Simon of Blogasm did a little unscientific survey, but it yielded some data worth scanning:

Premise: After reading a Newsweek article that discussed the lack of diversity in the blogosphere, I instantly became fascinated with the discussion of how the semi-anonymous blogosphere’s diversity compares to the diversity of traditional media. When talking about this Newsweek article, several bloggers pointed out that in many cases, you don’t know the race or gender of a blogger, which theoretically means that there is a somewhat-even playing field based on quality of content alone. But I was surprised that not much was done to actually chart the diversity of the blogosphere to create a frame of reference for these diversity dicussions to take place. So I set out to not only map the diversity of the blogosphere as a whole, but to also map diversity within individual niches.

Methods of experimentation: I emailed 1,000 different bloggers with a 4-question survey that enabled me to statistically chart the diversity of both gender and race within each niche. The 4 questions were:

1. What niche does your blog fall into (Examples: Political, gadget, movie, etc…If more than one, please list)?

2. What are the genders of all the bloggers who write for your site?

3. What are the races for all the bloggers who write for your site (if there are any that you’re not sure about, just indicate that you don’t know)?

4. What do you think of the diversity of the blogosphere, both in your niche and as a whole?

There’s more to read, but here’s where us MilBloggers fell out:

Military Blogs:

Male: 76%
Female: 24%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 100%

More grist for the mill….

It was a quiet day Sunday, so I reached for the remote and scanned the guide list of shows playing. “Patton” was on and had been playing for about an hour….I clicked to the channel and settled back on the couch.

The scene that was playing, when I cut in, was Patton giving a speech to a French audience on Corsica, talking about how he would soon be at work, liberating the homeland of Lafayette. Lots of cheers from the crowd. As he completed the speech, his aide told him the press wanted a few minutes with him.

If this “docudrama” has anything to do with reality, then I’m projecting that George S. Patton suffered as our current day commanders do, but with out instantaneous news cycles:

One an editorialist disguised as a reporter asked him about his future assignments: No comment. Some other questions, then Patton said: “Off the record, they are sending me to Malta.” To that, the editorialist disguised as a reporter asked: “will you be slapping any soldiers in Malta?” as Patton was walking away. Patton stopped, but did not turn around. After a moment, he then stepped off through garden and kept walking away. Sound familiar?

A few scenes later, a German staff officer delivers a message to a general. The General expresses dismay (this part was subtitled) that Patton was now moving to the central Mediterrean and starts barking orders to get more troops moved to Greece and Crete, and to let the Italians defend their own country. They had to get ready for the offensive Patton would surely be heading up.

So, once again, if the story presented has a degree of truth, then the media was leaking critical information to the enemy back in the early 40s.

There were other scenes where the press dogged the great military mind and General Bradley had to corral him several times, to prevent the Allies and later the US from being embarassed.

So what has really changed, except the speed of the news cycle?

Just thinking….

Oh, and speaking of the accuracy of the movie, I found this site that discusses the very issue:

Despite the way the movie makes it seem, Patton did not sack men without a moment’s regard to them, he did not curse like a sailor, he did not believe in “victory at all costs” in spite of casualty lists. He had a paternal care for his men unlike any other great military leader – he knew that little things, like a hot meal and dry socks, contributed more to victory than all the ammunition in the world. Why did Patton’s men love him so much? Because he never expected more from them than he was willing to give himself. A Third Army sentry recounted his only meeting with Patton as,“Oh, yes, I knew Patton, though I only saw him once. We were stuck in the snow and he came by in a jeep. His face was awful red, and he must have been about froze, riding in that open jeep. He yelled to us to get out and push, and first thing I knew, there I was with General Patton pushing right alongside of me.”

Quoted from “Patton Uncovered” by B. E. Boland.

After reading this page, the secondary lesson is Hollywood, as now, was distorting the true nature of military leaders in order to grab the audience….so what else is new?

And…for you staff officers, or those subject to a higher headquarters, this quote that indicates the some of the materiall on B. E. Boland’s book:

Yet, incredibly, General Patton himself was removed from the command of Third Army in disgrace. In >“Patton Uncovered” you can delve into the high-level politics surrounding the military maneuvers, and learn of the deceit, treachery, betrayal and back-stabbing that were commonplace at headquarters.

So, once more, as I said above: “so what else is new?”

Three lessons, one movie, and discovery of a book that seeks the truth of it all.

It might be true, it might be not, but it came into my email inbox today:

LETTER FROM A FARM KID
(NOW AT San Diego MARINE CORPS RECRUIT TRAINING)

Dear Ma and Pa,

I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. but I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing.

Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there’s warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you until noon when you get fed again. It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.

We go on “route marches,” which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it’s not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.

