Zinegata

Whatevs Zin. Next you'll be telling me I can't load the Yamamoto's ammo into the Bismark's guns.

To be good the IJN torpedoes had to be as big as they were is the point.

So, apparently St Louis's population during the Civil War was 1/3 immigrant German; two of whom were the founders of Budweiser. The younger of the two even signed up for the army... more specifically the Union Army to shoot up the idiot slave-owners upriver who keep trying to pretend that the entire South was pro-slavery including its single most populous city.

Not to derail, but getting reminded of how crappy Kraut-marine torpedoes were makes me thankful that evil genocidal dictatorships were too suspicious/incompetent to share their military technology with their allies. With the drubbing that the good guys took in the first part of the Battle of the Atlantic, what would have been the butcher's bill if the Nazis had good torpedoes like their Japanese allies?

IJN torpedoes wouldn't fit in German tubes in the first place. The best German aerial torpedo was in fact Italian. 

If you could harvest resources off the moon it might be sensible.

 

Not sure what you'd use there for propellant.

The most efficient harvesting site may in fact be Deimos, rather than the moon, since it costs less Delta V to get water from Deimos to LEO in specific windows than resources from the Moon to LEO. Really someone ought to try an automated water-mining mission there to send water ice to LEO; as this would greatly reduce the amount of water that needs to be lifted from Earth and may allow for more extensive industrial experiments be done in space stations.

Well, that is unless of course we install a space elevator in the moon... but that really implies a pretty extensive moon base at this point.

...What gaggle of drooling idiots wants to use the Moon as an airstrip for a Mars mission?

Not doubting they exist, but that one is new to me!

The Internet. Do note that most folks aren't even aware what Delta V is.

 

Holy hell, I bought it and am about a quarter of the way into it.  Its terrible.  I almost wonder if its a parody?  It's like every bad stereotype of US WW2 tanks and Wehraboo wankery all rolled up in a blanket of poor writing and completely false facts.  Lets marvel as just how wrong this paragraph is:

 

Probably no incident in World War II demonstrated the stopping power of a superior tank as graphically as the exploit of Michael Wittmann, the commander of a Tiger tank who encountered a British armored column near Bayeux, France. Attacking alone, Wittmann and his crew knocked out the lead Sherman with his first shot and the last Sherman in the column with his second. Rumbling down the column, he proceeded to destroy nineteen Shermans, fourteen half-tracks, and fourteen Bren gun carriers in five minutes.

 

That's not even what happened. The only guy I know of to claim "shot the tank in front, shot the tank in back, shot the trapped tanks in between" was from Ambrose while interviewing a German Colonel who had to "encourage" a flak battery into action.

Bob scoffs at your silly, meaningless "flags and footprints" plan.

Unfortunately, yes, he actually does.

The main problem with the Moon Base people is that they keep touting it as a literal stepping stone to Mars - as in build a moon base and then use that to launch a mission to Mars.

The Delta V just doesn't work that way, at least based on Ecklund's game-ified system (which I assume is pretty accurate since Ecklund consulted Zubrin for the Delta V map). It is much more efficient to have something from Earth orbit go to Mars rather than from the Moon.

As a test bed for out-of-Earth colonies, the Moon is fine. It might even be a possible resource extraction point to send stuff to Earth orbit to make the Mars mission rocket with (although it's probably more efficient to mine Phobos/Deimos and sling the resources back to Earth). But as a literal launch pad? That's what drives Zubrin nuts.

I think it's not necessary to naysay all processed foods. Hams and bacons are after all processed, as are cheeses, and nobody really complains about them. The Philippines, much to my surprise, also has a pretty damn good canned goods industry - something passed down by the Spanish and which snuck past the American period.

The issue really is the overcommercialization and trying to mass-produce stuff that stop being food and instead are just a bunch of chemicals slopped together. Shit like soy sauce made out of plastic is the worrisome trend, not that people are using soy sauce.

In part, the US government is to blame because they idiotically mandated the removal of a lot of fat from processed foods, causing everyone to switch to high fructose corn syrup instead, which resulted in that huge boom in diabetes and obesity that would have paradoxically not happened had folks stuck to butter instead like all the 19th Century epicurians already knew (they knew that it was too much bread/carbohydrate/sugar consumption, not fat consumption, that caused obesity)

The Saars are always a demonstration of how much firepower you can ridiculously fit into a tiny hull when you don't have any real seakeeping needs to worry about.

The problem with international law like genocide and war crimes is that international law pretty much does not act in the same way as criminal law.

