Red Baron Movie

Is Germany finally waking up from it's effeminate slumber? This movie about the story of WW I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen might just be the testosterone shot German manhood has needed for over 50 years. The storyline is somewhat fictionalized by adding a lover that The Red Baron never had. Why! Is this necessary? When Pearl harbor was released I was highly disappointed because so much of the movie was the ridiculous love triangle. Well, I'll have to wait until the movie is released for American audiences to see if love ruins the movie.

(Don't) Curse You, Red Baron!

Friday, Apr. 04, 2008 By ANDREW PURVIS/BERLIN

German First World War air ace Manfred von Richthofen (1882 - 1918) known as the Red Baron, leader of the 11th Chasing Squadron, with a comrade in front of his famous red tri-plane.

Hulton / Getty

Snoopy dreamed about fighting him. The English revered his chivalry in combat. His red Fokker Triplane holds an iconic place in the history of aerial "dogfights." But in Germany, Manfred von Richthofen, the World War I flying ace who downed 80 Australian, British, French and Canadian planes before being shot down himself 90 years ago this month, barely rated a mention in the history books. Postwar Germany, after all, was leery of celebrating legendary warriors. But now, the star of the "Red Baron" may be rising again.

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Military History Fading From Campuses

It appears that the teaching of military history in our college campuses is dying off. If this article is correct, and there's no reason to think that it's not, soon the only schools offering classes and degree in military history will be our military schools. I sensed this was happening back when I took some classes in history at the local university. The class was European History from 1914 to 1945. Perfect, I thought. A class that covers both world wars. To my chagrin the professor was more interested in teaching about the lost generation and the social impact of the wars than on the causes and the wars themselves.

Why Don't More Colleges Teach Military History?

Despite its enduring public appeal, and a country at war, the subject gets little respect on campus

By Justin Ewers

Posted April 3, 2008

Five years into the war in Iraq, military history seems to be experiencing a golden age. Hollywood has been cranking out war movies. Publishers have been lining bookstore shelves with new battle tomes, which consumers are eagerly lapping up. Even the critics have been enjoying themselves. Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military historians, is good.

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Laser Weapon System Near Deployment

It was in the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still that Gort, the space alien robot, used his cyclops laser beam to melt tanks and guns. That was a great Sci-Fi story but it's no longer . Now it's real. A laser weapon system that can track and kill or disable multiple targets is now being tested at an AF base in New Mexico. If this weapon system is successful and feasible pinpoint accuracy spells the end of for anything from enemy tanks, bunkers, ammo dumps, and ugly mother f***ing Muslim jihadist. See Popular Science article below.

How It Works: The Flying Laser Cannon

Boeing's new laser cannon can melt a hole in a tank from five miles away and 10,000 feet up—and it’s ready to fly this year

By Eric Adams Posted 03.13.2008 at 4:48 pm 13 Comments

Inside the Advanced Tactical Laser : Photo by Bob Sauls (Illustration)

Creating a laser that can melt a soda can in a lab is a finicky enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we’re not talking aluminum cans. Boeing’s new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations—the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession....continue here

Boston Hawk Beans Red Sox Fan

Hawk nest removed from Fenway Park after school girl scratched on tour

Email|Print| Text size – + April 3, 2008 01:02 PM

(John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

By John Tlumacki and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

A red-tailed hawk lost its choice seat behind home plate at Fenway Park today after the raptor scratched a middle school girl on a tour, drawing blood from her scalp.

The girl was in the upper deck behind home plate, some 40 feet from the hawk’s nest, where a single egg lay in an overhang near the press booth. The hawk had been perched on a railing and swooped at the girl with its talons extended. She was taken by ambulance to a local hospital.

"The girl is fine," said Red Sox spokeswoman Susan Goodenow, who said the team followed up with the girl’s group from Memorial Boulevard Middle School in Bristol, Conn.

"The nest and the egg were removed by the Boston Animal Rescue League at the direction of the director of Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife," Goodenow said.

It was the second incident with a hawk in the park in the last two days. It has been common for the birds to take up residence in the stadium rafters in the off-season, dining on rats and mice when the park is quiet.

"When the season starts and there is lots of noise, they usually find a new home," Goodenow said.

NEW CO2 REDUCING GADGET

With the rapid deforestation of Amazonia and Indonesia trees are at a premium if mankind is to survive rapid global warming ...eeech, no I didn't say that!!!! Well, just for arguments sake let's say that the developed world needs to come up with a machine that filters CO2 from the atmosphere. Like what a tree does. It just so happens that scientist who want to make a buck out of the global warming crisis have come up with such a gadget.

