This past weekend, we celebrated Armed Forces Day by visiting some of our military folks who brought some static displays and military equipment to show off to the public. The Army brought this UH-60 Blackhawk for all to sit in, touch, photograph and just plain gawk.

While I gawked, I remembered something that a 70’s news anchor, Harry Reasoner, said when he compared airplane and helicopter pilots with the following statements:

The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly.

A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

That is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why, in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened, it is about to.

- - Commentary by Harry Reasoner, February 16, 1971

As you may or may not know, I am a pilot - I’m rated in both airplanes and helicopters. While I agree with Mr. Reasoner’s basic corollary, I can see that it only applies to a pilot while flying a particular aircraft type.

For example, while flying airplanes under visual conditions, I do a little drill by identifying potential emergency landing sites around the airplane - an alert, but mostly casual drill. But, when piloting a helicopter, I find myself making slight course changes in order to be in a position to autorotate to a landing site. Sort of like a stepping-stone approach to navigation. It’s a bit more intense then the airplane drill.

When not flying, I like to think that I can be as extroverted or introspective as conditions warrant.

I’ve had this Gardenia for at least three years. Every spring it blooms, but this spring it is going to produce many of these beautiful, fragrant flowers since there are bunches of buds this year. For the previous couple of years, I only got a small handful of blooms.

There are hundreds of varieties of Gardenias; this one has a very strong and pleasant fragrance, but I’m not sure of it’s exact subspecies.

Click on the image to the right to see the 800×600 version.

This is a general description of Gardenias from WikiPedia:

Gardenia is a genus of about 250 species of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae, native to the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, southern Asia, Australasia and Oceania.

The genus was named by Carl Linnaeus after Dr. Alexander Garden (1730-1791), Scottish-born American naturalist.

They are evergreen shrubs and small trees growing to 1-15 m tall. The leaves are opposite or in whorls of three or four, 5-50 cm long and 3-25 cm broad, dark green and glossy with a leathery texture. The flowers are solitary or in small clusters, white, or pale yellow, with a tubular-based corolla with 5-12 lobes (’petals’) from 5-12 cm diameter. Flowering is from about mid-spring to mid-summer and many species are strongly scented.

When I saw her, I thought “oh look - something shiny!” I took this photo of my Para Warthog .45ACP pistol right after cleaning her up. I put something like 50 rounds through her and she was pretty dirty.

Click on the image for a bigger view.

Armed Forces Day was yesterday. Our town has a parade and static exhibits every year for the event. There is usually a flyby by a crack F/A-18 flight team. Yesterday was no exception. It always gives us a rush when those magnificent men in their flying machines streak across the sky.

Today, we went to see the static exhibits at a nearby mall parking lot. I got this shot of some soldiers proudly displaying a mobile Howitzer unit. We always enjoy seeing the hardware and talking with the contingent of military personnel on hand. It fills us with American pride to be with these fine men and women.

Click on the image to enlarge.

We’ve blogged about this place before. The son of Frank Lloyd Wright, Lloyd Wright, designed this unique chapel. Located just west of Portuguese Bend, the Chapel has been in continuous operation for many years on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

This is a picture of Catalina Island taken from an area just behind the chapel. We couldn’t go into the chapel while we were there today since there was a wedding in progress. What a great day to get married in this beautiful setting!

Today was an extraordinary day. Temperatures were near 90° F. and the skies were clear. We drove most of the way around Palos Verdes Peninsula before finally returning home for BBQ. It was also Armed Forces Day. We will be posting on that tomorrow sometime.

Click on the image for a full-sized view.

Could be a really big bottle of sparkling wine - or, it could be a champagne-colored round of .357 magnum ammo in the cylinder of a S&W 686 revolver - your choice.

We watched some of the proceedings at the NRA Convention in Louisville last night and today and really look forward to next year when the convention goes west - we plan to attend that one.

This week, the Department of the Interior caved in to the Greenbats by declaring a thriving species “endangered.”

From Planet Gore:

Polar Bears: More Journalistic Malpractice [Henry Payne]

How do you declare a species endangered when its numbers are increasing?

Once again, my profession — journalism — failed its fundamental duty to report the facts Wednesday as the Interior Department bowed to political pressure from green groups to declare polar bears an threatened species due to global warming. This, despite the fact that bear populations have increased from 5,000–10,000 in the early 1970s to between 20,000 and 25,000 today (during the very period their habitat was allegedly shrinking). This is in part due to concentrated efforts to impose harvesting controls that have allowed this once-overhunted species to recover.

Indeed, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a bear biologist with the Canadian government, wrote in 2006: “There is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”

GLOBALONEY wrote an excellent article on thriving polar bears in January. Included here is a very entertaining animation of thriving bears I found on Globaloney. Click for full size.

According to new research, the numbers of the giant predator have grown by between 15 and 25 per cent over the last decade.

Mr Taylor estimates that during the past decade, the Canadian polar bear population has increased by 25 per cent - from 12,000 to 15,000 bears.

UPDATE: Iain Murray offers that this is NOT about polar bears.

Quite right. This was nothing to do with the polar bear and everything to do with advancing a ludicrous “alternative energy now” agenda.

It appears that Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne is listening to whoever beats the drum louder. In the case of the polar bears, science disagrees with the listing, but Kempthorne is concerned about a ‘legacy.’ In an unrelated issue, that of carrying firearms in National Parks, Kempthorne listened to 51 U.S. Senators who recommended a rules change to allow the NPS to comply with local state law on carrying.

This puts Kempthorne in a position to be embraced by greens and gunners alike.

Don’t you just love politicians?

This handsome fellow perched on the power pole behind our house this morning. He then took up the song and dance routine that is so familiar to us in spring and summer months.

The same bird is seen in both panels of this composite image. Click for a closer look.

The Mockingbird entry in WikiPedia explains a bit more:

Mockingbirds are a group of New World passerine birds from the Mimidae family. They are best known for the habit of some species mimicking the songs of other birds, often loudly and in rapid succession. Mockingbirds also have a reputation of being fierce defenders of their nests.

In Part II, I posted a neat little video that shows the final landing sequence and initial deployment of panels and sensors. I’m hoping that I will be able to watch the control center during final approach and landing. I expect it will be on the NASA Channel - I’m going to check into that for sure.

Image and excerpt below courtesy of NASA.

May 13, 2008: NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls of Martian soil and buried ice. The lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on Sunday, May 25th.

Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 13,000 mph. In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 5 mph before its three legs reach the ground. Confirmation of the landing could come as early as 7:53 p.m. EDT.

Right: An artist’s concept of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander a moment before its 2008 touchdown on the arctic plains of Mars. Pulsed rocket engines control the spacecraft’s speed during the final seconds of descent.

“This is not a trip to grandma’s house. Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Internationally, fewer than half of all attempts to land on Mars have succeeded.”

Rocks large enough to spoil the landing or prevent opening of the solar panels present the greatest known risk. However, images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailed enough to show individual rocks smaller than the lander, have helped lessen that risk.

“We have blanketed nearly the entire landing area with HiRISE images,” said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, chairman of the Phoenix landing-site working group. “This is one of the least rocky areas on all of Mars and we are confident that rocks will not detrimentally impact the ability of Phoenix to land safely.”

When I went out on the patio this morning, I spotted a newly-opened Asian lily - then, I noticed two new bright red epiphyllum flowers - and then, I spotted three new Easter lily cactus flowers. I couldn’t decide which to photograph first. They are all so beautiful.

In spite of the gloomy overcast over the California coast for the last few days, the garden and patio continue to cheer up the back yard with color and beauty.

Click the image for a closer view.