International law is intensely political, and its definition, implementation, and prosecution are all subject to prior approval by all of the nation-states involved in the process. This is why it's actually harder to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes, not easier.

One of my favorite trucks here called Mishas Kitchen has them sometimes.

 

Russian food note, DFW is sorely lacking proper Slavic cuisine. 

We have exactly one slavic food chain - appropriately enough it's called "Balkan" and it supposed to serve Yugoslavian (!) cuisine.

Don't know how well they managed to capture the flavors using Filipino ingredients but the Goulash is pretty good.

Anybody here heard about Shaverma? It is Russian Taco.

 

Seems to be a variant of the Turkish Shawarma; which is actually pretty close to some forms of Mexican Taco. (Yes, this is what Tony Stark wanted to eat at the end of Avengers). Main difference in the Mexican version would be a corn tortilla wrap rathern a flour one and of course different meats and herbs, but the construction is basically the same - drop the meat and veg on top of a tortilla, roll like a cone with the contents inside, then plop some sauce into the opening.

The Turkish version widely available in the Philippines as a street food - in my early twenties I ate one almost every night from a stall that sells one for only $1 on the way home (beef + cabbage) - while strangely enough I've never seen the Mexican corn tortilla version sold anywhere. Bourdain swears by the Mexican version though, which has tongue for the meat and guacamole for the sauce. The best local version I've found is a Sunday Market version for $3 that is packed with lamb instead of beef.

What are ro-ro freighters normally used for?  Areas that don't have docks I guess?

For almost everything in the Southeast Asia region really. Ro-Ros are really common in Indonesia, the Philippines and other nearby countries because you can have them dock on pretty port rudimentary facilities - no need for a pier or a large crane. The Philippines and Indonesia use them so much because we have a huge number of islands and most of them can't support a proper port - with the Ro-ros generally carying both passengers and freight. It took us only about 2-3 years to setup a Ro-Ro network for most of our 7,000 islands for instance; when previously most of those relied exclusively on smaller wooden vessels.

Problem is Ro-Ros are not really that seaworthy, and the article frankly misses the real story - which is that China in fact has pretty terrible sealift capability if it has to rely on civilian Ro-Ros and needs them ready for mass mobilization in case of war.  

If you had actual military sealift capability you'd rely instead on LSTs - which operate in a similar manner to the civilian Ro-Ros with a large forward opening; but the LSTs are generally more seaworthy and they have the added advantage of being able to offload cargo on a beach without even a rudimentary dock (some beaches can also support Ro-ros directly, but not all).

This is why the Philippine Navy still has an LST that literally saw action on D-day even though we're never going to do an amphibious landing. And that's because despite their age they're still more seaworthy (one - the Benguet - was a veteran of Operation Dragoon, suffered a grounding in 2004, and yet is still in service today) than most of the flimsy civilian ro-ros plus they can offload supplies in case the dock is destroyed by a disaster as was the case in Yolanda.

I'm not sure if this deserves its own thread but a question on eggs. Particularly fried eggs. I prefer mine with runny yokes (over easy) which lends itself to the culinary pleasure of sopping up the leftover yoke with a well-buttered piece of toast.

My wife on the other hand prefers her eggs cooked until they are rubbery enough to bounce. True this lowers the risk of salmonella. But it also takes away the joy de vivre of a traditional English or American breakfast.

Which egg perpetration is the breakfast master race?

According to Alton Brown there's less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting salmonella in your yolk anyway, and then you bring that chance of infection even lower by cooking it. So unless she's pregnant and you want to be completely safe she has very little to fear from yolks.

Oh, and my favorite egg is the Ajitamago - which is a soft-boiled egg brined in a bit of mirin and soy sauce; and is a required element of any good Japanese ramen except the Hanamaruken Happiness Ramen - which is the single manliest Ramen in the world and needs no puny egg to make it better.

(Why is the quirkily named Hanamaruken Happiness Ramen so manly? Well take a look at this:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BCvzCmTagPA/UwGiZMgIC0I/AAAAAAAAQgQ/4pLxvQs9TuI/s1600/3-hanamaruken-ramen-manila-copyright-yedycalaguas-yedylicious-manilafoodblog.JPG

Yes, that is an entire pork rib in the ramen, floating on top of a rich porky broth. And this is a pork rib which has been so boiled and tenderized that the bones are now as soft as pork fat and can be eaten as such.)

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If we're talking about a home-cooked egg for breakfast though then scrambled for me; primarily because you get the creaminess without the cleanup mess poaching usually becomes.