Spongelike Air-Capture Gadget Scrubs Away Carbon Emissions

By Joanna Borns

Published on: March 28, 2008

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Section Archive

KEYWORDS

• global warming
• Carbon Monoxide
• environment

With the specter of global warming seared into our national consciousness, reducing carbon dioxide emissions has become a priority. Now, researchers have invented a phone-booth-size device that can take back those emissions we can’t prevent—the ones that have already reached the atmosphere. ..................continue here

SHOULD AL QAEDA IN IRAQ BE DEFEATED?

That's basically the question asked by this report.

The Risks of Defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq

Experts warn that jihadist fighters could carry their fight to other nations

By Kevin Whitelaw

Posted March 28, 2008

President Bush claimed on Thursday that U.S. forces and Iraqi tribesman have "systematically dismantled" the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Iraq in the long-troubled Anbar Province. And indeed, while Al Qaeda in Iraq remains dangerous and active, particularly in parts of northern Iraq, the terrorist group is having increasing difficulty pulling off its signature type of attack, deadly car bombings...........continue with article.

US SUPREME COURT vs WORLD COURT

SCOTUS Tells Foreign Court to Butt Out

by Ted Cruz

Over the past few years many Americans have become deeply concerned that judges have begun relying more and more on foreign law to decide questions of U.S. constitutional law. One doesn’t have to be a constitutional scholar to object to foreign laws and foreign courts -- laws that are not enacted by our democratic government and judges who are not selected as our Constitution provides -- ruling on Americans’ rights and the powers of American government. These concerns are largely well founded, and reflect the increasing degree to which modern constitutional adjudication has become altogether unmoored from the text and original understanding of the Framers........................................................continue here
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Three cheers for the conservative members of SCOTUS. What's amazing about this case is not that defendants can use the Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs to assist in their trials but that three of our justices - Breyer, Souter and Ginsburgh - would subordinate our legal system to that of a foreign courts. These three justices should be impeached, immediately!!!

GLOBAL WARMING AND WEALTH TRANSFER

Can you envision industrialized nations (mainly Europe and the US) paying billions
of dollars to Indonesia and Brazil to make environmentalist feel good? Well, that's what's at stake in the next UN climate change (notice it's no longer global warming) summit at Bali.

The Secret Life of Trees

Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 By BRYAN WALSH/NUSA DUA

Think of carbon dioxide, the main gas that causes global warming, and you'll likely picture a polluting factory in China; neon lights in Tokyo, an SUV sitting in traffic on the freeways of Santa Monica..........................While there are already international carbon trading schemes that help rich countries pay for reductions in carbon emissions from power or industry in poorer nations, no such mechanism exists for avoided deforestation. That nations are not compensated for protecting their forests has been a huge gap in anti-climate change efforts, and one that has to be resolved if the world is ever to achieve the kind of large-scale reductions in carbon emissions needed to avert catastrophic climate change. "Forests are the elephant in the living room," says Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Project and a forestry advocate. "Powerful — but unseen and unrecognized."

At the UN climate change summit in Bali — hosted by Indonesia, home to some of the world's most extensive tropical forests — that's begun to change. Though negotiators still need to work out the details, nations here agreed to put deforestation and forest degradation — the damage of woodlands, which can also release carbon — as a main element of the climate change deal that will eventually succeed the Kyoto Protocol. That will eventually open up a new market that could be worth billions, as industrialized nations that need to reduce carbon emissions could choose to pay tropical nations like Brazil and Indonesia to preserve their own forests. The private market — which has been the engine of forest destruction in the form of logging — could end up saving the trees. "We have to solve this market failure by turning to market measures," says Mitchell.
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THE BIOFUEL MYTH

It's not easy for me to read TIME and actually nod my head in agreement with any of their articles. But this time I was nodding in almost every paragraph. Could it be that the MSM is finally getting it!! The TIME article which has given me hope is The Clean Energy Scam.

Encouragement begins with the title. It continues with the body of the article, even though the authors still cling to the global warming scam. The authors basically come to terms with the observation that even good intentions can go wrong. This blogger believes the same and adds that good intentions and high minded proposals are usually the refuge of scoundrels.

The Clean Energy Scam

Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 By MICHAEL GRUNWALD

"But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable."

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Further reading see Technology Review: Biofuels