xthetenth

Umm. Vomitoriums are exits to arenas and amphitheatres where large numbers of people would walk out.

Cat C or incompetent?

It seems more that it's unprepared for an officer in a relatively high billet to do a resoundingly poor job than a particular lack of people. Kunk failing seemed to be a major source of the wrong people being in a position to suggest what they did. I wonder if a way for the people under him to relay what he was doing up above him would have solved that, and how it could be implemented without totally eroding the chain of command. A recurring theme of that story is people getting orders from up top that aren't based on an accurate appreciation of events and keep compounding mistakes and making problems worse while the lower ranks can't do anything.

Dammit I lose track of which forums I've seen things on.

I think that overall the unit was showing signs of institutional dry rot that wouldn't necessarily manifest without stress and quite probably wouldn't cause a collapse like that without severe stress. Part of my takeaway is that there needs to be an acknowledgement that problems bleed into each other, and if things straining the organization can be dealt with quickly an efficiently it may prevent greater problems in the future. As well, creating a culture where lower ranking members are empowered to blow the whistle and feel that it is their responsibility bar none seems to be the only way I can see to get a military to consistently live up to the values we expect even under extreme stress.

I think there would be far more useful ways to push for communism than that (and more immediate for that matter). I feel like that sort of thinking is what happens when you confuse a socioeconomic system that (hopefully) gets people working towards certain ends with the ends themselves. Communism, capitalism and all the rest aren't moral principles, they're mechanisms and organizational structures that have effects that can be judged from a moral standpoint but are not actually moral or immoral without the context of their effects. There are a great many lovely things to be said for the justice beloved of libertarians and the equality espoused by communists for example, but they must be considered in the context of where they are implemented and the results. Justice that in one society could protect a functional balance of power and distribution of wealth where nobody suffers could support entrenched wealth and ensure underinvestment in people and the squandering of their potential just as equality which could guarantee a happy productive society that protects from poverty and class-based anger could be an unworkable foreign imposition that leads to an eventual collapse in another society. I think that the cart's pulling the horse there.

Oh. I think I see what's up. According to the numbers here: http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-075.htm The numbers for use against Kamikazes are rather significantly different (second data set apparently uses better numbers. 5"/38 firing AA common expended 1000 rounds per shootdown, while 5"/38 firing VT used 200 rounds per shootdown. In non-kamikaze enounters those numbers are 1000 and 550 respectively. I can see the number I was talking about being a discussion earlier in the war when kamikazes weren't much of a thing yet. Wait, what the hell, they were still using the 1.1"? I'm gonna have to do a quick reading to try to figure out what was using that thing. Addendum: No idea which ship was still using the 1.1", I thought it might've been one of the auxiliary ship types up on picket duty getting a quad mount because it's a reasonably light gun, but it was all about the director aimed 40mms up there, with some 20mm to support.

It seemed like he was showing a pretty consistent pattern of behavior and had already gotten not good marks from psych. And yeah that is a bit tautological rereading it. He seemed like his behavior was the sort any decent military should want to get rid of. It reads like him getting in and being held on to were only out of desperation but there's a point where desperate or not some people are likely to contribute to serious problems and aren't worth holding on to. Finished the whole thing and I hope there's a success in instilling the values we claimed all militaries should hold at Nuremberg. They're good values.

As noted, the lower limit in the WWII period was 3" shells, which they designed the 3"/50 Mark 22 around as a drop-in replacement for the Bofors (and stuck with them when they turned out overweight) and the postwar attempts at an autoloaded 3" with blistering rates of fire that had to be turned down. 40mm and later 20mm are very firmly Cold War developments. For the 5"/38 Mark 12, VT fuzing reduced the number of rounds fired per aircraft downed by roughly half according to navweaps. I've seen numbers saying that's a 5x increase in overall effectiveness, which given limited engagement windows and so on I can kind of believe but I'd want to do math first. Friendly reminder that the US developed AWACS during WWII, complete with a radar that was in active combat use by the British when the Cold War ended and had an operational plan for it. Cold War carrier defense doctrine is so very linked to what they were doing off Okinawa it's funny.

Goons ruin everything.

I'd love one of those and inexplicably I really want to fire one of the post-WWII Papua New Guinean bows with huge heads forged from rebar with a very far front of center center of gravity talked about in this PDF: http://www.alaskabowhunting.com/PR/Ashby_Papua_New_Guinea_Bows_and_Arrows.pdf They've got a weird stance and carry spare arrows in the hand in comparison to what we do, but it's effective even if it isn't descended from our rigid traditions. Also, interesting bit about signs of heat treating for armor piercing purposes: http://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-do/research/analytical-projects/armour-piercing-arrowheads

Usually if there's a sticker on one side of the hub that side is the direction air's going. If not, that's probably the side with the plastic stationary bits holding the center of the fan in place.

