American circumnavigates the globe on foot on October 05, 1974

American circumnavigates the globe on foot: American David Kunst completes the first round-the-world journey on foot, taking four years and 21 pairs of shoes to complete the 14,500-mile journey across the land masses of four continents. He left his hometown of Waseca, Minnesota, on June 20, 1970. Near the end of his journey in 1974 he explained the reasons for his epic trek: “I was tired of Waseca, tired of my job, tired of a lot of little people who don’t want to think, and tired of my wife.” During the long journey, he took on sponsors and helped raise money for UNICEF.

He was accompanied by his brother, John, but in 1972 John Kunst was shot to death by bandits in Afghanistan and David was wounded. After returning to Minnesota to recuperate, Kunsk traveled back to Afghanistan and continued his global journey with another brother, Peter. Peter had to drop out later for health reasons, and David Kunst completed his trek alone, returning to Waseca on October 5, 1974.

American George Shilling boasted of a round-the-world journey nearly a hundred years before, but his feat was never verified. Another American, Arthur Blessitt, holds the record for the greatest distance walked and most countries visited, though he was propelled by a purpose other than record-book fame. Since 1969, Blessitt has walked more than 34,500 miles, visiting 290 countries on six continents, all the while carrying a collapsible 12-foot cross and preaching Christianity.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Dave Kunst / Minnesota Historical Society / David Kunst (YouTube search)

Understanding Military Terminology - Meteorological and oceanographic operations support community

(DOD) The collective of electronically connected, shore-based meteorological and oceanographic production facilities/centers, theater and/or regional meteorological and oceanographic production activities. Also called MOSC.

Joint Publications (JP 3-59) (Meteorological and Oceanographic Operations - Defense)

The Old Salt’s Corner

“The Odyssey”

BOOK XXII

Then Ulysses tore off his rags, and sprang on to the broad pavement with his bow and his quiver full of arrows. He shed the arrows on to the ground at his feet and said, “The mighty contest is at an end. I will now see whether Apollo will vouchsafe it to me to hit another mark which no man has yet hit.”

On this he aimed a deadly arrow at Antinous, who was about to take up a two-handled gold cup to drink his wine and already had it in his hands. He had no thought of death- who amongst all the revellers would think that one man, however brave, would stand alone among so many and kill him? The arrow struck Antinous in the throat, and the point went clean through his neck, so that he fell over and the cup dropped from his hand, while a thick stream of blood gushed from his nostrils. He kicked the table from him and upset the things on it, so that the bread and roasted meats were all soiled as they fell over on to the ground. The suitors were in an uproar when they saw that a man had been hit; they sprang in dismay one and all of them from their seats and looked everywhere towards the walls, but there was neither shield nor spear, and they rebuked Ulysses very angrily. “Stranger," said they, "you shall pay for shooting people in this way: om yi you shall see no other contest; you are a doomed man; he whom you have slain was the foremost youth in Ithaca, and the vultures shall devour you for having killed him.”

Thus they spoke, for they thought that he had killed Antinous by mistake, and did not perceive that death was hanging over the head of every one of them. But Ulysses glared at them and said:

“Dogs, did you think that I should not come back from Troy? You have wasted my substance, have forced my women servants to lie with you, and have wooed my wife while I was still living. You have feared neither Cod nor man, and now you shall die.”

BOOK XXII continued ...

~ Homer

Written 800 B.C.E

Translated by Samuel Butler

Table of Contents

“I’m Just Sayin”

“Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X.”

~ Sowa's law

“Thought for the Day”

“The most intellectual of the species that survives;

it is not the strongest that survives;/p>

but the species that survives is the one

that is able best to adapt and adjust

to the changing environment

in which it finds itself.”

~ Leon C. Megginson

“What I Have Learned”

“Don’t promise when you’re happy.

Don’t reply when you’re angry,

and don’t decide when you’re sad.”

~ Anonymous

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

McDonald’s Giving ‘Rick And Morty’ Creator A Jug Of Szechuan Sauce - Hope the discontinued McNugget dip lives up to a 20-year craving.

Justin Roiland, creator of the animated series “Rick and Morty”, is about to have a two-decade dream come true: He once again gets to sample McDonald’s Szechuan-style dipping sauce.

