Military
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Rapid Fire Saturday
- How to tell a good story
- Google unleashes free 3-D software
- A very interesting post on how a war with Iran is likely to function.
- LifeHacker on problem solving.
- LifeHacker on starting your own business.
- A guy in Colorado got caught with an infrared traffic light changer, and was only ticket $50! Totally worth it.
- A very good article on this ridiculous “Peak Oil” meme.
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Flagrant gadgetry
- Navicore Personal GPS – it wirelessly turns your bluetooth phone in to a GPS device. Very cool, but it seems to only be available in Europe, though I imagine that will change soon. HT: Gizmodo.
- 10 Million Candlepower flashlight – with built in recharging! And only $49 bucks too. There’s a 15 million candlepower for sale too.
- The Pain Ray – Not really a gadget, but cool in a creepy way. It uses microwaves to heat nerve endings. Supposedly for security and crowd control.
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Memorial Day being an odd coincidence
I was looking at the referral logs for moodyloner.net and came across A Day in Iraq. It’s a blog written by a soldier from Fort Benning (in Columbus Georgia) and his life there. Fascinating stuff with many pictures. A blog very much worth reading.
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Iraqi Insurgency
Some very interesting reading; Tom Palmer refers to this WAPO article on the goals of the insurgency in Iraq, and it raises some interesting thoughts.
The article breaks it all down into 3 groups: al Qaida in Iraq, headed by Zarquai, hardcore Baathists, and non-hardcore Baathist sympathizers. It’s all very good reading, most particularly the goals of the hardcore Baathists, which are to regain control of Iraq should the US leave. They thing they have the capability to do so based on their superior organization and ruthlessness.
All of which makes me wonder, the US death rate seems to be holding at around 15 or so per week, with a variance of 5 or so. However they seem to be coming in offensive action, not random murder, and the number of insurgents killed has been skyrocketing lately. Hopefully this is a good sign.