Google Earth

(click for larger)
I got this photo of Camp Randall Stadium here in Madison from Google Earth. If you have a relatively fast computer and internet connection, it is fun to play around with. This photo is funny because they took it at the time when they were repainting the field - check the word "Badgers" out down there. It is weak in the rural areas, but anyone who lives in a decently sized city can find their house or place of business from the air pretty darned quickly.

The Chinese Conundrum

Today I was pleasantly surprised to read this article. I think a lot about the Chinese as I consider them our greatest threat in the 21st century - a physical and economic threat. News like this makes me happier than anything that any politician has done for me in a long time.

We hear a lot about how the Chinese are building up their military and how they are consuming so much oil and other raw materials. This has partially led to us paying more at the pump and for other goods and services. The laws of economics will apply forever - higher demand with steady supply = higher price.

Their massive resource consumption aside, I have never been given a serious reason to fear China. Sure, the nuclear threat is always there, but if they nuke us, who will they build things for? The United States is by far their largest customer. What if China attacks Taiwan? Wouldn't the US cut them off at the knees as far as trade goes? I fear the "madman" theory most, which would be if the leadership of China just attacked Taiwan and didn't care about the consequences for anyone. As long as dictators have the army on their side who cares about anyone else as long as the dictator has a good supply of quality cigars, booze and women.

On another tack, their pegging of the Yuan will cost them (and us) eventually - you just can't do it forever. Greenspan says:

Pegging is unsustainable, Greenspan explained, because it requires China to buy huge amounts of dollars on the foreign-exchange market. These are then invested mostly in US Treasuries or other dollar-denominated assets. China has been buying an average $600 million a day to support the dollar. The dollar inflow includes foreign investment - a huge $52.7 billion last year. In the past 12 months, China has added $100 billion to its foreign-exchange reserves, bringing the June total to a huge $346.5 billion, exceeded only by Japan's $526 billion in international reserves.

It seems to me that capitalism is starting to not win over there yet, but at least put up a fight. China is a totally corrupt dictatorship. You can call it a Communist state if you want. In the end, it is just a bunch of guys ruling the populus with an iron fist. Some people are becoming fabulously wealthy over there and the little people want a piece - the American dream, so to say. They are also tired of having their property confiscated. This is the wild card. If the dictatorship can't keep the people under control there is no way they will ever be the global force that we are all supposed to fear. I like paying $20 for a pair of tennis shoes, but will pay $40 if it means the Chinese people can live free lives.

But back to the article about the riot. There is a lot of information in it that needs to be de-coded. I am surprised that news about this riot got out - that means it must have been BIG and that many Chinese must be getting more internet/satellite savvy.

The official Xinhua news agency, in a rare report on a local disturbance, blamed Sunday's riot in Chizhou in dirt-poor eastern Anhui province on a few criminals who led the "unwitting masses" astray.

I like how the official agency says the masses could not possibly be pissed about their plight.

The violence was the latest in a series of protests which the Communist Party, in power since 1949, fears could spin out of control and become a channel for anger over corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.

Like I said, everyone wants a little piece - their piece of the dream.

Armed police tried to quell the disturbance but were driven back by a hail of rocks and lit firecrackers, he said.

It is serious when the folks start attacking the cops. I highly doubt that the people threw firecrackers at the armed forces as that just sounds dumb. But the point sticks. There was actually an armed uprising against the establishment, for whatever reason.

The crowd, now numbering as many as 10,000, also flipped three parked police cars and set them ablaze.

By anyone's count, this is a very large riot.

The riot closely echoed one that erupted in Chongqing in western China last October when a quarrel between residents, in which one man passed himself off as an official, enraged bystanders with the attempted abuse of privilege. Thousands took to the streets, burning police cars and looting government buildings. Protests have become increasingly common in China, fueled by corruption and the widening wealth gap, but authorities are keen to quickly quash dissent and preserve stability. There were more than 58,000 protests, many of them over land rights disputes, across the country in 2003, a Communist Party-backed magazine, Outlook, has reported. This month, villagers in northern Hebei province protesting to keep their land were attacked by a group of armed hired toughs. Six farmers were killed and 48 injured in the ensuing battle.