The country is nice but awful flat. The sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The Captain is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don’t bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don’t move, and it ain’t shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain’t like fighting with that ole bull at home. I’m about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I’m only 5’6″ and 130 pounds and he’s 6’8″ and near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Alice G

Gee…it’s a good thing I scan other blogs sometimes….(Note to tasking agency: Captain Steeljaw: Send tasking directly next time – it reduces the response cycle considerably!) Anyhow, Skippy-san of Far East Cynic nailed Steeljaw Scribe, and he informed me (via a note at the end of his answers). Here are the details:

Seven Songs

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal/blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

1) 5 Candles – Jars of Clay

2) I Can Only Imagine – Mercy Me

3) Summer Song – Joe Satriani

4) Soundtrack from Crimson Tide

5) Tub Thumping – Chumbawamba

6) Pictures of a Matchstick Man – Status Quo

7) 3AM – Matchbox 20

Seven other victims? Who to bother…decisions, decisions:

I’m thinking Station Commando of Recruiting Tirade, Jack Army, Eagle1, Holly of Politics of a Patriot, Jason of Navy Says Hoorah1, Dadmanly, and (finally!) Andi of Andi’s World!

(Emails to follow later)

Disclaimer: While I have publically stated (about a year ago in the junior blog), I will never generate a meme, I have not said I would not pass them along!

HT: Glenn Beck’s radio show…

Well…I wonder how many liberals are hauling one of these around? What will they think of next for the pet rock purchasing crowd?

C’mon…like this will give you more of a clue than the big fireball in your vicinity? Oh, yeah…maybe one of your fellow travelers is packing a suitcase nuke as a carry on, and you (without a parachute as your carry on) want to know.

Glenn said this is a favorite inside the Beltway accessory.

I’m thinking a e-coli detector you can hold above your mixed green salad would be a hot seller right now….

OH, and the best part (to rip off Glenn), if there is a nuke and it does go off, and you didn’t get enough warning…it’s not like you will be around to sue them in a class action suit. On top of that (we return now to original thought), which of your neighbors has a calibrated “source” out on their tool bench that, while you’re over for a beer on Saturday afternoon, is available to do preventative maintenace checks on your key fob?

Hey…it’s only $160….(or $145/ea if you buy one for your significant other at the same time) mere pocket change for the DC crowd…

Station Commando pointed out that my comments section didn’t work. They had on the 9th, but as I dig about, I found that its not just comments. IT also has renedered the permalinks ineffective, dumping you to the top post.

I did chnage the format of the link titles to the “short form” and then things were working…problem: It negates all the track flaoting about the net….

Anyhow…if anyone has any fixes, I’d appreciate them. After 6 hours of the WordPress forum and different search engines, it’s pointing at the FrontPage extensions, but none of the proposed fixes, that others say worked for them worked for me….

I did, however, in my clicking about, completely disconnect the blog datatabse from the “world,” resulting in my getting a “It looks like you haven’t installed WordPress yet….” error…scary, but, I got in and dug about raw data files until I figured out where ti manually edit the database records, and it all came back, complete with the error of the permalinks not working.

My head hurts, but I’ll go at it more later…

Update: (I was gonna go and take and asprin, but I checked the net one more time…..) The problem is fixed. I found a post where a blogger said he had upgraded to PHP5 and his permalinks died. I then remembered that last weekend, while doing lots of reformatting for the 2996 Tribute Project post, I also changed over to PHP5 from PHP4 at my web host. I just changed it back and permalinks are now functional!

After about 10-12 hours the last three days looking at changes in style sheets, index formats, sidebars, the database and finally chasing my tail off to the MS FrontPage extensions, it was my using the newest version of the scrrpiting language that had caused the problem….go figure.

I hope this helps someone somewhere…

Try Mike Swain’s “Goggle Cam”

A news article is here and the site for the actual gear is located here.

First off, let me begin with a news flash:

There is no such thing as a “perfectly good airplane.” If that was the case, long before the Wright Brothers, Leonado could have painted more pictures rather than waste his time inventing and documenting the parachute (which, BTW, works exceeding well – See this movie to find out how the test jump went).

Don’t believe me, but will you be getting in your car to head to work, go home, or take a trip? Keep this in mind:

An important reminder for those with a fear of flying:
In America, your chances of dying in an airplane crash are 1 in 4.6 million. Your chances of dying in a car crash are 1 in 125. (Source: Institute for Pyschology of Air Travel)

(Thanks, Andy, for that tidbit of useful info!)

/rant off

Well, Jay Stokes did this past weekend. 640 times to be exact, which also is looking like a 24 hour record for number of jumps.

Why (in case you’re still wondering)?: Because he wanted to raise $60K for the Special Olympics and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

From North Georiga Access:

Sep 9, 11:43 AM EDT

Skydiver Completes 640 Jumps in 24 Hours

GREENSBURG, Ind. (AP) — Jay Stokes celebrated his 50th birthday by jumping out of an airplane – 640 times.

The veteran skydiver did it to break his own world record of 534 jumps in a 24-hour period. There was no immediate word when his new record might be confirmed by Guinness World Records.

