Sunday, October 22, 2006
Chicken Little Agenda links Corrected
I have been absent from Blogit for a while. Before I left, I had set up links to my recently published book, The Chicken Little Agenda – Debunking Experts' Lies. During my absence, I modified the underlying website for this book. Consequently, the links on Blogit were broken. They have now all been corrected. You can review excerpts from the book at THE CHICKEN LITTLE AGENDA—DEBUNKING EXPERTS' LIES. On August 22, I was interviewed by Bill Handle on KFI in Los Angeles. That afternoon, my sales...
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Friday, July 21, 2006
Combat Zones that ‘See’ Everything
In his recent thriller Prey, Michael Crichton describes an application of nano-technology running amok. In his story, literally millions of molecule-size machines learn to function as a “swarm” that seems to take on an identity greater than the sum of its parts, with dire consequences to any nearby living thing. In real life, this capability is known as nano-technology. Science has not yet reached this level. We are still experimenting with basic nano-technology principles, and where it will...
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Thursday, July 20, 2006
If you want to know the truth about Chernobyl...
Check this out: When Nuclear Goes Wrong.
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Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Tomorrow's Submarine Fleet: The Non-nuclear Option
The U.S. Navy nuclear fast attack submarine fleet is the most awesome suite of weapons ever built, but gains in non-nuclear propulsion technology over the last few decades raise the question of whether we should augment our nuclear submarine fleet with equally effective and dramatically less expensive non-nuclear submarines. We currently float 55 fast attack submarines. Thirty are Los Angeles class and 23 are of the Improved Los Angeles class - quieter, with improved weapons, retractable bow...
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Monday, July 17, 2006
When the U-2 Went to Sea
On Aug. 5, 1963, about the time I was graduating from Enlisted Submarine School in Connecticut, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk steamed out of San Diego carrying a most unusual cargo. Under the cover of darkness the night before, a super secret U-2C high-flying surveillance aircraft was loaded onto the deck, tied down, and covered with tarps. This was the commencement of the operational phase of a fascinating joint effort between the Navy and the CIA called Project Whale Tail. In the years...
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Sunday, July 16, 2006
SillyPutty Armor - Promises to Save Soldiers
How do you get ketchup out of a bottle? Most people turn the bottle upside down and slap the bottom. Smarter people quickly move the inverted bottle towards their plate, and stop it suddenly against the thumb and forefinger of their other hand. In effect, when the bottle stops, the ketchup keeps moving. This happens because ketchup is a shear thinning fluid: When subjected to a shock it becomes suddenly much less viscous – it gets thinner. Remember SillyPutty? You can mould it and shape it all...
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Saturday, July 15, 2006
DEPLETED URANIUM: THE MYTH THAT WON'T GO AWAY
The issue of whether or not depleted uranium (DU) from U.S. Army tank shells poses a health threat to our troops and civilians in Iraq has been in the news for a long time. Reports by the New York Daily News two years ago this month purported that some members of the New York Army National Guard were suffering skin rashes that may be linked to DU exposure. Before we delve into these reports, however, let’s review what science knows about DU. Uranium is one of the more abundant materials in the...
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Sunday, March 14, 2004
Navy Reserve and Air National Guard to the Rescue!
It’s certainly not something you plan for. No matter whether you are passengers – such as Mount Holly, N.C., residents, Eric Jahnsen and his fiancée Sarah Kernagis -- or eyewitnesses such as Command Master Chief Petty Officer in the Navy Melvin Johnson or naval reservist Lt. Cmdr. Art Eisenstein, a jeweler who lives in Edgewater, Md., just outside of Baltimore, sometimes a life-and-death situation can appear in seconds. It was raining in Baltimore Harbor on Saturday, March 6, 2004, but it rains...
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Monday, February 23, 2004
WHO BANNED THE U.S. FLAG IN KIRKUT?
At 3 a.m. on June 28, 2003, a rocket-propelled grenade crashed through a window of the Kirkuk barracks at Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, where three members of the mortar platoon slept: 30-year-old Spc. John Perkins, 19-year-old Pfc. Brian McJunkin, and 24-year-old Spc. Aaron Blakely. When the smoke cleared and the three could hear above the ringing in their ears, Perkins and McJunkin had taken some shrapnel, but Blakely’s legs were...
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Monday, February 9, 2004
Record on the Record
The Strategic Studies Institute is a branch of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. It is a military version of a traditional academic think-tank. The most significant difference between the SSI and similar civilian institutes is that the SSI is publicly funded. As such, all of its unclassified findings, reports, and monographs are available to the public at the SSI website. The SSI also distributes a monthly e-mail newsletter to the national security community that provides among other...
