Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Congrats to President Barack Obama on being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course the US netowrks are falling over themselves asking if he deserves this honour.

Whatev. He didn't award himself the prize, so suck it up, critics.

Damn that Iman!

Does this woman look 54 years old? What can we say to Somalian model, actress and entrepreneur Iman but, damn that Iman!

Image: www.theybf.com

The Dead Hand

Listening to Fresh Air on NPR today I learned something about Cold War history I didn't know.

I think it's a safe bet that most of my readers weren't born yet when the Cold War was still hot. Or if you were, you probably aren't old enough to have any memory of what it was like.

I remember.

When I was in grade school, we still had "Duck and Cover" drills. Yeah. If you were sitting at your desk when the nukes started raining in like a Persian arrow volley, you might die. But if you ducked under your desk and covered your eyes, everything would be OK!

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was 7 years old. Old enough to grasp the fact that we could all be dead in 20 minutes. That's how long it would take Soviet ICBMs carrying H-Bombs to travel from launch to detonation. 20 fucking minutes. Less time than it took to walk from home to school. Less time than it took to watch an episode of Superman.

But that 20 minutes was the travel time from the U.S.S.R. Travel time from Havana, just 90 miles off the Florida coast, would be a tad quicker.

It was a scary fucking time to be a kid.

The strategic position on both sides of the Cold War was Mutual Assured Destruction. MAD. No fucking shit, that's really what it was called.

MAD depended on a Second Strike capability. For instance, if the Soviet Union mounted a First Strike against the United States, we would need to still have the capability of launching a Second Strike massive enough to wipe them off the face of the earth.

Our Second Strike capability was maintained via The Nuclear Triad.



Land based ICBMs in hardened, underground, concrete silos,



nuclear submarine based ICBMs,



and B-52 bombers carrying live nukes that were airborne 24/7/365.

Beacuse the bombers were essentially on a one way trip, they carried a lot of survival gear.



Every one of our nukes had at least 3 humans in the loop. You had The President who had to issue the command to launch the nukes. Each nuke had 2 controllers. Both controllers had to acknowledge that they had received a valid order to launch. Both controllers had to agree to follow that order. And both controllers had to execute the commands and procedures to unleash the nuke.

It was called a Fail-Safe.

It was supposed to ensure that Doomsday would never be an accident.

But what I learned today is scarier than anything I learned as a kid.

The Soviet Union had a fallback option. It was called The Perimeter. Also known as Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand.

Today's Fresh Air interview was with David E. Hoffman, author of "The Dead Hand". I was so intrigued by what he reported that I googled it when I got home and found a "Wired" article by Nicholas Thompson discussing the same subject.

The Perimeter was the Soviet Union's response to Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system and a guarantee of a Second Strike capability. An incredible, overwhelming Second Strike.

Here is how it worked.

Much like the authorization to launch the nukes, it had to be turned on by the leader of the Soviet Union. In essence, it gave him the option of saying "You know what guys, I'm gonna have to take a pass on this. I can't decide if I should launch the nukes or not. I'm going to press this button and pass the decision to The Perimeter."

From Nicholas Thompson's "Wired" article:

"Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it's no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions:

If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil.

If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained.

If they did, and if some amount of time—likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hour—passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down.

If the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker—bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority.

At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was on duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-old junior officer fresh out of military academy. And if that person decided to press the button ... "

In the American Fail Safe system, even under a Second Strike protocol, each and every nuke requires 2 people to agree to let it go. There was always the possibility that 1 or both of the Control Officers would balk and refuse the order.

Not so much in The Perimeter.

This where it starts to get scary.

The Duty Officer who receives authorization to launch the nukes has the keys to The Gates of Hell.



From this point on, the robots are in charge.

The Command Missiles don't carry warheads. They carry launch authorization codes. Once launched, they arc over the Soviet Union issuing launch commands for every thermonuclear warhead in the Soviet inventory. At it's 1986 peak, that was about 45,000 warheads.

Try to picture that.

A handful of these Command Missiles flying overhead kicking up a wake like a ski-boat of tens of thousands MIRV tipped ICBMs carrying 45,000 hydrogen warheads all aimed at us. At you.

The Command Missiles don't have a human in the loop anymore. This is SkyNet.

