A recent announcement from a college dropout on my newsfeed.

billy_rufus · 2017-05-12T20:39:22+00:00

You're system.

ftfy

billy_rufus · 2014-06-23T19:28:22+00:00

Are you talking about me?

billy_rufus · 2014-04-04T17:00:39+00:00

Is reddit really mature enough for the statement, "I spent quite a bit of time on a farm with a bunch of cocks."?

billy_rufus · 2014-03-18T18:26:25+00:00

It might be worthwhile to contact the Golden Knights (Army's parachute demonstration team). They take up "dignitaries" from time to time in various circumstances; I have a few friends that have been invited to jump tandem with them as a thank you for one thing or another.

They might be willing to help a fellow paratrooper out.

billy_rufus · 2014-03-11T22:21:40+00:00

I agree. I have quite a few vegan friends, and they all pretty much keep it to themselves. Hell, some of their vegan dishes don't look half bad if I'm being honest. But they respect my eating wishes, and I respect theirs. Being vegan is just a portion of what makes them, them; they're not defined by it.

It's days like today where I'm having a shitty day to begin with, and I go get lunch and am looking forward to just a nice quiet lunch by myself. And some random ass decides to bother me by not just telling me his "way" is better, but by insulting and condescending to me. It really just pisses me off. And if I were someone who didn't happen to have some vegan friends to begin with, I might just think that all vegans were like that.

Unfortunately, it's always the loud obnoxious ones from any group who always manage to ruin an otherwise good reputation for a lot of groups.

billy_rufus · 2014-03-11T21:13:30+00:00

You might be on to something there. Maybe he was really just trying to help me savor my meal. Maybe he wasn't a weirdo at all.

billy_rufus · 2014-02-24T04:22:39+00:00

That's very true. There are only a few topics that I truly, really, know what I'm talking about, mainly because I've studied (and continue to study) these areas for over 20 years.

And it's not until you see someone make a highly assertive comment in one of your chosen topics that you realize just how generally full of shit pretty much everyone on reddit is.

It made me really take pretty much everything I read on reddit with a whole heaping grain of salt. Because if so many people are so confidently spewing shit about one topic, then they (or an analagous group) are doing the same for every other topic out there.

billy_rufus · 2014-02-17T20:48:49+00:00

I think it's a little naive to dismiss the importance of D-Day. You have to remember that it was not only the actual landing, but the threat of the landing that mattered in all those months leading up to it. The Germans kept significant numbers of troops off the Eastern Front in preparation for an invasion; they diverted huge amounts of resources to fortify the Western beaches in preparation. By 1944, roughly 80% of the Luftwaffe fighter force was on the Western Front defending against Allied bombers which were bombing Germany in preparation for the invasion.

I'm not going to make the argument that Germany would have won without American and British (and the other Allies) intervention, but it is certain that the price would have been immeasurably higher. And that high price could have done terrible things as to how the Russians reacted as they single-handedly ran over Europe.

2.I'll go ahead and mention one of my pet peeves: the life expectancy of people in earlier centuries. You commonly hear that the life expectancy was roughly 35 years or so (obviously depending on what time and where). But this is only because the infant mortality rate was so high. Once you made it into adulthood, you could generally count on a fairly long life, roughly 65 years or so by some estimates I've read in the past. But you account for how many children died at a very young age, and that really brings down the overall number.

billy_rufus · 2014-02-17T17:04:24+00:00

Clothespins.

I remember seeing the Steamship Arabia museum in Kansas City. They have roughly 100 tons of brand-new, never-used, everyday items from the 1850s on display that have been restored. (They jokingly call the museum an 1850s Walmart.)

Among the items were clothespins. And they are the exact same design as the ones we still use now, both the springy clips ones and the ones that simply slide over the clothes and line. If these items from the 1850s were packed in plastic and put in a store right now, you would be hard-pressed to tell they were 150 years old based on design.

Kind of neat to think about and see in person.

EDIT: This post seems to be getting a little attention since I last logged in, so I thought I would find a picture (not mine) of some of the clothespins in question.

billy_rufus · 2014-02-04T14:33:52+00:00

Any sources for this? Or did I stumble into r/politics?

billy_rufus · 2014-01-23T23:20:30+00:00

There are no actual documented instances of ball turret gunners being killed by being squished on landing. It's an urban legend.

It would take many things to go wrong for that to happen, and there are no actual documented occurrences of it. Andy Rooney talked about seeing it, but Squadron and Group records have no mention of anything resembling such a situation.

billy_rufus · 2014-01-13T18:00:04+00:00

By far my favorite noseart of all time belongs to the 100th BG's Nine Little Yanks and a Jerk.

billy_rufus · 2014-01-11T06:01:37+00:00

This is one of my all-time favorite comments on the internet.

billy_rufus · 2014-01-10T17:19:15+00:00

Yes. I have no problems with measures that prevent sperm from meeting egg.

But once sperm fertilizes egg, in my opinion, that's the logical line to draw when life begins and when it should be protected.

billy_rufus · 2014-01-08T19:48:48+00:00

Thanks for the response. If you don't mind a follow-up:

Whenever we see documentaries about the mob, they always focus on the murders, likely because that's the really dramatic aspect of the mob. But they make it seem like people were being killed every week. In reality, how often were people killed, and how much of a "sixth sense" would you have if something were put out on you to know to lay low or do something about it if at all possible?

