What military aircraft are you? EA-6B Prowler You are an EA-6B. You are sinister, preferring not to get into confrontations, but extract revenge through mind games and technological interference. You also love to make noise and couldn’t care less about pollution.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

In a war long ago and far away, a “terrorist” was caught and executed. 40 years ago today, as a matter of historical fact.General Loan was murdered that day, and the man who took the photo came to realize it. Eddie Adams spent a lifetime trying to apologize:

[…]
Adams caught the instant of death in a photo that made front pages around the world. It would became one of the Vietnam’s War’s most indelible images, shocking the American public and used by critics to dispute official claims that the war was being won.

In later years Adams found himself so defined — and haunted — by the picture that he would not display it at his studio. He also felt it unfairly maligned Loan, who lived in Virginia after the war and died in 1998.

“The guy was a hero,” Adams said, recalling Loan’s explanation that the man he executed was a Viet Cong captain, responsible for murdering the family of Loan’s closest aide a few hours earlier.

“Sometimes a picture can be misleading because it does not tell the whole story,” Adams said in an interview for a 1972 AP photo book. “I don’t say what he did was right, but he was fighting a war and he was up against some pretty bad people.”
[…]

It’s about context. In context, in the heat of battle, a combatant not dressed in a uniform…well, the Geneva Conventions allow this.

On the other hand, another Vietnam War photographer (still living), denies it was right, questioned if the man killed had been killing and that gives an entirely different spin on the story, the exact opposite of the “justice” being protrayed:

[…]
Sadly Adams is dead, so the programme featured a different, but also distinguished, war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths. And Jones Griffiths described his feelings about the photo and his own decision to track down and photograph the executed man’s widow.

Jones Griffiths had strong views on the photo and gave them to us.

He dismissed the idea that the executed man had been a killer saying both that the idea that the man had just killed others was “kind of propaganda” and that “he wouldn’t have been much of a Vietcong soldier” if he hadn’t tried to kill people. He clearly viewed the photo’s power as being its revelation of the evil of the war and America’s involvement.
[…]

Nice to put your spin on the situation your professional peer, now passed away, witnessed, in context.

Anyhow, there’s context with the picture taken 40 years ago this day, and when it was, the shooting killed many things, including the reputation of a fighting man.Rosemary’s Baby dvd

I won’t repeat Steeljaw Scribe’s well written tribute, but I will add something I took away from this incident:

“High Calling: The Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband” by Evelyn Husband is a remarkable read. Evelyn wrote it less than a year after the accident that claimed the crew’s lives, but told a story of a man who had set his sight on being an astronaut in high school and then figured out how to get there.

But there’s more. It’s a story of a man who struggled to do the right thing always, and to be a great husband and father. His wife used his personal journals, not written for any purpose than to help Rick find his own way though his life’s journey, to let us see who he really was.

And more beyond that as well. Curious as to what it takes to be an astronaut? Wonder how someone gets where they want to? Think you’re the only one who has questions about what’s going on to you? Read about Rick, you’ll find answers that will know some things, too.

She’ll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas movie download

I have a background in combat systems OS’ from way back. Had the men who actually wrote the ACDS Block 0 system working for me. Smart, smart guys, who explained just why it was important to make it the way it was…for the most streamlined movement of tactically important data, unmolested by interrupts like “printer offline.” After I listened, it made lots and lots of sense. “Open source” operating systems were not designed with a combat imperative in mind. Makes a huge difference when SS-N-22s are inbound, ya think?

Not sure if I’m a fan of open systems software, but…the SPAWARs bubbas have shown it works on USS DESERT SHIP at White Sands Missile Range

• Hellboy psp A Raisin in the Sun trailer

. From the SpaceWar site:

US Navy Test Confirms Missile Firing Capability Of Aegis Open Architecture

Aegis Open Architecture will allow the Navy to stay on technology’s leading edge through its innovative use of commonly-available commercial off-the-shelf computing hardware and open system software, enabling the service to more easily implement technology refreshes and capability upgrades to the weapon system as they are developed in the future.
by Staff Writers
White Sands NM (SPX) Jan 31, 2008
In a successful first test of its advanced fire control system, Lockheed Martin’s [NYSE: LMT] Aegis Open Architecture Weapon System recently performed a successful missile firing from the U.S. Navy’s “USS Desert Ship” at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). This was the first test of upgrades to both the Aegis Fire Control System and the MK 41 Vertical Launching System (VLS) installed on the USS Desert Ship, the Navy’s land-based, live-fire test bed for surface-to-air weapons.