“I feel a little bit tired but I think I’ll be OK,” the exhausted former Army Green Beret said Saturday morning at Greensburg Municipal Airport after finishing.
[…]

What a stud. He wore himself out to help the disabled and those families who have lost a loved one who was part of the Special Operations community.

It ain’t all “beer and skittles” as one of my favorite bloggers says, this effort takes many people to help make it happen, and it’s a serious work load for the jumper, even if the weight of equipment has come down to the mid- 20 lb range.

Packers, pilots and people to make sure the jumper is fed and hydrated as he runs between the landing spot and the waiting plane are required.

But…on top of that, it sucks to not log any significant freefall time from a total of 640 jumps, as you’re doing “hop & pops” (clear and pulls) right out the door, at the lowest legal altitude, so you can get to the ground and get back up again. For lots of other people, that would equate to at least 640 minutes in freefall, maybe longer with a twin turbo taking you to 15K feet each time (about 73 seconds/jump for formation skydiving (belly to earth stuff). My math says thats 12 h 58 m and change in seconds, with is one entire set of Gold Freefall wings, with the 58 minutes going to the next incremental award for freefall time.

If you want Jay to teach you how to skydive, he works at Skydive Greensburg in Indiana.

Don’t live near Jay’s home DZ? Find out which drop zone is nearest to you here.

Want to know more about skydiving records? There isn’t a single place to surf to, but the United States Parachute Association is making an effort to be a common repostitory for such bookkeeping.

H/T: Enlisted Swine blog

PS: I wonder if Bill Gates chipped in for the 640 jumps?

It’s Wednesday once more. Send your trackbacks!

The “sea story” of this day is not a humorous one, but is a story of my experience the one time I personally had to inform someone they had a family member in the hospital, with about 0% chance of survival. It’s one of those things you may have to do in the performance of your duties while on deployment and up the chain of command.

I was executive officer (XO) and we were deployed to the Persian Gulf. It was in the latter half of the deployment and, thankfully, they had modified the operational schedule for us to patrol the northern area of the gulf, as a reward for having spent the first half of deployment operating in the Straits of Hormuz (SOH)/North Arabian Sea (NAS). This change put us close to Mina Sulman, Bahrain and the logistics head of the 5th Fleet.

The Captain called me to his cabin and handed me a Red Cross message. Generally, that’s not a good thing. In this case, it was a very bad thing. The few month old baby of one of our petty officers was in the hospital back home on life support, having been taken there when his wife found the baby not breathing in his crib. It was now my job to get things rolling to get him home ASAP, and I also would be the one to notify him of the medical emergency.

I got back to my stateroom and called down to admin and got PN1 Weber going on cutting orders. I called the Ops Boss and put him to work contacting the ASU in Bahrain. I had the Combat Systems Officer find the man and bring him to my stateroom.

In that short time, while I awaited his arrival, the crew involved had arranged for a helo to come and get him, and a seat on the contract air carrier out of Bahrain after midnight. Better yet, the helo had been flying and would be able to get to us soon. The logisitics in support of this difficult moment clicked together in less than 30 minutes.

I had the petty officer come in and sit down while I closed the door for some privacy. The moment was difficult, and it’s hard to know what to say, keeping in mind you’re 6,000 miles from home and a life is hanging by a thread. It is more than humbling to realize the right words are elusive, even if you have a good vocabulary.

I told him his son was in the hospital in Charleston and we had arranged for him to be flow into Bahrain for a flight home that night. I handed him the Red Cross message and sat silently while he read the few short lines of (bad) news from home. He said nothing. I told him how sorry I was, and he needed to get below and get a bag packed, so he could get home. He was not a man who drew attention to himself, but he was one of those who got the job done, and sort of stayed back in the shadows, but he was even quiter now. I can only figure the emotional shock was gripping him. He stood, I opened the door and told him to let us know what we could do, and to contact the squadron when he got home. We would notify them of the case.

Off he went to pack, and shortly there after, we set flight quarters for the “Desert Duck” to do the “pax transfer.”

The sad part was the baby had no hope, but he was able to be with his wife for the decision on whether to continue life support.

In the military, you are fully engaged in the lives of those you serve with. There are the good times, the parties and tactical successes to tell of in later years, but these type of moments are a part and parcel of the experience as well.

Cross Posted at:

Linkfest Haven

Stuck on Stupid

First we had the “Main Stream Media (MSM),” then I proposed the “Has Been Media (HSM)” in the “junior blog,” and Tony Snow used that term a few weeks later….but now, it’s time for a change.

Just came to me today. Maybe we should just call our friends in the press: “Media’b’Allah”

Sounds good to me: The media of God (meaning Allah). After all….that’s how the reporting seems to slant (more like lean hard over towards, like an iron object in the vicinity of a very strong magnet).

Just thinking….I hope I’m not ripping off the Hiz’b’Allah® moniker too badly….