Brians Blog: October 2015

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Reno!

When I was a kid living in Elko, Nevada I saw two planes heading to the Reno Air Races. The Red Baron was one of them. This is what it looked like in 1976. You can read about its history here.

The other plane was also a Mustang, called the Flying Undertaker. It was later destroyed in a crash, as was the Red Baron.

Since then, I have wanted to go to the air races and I finally did a couple of weeks ago. Here are some of the best photos I took .

Dassualt Falcon 7x for the well-heeled

Two Hawker Sea Furies, Dreadnaught and Sawbones

A L-39 makes a turn around one of the pylons at nearly 500 mph.

I really enjoyed the Breitling Team in their L-39s. Good thing a lot of rich people pay way too much for a watch, so I can see the Breitling planes! I'll stick with Timex.

Former astronaut, Hoot Gibson won the unlimited class in this highly modified P-51 Mustang, called Strega.

This was the pace plane for the unlimited class racers.

A close up of Rare Bear's engine.

Thanks to my dad for going with me!

Here are the final race results:

RENO, NV – The 52nd Annual National Championship Air Races came to a close Sunday, Sept. 20, with Robert “Hoot” Gibson as the winner of the Unlimited Gold Race with a speed of 488.983mph in “Strega.”

Stewart Dawson flying “Rare Bear” was second (471.957) and Dennis Sanders in “Dreadnought” was third (420.361).

Steve Hinton, flying “Voodoo,” and who had won the Unlimited Gold Race the last six years in a row, did not finish the race.

Gibson, 68, is a former American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, and a retired NASA astronaut, as well as a professional pilot who currently races regularly at the annual Reno Air Races.

Other race results:

UNLIMITED CLASS
Speed: 488.983
Plane: Strega
Pilot: Robert “Hoot” Gibson

JET CLASS
Speed: 502.370
Plane: Vampire
Pilot: Pete Zaccagnino

T-6 CLASS
Speed: 238.073
Plane: Midnight Miss III
Pilot: Dennis Buehn

SPORT CLASS
Speed: 377.403
Plane: Blue Thunder II
Pilot: John Parker

BI-PLANE CLASS
Speed: 245.109
Plane: Phantom
Pilot: Tom Aberle

FORMULA ONE
Speed: 239.432
Plane: Endeavor
Pilot: Steve Senegal

RECORDS BROKEN
Tom Aberle broke the speed record in his plane, Phantom, in the Biplane class in a qualifying race on Monday, September 14, with a speed of 284.454 mph. The previous record, set in 2014, was 274.091

Saturday, October 3, 2015

My Favorite Photos from Our Oshkosh Adventure

I picked my favorite photos from our first family trip to Oshkosh. Six of us went in the party van and drove almost 4,000 miles. Are we a little nuts? Yes, before we even started. My wife, dad, two sons and one daughter went with me.

One of the front tires developed a bulge (and a bad vibration) and had to be replaced in Rawlins, Wyoming with two new front tires. That was the only real mechanical issues we had.

Crazy after 10 hours in the van.

The EAA Museum is really top notch. I loved the Pitts in the entrance.

The Mustang has always been one of my favorite planes and the polish job on this one is beautiful.

Martha and Carolina

After the Little River Band Concert

After our ride in the Ford Trimotor over Lake Winnebago

Eagle Base - we called this home for a week. We only had to deal with one severe thunderstorm on our first night that blew away the canopy and almost one of our tents. The van was our refuge from the rain.

The new Goodyear Blimp was really cool. It could fly sideways in a cross wind!

Here I am with my wife,Carolina and one of my other favorite planes, the De Havilland Mosquito - sleek and fast and made of wood with 2 Rolls Royce Merlin engines! Who could ask for more?

Oh, and our trip took us to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see our daughter, Sophia graduate from the U of M.

Pre-graduation dinner at Cardamom

The happy grad!

Culture

The self-educated individual – confident in his gender, his heritage, his religion, and the traditional culture that he seeks to project into the future – stands as a threat to the very existence of the state: He does not need its ministrations.

Where then to begin the creation of capitalist culture? The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward the realization of a capitalist culture….

Terry Hulsey

I would add:

The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward preserving traditional culture.

Delusionists

The delusionists are those who believe that the current system can be reformed, made more efficient, streamlined. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies act on market-like incentives. The delusionists believe that those in government bureaucracy can be convinced to reduce their role and influence. The delusionists believe that the president is in control of the bureaucracies. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies are led by good people just trying to do the right thing. The delusionists believe that individuals, acting as central planners, are even capable of identifying the right thing to do.