The platform is continually upgraded to meet the Navy’s live fire testing requirements.
[…]

I know it saves lots of hard won cash in the budget battles, but it also makes it easy for non-military types, as well as other then US military types to, if they get their hands on the code, to understand it much, much easier, if not the ability to decompile the code.

Call me a dinosaur in that way, but it makes my skin crawl.

Some ship’s master got some ‘spalinin’ to do…hope his BA content was like 0%.

I suspect his story will begin with “It was a dark and stormy night…”

From The Guardian, “How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people”:

A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

While tens of millions have been directly affected, the impact of the blackout has spread far wider, with economies across Asia and the Middle East struggling to cope. Governments have also become directly involved, with the Egyptian communications ministry imploring surfers to stay offline so business traffic can take priority. “People who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do,” said ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur.
[…]

So, consider the implications of large scale cyber attacks, if that day comes.Babylon 5: A Call to Arms movie full

Wow…forever changed.

Brothers Three: An American Gothic divx

Today in Naval History: We fired a rail gun at Dahlgren.

Cool! Shove a piece of metal at a target at Mach 5 to 7. Forget about having to handle hazardous explosives, just route some juice to the rails and send some good old, time tested “F=M*A” at the bad guys for effect. Can you say “10.8 megajoules ON THE WAY!”

The Military Times video, with CNO’s remarks is here.

embedded by Embedded Video

There will be a meeting on the Flight 93 Memorial, thanks to lots of people pushing the issue. That’s the good news. The bad news is only five days notice of the public hearing for this Saturday (Feb 2nd, 2008) was given for this meeting. Here is a call for help from the residents of the Somerset, PA area, and for non-residents, to contact your federal representatives:

From Alec Rawls of Error Theory, who has been on top of this issue for a long time now:

The Memorial Project gave only five days public notice for this Saturday’s public meeting in Somerset. Tom Burnett and I are trying to crash their party, calling on the population of Somerset to come out and protest the terrorist memorializing design.

Here is the ad copy for Tom’s call to action, which will be published in color in tomorrow’s Somerset Daily American. Please post this advertisement ASAP. I’m not putting on a blogburst header, since this is Tom’s statement, but feel free to add a commentary linking it to our regular blogbursts if you want.

I am optimistic that we might even get a few PA politicians jumping on the bandwagon this time.

There is a second color ad with my information that Tom asks readers to follow on to. It is linked at the bottom of Tom’s ad, so there is no need for you to post that as well.

HTML at the bottom as usual.

We might have them this time.

Alec

Below is the post in support of this effort to get the Islamic format of the memorial to those who died on Flight 93 on 9/11/2001 removed:

A plea from Tom Burnett Sr. to the wonderful people of Somerset

(The ad copy below is running in tomorrow’s Somerset Daily American.)

My son Tom confronted a terrible moment of truth. Faced with a plot against our nation, he and the other heroes of Flight 93 fought back, and at the cost of their lives, foiled that plot to destroy the White House or the Capitol. Now it is time for the rest of us to face our moment of truth. Flight 93 has been re-hijacked, and I am requesting that if you can, you go down to the public meeting of the Memorial Project at Somerset Courthouse Saturday, sign up to comment at the end, and demand that a proper investigation be conducted.

THIS was no accident:

The Memorial Project held an open design competition in time of war, inviting the entire world to enter. Guess who joined in? That group of trees that sits roughly in the position of the star on an Islamic flag is the crash site. Who do YOU think is being memorialized here?

A second Islamic feature that I also protested when I served on the Stage II jury is the minaret-like Tower of Voices, formed in the shape of a crescent, with its top cut at an angle so that its crescent arms reach up into the sky.

Upturned crescents are a standard mosque adornment in many Muslim countries.

Every iota of this original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called “redesign.” That is why Congressman Tancredo asked the Park Service this autumn to scrap the existing design entirely. Instead of getting rid of the giant crescent as Tancredo demanded back in 2005, architect Paul Murdoch only disguised it with a few surrounding trees.

