Now Reading

• The electronic Advanced Reader Copy for John Ringo's Under A Graveyard Sky, in which a tailored virus causes people to turn into zombies--not technically "undead" but close enough--and our heroes, who are prepared for various end-of-the-world scenarios, take a boat out into the Atlantic and start rescuing people from other boats. And ships. The assault leader is Faith, a 13 year old girl, which makes sense, because teenage girls can be vicious.
• The electronic Advanced Reader Copy for Larry Correia's Warbound, in which Franklin Roosevelt institutes some rather heavy handed government control--the parallel's with today's administration are, unfortunately, too applicable; Jake Sullivan picks up a couple of sociopaths and leads a team into enemy territory; and Faye Viera, despite being Spellbound, doesn't kill everyone, at least not by 75% of the way through the book. 
• the advance PDF copy of the Hero System book for the Monster Hunter International Emplyee Handbook & Roleplaying Game.

On this Day

On May 9, 1671, Colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the British Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Technically, he did steal hem--hammered a crown flat and tucked it into his clothing, and his confederates picked up a sceptre and an orb--but they were chased and caught after leaving the Tower.  However, Kind Charles II was apparently amused by this Blood's bravado and not only pardoned him, but granted him an estate in Ireland.

Action of 6 May 1801

On this day in 1801, HM brig Speedy, under command of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, attacked and captured the 32 gun Spanish frigate El Gamo, despite the fact that the Spanish ship was four times the size, with six times the crew and weight of broadside. The Speedy approached under American colors until she got so close that the Spanish broadside passed over her, and returned fire with double-shotted guns. After exchanging fire and repelling several Spanish attempts to board, Cochrane sent over his entire crew, leaving only one man aboard the Speedy; he then told that one to "send over the rest of the men!" and tore down the Spanish colors, whereupon the El Gamo's crew surrendered. The British took 12 casualties, the Spanish 55 killed and wounded and 261 captured. 

Fighter Factory

Josh and I had our first visit to the Fighter Factory / Military Aviation Museum in Pungo. There are two groups of buildings; the one at the far end of the driveway has the workshop / maintenance area and the WWI planes, while the main building has the WW2 planes and some vehicles.
Some of the planes:

• P40 with Flying Tigers livery
• P39 
• P51 Mustang
• FW190
• Yak 3
• Corsair
• B25
• Junkers Ju52--larger than I expected, and the exterior is all corrugated, including the wings
• Mosquito
• Spitfire
• Storch observation plane--they said it had a 300ft takeoff roll
• Fokker DR1 triplane
• Fokker D VII biplane
• Albatross D.Va
• Sopwith  1 1/2 Strutter
• V1 flying bomb

They also had a display of the various types of ammo in use, from .30 cal to 30mm, and several vehicles--staff cars, gun tractors, that sort of thing. They also had a British antitank gun from the North Africa campaign, and a 89mm Flak gun in an Afrika Korps paint scheme, which was cool -- nobody was looking, so I sat in the gunner's position for a while, and thought about...well, what I actually thought about was telling Josh to go get the car and see if we could surreptitiously tow it home. We could put it behind the house. I can see the conversation when Diana gets home:

"What's that?"

"It's a tree, sweetie."

"A tree?"

"A fliegerabwehrkanone tree."

"When did you get it?"

"We've always had a tree in the back, hon."

Battle of Montgisard

Broke out GMT Games' Infidel, which I've had for a while, and put counters on the board for the Montgisard scenario. Historically, in 1177, a tiny Crusader force under the sixteen-year-old King of Jerusalem, Baldwin the Leper, came across a much larger invading Saracen force under Saladin. The Saracens were tired from marching and unprepared for battle. Although outnumbered by something like 6 to 1, the Crusaders merely paused for a quick prayer, then attacked. With the King leading the attack personally, they broke through the whole Saracen army, destroying 90% of it and nearly catching Saladin himself. The game AAR went pretty much the same way.

Communism vs Capitalism

On April 17, a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, blew up, with over 160 casualties. I've heard people saying "The explosion happened because, CAPITALISM! It hadn't been inspected by OSHA since 1985 because, CAPITALISM!"

On this day in 1986--three years before the fall of the Berlin wall--the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine suffered an explosion and fire which spread contamination over much of western Europe. Over 130,000 people were evacuated; deaths from radiation exposure and cancers were estimated as at least 4000.

So disasters happen because humans are greedy, careless, ignorant, or lazy; it doesn't seem to matter much which economic system they're operating in.

Nightingale

Larry Correia, Howard Tayler and others had a Book Bomb to pump up Nightingale; the author's son was seriously injured in a skateboarding accident, and buying the book will both help with medical bills and promote the book, leading more people to buy it, thereby helping more with the medical bills.So I bought it.

I stayed up to 2am to finish it. That's not unusual, but normally I'm aware of the time. In this case, the clock somehow jumped directly from 11:29pm to 1:52am. That's pretty rare.

And as soon as I finished it, I wanted to start the sequel immediately. That's very rare, but I really wanted to know more about...not just the main character, but some of the secondary characters. What about Olivia's husband Mike? Is he a werebear? It seems unlikely, but not quite impossible. What about Father Leery, and how did he convert? How about the Weigher of Lost Souls?

Unfortunately the next book in the series isn't out yet, so I bought Million Dollar Outline and the first book of the Runelords series, and I expect to buy more of his work.