Well, save for what those silly Sci Fi settings that claim that Destroyers are the biggest vessels may claim. And of course there's the general size increase of seafaring ships overall to complicate matters further.

 

I was always under the impression that in Babylon 5, they originally used the cruiser-dreadnought classification (which seems to conform to the Centauri classification system as well - whose battlecruiser fit neatly in size between the Hyperion cruiser and Nova Dreadnought) until they designed an entirely new class of ship - at which point they started using the term "destroyer" to describe any "modern" post-Minbari War vessel.

On the other hand that may be assuming Hollywood had any sense to begin with.

Totally fair criticism. I really don't know much about the subject, so anyone reading should take that into account.

It's not so much as a criticism but a reminder that it's not a simple question to answer. Wiki for instance defines the corvette primarily by weight - 500 to 2000 tons in weight - which doesn't really tell us what the ship is supposed to do.

The Soviet Tarantul-class for instance are well within the "corvette" weight definition, but they aren't coastal or "littoral" craft. Instead they were meant to shadow and tail NATO battlegroups and then launch missile attacks ala PT boats in case of war. This is why the Soviet designation was "Rocket Cutter" - meaning it was a missile-armed small oceangoing craft, and deemed highly expendable.

The Swedish Visby by contrast is a "stealth" ship armed as a general-purpose vessel - with torpedo tubes and helicopter pad for ASW, plus anti-ship missiles. The Israeli Sa'ar meanwhile packs so many armaments that it outguns some full-sized frigates, but I have serious doubts that it could operate properly outside of the Med. The WW2-era "Destroyer Escorts" of the US NAvy by contrast were ocean-capable but more sparsely armed even with refits.

Part of the reason is because the general public has a very hard time grasping ship classification by "role" rather than by size. They want battleship>cruiser>destroyer because that's what Battleship taught them along with every Sci Fi fleet. Prior to 1975 for instance US Navy ships tended to be designated based on purpose rather than size, hence some "frigates" being larger than destroyers or even cruisers. Congress panicked because of this misunderstanding, so the USN started just designating stuff based on size so they could close the so-called "Cruiser Gap".

For my part, if the USN creates a vessel that can operate in most littoral waters, can carry its designed armament based on expected threat levels, and have lower operating costs (which is the bulk of a ship's lifetime cost) than a full carrier escort, even if it weighs much heavier than the wiki definition of a corvette, then the USN can rightfully claim to have made a "littoral combat ship". I still have no clue what the 44 knot speed is for though.

At the risk of channeling Daigensui, typically, what do frigates have for armament compared to corvettes?

Googling some corvettes and frigates makes it seem like both are similarly armed with the latter just having more of it.

I would be wary of proposing that corvettes have "typical" armaments to begin with. It's more of a weight class that is capable of operating in specific environments, rather than a designation of purpose.

And honestly, if it were up to me the optimal "weapon" loadout for any corvette would be one heavy or two light multi-role helicopters.

Honestly I think a lot of it is that sprint speed requirement, and that goes to having to have some checkbox feature that people can point to when called on to defend it as survivable.

 

In fairness I have heard an anecdote from an officer who thinks it would be fantastic to be able to go that fast so you could air dry your hair quickly, so the military utility is obvious (It's actually an argument about being able to sprint out of the radar horizon quickly that frankly seems pretty contrived and dependent on specific characteristics for the enemy systems).

Yep, the biggest point of idiocy of these ships is the 40+ knot speed requirement.

Guy Fierri is not the food scene in the US. At all. Those Gimmicks might work for TV show ratings and the throngs of waddling tourists from middle America but not for those of us who actually care about food.  

Yes but he's indicative of the mindset which creates the trashy cuisine and worse he's the face of the Food Network - which tries to turn food into a spectator sport instead of something you eat. And like it or not it's selling - with his absolutely terrible New York restaurant making a ton of money with bad food based primarily on heaping together as many artery-clogging ideas that sound good on paper but ends up being just a monotonous parade of "salted grease" on the tongue. And note this is a generation where even McDonalds is starting to experiment with kale on its menu.

Compare and contrast for instance to Alton Brown (who pretty much carries the whole Iron Chef show). Brown for instance isn't above using potato chips as breading to make some trash cuisine, but he does it in a way where the pork chop still comes out good because he's making something to eat. And he's very careful to point out that people do trash cuisine primarily because they lack money for fancy panko crumbs in the first place. Guy Fieri... just adds buffalo sauce on everything.

The Manila food scene used to be much of the same which treated food as status symbols instead of something to be eaten, in large part because all of the cooking and food shows (and the entertainment industry in general) were dominated by an upper class with Spanish colonial nobility sensibilities, and who generally frowned upon provincial/rural food.

