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Sturgeon's House

Virdea

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Everything posted by Virdea

  1. To answer about FOIA. I was the FOIA instructor for the USDOJ during 2000-2001 when the model was switched from the Clinton era "must reveal" to the Bush era "must conceal." In the Clinton era a FOIA request was automatically granted unless it was scuttled by a 5 U.S.C. § 552((x) reason. That meant a FOIA paperwork person had to release documents UNLESS they could describe why the documents must be retained. In the Bush era the documents went to a must conceal model where the person who released the documents must do the leg work to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the documents do not fit a 5 U.S.C. § 552((x) reason to deny. This had two effects - increasing paperwork and lawsuits, and massively decreasing what was sent out. When I requested Vietnam era AARs and medical documents a number of years back I was initially given them (as a member of DOJ it was easy to file) and then refused just a few months apart based on 5 U.S.C. § 552((1) even though the documents were not classified. The clerk after getting the Bush era memo put a halt to my document hunts for fear of ending up in jail, and the memo was sometimes accompanied by a "people at the top of government are watching you." At the time the halls of government were being flooded by young people with new jobs in what was one of the greatest expansions of non-military people in peace time ever recorded, and these young people were very proud of their political appointments, held sometimes extraordinary power, and had next to no training for the tasks they were being set to. Before anyone starts an anti-Bush tirade, must conceal is not all that harsh, it is just that the documents that the government are willing to fight out in court increases. I was eventually able to get the documents I wanted, it just took a filing in Federal court to get them. Obama went to a mixed conceal and reveal - domestic is not more open than even Clinton, anything WOT and international political is fought tooth and nail even if it is a memo describing the PM of Sweden's desire for a copy of Angry Birds. As part of my research class I require every student to apply for and obtain a series of documents from the US Government and they have found great stuff. One time we got the deck plans for the old CV Ticonderoga.
  2. Actually I was talking about the press. I read and poorly speak Portuguese and Spanish, and this is where my wife's family is from, plus my doctoral training was in historical analysis of the media (which I sort of hate, the media analysis part at least). So I monitor South American media. Venezuelan media speaks in terms of "look what the horrible capitalists made ISIS do." Brazil is really odd in their constant calls for dialogue with the poor people in ISIS even though the average person in Brazil is pretty disgusted by ISIS. Turkey is really weird with how much coverage of ISIS is redirecting - namely ISIS beheads someone but then they will spend eight pages explaining why killing kids is really a plot to demean Islam. Turkey has never been that weird before.
  3. The above CGI was dubbed the Westworld Effect in editing. It was an in joke.
  4. Actually Americans in WW2 were exemplary in their conduct even against the Japanese. I do not here mean faultless, but the average American group was still trying to take prisoners even after they found out it was worthless in the Islands campaign. I do think however we will get the typical cycle: 1. US gets brutalized by barbarians ISIS increasing stress on US soldiers. ISIS brutality gets limited coverage in the world press 2. US soldiers will, acting without orders, torture someone and it will be caught on camera. 3. World Press will act with condemnation against horrible Americans who are nothing more than torture monkeys. 4. ISIS, with a free pass, will brutalize with only limited coverage of its acts.
  5. If your weight is above 100 and you can run a mile then you are pretty close to a gladiator. They were heavy.
  6. Weirdly enough this guy approaches the norm for gladiators. Modern forensics on gladiator bodies show they carried quite a bit of weight - and not redneck built beefy weight but actual folds and mass, enough that their shoulder blades and hip joints showed wear patterns similar to a very heavy man. A 5' 6" gladiator who died in England could have massed just shy of 150 and would have displayed jowls, a beer belly, and a heavy below waist fat. The theory on why this is done is contained in lanista training manuals - the arms and weapons given the gladiators were fixed by precedents so no advantage could be gained there. Advantage could be gained by being fat, as most weapons were slashing weapons (to give the audience a greater thrill, as slashing weapons combined with strategic armor would have given a long contest). Someone his weight would have been unlikely to be a German soldier, but Gladiators could have eaten as much as 8000 calories a day of high fat, high carb meal and looked more like him than Kirk Douglas. (Also note the shoulders, wrists, and jowls, my wife's HOUSE MD-like office mate told me she thinks this gentleman has Hashimotos complicated by Dysthymia. She bases this on the fact that weight gain caused by overeating makes it impossible at that weight to bend the knees like this gentleman, and that his hands show water gain not weight gain. When you hear miracle stories of people loosing 100 kilos it is often because they cure Hashimotos or one of the other major thyroid conditions.)
  7. Yep - I have GLBs reloaded for me since my grenades are use blanks. I never really understood the theory that rifle grenades were too dangerous because "our guys did not know the difference between a blank and a bullet."
  8. The Iowa class is still extensively classified despite being passed on and now out of service. Closest you can get to full disclosure is getting a research kit from the North Carolina. Technically the armor could still be made (some of it is used in medical research) and the cannon could still be drawn. 10 years after being ordered the US could have a ship in the water crazy as it sounds. That said the Navy hates the BBs as much as the Air Force hates the A10s. Last time they had them they did not want them and saw the BBTFs as Reagan not carrying through with his promise to them of replacing the last four Tikes with Ikes.
  9. My WW1 Documentary comes to Kickstarter soon. I expect 10,000 from each of you.
  10. Yeah, I just found my manual and realized my French is weak. The table has examples of grenades but the top entry is for HOT - 800mm. M31 is 200mm Mle. 1952 is 250mm The current grenades are just 66mm rockets without the rocket and penetrates 300mm The HE round for the French is just a 60mm mortar round (and a 50mm mortar round in the 1950s) for a comparison of effectiveness with a 40mm Americans in the 1960s tested the French Strix and refused to adopt it because it was a blank fired grenades and US soldiers had nearly 20 accidents during testing where they fired it with live ammo. Modern French grenades use live ammo.