The Asian-style Chicken McNugget dipping sauce was made only briefly in 1998 as part of a promotion for the Disney animated feature “Mulan”.

Roiland has carried a two-decade torch for the sauce. He even turned his love for it into a crucial plot point of the Season 3 premiere of “Rick and Morty”, which aired April 1 on Cartoon Network as a sneak preview.

In the episode, Rick Sanchez, who was seen being imprisoned by aliens, declared to grandson Morty that he was going to do everything he could to get his hands on the discontinued sauce.

“Rick and Morty’s” cult appeal has raised awareness of the sauce and inspired online petitions demanding it back.

“We never say never, because when our customers speak, we listen”, the spokesperson said. “And to paraphrase some of our most enthusiastic fans, our sauce is so good that it would be worth waiting nine seasons or 97 years for.”

Huffington Post (07/22/2017)

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: How Does Autopilot Work on an Airplane?

The autopilot is a powerful computer that takes input from either the pilot or a navigation device and essentially does what it is told to do. GPS navigators, for example, can have a full flight plan entered from departure to destination, and the autopilot will follow the navigator’s guidance.

There are essentially a few types of features that different autopilots have. Some autopilots only have some of these features, while the more powerful autopilots do it all:

• Heading Hold: There’s a small indicator that the pilot can set on the desired heading and the airplane will fly that heading. This feature doesn’t take the need for wind correction to desired routing into account; that’s left to the pilot.

• Heading and Navigation: In addition to holding a heading, this version will take an electronic navigation input (e.g. GPS or VOR) and will follow (fly) that navigation reference. It’s sort of like an automated car in that it follows the navigator’s input and the pilot monitors.

• Altitude Hold: Again, in addition to the above, a desired altitude can be set and the aircraft will fly at that altitude. Some autopilots have the capability for the pilot to select a desired altitude and a climb or descent rate and the aircraft will automatically climb or descend to that altitude and then hold the altitude.

• Instrument Approaches Autopilots with this capability will fly preprogrammed instrument approaches to the point where the pilot either takes control and lands or has the autopilot execute a missed approach.

These are some of the controls on the autopilot:

• HDG Knob: Heading knob (Used to set the desired heading)

• AP: Autopilot (Turns the autopilot on)

• FD: Flight Director (A form of navigational display that the pilot uses)

• HDG: Heading (Tells the autopilot to fly the heading set by the Heading Knob)

• NAV: Tells the autopilot to follow the input from the selected navigator

• APR: Tells the autopilot to fly the chosen approach

• ALT Tells the autopilot to manage the altitude, controlled by the following:

• VS Vertical Speed (Tells the autopilot to climb or descend at the chosen rate)

• Nose UP / Nose DN Sets the climb/descent rate in feet per minute

• FLC Flight Level Change (An easy manual way to set the autopilot)

• ALT Knob Used to enter the desired altitude

CNBC • National Geographic • Mental Floss • Quara • Wikipedia

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

PosMo: Positive Motivation. Punishment for screwing up or being a Rock. Also known as Extra Military Instruction (EMI).

Powder Monkey: Term referring to a sailor sent back and forth for an item, usually tasked to retrive something from below-decks; derives from young boys who served on wooden ships that retrieved powder for broadside firing.

Power troll: A name for any officious person, usually used by engineers. Comes from the Powertrol valve used in Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) firefighting systems.

Just for you MARINE

SDI: Senior Drill Instructor, the leader of a recruit platoon

Seabag or Sea Bag: Duffel bag used to carry one's personal belongings. “Duffel bag” is an Army term not used by Marines.

Seabag Drag: Manually carrying personal items (often within seabags) to new or temporary living quarters.

Seagoing Bellhop: Derogatory term for a Marine stationed aboard a ship on sea duty.

Sea Lawyer: Person who attempts to argue by continually providing explanations for minutiae.

Sea Story: Story, tale, or yarn calculated to impress others, often contains exaggeration or even outright lies.

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

VAQ-140 - “Patriots”
CVW-7 Naval Aviation Squadron Whidbey Island, Washington - Established October 1, 1985

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“Break the Ice”  Meaning: To break down social formality and stiffness.

