To remain ignorant of things that happened before you is to remain a child. What is a human life worth unless it is in corporated into the lives of one's ancestors and set in historical context?
I can see a new campaign slogan coming after I watched a science program last night:
STOP LUNAR DRIFT!
Apparently, some scientist hundreds of years ago calculated that the moon was gradually moving further away from the Earth. When the Apollo astronauts landed there they positioned a mirror that we have been beaming a laser at in order to calculate the distance. That long ago scientist was correct; it is moving about 1 1/2 inch further away from Earth every year. Alert AlGore!
I’m most thinking it may have something to do with humans populating Earth…
Category: Humor, Public Service |
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U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Robert B. Brown, with Combat Camera Unit, Regimental Combat Team 6, watches over the civilian firefighters at the burn pit as smoke and flames rise into the night sky behind him in Camp Fallujah, Iraq.Photo Credit: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Samuel D. Corum.
Category: Marines, Military |
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BAGHDAD, Iraq – Over 1,200 Iraqi men came to Joint Security Station in Yusufiyah during a three-day police recruitment drive that ended June 25.
The drive, orchestrated by the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) from Fort Drum, N.Y., the 23rd Military Police Company, 503rd MP Battalion, 16th MP Brigade, from Fort Bragg, N.C., and the 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, began June 23 to increase Iraqi police manning in the 4-31 “Polar Bears’†area of operations.
Capt. Brent Dittenber, commander, Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), from Fort Drum, N.Y., checks the names of applicants for the Iraqi police force with Iraqi army staff officers. The recruitment drive was June 23-25. Photo courtesy of Joint Combat Camera Center.The goal was to find 200 qualified Iraqi police officers. When the drive began at 8 a.m., there were almost 200 men waiting in line to apply.
Gen. David Petraeus, the Multi-National Force-Iraq commander, visited the recruitment efforts the first day and spoke to several potential recruits and encouraged them to serve their country.
Five hundred seventy-seven applicants were processed the first day. Another 150 were waiting in line the second day and by mid-afternoon 361 had filled out applications and spoken with the troops.
Officials accepted 252 applications on June 25.
[..]
Need photographic evidence?
Working Together (Click the pic for larger image)
Working TogetherBoston native Staff Sgt. Robin Johnson (left), with Company C, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, and an Iraqi army soldier from 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 11th Iraqi Army Division, work together during Operation Tiger Hammer, a combined cordon and search mission in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah District June 7.Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael Pryor.
Last seen about 2100, heading for my stateroom at the end of the second 8 hours of the day behind me.
Step in, close the door (it’s been open since just before breakfast), walk over and turn on the idiot box mounted on the aft bulkhead to see what’s playing on the two channels. Settle on one of them. Bend down, retrieve the plastic bottle of squeeze cheese (courtesy of mother-in-law’s care packages) from the small refrigerator. Grab bag of toastitos, reduced to generally more smaller pieces than large due to handling in shipment, but, a little bit of “the World” in my hands.
Park in the chair at my desk, rest my feet on the surface, just inside the stateroom door and begin to consume the chips garnished with cheese. Watch the movie semi-mindlessly, while still considering what there is left to get done. After a sufficient amount of my snack to slow down for a few minutes, sit properly and begin to sift through the mail and other items in the in box. Read, think, consider, jot a few things on the AW-SHOOT list by hand (will enter them first thing in the morning), and clear the box. File action stuff in the notebook (supporting “linked” information for the tickler), or the desk drawer folders. A few hours of this and it’s taken care of for the night.
About 2300, retrieve the data from star sightings from earlier in the evening. “Reduce” the info by hand (means doing lots of math) until the sighting angle and distance towards or away along that line. Repeat until all 5 or 6 stars are figured. Get out the plotting paper and plot the assumed position, then the lines of position and the distances as computed. Early on, this was then “scratch my head time to figure out what I’d use as the “fix.” Later on, my use of the sextant became more precise and the answer to the point was much easier to determine. “Growl” the Bridge and ask the Quartermaster of the Watch to get me the position from closest to the star time fix. Plot the Ship’s position from other means (electronic usually) and determine how far off I was in my navigation efforts.
By now, it’s right about midnight. The watch has turned over (2345) and the 00-04 (Midwatch) personnel should all be on station. Get up and head by Radio (port side, enroute the Bridge), grab any new traffic, scan the space for anything that seems to be out of the ordinary. Head to the Bridge, then down to CIC, then down and aft to Central Control Station (CCS). Wander about the aft end of the ship below deck in the red lit spaces, then head back to my stateroom, assured it’s just another routine night.
About 0100, climb into the rack. The day is done.
Maybe that wasn’t very exciting, but it was a day in the life of an FFG-7 XO’s day on a deployment to the Middle East when there were no wars going on in the neighborhood.
Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It
The Duty to Monitor Your Blog Comments, and Liability
Basic Tax Law Issues in Blogging
Limited Liability Laws and Incorporating
Spam Laws and Which Unsolicited Emails are Legal
Are Bloggers Protected from Journalism Shield Laws?
I’ll have to take the time to read it closely. It certainly looks comprehensive and I strongly recommend you put down what you’re reading and get over there to see how Federal law may work for, or against you. In the meantime, I’d recommend we spread the word….