Yep, people hate it when you take their stuff. Just look at the huge outcry against the Kelo decision here in the US. There are also huge racial divides in China which just add fuel to the anger fire. Good luck to the Chinese - I hope the people can take their country back and join the rest of the world with some basic freedoms.

A Moving Target

Yet another gem in the Wisconsin State Journal today, this time by George Hesselberg.

The thrust of the article is that some nasty fellows are going around vandalizing show horses by cutting their tails. But look at these weird statements:

It takes a specialist to vandalize a horse. For one, a horse is a moving target.

A horse is a moving target? They don't just gallop around 24/7! If you actually see one in a stall in a barn, they really don't move around much at all, especially in the brutally hot weather we have had around here lately. And what sort of "specialist" do you need to be to cut a horse tail? A pair of regular household scissors and a human being is about all you neeed.

Two, you cannot sneak up on a horse, as you can with a building, or even, carefully, a cow.

Brutal sentence structure aside, what does he mean by "you cannot sneak up on a horse"? Why do you need to sneak up on it? Most horses trained for any type of showing see lots of people around them all the time so another person that happens to walk up to the horse is just no big deal.

I don't think Hesselberg has ever been around a herd of cattle at feeding time. I have and trust me, they typically don't care what the hell you are up to - they just want to eat. In other words, you can sneak up on them.

I am no "horse person", but have owned one in the past and hung around a barn or two in my day, unlike Mr. Hesselberg. Maybe he is dumbing himself down to make the article entertaining, but why do that to himself (and us)? More quality mainstream media.

Thank You Richard Daley for making Chicago safe by disarming citizens; fortunately handgun ownership is illegal in Chicago or there may be problems!!!

From yesterdays Chicago Sun Times June 27, 2005:
Shots rang out across the city Saturday night and Sunday morning -- from the Far North Side to the Far South Side -- with preliminary reports of nearly two dozen people shot.

The overnight tally -- which is unofficial -- included two shootings on the same corner, a fatal shooting near the Taste of Chicago and several on the West Side, where detectives were swamped. "We're just spinning up here,'' one detective said. Numerous incidents of gunfire and related injuries were reported overnight Saturday. Among them:

*At 9:45 p.m. Saturday, 20-year-old Christopher Sanders of Chicago was fatally shot during a fight one block from the Taste of Chicago.

*At 6:06 a.m. Sunday near Damen and 38th, a man was shot in the shoulder, police said. In between:

*A man was shot in the head at 11:52 p.m. at 4129 W. Van Buren.

*A 38-year-old man was shot and killed at 3:15 a.m. in the street in the 1400 block of West Carmen.

*And a man was left in critical condition after a drive-by shooting at 5:30 a.m. at 12434 S. Wentworth, police said.

There were two shootings at the corner of 52nd and Mozart:
*The first came at 9:47 p.m. when a man was shot in the foot.
*Hours later, at 1:38 a.m., two men sitting on a porch at the corner were shot by someone who pulled up in a dark Ford Escort wagon, police said.

Several other incidents involved multiple victims, and there were reports of more than 20 people wounded, police said.

First Deputy Chicago Police Supt. Dana Starks was on patrol near the Taste of Chicago late Sunday. Starks would be reviewing that fatal shooting and other incidents.

All kidding aside, I have been saying for a very long time that if you are depending on the police to protect you, you will be in trouble someday. There is no way all of these acts of violence will be investigated properly, and no way the cops in Chicago or anywhere else can protect the populus. They are reactive, not proactive. I know, sounds gloomy, but the truth hurts.

