"My source is a local man who ran the initial radar tracking for NASA in the Mercury and Gemini programs (a rocket scientist). He says global warming is pure bosh".

As a retired NASA engineer/scientist who was actually responsible for programs that included surface temperature changes and causes.......I say bosh too!

Sb.
I bought a Photo Safe II.
It is a bit tricky to use since there is not a clear indication that it is actually uploading.....maybe I'll get used to it.
It does have all the card slots and will charge with a phone charger. It was about $140 as I remember.

Here are a few photos that I took today at Seabrook Shipyard, Texas.
My oldest son, Mark has a Hans Christian 38 sailboat and it has been in the yard for 6 weeks having all the teak deck wood replaced with fibre glass and a complete new paint job (very expensive!)
I was helping install the prop before it was put back in the water.

New deck & paint Job


Son's Wife checking the prop refit


About to get wet again!

In mid Nov I will be travelling to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico
I haven't been there for many years so I am looking forward to taking lots of photos.
We have rented a villa for a week right in the down town area near the Cathedral.
For HOG members who don't know San Miguel try Google images and you will see a wonderful Colonial Mexico city, sort of the Mexican equivalent to the old Villages in England like Afridson that was recently posted on the HOG.
I am taking my Sony NEX and a couple of lens, also a GoPro camera to record video as I wander about.
I know that Jerry has a GoPro, and if he sees this post I would like to know if it works well on a chest mount when you are just walking around. Or anyone else that has a GoPro. I recently used my GoPro at a local dinner theater where I just placed it on the table and got about 2 hours of the show. I have taken a few screen shots off the video and they make very reasonable screen crops.
Here is an example of a 1/4 crop from the 30 fps video.
Would like anyone's advice for my trip!

Dinner Theater Crop

Covered Bridges are a part of American history.....and a very nice part.
One reason for the design other than the one discussed by GPS Phil is that a box is is a very good way of handling the bending load stresses to span a river.

I'm going to write a book called "What Obama didn't know".
I expect it to be a very large book.......maybe as many pages as Obama Care.

What really died at Auschwitz? 
Here's an interesting viewpoint: 
The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15 2011. 
It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world. 
THIS WAS IN A SPANISH NEWSPAPER: "EUROPEAN LIFE DIED INAUSCHWITZ" By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez "

I walked down the street in Barcelonaand suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz ... We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world. The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned. And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride. They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts. And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs. What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe . A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves. Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it. It is now more than sixty years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated.' Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world. How many years will it be before the attack on the ‘World Trade Centre’'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States ? If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to Iran , Iraq or some other Muslim country. Please do not just delete this message; it will take only a minute to pass this along. We must wake up before it's too late. 

I would recommend that each of you taking a position in this thead reread the article I posted on the Europian experience.
This is not guessing or speculation, but actually what the Muslims have created in the cities and areas of Europe that they have penetrated.
Also with reference to Detroit, Muslim intrusion is not the only problem, but it does show how Muslim's tend to pick an area to move into that will give the least resistance to their presence. I guess we have to say that they are smart in that respect.
The time to take action is now!

Frightening!   Europe Today Even if one third of the below writing is true, we need to be aware. After the PM of England spoke yesterday here in America, I am wondering where we are going.EUROPE TODAYGeert Wilders is a Dutch Member of Parliament.In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: Who lost Europe?'Here is the speech by Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, the Netherlands , at the Four Seasons, New York , introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem .Dear friends,Thank you very much for inviting me.I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe . Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .The Europe you know is changing.You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe . San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey .Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel , they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands , 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem .Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe, American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.Please take the time to read and understand what is written here, Please send it to every free person that you know, it is so very important.=

If the government can't manage a Obamacare sign up process why does anyone think that the goverment can manage a heath care system?

As a past Rolls-Royce and Benttley owner I can tell you that they never breakdown...they do however Fail to Proceed from time to time!

Loved that Comet photo.......the older one!

Sorry about the spelling!

Great photos of one of the nicest villages in England.
Thank you for posting, Geoff, and thank you for bringing to my mind a wonderful memory.
About 15 years ago my wife and I stayed at the Star along with my brother and his wife. After a wonderful dinner we retired for the night. My wife and I were in the room directly over the Inn door. I was like going back in history, and at about midnight there was a horse and rider clippity clopping down the road in front of our window, just wonderful.
A few minuets later we were startled by the sound of breaking glass, and someone running down the street, soon to be followed by a police car with lights flashing!
Ther had bee. A break in at the small jewelly shop just up the road.......talk about a a quick return to modern times!
Thanks again Geoff!

"... Piers Morgan had an entire show after this shooting declaring this class of weapon BE BANNED to prevent this from happening again! Proving he is the Idiot that he is. Trouble is it was a normal everyday hunting shotgun. Nobody had anything to fight it."

And an idiot he is. There was talk of deporting him back to the UK.......so I asked a few of my Brit friends about that.
They said that they don't want him back!