Slashdot

Just saw this is "green week" or something and thought of the ultimate Segway modification: replace batteries with a Honda generator for the "ultimate" hybrid. Burn ethenol in it if you want!

Via The Corner at Tne National Review Online:

Refighting the Pacific War? [Mark Krikorian]

Gen. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has died. He "had requested that there be no funeral or headstone, fearing it would give his detractors a place to protest." Detractors? Protest? He helped win the war and -- oh, by the way -- saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lives (both American and Japanese), but the left-wingers couldn't stand the fact that he wasn't a self-hater like them. Because, as he said, "I sleep clearly every night." You go on sleeping clearly, general.

Too bad he didn't go to law school, because I'd rather have a man like Tibbets on the Supreme Court rather than Justice John Paul Stevens, who recently told an interviewer that he was "troubled" by the fact there was "so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration" before deciding to kill Adm. Yamamoto in 1943 -- the head of the Japanese navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. Humanitarian consideration? We're supposed to wring our hands before killing an enemy commander, on a warplane, in the middle of a war? I don't follow closely the sophistries of the Supreme Court, but if this is the quality of the man's reasoning, no wonder we're in such trouble.

11/01 11:21 PM

Mr. Foer, you assert that you have witnesses to war crimes and UCMJ violations, to include statements from one of your writers, so why aren't you turning them in?

I have no idea of your military background, as far as I know you could have been a JAG in the IG shop, but you sure don't write that way. I was just a poor Line Officer (after being a Line Enlisted Soldier) . If you were you might see the value of the information to the Army for an investigation for war crimes, vs. your investigation to sell 30,000 copies of a magazine that your subscribers don't read anyway.

Believe it or not, you can not prosicute the criminals that you have in your clutches, but the US Army can.

So, Mr. Foer, please, pretty please, give up your documentation to the Army? If they fail to prosecute to your satisfaction then you will have a real blockbuster!

Seems that Eve Fairbanks is talking out of an opening about the Osprey.

The Osprey, if you remember, is the helicopter/plane hybrid prone to falling out of the sky that has already killed 30 servicemen in development exercises.

--Eve Fairbanks

In development the Osprey (an aircraft no service wanted and I remember watching a Marine testify before the Congress around 20 years ago on C-SPAN that they did not want it, but major components were manufactured in major Congressional districts so the Congress "made it so") did crash a bunch and 30 test pilots/crew did die testing it. That was in TESTING. It is operational now and has passed it's tests.

No, I don't want to fly the damn thing, but still, I have no idea how many folks died testing the UH-1 and I flew it for about 1200 hours from 1985 to 1992.

Calling a tilt-rotpr a "hybrid" is like calling my 1972 Rallye Charger a "hybrid". It is a unique aircraft, different than a helicopter and an airplane. It has a name, tilt rotor. Try using it.

An anonymous reader writes "Link to CNN article. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/01/28/free.ride .ap/index.html A guy wins a trip to space through an Oracle Corp. sweepstakes. Only problem is that he figures out he will owe $25,000 to the IRS if he accepts the prize. He decides to give up his boyhood dream instead of going into debt."