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H&I* Fires, 11 Mar 2007

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.

You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

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Somewhere, in a nice hot place, Kadaffi is rolling over in his grave A Lingerie contest, in Lebanon, sponsored by Absolut.

And they say progress is slow

In Memoriam: Vietnams Most Decorated Native American passes away.

-BloodSpite

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Lex has a tale of probably the funniest callsign(s) ever.

Embarrassingly, I don't know who Robert Kagan is, but he's got a column I'm surprised to see in a major media newspaper:

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.

And the Chicago Tribune has more "Words from the Front." - FbL

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Hell freezes over: Cosmo and Dr. Laura agree. More here.

Maybe I just don't run in the circles she's talking about, but I just find this pathetic:

In truth, it seems to me that in the chaos of our society, everybody should have the helpless feeling. To begin with, there are the same old practical and metaphysical problems that have been giving people the helpless feeling for millennia anyway. When you add the current dilemmas of our culture, of our technologies, of our seemingly insoluble social problems, you come to the conclusion that the basic old human organism just wasn't designed for this sort of thing, you know?

...They are everywhere, and the rest of us have no choice but to cohabit their world, and sit around having the helpless feeling.

Just. Ick. You're welcome to be pathetic, but don't pretend there's some virtue in choosing helplessness. Not all of us can run our corner of the world, but we can choose a point corresponding to our strengths and start to chip away at the problems. - FbL

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Chris Matthews says, "Conservatives don't like sex." Somehow, I don't think he's met the Castle Denizennes... [h/t Murdoc] - FbL

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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.

Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs (oops, can't call 'em UAVs anymore - they're now Unmanned Aerial Systems... some Colonel got his Legion of Merit for that change...), er, um UAS's we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to. It's also an open trackback, so if (Don Surber uses it this way a lot) someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".

5 Comments

Well, if woman who made much of being 'literate' actually read she'd know that Russians handled such subjects heavily(Dosteovsky for starters), and showed us that such Nihilism is childish. Oh well. Then there's the difference between victims and non-victims. Some of us notice all of this ennui causing stuff. We experience it most heavily(when we're being all Athenian(thanks for the phrase MajMike)). But we choose to do something about it instead of talking about it. It isn't easy but if we didn't nothing would ever get done. Some stare into the abyss, shudder with fear, and get on with it. Others look into the abyss, cry, and never do much else. Just because we who shudder and get on with it don't set up camp with the criers doesn't mean we don't realize what the abyss is or that it exists.
 
Heja, Mullah! Želimo vam pomoci – groznica, da?
 
Chris Matthews - I know it's wrong but I'm not going to bother reading the srticle, just the title is enough. What an asshat. Clearly, some smart, attractive, funny, articulate, conservative woman shot him down once and he hasn't gotten over it yet.
 
Ry - why would Khadafy, who's not dead yet (watch out for Idle and Cleese), be spinning in his not-yet-occupied grave? OH! Didja mean Khomeini? Who *is* still dead?
 
John-> The Spinning the grave part was me :) And I know he's not dead. I just wish he were. :P But it's the fact that in Lebanon, host to the Beirut bombings, Hezbollah, and the rest of the nut cases is having a Lingerie contest sponsored by a vodka company that just makes me want to laugh hysterically at the hypocrisy.
 
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