That's why Bourdain and Zimmern were so important not just for the American food scene, but the Filipino one as well. They made eating good food for the sake of eating good food cool again. Bourdain's one episode about the Philippines for instance pretty much forced the Manila food scene to (finally) accept the reality that they did not make the best lechon (crispy roasted pig), and that it was the rural Cebu version with its greens that was in fact the "best pig ever". Indeed, most viewers can't help but notice how miserable Bourdain was eating Manila food and processed fishballs, and he really lit up when he was eating rural food like chopped pork face.

It's definitely the lack of tamarind and, if you can get you hands on it, some miso.

In a Filipino food court you can buy a salmon head soup meal for only $2 and despite the salmon being not the freshest it generally comes out decent as long as the soup was soured by tamarind and flavored with some miso. Add some tomatoes, onions, and some greens (especially spicy greens like mustard leaves) and it becomes very, very good.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, Filpino dishes must be served with rice. A lot of Filipino dishes need rice to moderate the flavor.

 

Food in the US is getting better. Cooking five years ago is night and day compared to now. I work in traditional kitchens off-season these days, and I think I make one well-done or med-well a month these days, when both would dominate ticket line-ups (I'm not a snob, both have their places for certain cuts, but you get where I'm going) while I was still in college. Anthony Bourdain gets down on himself lately for Kitchen Confidential (and I mostly agree he should be), but he's more important today than 90% of chefs because he and Zimmern built a foundation of reviving taste in America. Seeing Zimmern smile and melt as he jammed a raw urchin into his mis-shapen head was more important than any cooking show barring Julia Child's.

 

 

The Manila restaurant scene has, rather shockingly, been getting better too. We fortunately never had a Guy Fierri phase despite abundant cable, and our Travel shows featured mostly Bourdain, Zimmern, and Brown. But we had a lot of pretentious crappy restaurants five to ten years prior; mostly because of a very narrow upper class that spent too much time in America. The call center generation - the new middle class - by contrast seems to have much more discerning tastes.

The big change really had been the explosion of the Japanese restaurant scene, which had formerly been relegated to the little Tokyo quarter but is now found nearly everywhere and is considered fine dining. Although they charge $10 a meal (as opposed to $4 for a Big Mac meal), and the fare is very simple like tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet) the Japanese restaurants have been able to admirably import Japanese cooking skills and technique and make the most out of these offerings. Everyone else had to basically step up their game to compete.

So now we've got all sorts of decent food from all over the world. Just this weekend I tried out a Peruvian place who gave us the best ceviche and roasted chicken I've had so far. There are now decent Italian, Spanish, American, Chinese, and even French restaurants I can name. Our canneries, operated mainly by old Spanish families, are also beginning to realize that they could do those pricier (and tastier) Spanish canned goods like sardines in olive oil while still making money.

Those serving local dishes are also doing pretty good, albeit if you want really good Filipino food you should head outside of Manila (which is really becoming too international).

That said the call center generation has been having a tough time learning how to cook - most of them simply don't know how to and can't even if they want to (too little space in tiny condos). I had to teach myself to cook by reading Alton Brown, and my cooking setup is pretty tiny and just consists of one induction stove and one toaster oven.

Fish head Filipino-stye requires a sour base to counteract the oil. This is also why Singaporean fish-head has a red curry base, while Chinese has a salty soy-based sauce.

I'm guessing you can't find tamarind in Alaska, as that's the traditional souring agent.

Also, the best Filpino dish isn't fish head. It's chopped pork face:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8025/7898043890_7034e91deb_b.jpg

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Oh, and until Guy Fierri suffers a heartattack, America is going to have to endure terribly-cooked over-complicated food that's based on gimmicks rather than solid, fundamental cooking.

Actually, scratch that and until all Guy Fierri-style shows suffer horrible ends you're going to end up screwed. The difference between Masterchef America and Australia in particular is like night and day. Masterchef America is about making drama out of cooking food. Masterchef Australia shockingly enough is simply about cooking food.

Given the choice between postulating yet another fucking land bridge and assuming that these folk sailed right the fuck across the pacific in balsawood canoes; I will choose the latter until such time as compelling evidence to the contrary appears.

Well, rather than postulate another land bridge why not consider the possibility of islands that are now underwater?

God-ancestors of sailing.

You get to live only on the basis of not saying "aliens"

There was a trade link between South America and Polynesia - the basis of Polynesian agrictulture is potatoes which were originally from South America. Maybe the genetic link is through the Polynesian trade?