House begins impeachment of Nixon on July 27, 1974

House begins impeachment of Nixon: On this day in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommends that America’s 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, be impeached and removed from office. The impeachment proceedings resulted from a series of political scandals involving the Nixon administration that came to be collectively known as Watergate.

The Watergate scandal first came to light following a break-in on June 17, 1972, at the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C. A group of men linked to the White House were later arrested and charged with the crime. Nixon denied any involvement with the break-in, but several of his staff members were eventually implicated in an illegal cover-up and forced to resign.

Subsequent government investigations revealed “dirty tricks” political campaigning by the Committee to Re-Elect the President, along with a White House “enemies list.” In July 1973, one of Nixon’s former staff members revealed the existence of secretly taped conversations between the president and his aides. Nixon initially refused to release the tapes, on grounds of executive privilege and national security, but a judge later ordered the president to turn them over. The White House provided some but not all of the tapes, including one from which a portion of the conversation appeared to have been erased.

In May 1974, the House Judiciary Committee began formal impeachment hearings against Nixon. On July 27 of that year, the first article of impeachment against the president was passed. Two more articles, for abuse of power and contempt of Congress, wereapproved on July 29 and 30.On August 5,Nixon complied witha U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring thathe provide transcripts of the missing tapes, and the new evidence clearly implicated him in a cover up of the Watergate break-in.

On August 8, Nixon announced his resignation, becoming the first president in U.S. history to voluntarily leave office. After departing the White House on August 9,Nixon was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who, in a controversial move, pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, making it impossible for the former president to be prosecuted for any crimes he might have committed while in office. Only two other presidents in U.S. historyhave beenimpeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / Nixon Library.gov / Senate.gov / Nixon impeachment hearings (YouTube search)

Understanding Military Terminology - Missile engagement zone

(DOD) In air defense, that airspace of defined dimensions within which the responsibility for engagement of air threats normally rests with surface-to-air missile systems. Also called MEZ.

Joint Publications (JP 3-01) Countering Air and Missile Threats

The Old Salt’s Corner

Main Photography Lab

This is the other photo lab found on board a carrier. As already mentioned, it handles more carrier-oriented photography duties such as administrative and publicity duties. It nevertheless can support intelligence related efforts should extra processing be needed (e.g., in support of a major exercise).

FAS.org / Module 6 — Intelligence WORK CENTERS

“I’m Just Sayin”

“If I were given the opportunity

o present a gift to the next generation,

it would be the ability for each individual

to learn to laugh at himself.”

~ Charles M. Schulz

“Thought for the Day”

“The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”

“Man is always prey to his truths.

Once he has admitted them,

he cannot free himself from them.”

~ Thomas Edison

“What I Have Learned”

The six most important words

“The six most important words: I admit I made a mistake.

The five most important words: You did a good job.

The four most important words: What is YOUR opinion?

The three most important words: If you please.

The two most important words: Thank You.

The one most important word: We.

The least important word: I.”

~ Anonymous

Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good – real news story)

2,505 naked women break skinny dipping world record

There was a wave of excitement at Ireland’s Magheramore beach ― and that’s the naked truth.

2,505 women banded together to break the Guinness World Record for “largest skinny-dip”, as part of an event to raise money for a local cancer charity.

The previous record of 786 people was set in March 2015 in Perth, Australia.

This record attempt was more impressive because it had three times the participants even though the water was a chilly 53 degrees.

One participant, Deirdre Betson, said the collective clothing-optional event was a game changer for her.

“Oh, my God, it was amazing. I have never been naked in front of anybody before, except my husband, and it was brilliant and bracing. It was great craic”, Betson told. “We are all different shapes and sizes and ages, and it was just super.”

Organizer Dee Featherstone created the “Strip and Dip” six years ago. She decided to start it after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012.

“I contacted some friends and family . . . and told them, ‘I only have one boob and I’m bald, so what’s your excuse?’” she told The Irish Times. “Sixty of us did the first one, and last year’s event grew to 200 women.”