Category: Blogging, Public Service |
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There was always a delicate balance, sometimes unspoken, between “ETs” (Electronic Technicians) and “users,” which came in all sorts of types: Officers, operations specialists, radiomen comprised most of that category. On a number of occasions, when something wasn’t performing to the expectations of the user, it was not caused by a malfunctioning of the equipment, but rather than from a misunderstanding of the function, or that the operator in question had wrong, leading to the often made remarks, in a derogatory manner, and sprinkled with “salty” language, about some dumb user. And, as luck would have it, once in a while a very frustrated, but knowledgeable petty officer found themselves making not so delicate responses to the tidal wave of derision heaped upon them when a mere mis-positioning of a switch may have been the only problem.I began my Naval career supervising a shop full of ETs, in addition to the OSs, I was the nexus, in good times and bad in the interaction of those two groups, and also the “screen” from the stuff coming down from above when RADAR and radio systems weren’t cutting it at any given moment. I appreciate it all the more because of those 18 months.
With that explanation, the new ET logo makes so much more sense, doesn’t it?
I know you stop by to read the blog once in a while, and I’m working up the email list for ValOUR-IT. I lost your email address in the hosting service move, so please help me update my records. Comment or email works for me.
(Oh, and put some contact info on the carrier page!)
For those of you who haven’t seen it, William has built and maintains The Carrier Page, a history of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers. He was a supporter of ValOUR-IT last year. Stop by his site and see what he has compiled.
Update 6/27/2007: First off, Bill tells me the email info is on his page. Second, so you don’t have to jump to the comments, Rusty Bill reports about “current ops” on his historical website:
Warning to prospective visitors: The Carrier Project is currently undergoing a massive refit – a total reformat and rewrite, in fact.
Many of the general information pages are up and running, but carrier history data has only been entered for CV-1 USS Langley through CV-9 USS Essex. I’m currently rebuilding the Origins of Carrier Names section, which should be posted in a couple of weeks. See the Refit Page for details.
The author of “I Accuse: Jimmy Carter and the Rise of Militant Islam”, Philip Pilevsky, was on Laura Ingraham’s radio show today. The thesis on his book is by Jimmy Carter failing to support the Shah, the fringe elements of jihadis, which had been around for hundreds of years as just that: Fringe groups, all of a sudden had a “State’ to operate out of and therefore made what the world is dealing with today possible.
Another name for from the beginnings of our Navy is Josiah Fox. Born in 1763 in Cornwall, England, he had been an apprentice at the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth, making him unique among our early shipwrights.
Josiah appears in the story of the post-Revolutionary War naval build up when he was asked by Joshua Humphreys in 1794 to assess the design proposed by Humphreys to the War department, as there was some conflict as to whether the planned frigates would be strong enough.
Fox’s reaction was blunt. His view was that in the Humphreys’ frigate the wales were placed too low; the bow and stern were too sharp; and there were too many hollow spaces in the hull, which would contribute the the weakness of the hull’s structure. The design ought to include more rake (the stem and the stern should rise at a smaller angle from the keel). Fundamentally, Fox was concerned that the Humphreys’ frigate was too long in proportion to her beam. The resulting structural weakness was so great that the ship might even break her back on launching.
The debate continued, but the historical record to allow us into the course of the conversations, as the people involved directly all lived in Philadelphia (Secretary Knox, Joshua Humphreys, Josiah Fox), and Ian toll speculates much of the discussions happened in face to face meetings, with no paper trail. The only thing we have to go on is the performance of the ships put to sea. I’d say Humphreys was right.
During this time frame, Joshua Humphreys was appointed as the “Master Ship Constructor” for the Navy by Secretary of War Knox, and, based on his favorable impression of Fox’s knowledge of ship design, Fox was hired as a draftsman to serve under Humphreys. What happened next is what the modern Navy calls a “personality conflict.” Apparently Fox’s drafts were not in accordance with Humphreys designs. Net result: Fox was assigned to make moulds for cutting timber. “The two Quaker shipwrights eventually came to hate each other” says Toll.
There is more to that part of the working relationship to read, some of it sounding not unlike some of the meetings I was a party to attending over my career and a few years afterwards.
Fast forward to where Josiah Fox still managed to “get around the system:”
Fox was the supervising shipwright for the USS CHESAPEAKE. CHESAPEAKE was an oddity in the line of our first naval combatants in that she was not named for something related to The Constitution, but named for a bay. In addition, there was already a USS CHESAPEAKE, a sloop of war, in commission (she was recommissioned USS PATAPSCO) at the time. The distinction continued in that “Frigate D” was shorter in length and broader in beam than the other ships, as a result of Fox altering the design to meet his concepts of ship design, based on his Royal Naval shipbuilding background. Built in Norfolk, she was shown to be slower than her sister ships due to significant design alterations.No Navy ships have been named in honor of Josiah Fox. He was a key figure in the formulation of ship design, being a thorn in the side of the man who envisioned a completely new layout for warships, which went on to have provide our nation with a maritime force capable of standing up to the navies of Europe.
The ship picked up a reputation as unlucky early on in her career at sea.