Tuesday Photoblogging

Here are the accomodations we stayed at on our trip last weekend to Birchwoood, Wisconsin. My grandma still lives here on her own. As always, click any photo for a larger version.

Here is my quote of the day from this site:

You know what I think? The ease of digital photography is making us a world full of crappy photographers. When you only had twelve shots on a roll and had to wait a week to see your photos, you were more thoughtful with your photos.

How true! I have been working very hard to keep improving my photography (who wants to be "crappy" at anything?) - hope you like the results. Two things I have tried to remember - take lots of photos and take my time (if possible). Oh yes, one more thing - have fun!

On the way back we stopped in Wisconsin Dells and went to a deer park. You pay a modest admission fee and buy some cracker like things and you can feed the deer. They are very tame and lots of fun. This one was pretty "nosy". Before you ask, yep, you can pet 'em - you can even grab the antlers if they have them.

So you don't forget, they call it the "northwoods" for a reason. There is still a mill in Birchwood that runs pretty much 365 days a year making different lumber products. Logging and the timber industry are very big in the northern half of Wisconsin. There are also many paper mills located "up north". I believe that everyone that has ever lived in Birchwood has worked in the mill at one time.

It isn't all woods up north. For those unfamiliar, in the distance that is a partially harvested hay field. Those large bales you see weigh between 750 and 1500 pounds each. I didn't scare or spook this mare and colt - I just got lucky and they started running - sometimes in photography it is better to be lucky than good.

This is from a farm we visited owned by a family friend. This barn used to milk 100 head of dairy cows a day - the farm is used for different purposes today, obviously. Look at the old style stantions where they used to put the cows in and milk them - now that was work. I wish I had an old black and white photo of this barn in action back in the day.

It was a sort of weird feeling walking through this place that used to be used for an entirely different purpose. Almost like looking at a skeleton and wondering what that person used to do for a living.

A Taste of Lead

In my younger days I used to attend all of the big festivals in Chicago including the "Taste of Chicago", Blues Fest, the 4th of July fireworks and others. Well, there was a murder one block from the entrance as the people were filing out from the Taste on Saturday night.

Can you believe it? The laws in Chicago relating to handguns are some of the most restrictive in the entire country! There is no way anyone in the whole city should have in their posession a handgun - especially if they intend to use it! Unless, of course, you are on Daley's security force.

Now comes the really funny part - note the totally lame excuses the cops give.

He (the Chicago Police spokesman) said police were "more than adequately prepared," adding that a police officer was a half block from the shooting and responded immediately.

That "half block" probably cost that guy his life - I bet he didn't think the cops were "more than adequately prepared". If you are relying on the cops to protect you, you are in deep shit - six feet deep for that guy from Saturday night.

"He just missed probably catching the offenders," Chiczewski said. "(The festival) is the safest place to go in the whole world."

Yea, the guy got away. As far as the festival being the safest place to go in the whole world - well, I will let you laugh as long as you want at that one.

Funny thing - I had to get the link to this story from the Detroit Free Press - the Chicago Tribune requires registration now and I will be damned if I will link to them after they cribbed our article.

Your Life In a Nutshell

There has been lots of raging in the blogosphere on the Supreme Court decision in the Kelo case. I am no law prof but have a few thoughts about this case as it is about one of the things I am against the most - the government seizing private property.

Of course on the fringes there is the "lets get the guns" outcry and there is also the "the state will take care of you, all of your property belongs to us" losers. Drudge has a headline that says "Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes". Certain blogs that lean libertarian have declared the end of the world as we know it. I have learned something very valuable over the last few years - when faced with something you are interested in, you must get many opinions and LOTS of information to form an educated opinion.