The annual event is open to women cancer patients and survivors, and to women who have been otherwise affected by cancer.

“It’s basically giving a big ‘feck you’ to cancer. For those who have cancer, they’re taking ownership of their bodies again”, Featherstone said before the event.

“A lot of women said that the experience really changed their lives. One woman told me that her husband hadn’t seen her naked in years. After the skinny-dip, she just walks around the house naked now.”

UPI (06/11/2018)

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: How Did Ancient Medics Determine the Medicinal Properties of Substances?

For the most part, they didn’t. At the dawn of the age of scientific medicine (the mid-19th century) there were only a handful of remedies that we would recognize today as safe and effective.

Our ancestors were not dummies, and did not require scientific methods to create sophisticated and effective technologies. The Romans built what is still the largest unsupported dome structure in the world 1800 years ago. Gunpowder, in concert with metallurgical advances, steadily developed from a Taoist elixir to a city-destroying technology by the 1600s. Sailing technology created worldwide trade networks even earlier. Scientific methods would have sped the development of these technologies, but were not required. Trial and error - plus lots of time - sufficed.

Hundreds of traditional medicines have now been tested in clinical trials. Few show any benefit at all, and even fewer show a benefit comparable to modern scientific medicines. There is little evidence that the remedies of 1800 CE were any more effective than the remedies of 1800 BCE. Moliere’s quip in 1673 that “More men die of their medicines than of their diseases” was very much on the mark.

Unlike other sophisticated modern technologies, such as jet aircraft or telecommunications, medicines are largely discovered rather than invented. They don’t rely on an entire edifice of previous scientific discoveries.

The ancient Nubians drank a beer (more like a gruel, really) fermented by Streptomyces bacteria. It was so loaded with tetracycline that their bones fluoresce under UV light. Tetracycline is a very effective broad spectrum antibiotic that can be used to treat plague, TB, diarrheal diseases, and respiratory, skin, and urinary tract infections. Tetracycline beer, used judiciously, could well have slashed infant mortality, leading to a Demographic Transition in Central Africa in 400 CE.

The ancients were also capable of creating, not just finding, sophisticated medicines. Bard’s Salve, resurrected from a 10th century Saxon text, is an effective remedy for wound infection in mouse models.

More surprisingly, every component—and the precise process for producing it—is required in order for it to work. This is a clear example of an effective ancient medicine that answered a critical medical need. Its formulation was written down, allowing it to spread and be improved upon. Instead it was forgotten.

Up until about 1800, everyone in the world, to a first approximation, was a poor subsistence farmer. Despite substantial technological advances, like the ones I described above and many others, the standard of living of the world’s population advanced not at all. Any improvement in agricultural technology, such as the horse collar and improved plow designs, led to increased food production but subsequent population increases ate up any gains in living standards.

We think of historical plagues as disasters, but they were in fact a great benefit - at least to the survivors. Life expectancy increased after the Black Death of 1350:

Fewer mouths to feed and a scarcity of labor leading to increased bargaining power led to more resources per person and a more equitable distribution of those resources.

In our modern innovation-driven economy, we consider more people to be a good thing.

We fret that declining birth rates will cause economic growth to stagnate. But prior to 1850, a growing population meant growing poverty.

Saving lives—particularly the lives of economic sinks like small children—did not make societies stronger. This is not to say that parents did not mourn the loss of their children. They did. But societies operated under what was a reverse Tragedy of the Commons, where what was bad for the individual was good for everyone else.

It is believed by some our ancestors were perfectly capable of making effective medicines. They chose not to, not out of perversity or ignorance, but because those medicines would have caused more suffering than they prevented. Medicine was not intended to cure; its role was to provide comfort. It was a form of social support, not unlike religion. Looked at from that perspective, traditional medicines are very effective. They did exactly what their creators intended them to do.

