Finally — A Realistic Iraq War Movie?

John at OPFOR reports that Hollywood is making a movie based on the book No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah, a gripping account of the Marine assault on Fallujah in 2004. Harrison Ford will star as a Marine general.

Can’t wait!

Revealing the Battle of Teutoburg Forest

In A.D. 9, German tribes entrapped and annihilated a Roman army of 15,000 men somewhere in northwestern Germany. The battle changed the history of Europe for the next 2,000 years. Known to history as the Battle of Teutoburg Forest (or Teutoburger Wald), its location was long lost to historians. Dozens of possible locations were suggested, but no one knew for sure.

In 1987, a British army officer serving in the area of Osnabrück did some research and developed a theory that the battle was fought nearby, at a hill named Kalkriese. He began scouring the area with a metal detector, and found numerous Roman coins, sandal nails, bits of armor, and other artifacts that confirmed his hunch. In the years since, archaeologists have been busy excavating the area, finding all manner of pieces — including human bones — that have definitively established this as the battle site.

Fergus M. Bordewich wrote an article in the Smithsonian Magazine a couple of years ago describing the battle and its aftermath, and the story of its rediscovery. Fascinating reading.

UPDATE (1/5/08): Jona Lendering has written a much more detailed description of the battle, including the history before and after, an analysis of the ancient literary sources of information, and the archaeological evidence. A must read for students of this battle.

Google is So Yesterday

Newsweek observes that Google is getting passed up by several third-generation search engines that out-perform the perennial favorite.

It’s not farfetched that five years from now we may wonder why everyone thought Google was such a big deal. “Google has won the first stages of the Web-searching race,” says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research in San Francisco. “It won’t win the next one.”

No doubt, Google is investing some of its billions on making sure it does win the next one. Whoever wins, the competitive race is good for everyone, especially the consumer.

Ouch! That Had to Hurt!

Check out this video taken from a helmetcam, worn by a woman on a motorcycle. The caption accompanying the video doesn’t indicate how badly she was hurt in the accident, but it sure came in handy in the investigation that followed.

A Touching Valentine’s Story, In Romeo and Juliet’s Backyard — Literally

Around last Valentine’s Day, archaeologists in Italy began digging up the remains of a young couple who were buried in a tender embrace about 5,000 years ago. The find is located a few miles from Verona, where Shakespeare set the story of Romeo and Juliet. The researchers do not yet know what killed the couple, but judging from the manner of their burial (see picture in the story), there was clearly something special about their relationship.

There is a much better photo here.

Wags on the internet have had some fun with this discovery:

This would be a really romantic way to propose marriage: “Darling, would you like to spend together forever, just like these neolithic skeletons?”

How Good is the News out of Iraq? And Why Isn’t It Getting Reported?

Dean Barnett wonders why this chart is not getting front page coverage on every newspaper in the country. It tracks American deaths in Iraq for every month since the war began. Look carefully at the numbers at the far right of the chart, from June until now. This covers the surge of Gen. Petraeus. Apparently this dramatic drop is not considered newsworthy.

Yet as Barnett notes,

What’s most frustrating about the press’s reporting about Iraq is that you just know the next time something goes wrong, be it a car bomb slipping through or a mishap involving American soldiers, that story will get above-the-fold treatment in America’s major dailies. The same old voices will begin shrieking “quagmire.”

The A380 Takes Off, At Last

The first commercial flight of the Airbus A380 took place today. A Singapore Airlines A380 officially entered service with a flight from Singapore to Sydney, Australia, carrying 455 passengers. The new jumbo jet, which can carry up to 853 people in an all-economy configuration, has displaced the Boeing 747 as the world’s largest commercial airplane.

Even so, Boeing probably doesn’t have much to worry about: “Orders for the [Boeing] 787 have exceeded 700. The A380 has received 165 orders to date.”

We earlier posted a link to a video of a test evacuation of an A380. Pretty impressive.

Another Boomer Myth Bites the Dust

Career expert Penelope Trunk presents evidence that Generation X’ers are rejecting the myth that parents can “have it all” — two high-demand careers, and kids.

Generation X knows that the belief that both parents in a family can have demanding, time-consuming careers outside the home is an antiquated one. Time has shown that it just doesn’t work.