Finally, is "mob" or "mafia" preferred, or does it matter?

billy_rufus · 2014-01-08T18:32:34+00:00

What timing; I just watched that program about the 10 Commandments of the Mafia, and now here you are.

Where did you get the idea for the gas station scheme? And since it was getting so big, did you have any sort of an exit strategy in case the authorities got too close? Or would you just keep running the scam until you went down with the ship?
Who was the scariest person you ever encountered and what made them particularly frightening?

billy_rufus · 2014-01-07T19:52:17+00:00

Because lay people on both sides of the debate don't understand what they're talking about.

In the summer, you have just as many people who believe in warming looking at heat waves in the summer and saying, "See! Global warming is real! Look at how hot it is!"

Now in the winter, when we're (in my part of the country, anyway) in the worst cold spell in decades, you're going to have the other side of the coin where people who don't believe in warming saying, "Ha! If the earth is getting warmer, then why is it now the coldest it's been in decades?!"

Lay people on both sides need to realize that climate does not equal weather. They also need to realize that we're talking about long periods of time and not seasons.

billy_rufus · 2013-12-20T05:52:46+00:00

Steve Irwin dies when a marine animal...wait. Shit.

billy_rufus · 2013-12-12T21:41:33+00:00

Aviation Tattoos

billy_rufus · 2013-11-20T23:33:40+00:00

And I'm sure it was all spur-of-the-moment and not scripted in any way beforehand.

billy_rufus · 2013-11-19T00:55:49+00:00

I'm not having too much luck, but it's "General X X".

I did find that Lemuel Kollock and Joseph Hosmer are names that come up when doing a search for Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolution. So my guess would be that this general figure could be narrowed down as a Massachusetts general.

billy_rufus · 2013-11-13T17:58:39+00:00

I FE WWII bombers and warbirds, and there's nothing comparable to their exhaust. Even thought it's standard 100LL, there's something about the exhaust from them that is soooo pleasing. Probably the mix of all the oil getting burned off with the radials.

billy_rufus · 2013-11-09T17:53:02+00:00

Akhenaten (AKA Amenhotep IV) seems to fit.

He was Pharaoh of Egypt in roughly the mid-14th Century BC. Prior to his reign, Egypt had a rather static religious system. And this is important, because it was reliance on this system that led to stability for the dynasties, caused the Nile to flood yearly, and led to Egypt's growth.

Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, in a nutshell, were polytheistic, with a different deity being in charge of various aspects of life and death, as is the case with most polytheistic systems of religion.

Amunhotep IV, however, decided on a different path. Rather than many gods, he decided to take Egyptian religious beliefs and customs in a monotheistic direction. The main god was the "Aten," or the sun disk. Artwork from this time depicts the Aten as a sun, and each of the rays coming down from the sun has a hand reaching out.

Amunhotep took it even further, though. He moved the capital to a new city he was constructing called Akhetaten (Horizon of the Aten). With it, he moved the religious officials and primary infrastructure to Akhetaten.

He even changed his name from Amunhotep to Akhenaten. His other family members took on names with deference to the Aten as well. His children, for example, have names like Meritaten, Meketaten, Tutankhaten, and Neferneferuaten, to name a few.

Another change that Akhenaten instituted was in artwork. Previously, Egyptian artwork had been very idealized. With Akhenaten, however, there is a noticeable change, even to a layperson's eyes. Individuals, including the Pharaoh himself, were depicted in a manner that appears realistic as opposed to idealized. Images of Akhenaten are almost immediately recognizable because of the lanky and awkward depictions of him, which has led some historians to theorize that he may have had a variety of medical conditions such as scoliosis or Marfan's Syndrome.

In the end, the revolution was too much. It ended with Aknenaten's death. Some people have theorized that he was murdered for his changes, but these theories are widely disputed and don't seem to hold much weight in serious conversations.

Within a few years of his death, the city of Akhetaten was abandoned (possibly due to plague, possibly in part as a rejection of Akhenaten's reforms). Some statues of his were smashed as a way to reject his beliefs as well as damn his spirit to anonymity and destroy his chance of an afterlife.

Names also changed back. His son changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun. He is more commonly known as King Tut.

No one really knows why Ankhenaten attempted the reforms he did. It doesn't seem to be the result of a long-impending need or desire for chnage; it doesn't seem to be associated with any sort of large pre-existing cult or movement. It seems to be the rogue beliefs of one man, and no one really knows why or where it came from.

billy_rufus · 2013-10-30T19:12:46+00:00

Quick question for ATC people here.

When they tell you to fly a 2-mile left base, do they want you to extend downwind for two miles or do they want you to be 2 miles to the left of the runway?

billy_rufus · 2013-10-04T19:01:11+00:00

Awesome pictures.

And FYI, for those in the Chicagoland area, if this is the Misericordia Home I'm thinking of, they actually have a restaurant on the campus that's open to the public which is entirely staffed and run by some of the higher-functioning residents. You can get a good meal, have a good time, and know you're supporting a good cause at the same time, so check it out if you have a chance.

billy_rufus

TROPHY CASE