Encyclopedia Britannica • Johns Hopkins Medicine • Quora • (Medicine in ancient Rome) - (History of medicine) Wikipedia Ancient Medicine For The Modern Human Body (YouTube)

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

UNODIR: Unless Otherwise Directed; enables trust-based management by exception (MBE).

Unicorn: An officer with a particularly rare designator (i.e. METOC).

UNREP: Underway Replenishment: The taking of supplies from a supply ship by maneuvering alongside it and passing lines between it and one's own vessel. Differs from “VERTREP”.

UNSAT: Unsatisfactory: Below standards.

Up the hawse hole/pipe: An enlisted man going officer. See “Mustang”.

USS Backyard: A sailor's home of record, to which he or she happily returns upon discharge.

USS Belcrash: The USS Belknap (CG-26). So called in reference to her collision with the USS Kennedy in 1975.

USS Forestfire: The USS Forrestal (CV-59). So called due to the number of fires that have broken out on board ship.

USS Immobile Bay: USS Mobile Bay (CG-53). So called due to the time spent pierside during work ups for deployment after Mobile Bay failed INSURV inspection in 2011.

USS In-Port Royal: The USS Port Royal (CG-73). So called due to time spent in port after running aground near entrance to Pearl Harbor.

USS Lastship: The ship a sailor was on previously. Used when a sailors try to tell stories about their previous ships, or how things were handled on their previous ships. Compare “USS Ustafish”.

USS Lake Cham Pain: The USS Lake Champlain.

USS Neverdock: Any ship that seems to stay out at sea for unusually long periods of time. For sailors, this is usually their own ship.

USS Neversail:

(1) Any mock-up ship found in boot camp. Also called USS Recruit.

(2) Any real ship which seldom leaves port, for example a sub tender.

USS Loungechair: The fictional ship sailors serve on when they retire.

USS Notagain (DD 214): The fictional ship which sailors who are separating from the Navy specify when they are asked which command they are going to, or which former sailors specify when new personnel ask which ship they are on. “DD 214” is the form that must be filled out before a member of the military may be discharged. "DD" was also the type designation for pre-missile destroyers.

USS Slurpeefish: The USS SAN FRANCISCO. So called because the ship's hull is number SSN 711.

USS Ustafish (Submarine Service): The boat a sailor was on previously. Pronounced “used to fish”, the term is a reference to the time when attack boats were named after fish. Compare “USS Lastship”. “We don't want to hear about your Ustafish stories.”

USS Zippo: Derogatory name for USS Forrestal (CV 59).

VA Veterans Administration / Department of Veterans Affairs: A department of the U.S. Federal Government that assists military veterans with medical care, educational benefits for college of technical training, home loans, burial, etc.

VA: Fixed wing attack Aircraft Squadrons. No longer in use, see VFA.

VAQ: Fixed Wing Electronic Attack aircraft Squadrons.

VAW: Fixed Wing Carrier Airborne Early Warning aircraft Squadrons.

Vampire Liberty: A day off one gets for donating a pint of blood.

VASTARD: Sailors that work with the AN/USM247(V) Versatile Avionics Shop Test (VAST) operational from 1972-2006. Used for testing Weapons Replaceable Assemblies (WRA's) on E-2C Hawkeyes, F-14 Tomcats, and S-3 Vikings. Typically these shops are found on aircraft carriers just forward of hangar bay 1 on the 01 level. Part of the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department (AIMD), IM3 (Avionics) division.

Just for you MARINE

Zero: Pronounced zee-ROW in an exaggerated manner, as used by Drill Instructors at the end of a count-down implying that recruits are to immediately cease all activity and remain silently in place. Used by Marines to gain the immediate attention of all personnel in the area without calling attention on deck.

Used by Marines to gain the immediate attention of all personnel in the area without calling attention on deck.

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

VFA-143 - “Pukin' Dogs”
Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia Beach, Virginia - Established July 20, 1950

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“Busy as a bee:”  Meaning: Very busy.