Sure, girls can grow up to be anything, and boys can start companies and become millionaires. But there’s a limitation that no one talks about: Two parents working more than 60 hours a week each is bad for the marriage and bad for the kids.

Thanks to Gen X, the power-couple-as-parents setup will likely go down in history as just another terrible idea conceived by baby boomers.

The Gen X approach is more balanced: One full-time career, and one (ususally Mom) part-time, with plenty of room to devote to raising the kids. The result? Families that may not be quite as wealthy, but are a whole lot happier.

“The Global Warming Debate Isn’t Over”

So asserts John Stossel, in an excellent summary of the inconvenient facts about the issue that Nobel Peace prize winner Al Gore so conveniently ignores.

If you must declare a debate over, then maybe it’s not. And if you have to gussy up your agenda as “our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level,” then it deserves some skeptical examination.

America’s Best

President Bush awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously to Lt. Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. Murphy’s exploits were documented in the best selling book Lone Survivor, written by the only member of Murphy’s four-man team to survive the battle in which he was killed.

The fact that America still produces such young men of integrity, courage, and self-sacrifice gives me great hope for the future.

Preview: CoD4

Last weekend I downloaded a full-featured demo level of the new Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare game, scheduled for release in a couple of weeks. In a word:  awesome!

Apparently others share that sentiment.

Kansas: Battleground in the Global Warming Debate

While I was out last week, the state of Kansas killed a permit for a coal-fired generator in the southwest corner of the state, specifically due to concerns over carbon dioxide emissions.

Noel Shepherd summarizes the news reports on this decision, and explores the ominous implications:

If we begin preventing the creation of coal-fired plants, and continue eschewing nuclear facilities, how are Americans going to power their homes, offices, warehouses, and stores? This should be an even greater concern in our current global economy, for China and India aren’t worried about such environmental issues.

Those losing sleep over the exportation of manufacturing jobs, as well as the already unfair economic and trade advantages these two growing behemoths enjoy, should be totally insomniac over the thought of China and India expanding their electricity production unfettered by carbon emissions concerns while America’s output declines due to global warming fears.

A New Breed of Warrior

Victor Davis Hanson shares his impression of some of the middle echelon officers he encountered during his recent tour of Iraq. He is impressed by what he sees, and thinks it bodes well for the outcome of the war.

Something is going on in Iraq entirely missed by media. It’s not just that things are turning around, but rather Gen. Petraeus has assembled perhaps the most gifted group of Army officers seen in a generation—who feel they are going to snatch victory from the jaws of political defeat. I think they will pull it off and the entire political landscape here at home will have to readjust to it by early next year. The smarter Democrats will take credit by claiming their anti-Bush efforts forced needed change, the denser ones will just continue to deny, like Sens. Reid and Schumer, that any good is occurring at all.

Back In Town

The blog has been quiet this past week because I was in Lowell, Massachusetts, for a business conference. (See map here, and the city’s home page.) In case you’re interested, this is the conference I was attending.

It will take me a few days to get caught up on things.

Gore (Politician) vs. Gray (Meteorologist)

Dr. William Gray, a Colorado State University meteorologist with a distinguished career of forecasting hurricanes, took Al Gore’s fiction film apart at a recent lecture at the University of North Carolina.

(By the way, why is the Syndey Morning Herald — an Australian newspaper — the only one picking up this story?)

Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures – related to the amount of salt in ocean water – was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

“We’ll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was,” Dr Gray said.

During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.

He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

“The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures,” Dr Gray said.

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

“It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong,” he said. “But they also know that they’d never get any grants if they spoke out. I don’t care about grants.”

Someday the current hysteria over global warming will be taught in universities as an example of how not to do science.

A Medieval Machine Gun — Sort Of

An English archery club a few years ago posted a study of the physics of the longbows that the English used to defeat a much larger French army at Agincourt in 1415. It’s a detailed analysis of trajectories, kinetic energies, and bow designs. Don’t bother with the math (unless you’re into that sort of thing). Jump to the conclusion, summarized in the last paragraph:

It is sobering to combine these facts with some historical data. Henry had approximately 5,000 archers at Agincourt, and a stock of about 400,000 arrows. Each archer could shoot about ten arrows a minute, so the army only had enough ammunition for about eight minutes of shooting at maximum fire power. However, this fire power would have been devastating. Fifty thousand arrows a minute – over 800 a second – would have hissed down on the French cavalry, killing hundreds of men a minute and wounding many more. The function of a company of medieval archers seems to have been equivalent to that of a machine-gunner, so in modern terms we can imagine Agincourt as a battle between old-fashioned cavalry, supported by a few snipers (crossbow-men) on the French side, against a much smaller army equipped with machine guns.

