Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

One man’s tragic tale documenting the horrors of WWII concentration camp life from the inside

We all know there are terrible tales of military heroism that we don’t get to hear until far, far later. One recent example of this that has come out is the tale of Anthony Acevedo, military medic assigned to a satellite camp of Buchenwald with others in his tropp because they looked like Jews. Because of how the military handles many sensitive incidents, particularly during war, this is a story that was never intended to be known to the general public.

Acevedo’s story is one that was never supposed to be told. “We had to sign an affidavit … [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren’t supposed to say a word,” he says.

The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home. “You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press,” it says. “You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures.”

I am not here to question silencing those who have suffered through such events. I have worked in a classified environment, and I fully understand and respect the need to initially treat sensitive matters as classified. The military says the reason for secrecy is to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees, and I have absolutely no reason to question that. I do, however, think there is a need for an office responsible for reviewing
these cases after the fact. This is a story that is well worth knowing, and the events Mr. Acevedo describes seem to have no impact on the need to protect that the military says is the case. Certainly, 60 years after the war, I would can’t imagine why he needs to be kept under confidentiality agreement. Understand I’m not saying I know that it is fine for him to talk – I just can’t come up with a reason based on what I’ve read and learned that would support keeping confidentiality in effect.

That said, see some more below the break about Mr. Avecedo’s experience, and learn a little about how his agreement hurt him in the shortterm.

Continue reading “One man’s tragic tale documenting the horrors of WWII concentration camp life from the inside”

My FaceBook WTF?!? moment

Anyone who uses FaceBook knows there are ads in the sidebar.  I usually ignore them – I’ve been online long enough to automagically tune that stuff out.  Today, however, the FaceBook ad server caught my attention with this WTF moment:

Now I have to figure out just what I’m doing in my surfing that makes FaceBook think that first ad is appropriate for me.  Maybe I need to surf more straight pr0n?  I thought maybe the $1 million from the second ad would be available for me if I got involved with the hot gay men, but sadly, the money is pretend only.

[tags]FaceBook, WTF, Ad Service, More pr0n please[/tags]

ExtremeTech: Technologies we wish had caught on

Recently, I was reading an article at ExtremeTech discussing technologies the site editors wish had caught on. For the most part, I can see why the article creators wish the technologies had caught on, but I confess that I am mostly indifferent to or mildly in disagreement with the items they listed. One mention, however, I felt I could respond to since I long ago mentioned it here on the Blahg. I wanted to remark on the text made in the article in regards to the Microsoft Zune. Rather than start with what I agree with, I’ll pop the negative portion of my rather long comment out first, just below the break, so we can end on the happy, let’s all hug agreement section at the close.

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The Kudos Society – My take on the Open Source community

I am working on a set of posts in which I want to talk about Open Source products. Given how long just my introduction to these has grown, I will probably move them over to separate pages on the Blahg. To begin, I am writing a bit on why I am such a fan of Open Source, what tools I use and what tools I recommend for others, and why I try to participate in parts of the Open Source movement. The overall community of Open Source developers, users, and other contributors is something I call “The Kudos Society,” which may deserve at least a small bit of explanation as well.

All that said, what follows below the break is some of my personal history in joining this movement, which hopefully sheds some light on why I care so much about the status and health of Open Source overall.

Continue reading “The Kudos Society – My take on the Open Source community”

Global Warming and the World Wide Pirate Shortage

It seems that piracy is returning to favor in parts of the world. We hear more stories about pirates taking massive tankers and cargo ships in certain parts of the world, and the ransom demands for the return of these ships is growing ever greater. After decades of global warming, there is talk that we are now heading for another ice age.

It has plagued scientists and politicians for decades, but scientists now say global warming is not the problem.

We are actually heading for the next Ice Age, they claim.

British and Canadian experts warned the big freeze could bury the east of Britain in 6,000ft of ice.

There can be little doubt, given the inverse relationship between global warming and worldwide number of pirates (read beginning just above the graph half-way down the article) that these events, the increase in piracy and the return to an ice age, are related. This is simply the environmental impact of a poor world economy, I suspect. As it gets harder for people to earn a few dollars by working, they’ll look to earn a few hundred million dollars from stealing massive tankers. That’s just forward-thinking economics, really.

In response to the multiple looming crises, several world governments have taken to combating piracy. For example, an Indian warship has recently sunk a pirate “mother ship” to fight piracy.

An Indian naval vessel sank a suspected pirate “mother ship” Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden and chased two attack boats into the night, officials said, as separate bands of brigands seized Thai and Iranian ships in the lawless seas.

A multinational naval force has increased patrols in the region, and scored a rare success Tuesday when the Indian warship, operating off the coast of Oman, stopped a ship similar to a pirate vessel described in numerous bulletins. The Indian navy said the pirates fired on the INS Tabar after the officers asked to search it.

