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“Shortly before dawn on Aug. 28, an M1A1 Abrams tank on routine patrol in Baghdad “was hit by something” that crippled the 69-ton behemoth. Army officials still are puzzling over what that “something” was. According to an unclassified Army report, the mystery projectile punched through the vehicle’s skirt and drilled a pencil-sized hole through the…

The Washington Post has a report today concerning the survivors of the shot-down CH47 in Iraq. Story. “It started out fun,” said Sgt. Christopher Nelson, one of 12 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, based in Fort Sill, Okla., aboard the helicopter and in Iraq since April. “We were just ready to…

Our long-standing partner blog, ConfinedSpace – about halfway down on the right, with its RSS headlines – has had a terrible experience. Jordan Barab – the gun what built it, mate – has been campaigning furiously against one of those citizen-initiated referendums I don’t like. This particular one (Washington State initiative 841) was intended to…

Frankfurter Allgemeine story The commanding officer of the KSK, the German army’s special forces, has been relieved of his duties by the Defence Minister, Peter Struck of the Social Democrats, after he allegedly wrote a letter to the conservative deputy Martin Hofmann congratulating him on his now-infamous speech in which he described the Jews as…

A Microsoft employee has been fired for blogging a picture of Apple Macs being delivered to company HQ in Seattle. This is the post at issue. God knows what’s wrong with them. Despite the dull techie Windows vs Mac wrangles, Microsoft have been selling software to run on the things since I were a lad…

BBC story Apparently, researchers at Berkeley have concluded that 800 megabytes of information is produced for each person on the planet every year. That’s doubled since 1999, when they last checked. The conclusion is of course dependent on many other factors – just what is information? Does printing many copies of the same book create…

From the last issue of International Affairs, I see Air Marshal Sir Timothy Garden’s review of the invasion of Iraq. How wonderful…reviewing a war like a book…I digress, though. On the question of propaganda, Sir Tim is moved to the following remark: “A total of 158 air missions dropped 31,800,000 leaflets. The US analysis equates…

Link I noticed on a bulletin board that someone saw the Northern Lights from an Edinburgh-London flight at the latitude of Manchester on Monday. Almost a pity not to be up north.. “The compass variation at the Lerwick geomagnetic observatory in Scotland changed by 5.1 degrees in only 25 minutes at about 0630 GMT. Japan’s…

Link This is the same chap who recently shocked the Russian and Ukrainian press by threatening to bomb the Ukraine at a press conference on a minor border dispute in the Straits of Kerch. I wonder whether that had something to do with it..or perhaps he was trying to embarrass Putin? Still, it’s very depressing…

A Fistful of Euros: Life outside of Europe From the same lot, this is amusing.. “The Bible does not predict the establishment of the State of Israel, nor does it predict that the Antichrist will attack it when there is peace with the Palestinians. Yes, I’ve read the entire Bible. I even used to go…