After much reading I hapenned upon this blog post via Ann Althouse which sums it up about right for me:

I think the case sends just about the right message. The Court is not prepared to adopt a per se rule against takings for economic development. But the amber light is flashing. Stevens and Kennedy seem to say that careful planning and lots of community input are important in sustaining the use of eminent domain for economic development. Kennedy ... warns that he may come up with a theory in the future which would allow him to go the other way -- so watch out! The Court is closely divided 5-4, which means another, more egregious example of condemn-and-retransfer might get struck down. So the message to state courts is: go ahead and use eminent domain for economic development, but please try to take property rights more seriously in the future. I think this is exactly the right message. it preserves federalism in this area, but tries to re-shape values and attitudes to be less casual about overuse of eminent domain, which can be a wrenching experience for people.

I am no expert in this field but this sounds logical! You have to have some limited eminent domain powers or you will have no new roads, and won't be able to bulldoze crack houses. But let's not sell people's homes for a new stereo store either!

So it took me reading about 30 articles or so before I could find someone using logic and sane reasoning to find an answer to my query - how does this decision affect me? But isn't that your life in a nutshell? Does the decision affect me? It might. There are legitimate concerns over the Kelo case as far as your private property rights go - there is plenty to be mad about here. Just maybe not as much as everyone is saying. Trust me, cases of this type will appear again in the Supreme Court - we can only hope that the future Supremes will protect private property better than the current ones.

The greatest life lesson I have learned in the last few years is to form my opinions on LOTS of information - not just giving you "mega dittos".

Am off to the beautiful northwoods of Wisconsin for a few days - y'all have a good weekend and thanks as always for reading.

Scouting

Learning about combat and some of the realities of it is the main reason Carl and I play Combat Mission. We are now on the third edition of this extremely realistic combat game and have been playing each other for about five years now. It is great because it is a "we go" type of game vs. "I go, you go". In other words, you both plot your turns and then the computer calculates the action and gives you a "movie" of the combat that your turns have produced. This post isn't about Combat Mission, though - it is about the value of scouting and recon.

As of late I have been learning the value of aggressive scouting and how hard it must have been in real life combat. Most of the value in scouting, unfortunately, comes with immediate death for the scouts, whether it be a vehicle or people. However, the enemy has been found and the commander can plan accordingly.

One of the most terrible jobs I can imagine is being a scout in the South Pacific as described in Eric Bergerud's great book Touched With Fire. The Americans and Japanese scouted and probed with columns of men all the time - usually the guy at the point (the head of the line) had about a 50% chance of making it back alive. Add to this the misery of doing this awful job in one of the most inhospitable places on earth to boot and you have one miserable job. An interesting fact is that the Americans carried shotguns quite often when working on the point. I think a good ol' 12 guage pump would be my choice as well - or a BAR if I was feeling good and strong.

Scouting and Recon is essential in a set-war scenario. By set-war, I mean a war where there are sides, lines and defined enemies such as World War 2 or the Gulf war.

If you don't know where the enemy is, you can't blow them up. All of our spy planes and AWACs over Iraq in the modern day served the same purpose as our air forces in the Pacific and Atlantic during WW2. Back then, we constantly scanned the seas for U-boats, the Imperial Japanese Navy or anything else that looked funny. In the Iraq wars, the (more sophisticated) AWACs and drones scanned the desert and cities for tanks, bunkers and anything else suspicious. These airplanes (in both cases) served the same exact function as those Marines previously mentioned in the South Pacific - scouting and gathering information.

Talking about it and actually doing it are quite a jump. The closest thing to doing it in my life will be playing Combat Mission - the results are grim. In a 10 man platoon, usually 5 die instantly in a scouting mission and the other five panic or run away. However, mission accomplished - now that the enemy is located, they can be blown up.

Below I have compiled some photos of machines and men designed specifically to scout along with some notes on each. Hope you like them. You will note that all of these are from the Allied side - it is Carls job to report on the Axis.

This is a M8 Greyhound scout car (photo credit here). I like this vehicle a lot - it was very quiet and could sneak up on an enemy easily. The 37mm main gun could destory a Pz 3 for sure and a Pz 4 if lucky. Serious damage could be done to a heavy German tank if attacking the rear. Also the Greyhound carried canister shell which is like a huge shotgun shell for infantry supression. This one looks like it has an anti-aircraft mount as well.

