Short Takes
Karen at Dark Bilious Vapors has located the all-purpose holiday decoration.
Jack at The Grumpy Forester has a rather all inclusive rant about the year that is concluding.
According to the Pensacola Beach Blog our local zoo received a special Christmas present: a baby hippo. No pictures yet, and no name until the sex is determined.
The family of Albert Weimorts reported his passing in the week before Christmas. He was a local Federal civil servant that most have never heard of, but he took a request for a bomb to penetrate bunkers during the first Gulf War from inception to delivery of a working weapon in 28 days.
Mr. Weimorts also designed the Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon, also known as “the mother of all bombs”, 10½ tons of explosive that rivals a nuclear weapon without radiation. It’s hard to imagine a target for the MOAB in anything less than all out war.
I mention Mr. Weimorts because my Father was involved in weapons design, and to point out that if this work had be given to a private contractor, the office to design the bunker-buster would not even have opened in 28 days, and the costs would have already exceeded the entire budget for the project Weimorts led.
[update: Baby hippo pictures from the Pensacola News Journal]