Bionic Mosquito

The State

"A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats." - Walter Lippmann

Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"The logic of compulsory schooling in the middle of a democracy is a contradiction of the original national charter; it breaks the contract of the Bill of Rights, using as its justification the excuse that kids can't learn any other way, that they can't be trusted with responsibility. The truth is exactly the opposite: unless they are trusted with responsibility they cannot learn much, and under the thumb of central compulsion the lessons they do learn are bad ones."

John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher", pg. 193-194

Robert P. Murphy

In particular, the market interest rate coordinates the "intertemporal" (i.e., across-time) activities of investors, businesses, and consumers. If consumers become more future oriented and want to reduce consumption in the near term in order to provide more for later years, what happens in the free market is that the increased savings push down interest rates, which then signal entrepreneurs to borrow more and invest in longer projects. Thus resources (such as labor, oil, steel, and machine time) get redirected away from present goods, like TVs and sports cars, and the freed-up resources flow into capital or investment goods like tractors and cargo ships.

Now when the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates.

On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors. Because modern economies are so complex, the charade can continue for a few years, with entrepreneurs cutting corners and "consuming capital" (i.e., postponing necessary replacement and maintenance on equipment) while both investment and consumer goods keep flowing out of the pipeline at increased rates. But the music eventually stops, since (after all) the Fed's printing of green pieces of paper doesn't really make a country wealthier. When the Fed "cuts interest rates" it isn't really creating more capital for businesses to borrow; it is instead distorting the signal that the market interest rate was trying to convey.

From mises.org

Gary North

Gary North recently wrote a great article on the politico-economic outcome caused by the anti-nuclear media forces following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

"Energy is the key to output. This has been true for over 200 years. To control a primary source of energy is to get rich. China will be able to buy uranium by means of its output from uranium. It will convert uranium into wealth. It will do so with the lowest energy cost-per-output ratio of any nation. Its people will find employment.

I think this has shifted the balance of economic power away from India. India will face public resistance to nuclear power. China will not. India has a lot of advantages: English, the legal system, the free flow of ideas, and a lot of motivated, well-educated people. I am not saying that India will fall behind the world. It will advance. But with respect to the job market for millions of recent arrivals from rural districts, nuclear power will give China the edge.

The anti-nuke forces will never talk about this in public. They will never say publicly, "We have delivered the world's economy into the hands of China." But they will have done just that."

Lew Rockwell - again

The beauty and glory of economic science is that it consists in a series of laws and principles that do not change according to time and place. The prescription for prosperity and stability and human economic flourishing is always and everywhere the same: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of enterprise, freedom to trade across borders without penalty, sound money that is redeemable in something besides paper, private property rights, wages and prices that adjust by market conditions, and a legal structure that shores up these institutions rather than undermines them.

James H. Polve

“Mechanical engineers design and manufacture machines, machines to help mankind, to ease his burden and to make like more abundant. Machine work supplants slave labor and provides power far in excess of muscle power to free men from hard labor and yet provides the means to accomplish. Automobiles, airplanes, tractors, electrical and nuclear power plants, steam plants and many other similar kinds of plants and machines are typical examples of design and manufacture by the mechanical engineer. His special abilities are aimed at coupling natural laws with natural materials to produce work. He channels energy available on earth, and wherever possible in the universe, through devices into more usable forms to aid man. He can multiply man’s strength and quickness through hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical devices. He can transport men and goods faster, further, and more efficiently than man can walk or carry. He provides for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. He is aided and yet constrained by the physical laws and the characteristics of resources that surround him; and yet he has made great advances to free men somewhat from the edict ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground’ (Gen. 3:19).”

Ted Rockwell - The Best Quote Ever

That tactic, of making problems out of advantages—making sow’s ears out of silk purses, I call it—permeates the whole nuclear enterprise. The advantage that radioactivity continually and automatically gets less and less toxic every day, is converted to, “it stays toxic for thousands of years.” And this is implied to pose an unprecedented problem that humanity is not equipped to deal with. And breakable light bulbs containing mercury are called “green,” and radioactivity is called uniquely hazardous.

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/townhall-qa-rickover-to-the-renaissance/

Thesis Topics for Research

How much money will UTOPIA ultimately consume? Currently they have spent $516 million. I bet the total goes over $700 million before bankruptcy is declared.
Why does lightning occur with earthquakes? Is Harold Aspden's theory about this correct?
Where was Joseph, the Carpenter when Christ was crucified? Had he already died?
What was it like to be a Christian in the 1st century, when the Apostles were still alive?
What influences Americans against nuclear power?
Chinese Trade - what was it paid with in AD 800?
History of Property Taxes in Utah. When Brigham Young said "This is the right place", there weren't any property taxes.
What determines left or right-handedness?

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Sunday, October 4, 2015

Reno!

Saturday, October 3, 2015

My Favorite Photos from Our Oshkosh Adventure

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