History: From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, (the Squire's Tale), 1386-1400:

“Ey! Goddes mercy!” sayd our Hoste tho,

Now such a wyf I pray God keep me fro.

Lo, suche sleightes and subtilitees

In wommen be; for ay as busy as bees

Be thay us seely men for to desceyve,

And from a soth ever a lie thay weyve.

And by this Marchaundes tale it proveth wel.”

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

Loss of cilia leads to melanoma • Best of Last Week–A battery for cold climates, complex molecules found on Enceladus and new way to measure intelligence • First confirmed image of newborn planet caught with ESO's VLT • Self-replicator that is simultaneously created and destroyed may lead to better understanding of life • Solar purifier creates its own disinfectant from water and sunlight • World's first animals caused global warming • All the forests in the world from a single layer of cells

Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

The Strange, Mysterious or Downright Weird

Aliens May Be Rearranging Stars to Fight Dark Energy, Awesome Study Suggests

Astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev first proposed these three phases (called Level I, II and III) of galactic expansion - which he referred to as the three “types” of technologically advanced civilizations - in 1962 as a way to measure the energy consumption of increasingly powerful societies. Recently, a paper posted June 13 to the preprint journal arXiv.org has revived Kardashev's model and added a new, apocalyptic twist. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens]

According to the author of the paper, Dan Hooper - a senior scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago - harvesting energy from distant stars isn't just the best way to increase a civilization's available resources. It's also the only way to prevent the ever-expanding universe from leaving that civilization totally alone in the vastness of space. (This study has yet to be peer-reviewed.)

“The presence of dark energy in our universe is causing space to expand at an accelerating rate”, Hooper wrote in the new paper. Over the next approximately 100 billion years, the stars beyond our Local Group, or a group of gravitationally bound galaxies that includes the Milky Way, will fall beyond the cosmic horizon, meaning an observer here could never retrieve information from them over the course of the age of the universe.

At that point, “the stars become not only unobservable, but entirely inaccessible, thus limiting how much energy could one day be extracted from them”, Hooper wrote in the paper.

In other words, if humans hope to meet aliens in distant galaxies, it'll be a race against dark energy, that mysterious force thought to be uncontrollably stretching our universe farther and farther apart.

Catch a star by the toe

Any advanced civilization worth their starships would understand the grim reality of universal expansion, Hooper wrote, and they wouldn't just sit around idly while the universe literally passed them by. Rather, they would capture stars from other galaxies, reel them in and harvest their energy first, before those stars (and their energy) became inaccessible forever. [12 Possible Reasons We Haven't Found Aliens]

“Given the inevitability of the encroaching horizon, any sufficiently advanced civilization that is determined to maximize its ability to utilize energy will expand throughout the universe, attempting to secure as many stars as possible before they become permanently inaccessible”, Hooper wrote.

Redecorating the galaxy

These hypothetical, star-harvesting aliens will probably be picky, Hooper noted: Teeny-tiny stars, hundreds of times smaller than Earth's sun, wouldn't produce enough radiation to be useful; significantly larger stars, on the other hand, would likely be too close to going supernova to be used as a viable battery. Only stars with a mass about 20 to 100 times the mass of our sun would be viable candidates for capturing and hauling back to the home galaxy, Hooper said. And because solar objects in that mass range radiate certain wavelengths of light more than others, alien star harvesting would show up in the light signatures from these galaxies.

“The spectrum of starlight from a galaxy that has had its useful stars harvested by an advanced civilization would be dominated by massive stars and thus peak at longer wavelengths than otherwise would have been the case”, Hooper said.

Humans likely don't have precise enough instruments yet to detect these unusual light signatures beaming from the depths of the universe, Hooper wrote. Hopefully, astronomers will develop them before our sun becomes another flaming marble in some distant civilization's collection.

Live Science (05/09/2018)