Bryan Adams: Still Gaining Acceptance
I don't know how it got to be Friday already, but I'm sure as sugar not complaining. Here are a few things to round out the week.On Wednesday, Fox News ran an AP story about a so-called "Martyrs list" that's being kept among the leadership of Moqtada al Sadr's Jaish al Mahdi militia. It's worth the read, if for no other reason than to demonstrate the sheer complexity of the political and military situations in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. It's long been my opinion that the majority of these developments couldn't have been foreseen prior to the invasion. At any rate, it's an interesting read.
Also on Wednesday, the BBC had an article about Australian criticism of ISAF participants who don't deploy troops to Afghanistan. This statement is ironic in light of an article I saw back in May that basically said that Australia's troops are "ashamed of wearing their uniform" because Australian politicians will only clear special forces personnel to actually fight. Australian military forces have proven their worth as recently as the Iraq War, when an Australian boarding party bested would-be Iranian hostage-takers in a situation that, when the Brits faced it, led to two different incidents of British sailors and Marines being captured. Still, it's frustrating to see such capable soldiers held back from sharing the combat burden when their help is so sorely needed.
And again on Wednesday, I saw an article about the varying levels of quality of different types of green roofs. I'd never heard of "green roofs", but apparently they're basically systems you can set up on the flat roof of a building. This is the kind of "green" measure that I can get onboard with. Who doesn't like being able to find a garden at the top of a building in the city? And you'd think that various locales would have a better infrastructure set up by now to collect rain water, given how much everyone bitches about the difficulty with droughts and desertification. Anyway, I just thought it was cool.
One from yesterday: a Qatari sheikh spent about £26,000 (about $62,000) to fly his Lamborghini to London for an oil change, and then immediately back to Qatar. Environmental activists are having a coronary about this, claiming that this isn't so much of a carbon footprint as it is a carbon crater. I'm no more a fan of Arab sheikhs who are fabulously rich through no merit of their own than the next guy, but anything that can so completely aggravate the environmental lobby is okay in my book.
So, remember earlier this month when I added a bunch of links to the sidebar, to include a bunch of military field manuals? Well, although this was originally to be a pretty basic project inspired by the Butt Rubber (pictured), I decided to combine it with a project that I worked on in college. Remember my archive CD with a ton of old books on it? Well, I figured it might be excellent to have a CD for my own use that expanded the volume of ancient sources, combined the CIA World Factbook, and various military field manuals on subjects that are relevant and interesting in today's security climate. I'm also toying with the idea of including a couple of extraneous texts, like Colonel Moammar Qaddhafi's infamous Green Book, and Ernesto Guevara's treatise on Guerrilla Warfare. Please note: I'm not endorsing those last two, but they are formative literature from the last century (even if they were written by literary amateurs to an audience of complete morons). What are some of the field manuals that I'm considering for inclusion on this Fly super archive?
US Army Field Manuals:
US Marine Corps Doctrinal Publications:
There are some others, mainly relating to intelligence, but I'll spare you the link fest for now. At any rate, this will join my list of numerous projects to complete while I'm in Virginia. I also have to do something that will be tedious, but ultimately worth it: converting the .DOC files from the original archive to .RTF files. Given that there are several hundred documents, that could take a while. Aside from a few issues, this computer is probably just the piece of equipment to accomplish this task.
Okay, speaking of earlier posts, remember when I was bagging on Bryan Adams a few weeks back? And then I recanted a little? Well, check out an acoustic solo performance of the song in question, originally performed with Sting and Rod Stewart (before the latter began battling incontinence).
On the bright side, his performance is still more inspiring than Al Gore's at Live Earth... Or Al Gore doing the Macarena. Now that was terrifying.
Have a great weekend, folks!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home