Origin: The earlier meaning of this phrase, that is, 'to forge a path for others to follow', alludes of course to the breaking of ice to allow the navigation of boats.

The figurative use is quite old and was recorded by Sir Thomas North in his 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes:

“To be the first to break the Ice of the Enterprize.”

It wasn't until the latter part of the 17th century that it took on its current meaning of 'establish a relaxed relationship in socially awkward situations'; for example, Samuel Butler's Hudibras, 1678:

“The Oratour - At last broke silence, and the Ice.”

Moving forward another two hundred years 'breaking the ice' reverts to its original usage, when specialist ice-breaking ships were introduced. These ships, known as ice-breakers, were equipped with strengthened hulls and powerful engines and were employed in the exploration of polar regions.

Soon after these ships were introduced the term 'ice-breaker' began to be applied to social initiatives intended to get strangers acquainted with one another. In 1883, Mark Twain used the phrase that way in Life on Mississippi:

“They closed up the inundation with a few words - having used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder - then they dropped into business.”

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

Big Bang gravitational effect observed in lab crystal - Phenomenon thought to occur only in exotic, high-energy physics environments seen in quantum material • The strange topology that is reshaping physics • Quantum teleportation is even weirder than you think • Uganda trial shows why it's worth paying people to preserve trees • U.S. defence agencies grapple with gene drives • Iceland drilling project aims to unearth how islands form • The DeepMind debacle demands dialogue on data - Mishandling of patient information shows how governments and companies must become more worthy of trust

Nature

The Strange, Mysterious or Downright Weird

Exhuming Salvador Dalí: Paternity Suit Leads to Artist's Grave

In a surreal development almost worthy of one of his paintings, Salvador Dalí's grave is scheduled to be opened tomorrow (July 20) in an effort to collect DNA samples that could settle a paternity claim against the artist's estate.

The paternity suit has been brought by Pilar Abel, a tarot card reader and fortune teller who has claimed for many years to be the illegitimate daughter of Dalí, who died in 1989. Abel, who is well-known in Spain as a television psychic, claims that her grandmother said Abel's mother had an affair with the artist before the fortune teller's birth.

The French news agency AFP reported that a judge in a court in Madrid ordered Dalí's remains to be exhumed after previous tests failed to provide a viable sample of the artist's DNA. These tests were done on fragments of the artist's skin and hair that were taken from his death mask. [Genetics by the Numbers: 10 Tantalizing Tales]

Dalí is buried beneath the floor of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in his hometown of Figueres, in northeastern Spain. If DNA tests prove that Abel is indeed the daughter of Dalí, then under Spanish law she is entitled to inherit a quarter of the artist's considerable fortune in artwork and properties, which was left to the Spanish state in Dalí's will.

Dalí was married, but he had no children from the marriage, and his sexuality has been the subject of much speculation, reported The Guardian.

DNA challenges

Obtaining a viable DNA sample from Dalí's 28-year-old remains will be a challenge, but not impossible, said Victoria Moore, the commercial DNA services manager for LGC, the United Kingdom's leading life sciences testing and forensics company.

Moore noted that scientific researchers have recently been able to extract DNA in mummified soft tissue from an Egyptian mummy that was around 2,000 years old.

But the success of the sampling would depend on how much the DNA in Dalí's body has degraded over time in the specific environmental conditions of his grave, Moore said. [Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal with the Dead]

Identifying the past

If enough of Dalí's DNA can be recovered during the exhumation, the next stages will be the so-called amplification of the sample so that it can be used to produce a DNA profile of the dead artist, Moore said.

The final step in analyzing Dalí's DNA will be to compare the artist's DNA profile with that of his alleged daughter, “the sort of test that's done on a day-to-day basis in all paternity labs all over the world”, Moore said.

Moore and other scientists at LGC are using similar techniques in a major effort to identify the remains of around 3,000 Australian and British soldiers who were buried in mass graves after the Battle of Fromelles in northern France in 1916.

Moore and her colleagues at LGC are now compiling a database of the DNA profiles of thousands of living relatives of the soldiers killed at Fromelles, so these profiles can be compared against those of each set of remains from the mass graves.

Live Science (07/12/2017)