in 1909 on Flickr and folks in Moscow found them and they went viral. The Moscow Times just did an article on them: ‘His photographs of pedestrians, street venders and aristocrats are rare glimpses of everyday life before the upheavals of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution — and sparked huge interest in Russia among history buffs and local museums. The photographs re-emerged a few months ago when Howe’s great-grandson, Andrew Howe V of Atlantic Beach, Florida, posted about 75 of them on his Flickr account.’” PHOTOS HERE
And more pictures from Russia! These are in color. And great to view!
Here is even more interesting information. About the Manhattan Project, the country’s atomic bomb project in World War II.
The Manhattan Project quickly began to design and build a practical atom bomb. It is interesting that during the conceptual design stage, Edward Teller was already thinking of how to make the much more powerful Hydrogen bombs. His ideas were set aside for the time being, to pursue the conceptually much simpler fission bombs. The first bomb to be built was a plutonium implosion device, and was referred to as the “Gadget”. The gadget is pictured above, prior to testing.
So now how about some goofy pictures of that goofy leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il? Just go to the gallery and enjoy:
kim jong-il looking at things
Now for some good laughs! Shit My Students Write
An explosion in the population of the predatory lionfish in Caribbean waters, where it has no natural predators, is posing a widespread threat to marine wildlife.
Just off the north shore of Little Cayman, I sink into the blue abyss.
Lionfish swimming by coral
No-one knows how the lionfish came to be in the Caribbean waters
I am descending the vertical coral wall at Bloody Bay Marine Park.
Straight ahead and straight down there is nothing but blue – a dizzying empty space where sunlight streams down and down into darker places well beyond my reach.
But up close, the wall of coral is covered in giant barrel sponges as tall as a man, bright purple vase sponges, green and red corals and creatures that creep, crawl and swim within and among them.
I spot a seahorse, clinging to a whip coral by its tail, a spider crab with legs almost 3ft (1m) wide and a baby hawksbill turtle rocketing to the surface for a breath of air.
Was watching the Science channel the other night. Had a program about fungus and how they love ants, and other insects. Very interesting.
Tropical carpenter ants (Camponotus leonardi) live high up in the rainforest canopy. When infected by a parasitic fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) the behaviour of the ants is dramatically changed. They become erratic and zombie-like, and are manipulated by the fungus into dying at a spot that provides optimal conditions for fungal reproduction. New research, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Ecology, looks at altered behaviour patterns in Zombie ants in Thailand and shows how the fungus manipulates ant behaviour.
A multinational team of researchers investigated O. unilateralis infected carpenter ants in Thailand’s rainforest. The growing fungus fills the ant’s body and head causing muscles to atrophy and forcing muscle fibres apart. The fungus also affects the ant’s central nervous system and while normal worker ants rarely left the trail, zombie ants walked in a random manner, unable to find their way home. The ants also suffered convulsions which caused them to fall to the ground. Once on the ground the ants were unable to find their way back to the canopy and remained at a lower, leafy, ‘understory’ which, at about 25cm above the soil was cooler and moister than the canopy, provided ideal conditions for the fungus to thrive.
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FBI is putting these on vehicles? Watch out people, big brother is tracking you!
FBI might be tracking you? Fix their device on your car
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Iraq is full of street kids; children with one or both parents killed, or some who have merely been abandoned.
It has been estimated that there are now more than one million orphans in the country. But there are just four small orphanages in the capital, Baghdad – none of them filled to capacity.
The Iraqi government says that relatives would rather abandon children they are unable to take care of than bear the shame of bringing them to an orphanage.
The female genital structure is perhaps the least fully understood aspect of human sexuality. In that light, we have put together this in-depth guide to the external and internal female genitalia, along with definitions and explanations of each feature. The guide to the external female genitalia should provide a smooth transition to the internal female genitalia below and help make understanding the location of the features much easier.
The following guide to the external female genitalia features an actual photograph of a female vulva
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 ) was an Italian polymath, being a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived..MORE
Originally posted 2011-05-10 10:50:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
