Gay Soldiers,Kornet, Good books

Gay Soldiers

Seems a natural fit.
Invasion by Alexander's Macedonian Phalanx rather like a tour by a particularly nasty Gay dancing troupe. They arrive, set up a concert/battle in a field outside town entertain/kill a lot of young men, then leave the country soon after. If you're lucky they rename a town with a Girlie title ("Alexandria"?)
______________________________________________

Kornet

"On Dec. 6, a Kornet anti-tank missile fired for the first time in Gaza, hit an IDF tank and penetrated its outer shell. Luckily, the missile did not explode inside the tank. We're talking about a massive missile..." Ashkenazi
[massive? the system is carried by 2 blokes ... I trust thats not Ashenazi the pianist...]

While the tank crew was unharmed in the latest incident, the IDF did sustain casualties from the Russian-made Kornet during the 2006 Lebanon War. The Islamic armed group Hezbollah used it against IDF tanks, a Navy missile boat and a heavy transport helicopter and killed the entire crew aboard.
[the boat attack was from some big winged old-fashioned looking StoS missile, not a Kornet]
On Sunday, the IDF announced it plans to deploy tanks fitted with a new active armor protection system along the Gaza border,..
Deployment of the Me'il Ruach (Windbreaker) system is scheduled to begin in January...
xinhuanet

Me'il Ruach (Windbreaker).. marketed ..under the name Trophy.
..........................

.................
from ZE blogsite:

The tandem warhead is not intended to explode inside the penetrated vehicle, but to trigger the reactive armor and let the main charge to do the penetration, AFAIK. This is most probably is just bad journalism and what he meant that the penetration didn't cause fire or munition explosion inside the tank.
...............
The IDF is going to deploy the 9th armoured Battalion to Gaza, which is the only Battalion so far to be equiped with the Trophy system.
It is a known fact that hamas got kornets and Metis AT missiles since 2006-7, so why weren't the 9th Bat deployed there ASAP after the upgrade is beyond me.
....................
The trophy anti-atgm system can make tanks almost immune to ATGM's, but they cost 300,000 per kit, per tank. They also have 4 shots and then have to be reloaded manually. Thus, the IDF plans to equip, at the start, one brigade as a frontline 'speapoint' brigade to be the first in incase of a war with Hezbollah or Hamas. Later, other brigades would be equipped.
...................
Trophy has an automatic-reload system, Iron Fist don't. Trophy cannot defeat tank kinetic sabot round, Iron Fist can. "/
............................
Trophy,...detects an incoming missile and fires a projectile at it,

[some knd of 'metal storm'??]

......................
_________________________________________________________________
Some confusion... Despite the above Chinese news report, Its unclear whether Kornets were used in Lebanon 2006. Russia hasnt admitted it, TelAviv hasnt officially confirmed? [wikip says yes]

2006 was peculiar: IDF semed not to use attack helicopters. Apparently they were freaked out by the loss of the 'heavy transport helicopter' If it was by a Kornet, then warfare has changed.
wikipedia 9M133_Kornet
Utube
Other suggestions were that HezB simply used a lot of older cheaper ATMissiles.
HezB had tiny video cameras all around the valleys? Important that it was valleys. On a broad plain, it wold be harder to saturate-attack tanks. Deep tunnels with re-inforced concrete were much safer than the Vietcong mud tunnels, which collapsed under heavy bombs.
..............................
'Iron Fist' an explosive projectile interceptor .. similar to a small mortar bomb,.. uses only the blast effect ..crushing the soft components of a shaped charge or deflecting and destabilizing the missile or kinetic rod in their flight. The interceptor is made of combustible envelope.. Without the risk of shrapnel [might even work, occasionally?]
.....................
All these protection systems can be overwhelmed. You need lots of cheap ATMissiles but.
You also need Tanks to be on known roads.
Seems to be some confusion about shrapnel" IronFist is great because it doesnt have any, Trophy has lots. Bad luck for Infantry nearby?


