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Incredibly awesome airshow pics

January 31, 2008

Dan at A Normal Backyard sent me a link to these amazing air show pictures.  Not only are they great action pictures but imagine what’s involved in flying that way.  Makes you wonder what the limits of human spatial interaction and reasoning really might be.  One albatross makes an appearance – hopefully he decided to land and let the air show finish before taking to the air again.

Some of the pictures show the shock waves created by the jets’ passage with unusual clarity.

Also check out Dan’s pictures from Little River canyon in Georgia. (scroll down).  I didn’t even know that place existed.  It is really beautiful.

Categories: observations
  1. Me
    January 31, 2008 at 16:48 | #1

    What a display of military hardware!

    Ahh, but that’s tax money well spent. I get so excited at fearsome and noisy hardware, that I almost spooged myself.

  2. Me
    January 31, 2008 at 20:58 | #2

    The Washington Compost:

    The U.S. military’s reserves and National Guard forces are not prepared to meet catastrophic threats at home and face an “appalling” shortage of forces able to respond to chemical, biological or nuclear strikes on U.S. soil, according to a congressional commission report released today.

    The problem is rooted in severe readiness problems in the reserves and National Guard forces, which would be well-suited to respond to domestic crises but suffer from a lack of personnel and training as well as a $48 billion shortage of equipment, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves said in the report.

    “Because the nation has not adequately resourced its forces designated for response to weapons of mass destruction, it does not have sufficient trained, ready forces available. This is an appalling gap that places the nation and its citizens at greater risk,” the report said.

    Quick, someone throw some more money on the bonfire. The current defense budget has been pared to the bone by those America hating Republicans.

    Those are great pictures, but how much in greenhouse gases and expense was generated for the benefit of recruitment and positive PR?

    Don’t worry though, we’ll start working on that global warming thingie right away. Some other day though, when the opportunity presents itself…

    From VoxEu

    No longer confined to the roundtables of politicians and scientists, the debate on climate change has become a mounting wave that doesn’t seem to be losing momentum. Both policy and research communities have focused on the need to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentrations at about 550 ppm (parts per million, all greenhouse gases included). This is generally considered a very ambitious, hardly feasible target with drastic implications for our economies and lifestyles.

    Given projected world population dynamics, this objective requires reducing per capita emissions in the second half of this century from about 2 tonnes carbon equivalent (tC) to about 0.3 tC per year. In other words, the world will have to cut emissions to the per capita average of India today – quite a significant reduction for most industrialised countries (US average per capita emissions are about 5tC) and for countries that aim at similar lifestyle standards. For example, 0.3 tC is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by an individual flying – one way – from the EU to the US East coast!

  3. January 31, 2008 at 21:43 | #3

    I agree with the points you’re making, Me, but I can’t make the airshow not have happened by not enjoying the brilliance of the engineering behind the planes, the skill and showmanship of the pilots, the fascinating physics of the image where shockwave distortion is so clearly visible (best such photo I’ve ever seen) and the visual instincts of the photographer.  I find beauty where I can.

  4. Me
    January 31, 2008 at 22:23 | #4

    Sure; I can see that and it’s hard not to admire great feats; but we’ve got to learn to avert our eyes from the trainwrecks in progress—beit airshows that are bad for us in a litany of ways, or beit the drama of Brittany Spears foisted on us by the media.

    At some point we need to stiffen our resolve, and understand that some beauty is deadly—not only in the conventional sense of beautiful war machines spewing death over Guernica, but also of media and media events that feed us fatty amusements as distraction from events that require attention.

    Of course, you have the right to appreciate beauty as you see it; it takes skill to take pictures like that.

  5. January 31, 2008 at 22:45 | #5

    It is possible to have more than one thought in your head at a time.  The three-dimensional reality is that beauty and danger are very much a matter of angle, and many objects have both.  There is nothing in seeing through an aesthetic lens that precludes seeing through a religious one, a scientific one, or a political one.

    Also as much as our military is blown up to hypertrophic steroidal proportions, we do still need one.  It is not a virtue to refuse enjoyment of a necessary thing.

  6. Jim
    February 1, 2008 at 06:27 | #6

    Good post, but I have one little nit to pick. Little River Canyon is in Alabama. If you ever get a chance to be down this way check it out, it really is spectacular.

  7. February 1, 2008 at 18:42 | #7

    You are correct, Jim, and Normal Backyard mentions crossing a bridge into Alabama.
    Definitely a beautiful part of the country, for sure.

  8. February 1, 2008 at 19:30 | #8

    So sorry!  That was my mistake, not Dan’s.

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