Agincourt, by the way, was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Henry V.

Not Yet Convinced of Media Bias? Check This Out . . .

The major media outlets all ran a lead story highlighting something Gen. Rick Sanchez said in a speech before the Military Reporters and Editors annual conference this week.  The stories all seized on Sanchez’ criticism of the Bush strategy in Iraq as “a nightmare with no end in sight.” No doubt, you heard about this.

But the stories conveniently omitted something else the General said in the very same speech — about the media coverage of the war.

The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our servicemembers who are at war.

Great quote, but Sanchez was just warming up. He delivered a blistering attack on the media for their lopsided coverage of the war:

My assessment is that your profession, to some extent, has strayed from these ethical standards and allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on TV, what they read in our newspapers and what they see on the web. For some of you, just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own preconceived notions, biases and agendas.

Read the whole thing.

Now I wonder — why would the media race to the presses to make sure America heard the General’s criticism of Bush, yet quietly ignore the General’s criticism of the media?

If you can’t figure that one out, you should lose your right to vote.  The foundation of a stable democracy is an informed citizenry. But when the dominant news organizations entrusted with delivering that information deliberately manipulate and mislead the citizens to promote a political agenda, democracy is in trouble.

Why We Have the Second Amendment

Finally, the news media highlights a story about an armed homeowner defending his property. This sort of thing happens all the time, but we rarely hear about it. (Be sure to watch the video.)

Just imagine what this country would be like if the government completely outlawed all firearms, as some advocate. Oh, wait — that’s already been done in Washington, D.C. Worked great there, didn’t it?

The Final Voyage of the USS Grunion

Of all the U. S. submarines that were lost during World War II, only a few disappeared without a trace. One of them was the Grunion, carrying 70 men, which was last heard from on July 30, 1942, near the island of Kiska, off the coast of Alaska.

The skipper of the Grunion, Jim Abele, left behind three young sons, who never forgot their dad. As they grew older, the boys became more determined to solve the mystery of what happened to their father’s sub.

Last summer, their determination paid off. Bob Dotson tells the moving story of the sons’ search and discovery of the ship’s wreckage, a thousand feet below the surface of the Pacific.

There is a lot more information about the search project, and the action that sank the sub, at the search team’s official web site. Another site has a lot of high-quality photos of the wreckage taken by the search team. The roll call of the men who were lost on the Grunion is found on the official Navy web page commemorating the ship.

Stories like this put a human face on the dreary numbers of casualties that came out of that war, and remind us again of the courage that motivated those who risked their lives to defend our nation. As the Abele sons note on their web site,

One could question the reason for the publicity on what otherwise should be a private matter, but we believe that this is about more than just honoring the 70 sailors who sacrificed their lives so we could live ours in freedom. It is that, and it’s also about making an effort to remember and honor all those who died in WWII and the many more injured who took great risk and commitment to protect a democratic system that we seem to have lost respect for today.

Day of Reckoning for al Qaeda in Pakistan?

AJStrata summarizes some interesting details about the Pakistan military putting the squeeze on al Qaeda operatives in northwest Pakistan. It appears that Pakistan — deliberately or otherwise — is slowly pushing the terrorists back toward the Afghanistan border, and into the waiting arms of U. S. and NATO forces.

He also speculates that this may be a reason the Marines are itching to shift a brigade from Iraq to Afghanistan.

If we are surrounding the leadership I have no doubt everyone in the military (and many beyond) would line up to bring the masterminds of 9-11 to justice.

Will Hillary Defend Rush?

Good question.

In a WSJ editorial, Daniel Henninger wonders aloud how Sen. Clinton’s pious talk about moving away from the polarization of modern politics will affect the current campaign to “get” conservative gabster Rush Limbaugh. A campaign, by the way, that is being championed by some of Clinton’s colleagues in the Senate.

Freedom of speech applies to everyone — conservative or liberal — or it applies to no one. When government officials get in the business of deciding who should or shouldn’t have the right to speak, freedom itself is at stake. Be afraid, be very afraid.

