"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
Boy, does this make me feel old: In early November 2007, the nose and cockpit section of a Missouri Air National Guard F-15C broke away from the rest of the aircraft during a training flight. The pilot ejected and survived. Here’s a simulation of what happened: Following the mishap, the USAF grounded its entire fleet […]
Gwen, one of my regular readers, alerted me to this story about Pentagon and pharmaceutical industry efforts to create a drug to suppress soldiers’ moral qualms over killing. Psychological Kevlar, in other words, to reduce or eliminate growing mental health problems in troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s the trouble with traditional methods of overcoming our aversion […]
Is air power the new face of successful war-fighting? Much to the dismay of the boots-on-the-ground zealots … the answer for today’s democracies may well be “yes.” During the summer, while U.S. ground forces in Iraq were distracted investigating potential war criminals in their midst, air power delivered a major success. … When thousands of troops […]
I know, who the hell wants to read about work . . . or write about it, for that matter? But I’m on the intra-hospital run for a month, shuttling patients between Tucson and Phoenix, and it’s been an interesting first week. It started with a homeless man who soiled himself at a rest area where […]
Our friend Darrell celebrated his 59th birthday with us last night. Here we are at the dining room table: So here’s to Darrell, and good friends! I’m feeling especially fond of Frank (2nd from left in the photo). Frank, like Donna and Mary Anne, is Italian-American. After tasting the sauce and polenta I cooked, he pronounced […]
This is the real stuff, a meat sauce recipe from the Veneto region of Italy, handed down through generations of my wife’s family. I’m sure the recipe changed as it adapted to life in the United States, but when Donna and I visited the old folks in Vittorio Veneto back in the 1980s, we thought their sauce tasted just […]
Donna and I went to a party today. At one point our host put on a DVD his son sent from Iraq, where he’s serving with the US Army. We’ve known our friend’s son since he was in junior high, and we’ve seen him grow up into a fine young man. The DVD he sent […]