Starting off, another "THEY'RE ALL GONNA DIE!", this time for Italy and the Mediterranean:
The undersea Marsili, 3000m tall and located some 150km south-west of Naples, has not erupted since the start of recorded history.
It is 70km long and 30km wide, and its crater is some 450m below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
"A rupture of the walls would let loose millions of cubic metres of material capable of generating a very powerful wave," Prof Boschi said.
"While the indications that have been collected are precise, it is impossible to make predictions.
"The risk is real but hard to evaluate."
Oddly, this thing is not listed on any volcano map I could find; may look a bit more later. For now, if it went you could figure on the whole west coast of Italy getting washed along with Sicily and Sardinia and- well, probably most of the Med coast.
Idiot judge:
Lawyers for the father of a Marine who died in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters say a court has ordered him to pay the protesters' appeal costs.
On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered that Albert Snyder of York, Pa., pay costs associated with Fred Phelps' appeal. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at the funeral of Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, in Westminster in 2006.
Lawyers for Snyder say the Court of Appeals has ordered him to pay $16,510.80 to Phelps for costs relating to the appeal, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Court of Appeals' decision.
Rep. Stupak(Vile NSDP Bastard) & Co. are looking for their payoffs, all the while saying "No, NOTHING to do with betraying the people we represent."
Good grief! I'd think that much of that ammo might sink the boat by weight alone!
The coastguard vessel reached the pirates as they were 255 nautical miles northwest of Mahe, heading towards Somalia.
Mr Morgan said the pirates ignored the coastguards' audio calls to release their hostages and did not alter their course when warning shots were fired.
"We took the decision to open fire on the engine compartment, 10,000 12.7mm rounds were fired ... and we continued our harassment operation until we achieved what we wanted, which was to set fire to the engine," he said.
Mr Morgan said all on board had to jump off the boat but nobody was wounded.
I wonder if they might have miscounted the number of rounds fired. Or if they're just that lousy a shot.(thanks to Theo for the link)
9 comments:
OK, surplus .50 cal rounds run over a dollar per round. Assuming (optimistically) that the government was able to buy for only a doller per, that's $10,000 to disable a piece of crap boat. While it would be nice to have a one Barret M82 rifle per vessel for these situations, those run over $10K per also. What's the cheap solution? A good gunner who can touch off one round at a time. Last I knew, M2 machine guns had a slow enough rate of fire to do this, if the gunner knew his job. In this case, I'd bet such a gunner could've done the job at the cost of 20 or less rounds.
"dollar", that is....
Well, hitting a moving vessel from a moving vessel using mod.0 eyeball guidance isn't all that easy.
That being said, 1,000 rounds is a much more likely figure needed to accomplish the deed.
Who were these guys, the A-Team?
About Marsili:
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/03/submarine_volcano_off_italy_ma.php
Read the comments, they're fun!
Ah, thank you!
I think there could be two factors in the volcano story.
1)
Italy has just had local Govt elections, as usual the left have worked overtime trying to smear Berlusconi. But, tough luck, the left were wiped out.
Had they won, it would have emboldened them to push for all sorts of spending.
2) the usual call from academics for yet more tax payer money. Me wonders if this is one of the Italian vuconologists that the guys doing PHDs when I was a college in the 80s, were warned not to give any info to, as certain of them would publish it as their own.
Damn;
Vulconologists
Most likely the M2 gunner was just having too much fun to stop. And most likely, both the gun tubes and the ammo were supplied to the Seychelles by American taxpayers.
What did a block of C4 cost during the Vietnam War? I've heard a number of stories of lighting C4 with a match to heat up some canned rations, and surely that costs a heck of a lot more than Sterno.
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