Also remaining are those damned 44 glass blocks on the flight path. (There were forty passengers and crew and four Islamic terrorists on Flight 93.) The Memorial Project acknowledges the 40 blocks inscribed with the names of my son and the other heroes, and they acknowledge the three inscribed with the 9/11 date, but they pretend not to know about this one: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site.

When this 44th glass block is pointed out, Project Partners say that it can’t be counted with the other blocks because it is not the same size. What? Because the capstone to the terrorist memorializing block count is magnificent, that is supposed to make it okay?

For every Islamic or terrorist memorializing feature of the crescent design, the Park Service has another equally phony excuse. Please read the exposé below of the Park Service’s fraudulent investigation, and please come to the meeting on Saturday to demand state and Congressional investigations into the Flight 93 memorial.

Tom Burnett Sr.
February 2008

PDF of ad copy here.

Non-locals who want to help, please contact your senators and representatives!

Not all of the Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial is hidden. One of the things that Tom Burnett Sr. protested from the beginning was the overtly minaret-like Tower of Voices. The Tower is formed in the shape of an extruded crescent, and even has its top but at an angle so that its crescent arms reach up into the sky, similar to the upturned crescent motif seen atop minarets all over the world:

Up tower view (left) shows the Tower of Voices to be formed in the shape of an Islamic crescent, covering about 2/3rds of a circle of arc, with a circular inner arc. The top of the tower is but at an angle (right) so that the crescent arms reach up into the sky.

This sky-reaching crescent is a standard mosque motif, seen from the Abdul Gaffoor mosque in Singapore:

… to Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland:

… to the Uppsala mosque in Sweden:

There is no way that the Islamic shaped crescent atop architect Paul Murdoch’s minaret-like tower is an accident, any more than THIS could possibly be an accident:

That’s before you even get to the hidden stuff, like the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent; the 9/11 date placed in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag; or the fact that the Tower of Voices turns out to be a year round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial:

Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign, which only disguised the original crescent with a few irrelevant trees.

That Islamic crescent reaching up into the sky is completely undisguised. How can anyone abide this?

Stop the Memorial Blogburst

1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech
A Defending Crusader
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever
And Rightly So
Big Dog’s Weblog
Big Sibling
Cao2’s Weblog
Cao’s Blog
Chaotic Synaptic Activity
Dr. Bulldog and Ronin
Error Theory
Faultline USA

All About Eve hd

Flanders Fields
Flopping Aces
Four Pointer
Freedom’s Enemies

Ft. Hard Knox
GM’s Corner
Hoosier Army Mom
Ironic Surrealism II
Jack Lewis
Kender’s Musings
My Own Thoughts
Nice Deb
Ogre’s Politics and Views
Part-Time Pundit
Right on the Right
Right Truth
Stix Blog
Stop the ACLU
The Renaissance Biologist
The View From the Turret
The Wide Awakes
Thunder Run

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.

Have you lusted, for a very long time for a fully functional “heads up display” (HUD) that’s no muss, no fuss to wear? No annoying glasses style rigs, no wires dangling around your neck….

Well, in a “life imitates art” moment, someone has done your bidding. Pet Sematary II psp The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! psp

From the Telegraph in the UK:

Contact lenses with Terminator vision

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 27/01/2008

An electronic contact lens has been developed that will enable maps and videos to be beamed before the wearer’s eyes.

The bionic lens has microscopic circuits fixed to a flexible plastic. The scientists who created the device say the lenses could eventually provide computer-aided vision similar to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robotic character in the Terminator films.

Drivers and pilots would have essential information – their speed and direction, for example – superimposed in front of their eyes, in a massive advance on the kind of “wearable displays” now available, which are spectacles that have images displayed on the lenses.
[…]

Now, just because this was in an English paper, doesn’t mean it wasn’t homegrown. Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer at the University of Washington is the man with the plan.

And if just data displays aren’t good enough for you, he is working on advanced versions already:

[…]
Mr Parviz plans more sophisticated components to show detailed pictures, and it is possible to include a zoom function. The lenses have been tried on animals but there will be tough safety tests before the technology is developed for people.
[…]

Sign me up for the testing! I wonder…do they also correct for astigmatism? Probably for an extra cost…