  11. The man is my great uncle McKeeby, whom I knew as Uncle Byron when we visited his grave. My Great Great Uncle is standing next to the trophy. He was the nut in our family and was constantly agitating for open marriage laws and annexation of the Philippines as a state.
  12. Armor pen is like miles per gallon. I know the rifle grenades have impressive penetrations, but I have always suspected that they are measured against 1960s armor. properly fired rifle grenades though are unique in that their low velocity causes them to strike the top of the tank. The main issue for rifle grenades in any case was always the size of their jet stream, as their small explosive load may not be enough to blow up a tank with wet storage ammo and other safety devices.
  13. Each French squad has traditionally had since 1956 a LRAC and later Eyrx operator (where the main AT force comes from), a GPMG operator, a sniper with a long range marksman rifle, and 4-8 rifleman with grenade launchers that carry a wide range of grenades issued as needed for different missions. When tanks threaten they carry a range of grenades that have between 700 and 800mm armor penetration. The grenades are designed to attack the top of a turret. In practice the French have never fought armor heavy enemies with infantry, but accounts of actions in Afghanistan where a squad carries 50 high explosive and WP grenades, plus AT grenades to break through concrete, say that the tactics were very effective.
  14. Probably gunfire. US intercepts of drug planes are not normally armed with missiles. It is interesting that Venezuela downed the plane, normally they are pretty tolerant of smuggling, and many smugglers can file flight plans with the government to avoid such complications. The normal complaint is smuggling from Venezuela TO Brazil, which Lula traditionally tolerated as the junior partner in the old Lula / Chavez love fest. The unusual direction the drugs were flying, and the resort to fighter intercept could say a lot about changing politics in America do Sur.
  15. Another trick is to find (or have me send you one) a French recoil sleeve. They were designed in 1952 because French rifles began to throw HUGE direct fire 22mm grenades as part of a new anti-tank strategy with the eventual ideal of having each member of a French squad able to tackle a tank. These pad fit the comb of an Enfield and add about four centimeters to the reach. Let me know if you want me to track one down for you.
  16. One importance for finds in this era is that we now know the Australopithecus gens were tool users. Complex tool use and cooperative hunting are the chicken and egg of human evolution - at some point evolution either suited our line to hunting, or in some way hunting caused our line to evolve. We have so few data points of these creatures, unlike later homo species, that any discovery in this area is important.
  17. No - I agree completely. One of my articles on the development of great war infantry tactics required six books published 1914-1917, review about 700 letters, and read hundreds of what passed for AARs in that era. The original scholarly article was nearly unreadable in its density. The popular article was much simpler but was immensely dense in terms of how much was needed to make each statement of fact. In the discussion on American bayonets in my bayonets book - the simple section was itself an entire research paper. It tracked the writings of the designer of the springfield spike bayonet, complaints about bayonet advocates who had never fought in the west, complaints by soldiers who were unhappy with the spike bayonet, articles in the New York Times and Herald about the issue, and NARA documents. And although the anti-bayonet party won for many years - they were defeated under British influence in 1907, but enough old guard existed that getting bayonets accepted as superior to marksmanship was a difficult process. Even after all that work the fact that advocates existed for bayonets being adopted even at the expense of machine guns could call my thesis into question. It took a long time before I finally put the US in its own category vis a vis bayonet use.
  18. Writing is a ton of work, so yeah - you are probably right, I have a long "to do" list right now - funding a movie and getting that shot, four books each of which the research for already fills up three book shelves of binders, and I am building a television studio in Virginia, so my time is heavily called for. But I know a lot of people who wish they could have something with their name on it that says "written by".
  19. Sharepack cores are power generation units. He either needs a LOT of power for something like a big radio, or he is the generator for his team.
  20. You are still welcome, and this will not be the last book I write and edit, I will be moving a lot of my work from academic to popular press. You could start by editing even and then picking up long form when you can.
  21. We literally have the best of both worlds in word count. The biggest I can make a book and keep it priced below 6 bucks, and break even on the affair is around 75,000 words and 200 images. As I figure how many people want to play and what the book looks like, we can start to narrow down the size, but a book getting bigger than desire simply gets reset as two books. Normally editors hate this as editorial time is a big cost, but since I am an editor and can eat that cost myself - I literally only have to rent by own equipment from myself (don't ask) there is no limit on size if the writing is good. We could end up with a 21st century book, a 20th century book and so one if we get crazy enough.
  22. That said, a photo taken by you of twenty PH soldiers ready for battle looking on at an iPad, even if staged, would work.
  23. What you describe would be the last chapter - the use of roll-your-own technology in battle is a major issue and represents the return full-circle when battle used hunting weapons. We have to have clear copyright clearance on any document. Official photographs released by the PH government are OK, but we cannot simply rip images off the web without the written permission of the person who took them.
  24. Everyone is welcome. AND since the book will be an eBook, if you miss a deadline the section can be added later. I hate to say that, but it is one of the nice things of eBooks. The main unifying feature of this book is the relationship of technology and the soldier on the ground. So if a subject cannot be simplified enough to go in there then maybe you and I should explore a co-authored book of greater density on the subject of aircraft alone.
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