_________________________________________________________

Jaron Lanier

likes USA, doesnt like Wikileaks, doesnt like anti-abortionists, seems traumatised that he missed out on EFF

It is often pointed out that Wikileaks didn't leak all the diplomatic cables it had, but only a small percentage that was filtered through traditional news organizations, as if this were a sign of deliberation and moderation.
...........................
But it did use all of the cables for blackmail. Encrypted copies were sent around the world, creating what is known as a "dead man switch." It was claimed that the encrypted cables contained genuinely dangerous information. Under certain circumstances the key would be released. Is this not similar to the case of the abortion doctors?

[ er .. well.. depends what side youre on JL ... its a thing called a Moral decision .. um ..
Doctorkilling = bad
=> revealing Doctors addresses = bad
=> revealing USAnian lies and deception = bad
is a tivially false syllogism]
I hope that Julian is not dissappeared, but if he is, I hope the "dead mans switch" works.

'deliberation and moderation' - gee Jaron, I guess thats having Old Joe Biden hold your hand while Hilary administers the waterboarding...

......................

Wikileaks grew out of a forum hosted by John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I almost became one of the founders of EFF as well. I was at the founding meeting, a meal in San Francisco's Mission District with John, John Perry Barlow, and Mitch Kapor. What kept me out of EFF was a sudden feeling -- at that very meal -- that something was going wrong.

[Hey JL maybe they thought you were a tedious prick]

There was a fascination with using encryption to make hackers potentially as powerful as governments, and that disturbed me. I could feel the surge of ego: We hackers could change history. But if there's one lesson of history, it is that seeking power doesn't change the world. You need to change yourself along with the world. Civil disobedience is a spiritual discipline as much as anything else.

............
[ ha ha I hope JL gets a decent stipend from The Atlantic, and good luck with that 'spiritual discipline']
___________________________________________________________________________

Good books

of 2010
Taylor, Jeremy :Not a Chimp: The Hunt for the Genes That Make Us Human
Wells, Spencer :Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Costs of Civilization Wells, Spencer
Finkbeiner, Ann :The Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe ..
Harman, Oren :>The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness Harman
McElheny, Victor K. :The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Kean, Sam

:Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project

..
Hawking, Stephen & :The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life ..
Leonard, Annie :>The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-..
Foster, John Bellamy & :>Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on Earth ..
Collins, Francis S. :The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine ..

Mukherjee, Siddhartha :The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Mukherjee, Siddhartha

Stipp, David :The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution

Ferris, Timothy :The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature Ferris, Timothy

Vaillant, John :The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

Greenberg, Paul :>Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food

Costa, Rebecca :>The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction Costa, Rebecca

Stannard, Russell :>The End of Discovery: Are We Approaching the Boundaries of the Knowable?..

Kelly, Kevin :What Technology Wants
Bellos Alex :Alex's Adventures in Numberland:..
Conniff Richard :The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth ..
Sacks Oliver Wolf :The Mind's Eye ..
Ball Philip :The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
Sample Ian :Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle
Greenberg Paul :Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food..
Hyde Lewis :Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership
Wu Tim :>The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Winchester Simon :Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms..
Hiltzik Michael :Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century
Whitty Julia :Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean
Fine Cordelia :Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference ..
Siddhartha Mukherjee :The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer..
Chivers C.J. :The Gun
_______________________________________________
Ancient Penguins

Waimanu manneringi and the slightly younger and smaller Waimanu tuatahi. .. from the South Island of New Zealand. The oldest fossils of Waimanu manneringi are an astounding 61.6 million years old ..
Climate was much warmer...Few large mammals ..Cretaceous extinction .. killed off many marine reptiles such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, as well as decimating sharks. This created an opportunity ..and penguins were among the first to take it. In fact, Waimanu.. plied the oceans long before the first fully aquatic whales and pinnipeds ..
[So I guess the oceans werent dead zones?]

During the Paleocene Epoch, the time interval when Waimanu appeared, climate was much warmer than today: average global sea temperature was about 6-8°C higher than today [10].
eol
a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=five-things-you-never-knew-about-pe-2010-12-20 <">scientificamerican



10. Zachos, J., M. Pagani, L. Sloan, E. Thomas, and K. Billups. 2001. Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science 292:686.
________________________________________________
woot
tentacle arm
_______________________________________