Capt Kirk to the Bridge! Meals on Keels

The Buoy and the Sci-Fi Destroyer | The American Spectator:

Mostly a post because I like one-liner humor.

Referring to the natural progression of problems that can arise on ships at sea; first you become a buoy, then you become a reef! Funny unless it happens to you ... and as was in the news recently and covered in the linked article, our new $362M destroyer "Milwaukee" had to be towed back to port after a couple weeks at sea due to "metal filings" completely stopping their propulsion systems. One likes to imagine that a ship that might face battle would be designed with some level of redundancy -- apparently not enough.

The Capt Kirk reference is relative to the actual captain of our new "USS Zumwalt" (James Kirk), a stealth littoral defense ship that runs $3 BILLION a copy! It also looks odd -- as the columnist opines "like the box a destroyer comes in".

"Meals on Keels" is a snide reference to His Potent Odiferousness believing that the Navy (and the military in general) is largely for "social engineering".

I firmly believe that **ALL** human endeavors, even mine, definitely need to have humor poked at them FREQUENTLY. From Adam on, the propensity of humans to be FAR "too big for their britches" is universal, and unfortunately it doesn't really go away once we get through our "terrible twos".

That's the biggest take away from the enjoyable article -- new technology will break, things will cost too much and commanders in chief will have random thoughts about what the military might do forever -- and hopefully we remember to enjoy our follies!

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