This is a White Scout Car (photo credit here). It was used lots for high speed scouting as it could go 55 mph (very fast for a military vehicle of it's time). Most carried .50 cal machine guns but many were up gunned to a 37mm. Many were up armored as well especially if they were used to carry senior officers around.

Here is a PBY-3 Catalina (photo credit here). This plane was used extensively for scouting missions everywhere. They looked for anything, but especially submarines and enemy naval vessels.

A photo of a Marine on Okinawa getting ready for business. The photo credit is here, along with a very good synopsis of the combat shotgun if you are interested.

Of Fireworks and Stupid Laws

Today in the Chicago Tribune (I would link the story but they require registration now, so screw them) it is reported that the city of Chicago is considering outlawing sparklers. It is very easy to obtain not only sparklers, but the really big fireworks in the neighboring states of Indiana and Wisconsin. In the end it is somewhat like having a dry county. People who want to drink just go to the next county and buy their alcohol there.

Most readers understand that the city of Chicago must have better things to do than sit around and make annoying laws about sparklers - what with their super high murder rate. My big gripe is that here we have yet another law that has basically no means of any sort of enforcement mechanism. There will never be "firework cops". Toothless laws like the sparkler ban are just another way for the ever growing state to take just a little bit more of our freedoms away - a way for them to inject themselves into our lives at little risk. The founders or anyone else who truly believes in the inherent right of man to be free would, of course, bristle at the stacks of laws on the books that seem trivial but chip away at our freedoms. When was the last time anyone got a ticket for jaywalking? Then why have that law on the books? Behavior modification - you must obey the law. The state is your parent.

I am tired of it. A smoking ban in all restaurants and bars goes into effect in the city of Madison July 1. This is nothing other than the government going in and telling a business owner how to run his life. Smoking is not illegal. No one is forcing the patrons to stay there; no one is forcing the workers to work there. It is simply another government power grab under the ruse of public safety.

Remember when the mandatory seat belt laws went into effect? Police and politicians said they never would write tickets for just that - well, that may come to an end this year here in Wisconsin. I think it is just another reason for cops to pull you over and violate your privacy by going through your car or asking you questions.

If the populus doesn't start asking politicians to end this disturbing behavior it may never end.

The World's Dumbest Landlord

Today I was driving along interstate 88 in Chicago going west through the suburbs.

For the last 10 years I have driven past this building and it ALWAYS has a for-lease sign out front. I think that the day I drive past this building and they are not begging a tenant to rent it will be the sign of the apocalypse... or that the real estate bubble has finally maxed out.

The landlord could have rented it for cents on the dollar and come out ahead vs waiting 10 years for the perfect tenant to come along... thus the title.

Milwaukee

My dad and I have made it a tradition for Fathers Day to spend a day in downtown Milwaukee and then go to Kenosha the next day for some salmon fishing. Here are a few photos of our wonderful time Saturday and Sunday - hope you like them. Click on any for a larger version.

 

 

Note the total absence of people! We couldn't believe that there were not more people out enjoying the perfect weather with a nice walk on the river. 

 

A shot of downtown Milwaukee. 

Usingers sausage factory. They have a store below that sells many yummy things. Mmmm does it smell good. 

Front row seats for Dan and Dad for a cruise on the Milwaukee River. 

 

A photo of the Milwaukee Instute of Art Design. Ironically, this is one of the ugliest buildings in downtown Milwaukee. 

 

A shot of the stunning Milwaukee Art Museum, one of my favorite buildings of all time.

Sunday morning, off to Kenosha and salmon fishing. Now that's a sunrise. 

You will note there are no photos of fish - we only caught four and those were not worth taking a picture of. But a very relaxing day with Captain John with perfect weather.