I support their brave endeavors to probe the boundaries of smug pseudointellectual incomprehensibility. I can't even bring myself to tell what's up there.

Funnily my case has filters on all the intakes. All but one are nicely removable quickly and easily. In a lot of cases the venting holes have outwards flow, also you can block them off to pressurize the case out through the back vent and make sure all intakes are vented.

What the hell was Green doing still in if he was known to be unstable and had needed a waiver to get in in the first place? Frankly he seems like the sort of dreg a military less desperate for people would pass up. Frankly that reads like the Nam bits of Prodigal Soldiers, with horrible institutional rot catalyzed by people who shouldn't have wound up in uniform. I don't think it's an accident that Lieutenant Calley was a recruit from Project 100,000 and somebody so obviously ill-fit for military service from before joining up as Green catalyzed this crime. Also, an interesting comment in light of another subject of discussion: On the other hand, in a more positive light, I'm damned proud that Watt wore the uniform representing my country. He's a hero no matter what he says, heroism is knowing that your job is the right thing and doing it no matter the risk.

If your case is tall the NH-D15 is actually pretty accomodating because there's a cutout in the heatsink and you can move the fans up freely. Like so: If you've got a wide enough case there's a bunch of room. You can see how short my heatsinked DIMMs are in comparison, and if you're really not sure Noctua's website has a lovely compatibility chart complete with schematics (64mm clearance between motherboard and that notch, 165mm normally and 192mm with the front fan raised all the way to accommodate the DIMMs (you could also put it on the other side from the RAM if you're not on a quad channel board). (I'm fully aware this likely isn't what you're looking for but it's worthwhile information to compile for the other guys anyway)

Starships are made to fly.

That's Texas for ya. I'm starting to believe the Texans who talk like it isn't really America. Damn straight. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to externalize costs onto the people who put their lives and bodies on the line to scrounge pennies. If you can't pay for the people damaged by a war you have no right whatsoever getting in it unless it's a matter of absolute necessity and there's no other options.

I'd murder for statistics on the demographics on people joining the military broken down by when. I would be relatively surprised not to see a pretty decently educated and well-off peacetime body getting supplemented by a wide demographic spread in and shortly after 2001, followed by a gradual loosening of standards as demand grew and supply fell. There have historically been changes in the makeup of the force, so lumping everyone together isn't necessarily going to get the most accurate picture, especially when one group in particular is under discussion. However the peacetime force I'd say was really not the dregs by the 80s because there was a conscious effort to legitimize it as a path to opportunity. It seems like it would be especially appealing to the poorer kids in a given neighborhood whose resources aren't necessarily up to providing the college education the life they aspire to requires. That demographic chart by neighborhood chart would be a very interesting counterpart to a similar breakdown by personal/family wealth. Unfortunately I'm having a swine of a time and am not even sure I can find one (if it exists). What I'm seeing does tend to show that middle class neighborhoods are providing the bulk of the recruits, which is unsurprising considering that that's tied to school district quality and the goal to get 90% high school recruits. There are however no notes about ideology of course.

For the record, Victorian smut is filthy (and screwed up to modern sensibilities in a good few ways, some of which are considered pretty non-negotiable across wide demographic stretches, like incest). They made some great advancements and some cool things but we still have a pretty significantly cancerous cultural legacy from them because there's a lot of "traditional" behavior and thought that stripped away a lot of older safety valves for various groups and behaviors they didn't like. I can't help but think the time was pretty cool though, with it being back when a single person could really push the boundaries of science and technology and make something that caused a huge change.

It's severely weird realizing all the nationalist stuff that only kind of got sorted out with huge amounts of problems less than a century ago. It was especially weird reading about post-Ottoman Arab nationalist thought in the context of the German and Italian nations being works in progress that seemed to be working but weren't really sorted out yet when the whole Arab Nationalism thing was starting as an ideology. If that had happened on a different chronology I don't doubt that some things would have gone considerably differently.

Victorian and Edwardian people spent a truly worrying amount of time feverishly wondering about how reprehensible and horrible everybody else's sexuality is, I'm not too suprised. We got some fine myths about depraved Romans from them too. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the moral panic stuff sold to people looking for smut.

So's they totally aren't nazis despite posing with Nazi iconography because black humor and ironic nazism but totally not the awful views we'd say anybody else pulling that sort of stuff hold because they're our troops and I know what all of them are like? I've yet to see a place where ironic racism or nazism was common and there weren't a few people who really meant it. Even in the best case it's some serious bad decisions and a wild disregard for the integrity of the uniform they're wearing.

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure they did. There's also the fact that the people I knew who did stuff like that held some pretty heinous views and often hid some nasty prejudices under "ironic" stuff like that, and considering at least one wound up going to the Citadel I wouldn't be endlessly surprised if that were reflected in the military.

Yeah. Considering how well things have been progressing in wearables, I'm reasonably hopeful it might be coming sooner rather than later.