One year ago today: April 22, 2013, St. John's fleet.
Five years ago today: April 23, 2009, tuning bagpipes.
I figure if I’m going to show you food pictures, at least go for variety. Last day I mentioned a home treatment for gout that involved vinegar, but I didn’t mean just any vinegar. Here is something many people have never seen. It’s apple cider vinegar but with an edge. Look at the label, it is unfiltered and non-pasteurized. Now look at the liquid. You can’t see through it. And that’s what “with the mother” means. It really does taste better, more like sour apples, and it turns clear when mixed with water to a drinkable concentration.
Or this article that a 38-year-old man poinked a 17-year-old “girl”, but that doesn’t bother me. I mean, only a fool thinks punishing males is going to stop teenage girls from having sex with whomever they please. I didn’t say it was okay, but I do say it is wrong for the authorities to get involved. Such matters are the responsibility of the families and parents, not the taxpayer. There is also the contentious issue of trying to force morality upon others. People who think they have that right are very disturbed individuals.
It says here the Yemenis object to drone attacks, saying the Americans are going about things the wrong way. First, doing it wrong is nothing new in the military. Second, when an avowed enemy keeps telling you something isn’t working, all-rightie-then! Terrorists prefer it when their victims are helpless, not the other way around. Yemenis don’t explain since when does a nation’s sovereignty confer the right to harbor terrorists? The Arabs in general complain the drone strikes are indiscriminate. And these Basra Boys know what they are talking about when it comes to civilian casualties.
But none of that bugs me much. Nor does the army ban on dreadlocks and facial tattoos. After all, it’s not like those people have to enslist to get shot at enough already. I don’t like the arrest of the 78-year-old man in Texas for a crime committed 33 years ago, since most crimes should have some kind of prosecution window or age limit. And of course, depending on their behavior other than the crime. Nope, folks, we are going to have to wait until later in the day to see if anything gets my goat.
I got it. MicroSoft. That’s who deeply irritates me. The worst software company in the world. Those who like Windows are the roaches in the computer food chain. I kid you not, whenever I meet someone who “likes” MicroSoft products, it is invariably a geek gamer who does not know any better, so he accepts the anoyances in every version. Since MicroSoft adopted the policy of watering down every new release so semi-retards can use it, it isn’t surprising to meet Windows “experts” who have never done anything but use default settings. I have yet to meet a MicroSoft Word “power user” who even knows the definition of a half em.
This Win 7 computer is going back to the shop. We’ll sell it to one of them experts. I have to reboot this pig five times a day just to clear the memory clogs. (The same programs run fine on my other computers.) And how about that Callibri 11? Like that failed png format, they gotta shove it down our throats. Even if you can find your old commands, they don’t work the same. As near as I can figure, Win 7 has code built into it to prevent you from using things MicroSoft doesn’t like, for instance free youTube videos. You pause the movie to let the buffer download ahead and the buffer also stops. People who program things like that are pitable, just pitable.
Okay, as a treat for reading this far, I’m going (without his permission) give you the Prof. Oz inside scoop on the cruise ship “Carnival Liberty”. If you’ve never been on a cruise in the past twenty years, you had better look at this first. And the Oz is no conspiracy theorist.
Many Mafia-like activities on board. They take your credit card and keep it for the whole cruise, which makes you very vulnerable. A friend has already been double billed. When you leave, you are supposed to get a statement, but they don’t give it to you in time to really check it over. They are also hard on people buying bottles of liquor in foreign ports and insist on “holding if for you”. Their entire system is designed to extract maximum dollars from you. All the bars on the boat will sell you the same brands of liquor in unlimited amounts. There are many hidden charges you have to watch out for, like for the chocolates the maid leaves in your room every day. Things in your cabin appear and disappear. They monitor every move down to the minutest detail and you have to keep in mind you are a prisoner on of their boat.
Not what you thought, I’ll bet. Please be aware that complaints against Carnival for bad service outnumber their compliments by 300 times. Carnival is plainly not the luxury cruise line it was so long ago. Most common complaint is poor service, followed by rude staff and outrageous over-charges. Like the Tennessee couple who had some wedding photos on the ship and were billed $6,000. For the record, I smelled a rat the first time I ever saw a Carnival boat and have never been on one.
So did this guy:
I'd rather lick a bar rag.
ADDENDUM
I’m still watching the documentaries on Middle East wars and it is hard not to admire the efficiency of the Israeli Defense Forces. Talk about completely outclassing the other side. This time I watched old newsreels of the situation on the Golan Heights, along the border with Syria. You can see the Syrians hiding in dugouts and spraying bullets at a kibbutz nearly three miles away. Anybody is brave from that distance.
They use Soviet tactics, never firing twice from the same position. But then a single Israeli jeep with a recoilless rifle pulls up and rapidly starts picking off the machine gun nests. Bang! Bang! Every shot a direct hit. It takes maybe six bull’s-eyes before the Syrians begin to catch on and bolt across the desert. Within seconds an Israeli jet appears over the horizon and mows them down. Time after time. The Syrians never seem to catch on.
These tactics reminded me of late-war German tactics, honed on the
So I’m watching combat footage from the era and it is comical how Americans portray war. They brag how the Allies wiped out the “entire” Panzer Lehr division. They fail to mention at the time the division only had 40 tanks left and around 8,200 men. Against 238 Shermans and 141,000 Americans. Trivia. Lehr in German means “to teach”. The division was an elite meant to go from unit to unit and teach the regular army on armored best practices. Instead they were thrown into battle wherever things got nasty.
Some may say I’m too rough on the historians. Not so, there really is a “way” that war is viewed that is different in the West than the East. I’ve read a few chapters of Tzu “The Art Of War” and von Clauswitz “On War”. Only a few? Yes. Like the Bible, after the first little bit you lean back and say to yourself, “Okay, I get it. Now I’m going to go make fish fritters. Big fritters, the kind that set off the smoke alarm.”
I will just make a quick comparison. The West views war as a business that starts and ends on certain dates. The East sees war as an encompassing ritual. So yes, what Tzu says about war is as valid today as 2,000 years ago—insofar as it has been that long since the Orientals have invented or changed a damn thing. On the other hand, von Clauswitz saw plenty of innovation in weapons and tactics. Which method is superior? I dunno. But consider the following.
No western army has ever defeated an Asian army on the battlefield. Singapore, Dien Bien Phu, Saigon. Did the west turn and run or did they finally just walk away from it? The point is, the Asians always claim victory by their standards, which often means 10 to 1 killed in action. Ah, some say, but what about the defeat of the Japanese in WWII? Well, I said Asian army. The Japanese lost because they had almost totally adopted western methods. Their navy was built in England. Their officers had trained in Germany. If they had been true to their own philosophy, they would not have attacked a stronger enemy.
There. How’s that for a blog?
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