How to Lower the Cost of Health Care–and Increase Quality

Limited government advocate John Stossel uncovers real examples of medical care that is affordable, very good, and getting more so. The common element? Free-market competition.

When consumers pay for medicine themselves, saving insurance for the big things, and doctors deal directly with consumers, doctors begin to compete. They start posting prices and work to keep them low.

And consumers gain more control of their health care. Instead of governments and insurance companies deciding for patients, patients decide.

Competition gives consumers more choices. And choice gives them power. Remember that when you hear a politician promise to make health case accessible and affordable through the force of government.

Fantasy Football – Week 5

Ah, sweet victory!

I took on an undefeated opponent this week, with several untested players who I shuffled in to replace others on their bye week. I didn’t have a good feeling about the matchup. It really got bleak when Deion Branch got hurt early, so I got nothing from him. Still, by the end of Sunday, I was only behind by ten points. Between my opponent and I there was only one player who was playing on Monday night — Jason Whitten, my TE. It was a thriller of a game, regardless of the impact on the fantasy teams, but Whitten’s performance was stellar. I ended up bringing down my undefeated buddy, 86-79, on the strength of my star tight end.

Next week will be a challenge. I have four starters in their bye week, including Peyton Manning and the Steeler defense. That’s a big chunk of my scoring right there.

One Man Takes a Stand

Politicians waffle, media elites snivel, and academics turn common sense upside down on the immigration issue. But when somebody flew a Mexican flag above the U. S. flag at a Reno bar, one man had enough. His action puts to shame all the do-nothing intellectuals who have allowed this situation to get so out of hand.

Meet Jim Brossard, American hero.

You can hear an interview with Mr. Brossard on Breitbart.

The Decline of Higher Education in America

Michael Barone has posted an excellent piece on the sorry state of academic integrity in America’s universities and colleges.

I am old enough to remember when America’s colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America’s colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society.

Google Outer Space

Okay, it’s not Google, but it’s still pretty cool.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a nifty visual simulator that displays the location of any object in the solar system–including planets, moons, and spacecraft–from the perspective of any other object.

For a really interesting space lesson, do the following search: “Show me Voyager 1 spacecraft as seen from below.” The result shows how far away the Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and Pioneer 11 spacecraft are from our solar system.

UPDATE: Wouldn’t ya know it — Google really does have a space search feature. The first reviews are somewhat harsh, but give ‘em time. They’ll have photos of our solar system as seen from Andromeda before you know it.

How to Win a Debate? Simply Declare, “I Win!”

At least that seems to be Al Gore’s approach to the global warming controversy.

The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank (with inconsequential funding from energy companies, by the way), has repeatedly and publicly challenged Gore to debate whether global warming is the terrible crisis he claims it to be. Here is how a Gore spokesperson responded:

The debate has shifted to how to solve the climate crisis, not if there is one. It does not make sense for him to engage in a dialogue with them at this time.

How convenient! Simply declare the matter closed, and stay focused on the prescribed agenda.

But ignoring contrary evidence doesn’t make it go away. Someday, when the truth becomes too obvious to ignore, the current hysteria over global warming will be taught in universities as an example of how not to do science.

Polishing the Crystal Ball

Ragnar Danneskjold at The Jawa Report goes out on a limb — way out:

1. Fred Thompson will be the GOP nominee.
2. It won’t even be particularly close.
3. Fred Thompson will beat Hillary in the general election.

Me? I don’t have a clue who the GOP candidate will be, although Hillary pretty well has the Democratic nomination sewn up. And I won’t venture a guess who will win the Big One.

Fantasy Football – Week 4

Now I know how those teams feel whose playoff chances hinge on the performance of other teams. Totally helpless.

Peyton and my boys had a pretty good Sunday afternoon, good enough for 87 points. Not bad. Especially considering my opponent had only 70 points. But in the Monday night game, I had no players, and my opponent had two. One of them was Randy Moss. And wouldn’t you know it, Moss had a banner game – 23 points by himself. I ended up losing, 96-87.

To rub salt in the wound, I acquired Sammy Morris during the week, and he had a blowout game for New England–except I had him on my reserve list. Zero points. If I had started him instead of Edgerrin James, I would have won by one point. (Sigh!)

I’m not too hopeful about next week. Three active players have a bye week, so I’ll have to sit them out and let some reserves play against a 4-0 opponent. Whatever.