The Command Missiles say "Fuck it. We're doing this. Buh Bye, meat puppets!"
But there is one more thing that makes this even more terrifying.

The Perimeter still exists and Russia has continued to "modernize" the system.

Think about it.

Someday a combination of a counterfeit computer control system with Bill Gate's "Blue Screen of Death", an earthquake in Siberia, and a peasant farmer slicing a buried fiber optic cable with an ox-drawn plow could inadvertently launch the The Command Missiles.

This is what the first couple of nukes would look like from right here in Kansas City.



I'll leave it to your imagination what things would look like 44,998 nukes later.

An Untold Story Chapter 1 - The Woman

This story has been stewing inside of me for about a year. With the exception of a few trusted confidants, I haven't shared this with anyone.

It was too personal, too recent, and too raw. I was also, and still am, respectful of the other person's privacy. Which is why the names have been changed, although the circumstances are completely factual.

Most of the prologue can be found in Parts 1-3 of my "Disasters in Dating" series.

Disasters in Dating - Part 1

Disasters in Dating - Part 2

Disasters in Dating - Part 3

The beginning of Part 1 finds me freshly divorced from my 2nd wife and very much on the prowl.

By the end of Part 3, I am in love, happy, content and have been for a few years.
Which is where this story begins.

The Woman

I met Becky over 5 years ago. I had been divorced for a couple of years and was very active in the local online dating scene.

OK, "active" doesn't quite do it justice. That's like saying Ted Kennedy enjoyed an occasional sip of scotch in a social setting. Or saying Bill Gates is doing OK for himself and can live within his budget.

I was a full speed, pedal to the metal, balls to the wall manwhore, mkay? I can refer you to a few local bloggers and tweeters who will vouch for the depths of depravity and promiscuity into which I dived like Alvin on Ecstasy.

But after a couple of years of this, I had started to think that maybe I was beginning to be ready for something more. Maybe.

None of my attempts at "something more" lasted more than a month. It got to the point that I started thinking I could save myself a lot of time and money by just calling up women at random out of the phone book and breaking up with them.

"Hi! You don't know me, we've never met. But I really don't think we should see each other. It's not you, it's me. I know this comes as a shock. I'm so sorry! But you'll get over me. You'll find somebody else. You deserve to be happy. I still want to be friends. Let's stay in touch! Maybe we could have lunch sometime! O.K., I gotta run. Buh bye!" click buzzzzzzzzzzzz (that's a dial tone for you young fucks who have never heard one)

When I found Becky's online profile, I noticed that not only was she petite and cute and hot and funny, but her status was "separated".

I thought "This is fucking PERFECT! She isn't even divorced yet! She can't possibly be looking for anything serious, I suck at anything serious, so this is doomed from the start! Exactly what I'm looking for!"

I can help her transition to single life, we can have some laughs together, she'll realize she isn't ready for a relationship, in a couple of months we can part as friends and it will all be good.

Well fuck me running! It didn't work out that way. We fell in love. Sometimes shit just happens.

She'd been married twice. So had I.

Her first marriage was to a shiftless, abusive, druggie and only lasted a few years but resulted in her oldest son, Jerry.

Her second marriage was to a callous, misogynist, railroader, lasted 20 years and resulted in two more boys, Desmond and Sam.

The first 3 years we were together were fucking AWESOME. We talked and emailed every day, spent almost every weekend together. We never fought or argued. We shared a warped and twisted sense of humor.

[SIDE STORY - Before our first date, we were talking on the phone. I can even tell you the exact day. It was Saturday, July 3, 2004. She was in the middle of trying to find a job. As we were chatting and flirting over the phone, a Breaking News Story came on her TV. Tragically, it was the story of the disgruntled ConAgra meat plant worker who brought a couple of pistols to work, shot 7 people, killing 5 of them before killing himself. Her first reaction was "OOH! I bet they're hiring!" That was some sick and twisted shit! I was pretty much a goner right then and there.]

We had a lot in common. We were both the oldest of 4 kids. Both of our dad's worked for TWA. We ALWAYS had each other's back. We weathered some individual tough times hand in hand.