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Saturday, January 31, 2004
BLATANT SELF PROMOTION
Okay, it's time to put myself back on the list. Please go and read some of my past postings. I'll be bringing more in the near future: ISLAMIST VIOLENCE - 28 days ago Solving the Terror Matrix - One of the real problems faced by the U.S.... World - Popularity rank: 1109 DEFENSEWATCH - 25 Dec 2003 President Bush Sends His Regards - By now no one on this planet with a... World - Popularity rank: 2206 SCIENCE 101 - CHICKEN LITTLE'S JOURNAL - 19 minutes ago Exxon Valdez, 15 Years Later - They did it...
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Thursday, December 25, 2003
President Bush Sends His Regards
By now no one on this planet with a radio or TV, or who knows how to read does not know what happened in Iraq on the evening of Dec. 15, 2003. Chances are, however, that you never got the entire story, so here it is, with my Christmas compliments. (Cartoon by Linda Eddy c/o IowaPresidentialWatch.com) In the weeks before Saddam’s capture, Col. James Hickey, who commands the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, had sent his men out on at least a dozen intelligence-based missions to capture the...
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Saturday, December 13, 2003
Alford: They Finally Did the Right Thing
In the early 1970s, I was the Assistant Weapons Officer on a Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine. I had come up through the ranks, so I had a bit more experience than the average lieutenant junior grade, and this may be what made the difference. My first class sonar technician was a top-rated petty officer headed for chief, and bigger and better things. He was popular with both the officers and crew. During the latter part of a two-month patrol, this petty officer began to sleep late and behave...
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Tuesday, November 25, 2003
The Osama–Saddam Connection Proved
Part of the Bush administration’s justification for going to war against Iraq was its insistence that there was a real and dangerous connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. This connection has been roundly denounced by Bush’s political opponents as nothing more than lies and half-truths designed to pave the way to a war that somehow benefited the rich and corporate America at the expense of the common people. Because the Bush administration has been reluctant to reveal its sources...
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
DOING WRONG FOR THE RIGHT REASONS
In my ongoing research I receive a regular communication from Khilafa.com, a popular Islamic website that claims it is devoted to a non-confrontational informational and spiritual service to world-wide Islam. Khilafa.com portrays itself as the one outlet available to Muslims everywhere that presents the news without bias and Qur’anic teachings without sectarianism. On Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2003, Khilafa.com notified me by email that the current edition of Khilafa Magazine was online and available....
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003
A FUTURE'S MARKET FOR TERROR
Walk with me down a pathway leading into the fascinating future of tomorrow’s weapons systems. Imagine, if you will, a cockroach-size robot that can transmit high fidelity color and audio images, and – like the cockroach it mimics – can maneuver over and around rocks, up and down stairs, and in and out of small areas. Consider a honeybee swarm that searches out explosives instead of sweet nectar. Or a remote MRI-like device that can identify from a queue of people waiting to board a plane the...
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Wednesday, November 5, 2003
COMBAT ZONES THAT 'SEE' EVERYTHING
In his recent thriller Prey, Michael Crichton describes an application of nano-technology running amok. In his story, literally millions of molecule-size machines learn to function as a “swarm” that seems to take on an identity greater than the sum of its parts, with dire consequences to any nearby living thing. In real life, this capability is known as nano-technology. Science has not yet reached this level. We are still experimenting with basic nano-technology principles, and where it will...
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Sunday, November 2, 2003
TWO HEROES, TWO WARS, ONE MEMORY
Daniel Bedinger was born to Henry Bedinger and Mary Slagle near Bedford, Va., sometime in 1760; no one knows the exact date. In 1774, his two older brothers left the family farm to join Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army that was assembling at Fort Washington outside New York City. Fourteen-year-old Daniel stayed behind, but a year later he walked the entire 430 miles separating him from his brothers. He lied about his age, and became Pvt. Bedinger. Pvt. Bedinger saw his first action on...
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Thursday, October 30, 2003
IRAQI CASUALTY COUNT: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
A persistent rumor circulating around the World Wide Web is that official United States sources are underreporting U.S. casualty counts in Iraq. Upon investigation of this rumor, I discovered that several news organizations are responsible for these reports. They appear to be unrelated to each other, but all contain a common anti-American thread. Perhaps the two most egregious sources are Al Jazeera and the Russian website Iraqwar.ru. Reports emanating from the Department of Defense (DoD) appear...
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
THE MANPAD THREAT – AN UPDATE
The threat from man-portable surface-to-air missiles has worried aviation experts for years, but in August it became far more than a theoretical risk. It is now time for the federal government to undertake a crash program to protect the nation’s civilian airliners from the dangers of “Manpad” missiles, as the weapons are known. In a recent post about the Manpad threat, Terror in the Sky - the Manpad Threat, I noted: “It’s only a matter of time before [a Russian Manpad] or a Stinger purchased...
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