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Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Field Guide to Flying Death: Cruise Missiles

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A British Tornado fighter plane carrying four  Storm Shadow Cruise Missiles   Cruise missiles are actually a pilotless jet plane th...
Friday, April 13, 2018

President Grant Wipes Out the Ku Klux Klan in 1872

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I am on page 767 of an 1,100-page biography of President Ulysses S. Grant by Ron Chernow.   The first 600 pages follow Grant from ch...
Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Empathy: The Tyrant’s Key to Manipulating Fools

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In a perfect world, empathy would always be good. It would describe our capacity to identify with the suffering of others. We would u...
Thursday, March 29, 2018

Maundy Thursday: My Day to Volunteer

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On this day 11 years ago, Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter, I decided to call an Army recruiter and re-enlist.  It was mid-April....
Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Tankers vs. Non-Tankers: the never-ending discussion among armor crewmen

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    So much of the Army is competition, especially the combat arms parts of the Army where men are confined together in small armored...
Monday, March 26, 2018

Blackhawk Helicopter at Sunset, Ali Air Base, Iraq, December 2009

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Today I was looking at photos from my tour in Iraq in 2009-10.  Near the end of the tour, the days were shorter and winter sun shone on the...
Thursday, March 15, 2018

Every Week in Cold War West Germany, Gas Mask Drills

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Every week during my three years in Cold War West Germany,  the Tankers of 1-70th Armor had a MOPP drill. Gene Pierce, Abel Lopez and...