When I was out of work and filing for bankruptcy, I woke up one morning to find my jeep GONE. Repossessed in the middle of the night (due to bad advice from my lawyer). After an entire day of complete MELTDOWN PANIC, she came over after work picked me up and calmed me down. We drove to a dealership I had found that had a jeep I wanted. She had to write the check because my hands were shaking too bad. I was barely able to sign it. Then she bought me dinner at Denny's because I hadn't eaten anything all day and was about to pass out.

She called me, crying, when her transmission died at Truman and I-435. I ditched my grocery cart at Price Chopper and raced to her. We got her fucked up car towed to her house. Then I took her to KCI where I rented her a car so she could go car shopping. When she found one she wanted, she needed to borrow $1500.00 for a down payment. I met her at CarMax and wrote a check. No questions asked.

We were a great team!

This was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Then about two years ago, tragically, things started to change.

Next: Chapter 2 - The Diagnosis

Rihanna - Best in show

Hey, peoples. Hope everyone had a good weekend. I want to welcome my newest follower Manny to the Cheese-on-Bread family!

Anyhoo, remember I told you all how Rihanna's been turning sidewalks into her own personal catwalk? Well now she's doing the same at all the fashion shows presently underway in Europe.

I can't recall the names of the shows she attended, nor the designers she wore (Jean-Paul Gaultier is in there somewhere), but here's a look at what our girl has been parading around in.

Rihanna's criss-crossed top reminds me of a haute couture mummy costume.




Obviously Rihanna real hard ears and forgot what I told her a while back about catching cold. The expression on the face of the guy in the photo says it all.


"Boots, boots, boots and more boots". Rihanna looks downright dangerous in this outfit. All she needs is a whip and horse.



With her looks, fame and money, I know Rihanna probably doesn't have one ass to worry about, but still, no need to show off, Rih-Rih!



Image: theybf.com; justjared.com

Air Force One Paint Scheme Contest

I need some Photoshop graphic gurus. to help me redesign Air Force One. The basic robin's egg blue, federal blue, chrome silver and virginal white paint scheme has remained unchanged since the JFK 727s.



This is a WWII Era P-40 Tomahawk.



This is the same type of plane outfitted for the American Flying Tigers Squadron.



See what they did there?

This is Air Force One.



This is an American Bald Eagle.



This is Air Force One.



This is an American Bald Eagle.



This is Air Force One.



This is an American Bald Eagle.



Here is my idea for an Air Force One Fighter Escort/Precision Demo Team.

You graphic designers need to get busy. There is some serious potential here.

The contest will run through the end of October. Post links to your submission in the comment section.

Readers will be allowed to vote for the winning submission via a poll in November with me serving as a Super Delegate.

The prize will be as much exposure and publicity as I can generate and maybe a cheap trinket.

GO!

Poetry

I don't get poetry.

Never have.

I'm not slamming poetry, or people who appreciate poetry. My best friend couldn't live without poetry. It flows through her veins and sustains her. Many bloggers I know are either poetry lovers and/or even poets themselves.

Not trying to denigrate them or the art form they love. Just saying I'm different and I fail to see the point of poetry.

I ran across a quote from the physicist Paul Dirac, who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger. He sums up my feelings about poetry quite nicely.

"In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand.

In poetry you are bound to say...something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand."

Exactly!

If you have something to say, if there is something you want me to know, just tell me what it is! Don't make me guess, don't leave it up to my interpretation, don't cloak it and hide it in obtuse phrases. JUST FUCKING TELL ME!

Same goes for abstract art of any form. Anybody can sling paint on a canvas, stick it in a frame and hang it on a wall. As far as I'm concerned, all abstract art is one big Rorschach test. None of it has any objective meaning, everything is left up to the viewer to decide what it means. Which means it doesn't mean anything at all. It is meaningless. It has no content and therefore no relevance.

The purpose of this blog post is to express to the reader why poetry doesn't speak to me. In order to express my feelings, I choose my words very carefully. I go back and re-read what I have written. If I find parts of it to be vague or ambiguous, I will re-write those parts to make them more concise.

My goal is for the reader to come away with a clear understanding of the point I am trying to make. I write this way so as not to waste people's time by making them try and guess what I mean. It's a courtesy to the reader.

I apologize that I will not spawn an industry of critics and apologists who spend decades hunched over my scribblings and writing their own interpretations of what they feel I was trying to say.

Sorry to break your rice bowl Sparky, but I say what I mean. I don't need no stinkin' interpretation.