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LOL! I have taken the gander, and seen why the Ptolemaic system lies defunct on the far side Occam's razor from the surviving Galilean Model.

The Earth doesn't revolve around the moon, either. Hence, the sarc tag.

To be astronomically correct,the earth-moon system revolves around their common center of gravity (aka center of mass). The center of mass of the earth-moon system lies at a point beneath the earth's surface about 2900km from the earth's center; that's about 75% of earth's radius.

For the above reason, the earth's orbit around the sun isn't a perfect ellipse - it has a wobble with a period of 28 days.

Lord, I love useless trivia!

Let's try that again:
12,000 = 5% of x ... where x = surfaced area of total spill.

Therefore x = 12,000 / 0.05 = 240,000 sq mi ... so you were only off by a factor of 10.

Unfortunately the media is, for the most case, 10x worse than you on their math and who knows what kind of fudge factors BP et al are using. If your numbers have any validity, this puts the potential surfaced oil (as of right now) at somewhere between the area of California (163,696 sq mi) and Texas (268,581 sq mi

What are your credentials, JV, to enable you to make such cavalier statements? I doubt you have any background or real knowledge of either submarine or anti-submarine operations, based on your statements so far.

I am a US Navy submarine vet, and keep up on developments in both areas. Trust me, the USN wouldn't have spent the money to bring the Swedish boat over to San Diego if they felt we were so damn invincible. Facts are that diesel-electric and AIP (air-independent propulsion) boats are harder to detect than other nuke boats and carry a weapons suite just as deadly. Yeah, they don't have the top speed and legs that our boats have ... but if they're around where and when we go into harm's way, it could be dicey for our side indeed.

Likewise, FRiends! I climbed aboard the Semiconductor roller coaster at Signetics (Sunnyvale) in early 74 (when Corning Glass owned it) and worked there in various aspects of manufacturing for 17 years (through the Philips acquisition). Started out as a electronics tech supporting several fabs, gravitated into ion implantation because of my nuclear physics background, and left as a Sr Process Engr in 1991.

Moved to Silicon Systems in Santa Cruz in 91 when they were owned by TDK (yeah, the Nipponese tape company) and went through their acquisition by TI. Made Sr Principal engr and was elected to TI group Technical Staff.

To me, Shockley, Fairchild, and Signetics acted as incubator and 'university' for most of the key players in the integrated circuit industry - at least from the manufacturing end. A lot of 'graduates' from those three companies went on to form their own companies and make millions. (Sadly, I'm not one of them.)

Thanks for the sanity! You've saved me the trouble of pointing out the same things I would have. Both guys deserve to fall on their swords. AIG was smoke and mirrors accounting; GM is a dinosaur that has refused to evolve in response to global competition.

Now that we're out of power, a lot of Freepers are taking us to the level of DU creeps.

Horse-pucky! The gravitational impact of the galaxy on the solar system, and on Earth in particular, are sub-microscopic in comparison to the gravitational impact of the sun and to a lesser degree the moon. And those influences have been with us since before life started on this planet.

Your 'some scientists' wouldn't be astrologers or or 2012 Apocalypso-nuts, would they? There's no 'Science' in a statement like that.

Depends on how one defines 'sighting'! Macho B has been caught by motion-sensing cameras a number of times - that's how they were able to identify him so quickly when he was trapped in February. They know his spot patterns; I found it amusing that Macho B's defining spots were called 'Betty Boop' and 'Pinnochio', LOL.

Jaguars just can't get any respect anymore ... at least since Ford bought the company, heh heh.

Wuss! I'm ok with flying with her ... but on the other hand, I have a private pilot's ticket, so in extremis I'd like to believe 4 limbs wins over 2.

Two satellites collide in orbit. Indeed! A defunct Russkie Cosmos bird rammed into a US commercial Iridium bird about 5oo miles up.

Apparently one of the larger chunks of debris was knocked out of orbital velocity, and it took until today for its orbit to to decay and finally the chunk (maybe a mostly intact satellite) enter the atmosphere at thousands of mile per hour over the lower mid-west US, creating a sonic boom and the chunk broke up raining down debris.

More photos available at the linked article.

Jessica Cox, who was born without arms, recently earned her sport pilot license at Ray Blair Airport in San Manuel. She flies this Ercoupe plane the way she does most other things in her life — with her feet. She also has started her own motivational-services company.

ROFLAMAO
BTDT

I know I do!

My old URL for the pic is defunct but it survives; Google "not this sh*t again".

Stop making sense! ... was the title of a 1984 Talking Heads movie and album. But it was the phrase that sprang to my mind when I read your very cogent comments.

Perhaps that is true on the newer boats but it is not true on the older SSNs & SSBNs I sailed on.

Not true for any manned submarine in the USN or other navies. They all have XX% (I can't recall the minimum required) reserve buoyancy with ballast tanks empty (completely blown).

There are several factors which can make achieving that positive buoyancy dicey:

a.) if you're leaking into the people tube (interior of the boat), every ton of seawater taken in = a ton of reserve buoyancy lost;

b.) when you blow ballast tanks at test depth, you're not instantly ridding yourself of all the seawater in the ballast tanks ... you're simply putting a bubble of high-pressure air in the tanks to make a change from the normal submerged neutral buoyancy to a positive buoyancy. As the boat begins to rise the bubble expands, pushing more seawater out of the ballast tanks, giving even more positive buoyancy and so on ... until you finally reach then surface and the ballast tanks are finally empty.
However keep in mind factor 'a' above ... enough water in the people tube and you lose positive buoyancy, and you kiss your ass goodbye. WW II fleet boats were designed with enough positive reserve buoyancy to be able to survive 1 completely flooded compartment, but modern boats have fewer compartments - though I can't speak for RAN Collins class boats, US nukes can't survive a fully flooded compartment. ;

c.) Your rate of rise towards the surface CAN be enhanced by increasing speed and putting 'Rise' on the control planes.

As an aside, the Thresher NEARLY made it to the surface (within a couple hundred feet!) before they lost speed and became negatively buoyant and began back down to 10,000 feet, imploding and breaking up on the way down ... God rest your souls, my brothers of the 'Phins!

- A Cold War submarine vet (SSN-588, SSBN-629B, SSN-669 plank-owner)

Indeed! particularly when one notes the ad is sponsored by ... The Dep't of Justice.

Anyone else feel like you're trapped in a Costa-Brava movie? (Google it)

Why is it that, when I get this guy's name flashed at me in a headline, I get a mental image of a big multi-layered sandwich being built in a dark kitchen, illuminated only by an open fridge door, by a guy in PJs with a weird-looking hairdo?

Actually tis would be a good time of year to execute that plan. December wind patterns in that region of the globe are generally South Westerly, so any fallout would head for Somalia ... kinda like a twofer. During monsoon. prevailing winds a North easterly, so fallout would rain down on China and the Northern 'Stans' states. Probably not a good idea to piss off the Russians and Chinese.

Spring and Fall not much wind at all, so the target areas would stew in their own juices.

Wasn't that 'PPK' (vice ), aka 'Purple K'? Of course my mind (what's left of it, that is; CRS and all that) has to go back 40 years to my last boat. Stuff may have changed since then.