If the global temperature goes up next week, you’ll know why. Besides, the Indian government is apparently forgetting the trickle-down effect that the $100 million ransom will have on the global economy is the Somali pirates get the money they are asking for. I’m betting it could show up as early as next month in your pay check. If you get a little pay bump or a Christman bonus, remember to thank a Somali pirate.

[tags]Piracy, FSM, Pastafarian, Global economy, Climate change, Global warming, Global ice age, Trickle down economics[/tags]

The World’s Sexiest Man (other than me)

People magazine has once again named the world’s sexiest man, and once again they somehow overlooked my qualifications that should have assured my winning. I don’t harbor any resentment for the winner, naturally, but I do feel I fare much better in the moderately-overweight, middle-aged man with bad habits. And that’s something I just don’t see Mr. Hugh “I’m totally Wolverine AND Van Helsing at the same time” Jackman “Oh, and I can dance and sing, too”.

He’s a triple threat: a star who can sing, dance and wield a weapon.

At 6-foot-2, all scruff and biceps, Hugh Jackman looms large in the epic “Australia,” which he says kept him “dirty 95 percent of the time” and left people stammering, “Oh … my … God,” according to costar Nicole Kidman, who adds, “Women’s jaws drop when Hugh walks into a room.”

The interviewer with the magazine goes on the ask him about such silly topics as the success of his marriage (he and wife Deb just are happy to be together), the secret of keeping passion alive (his costumes feed fantasies of affairs), and what he wears to bed (hey, you’ll have to look that up yourself). No mention of how he produces claws from his knuckles, nor how he gets through airport security without the alarms going off (is adamantium non-magnetic? I think X2 says otherwise, but that could just be poetic license). No discussion of his experiences as a werewolf, nor the pain involved in infection, transformation, or cure.

There is a mention of his new movie Australia, but I’m really not at all interested in talk of a fictional nation/continent on the bottom of the world, unless they at least film with authenticity and show everyone upside-down. Folks – the world is flat, and people would fall off if they were on the bottom. Really. What do they teach you people in “school” these days?

UPDATE: Images added

[tags]Hugh Jackman, People magazine, World’s sexiest man, Mythical continents[/tags]

Start slicing stuff – no sharks included

So long, we have failed to talk lasers here on the Blahg.  If you’ve been around long, you know it’s one of our favorite topics.  But what is happening in the laser world?  What goes on when the Blahg doesn’t mention lasers?  If someone puts out news on a laser, and the Blahg doesn’t cover it, does it deserve to be mounted on the head of a friggin’ shark?  Well yes.  Yes it does.  Every laser deserves a shark of its own.

That out of the way, what good news to we have?  Well, how about a guide to building your own laser cutter?  Would you be interested in getting a knife made of focused light?  And what if it was less than $50?

This project demonstrates a simple hack to create a large format laser cutter utilizing all the scrap electronics you may have lying around. If you have a broken scanner or two, the cost can be just about 30 dollars for the entire project.

I totally need to build one of these, even if it isn’t actually a hand-held laser knife.  It sounds cool enough that it could go in to The Best of Instructables book, although it looks like it didn’t make the first volume.  Maybe volume 2?

So we’ll try to get you up date on the coolest or most useless new laser news in the coming days.  And as always, we’ll watch for news of advances on the friggin’ shark front.

[tags]lasers, laser, shark, Instructables, Laser knife[/tags]

Weird Al wonder

The wifey-person and I just finished watching Weird Al on the Biography channel.  I know there are folks who don’t like Weird Al.  Of course, I’m not much of one to care what others think, so I’ll go ahead and post about him anyway.  Every time I think about Weird Al, I think about this, one of his two finest videos:

Rumor has it that Coolio wasn’t too happy with Weird Al over this video.  Although all reports are that later they worked things out, perhaps minus hugs and kisses.

Although Yankovic traditionally secures permission from the artists he parodies (even though this is not legally required), and was told by his record label that Coolio had given permission, Coolio later claimed that he had not given such permission. This created a minor controversy, as speculation surfaced that Coolio had actually given permission but later claimed he had not in the fear that allowing the parody would not be seen as “cool”, or that Yankovic’s record label had lied to Yankovic in the hopes that the song would become popular.

During the show, one of Weird Al’s cohorts mentioned that pretty much every artist Weird Al contacts now is willing to let him create parody works.  Nearly everyone says yes, although Prince is apparently the perpetual holdout.  I wonder why that is.

And while I’m sure you don’t actually care what his other best video is, I’m going with The Saga Begins.

But I must say, some of his latest songs and videos are quite good, too.

[tags]Weird Al, Amish Paradise, The Saga Begins, Video[/tags]

Back, and slowly re-building

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, if you are either of my regular two visitors at least, the Blahg is finally back, although still not updating daily.  I am in the process now of restoring 1200+ image files that got lost in the move to a new host and went unnoticed among all the other issues that kept me mostly inactive.  I still have a few hundred to try to recover, but my backups are either incomplete, broken, or on my recently deceased laptop where I worked on the Blahg most frequently.  So while I will restore more as I can track down what else I’m missing, there will likely be an occasional dead image that is unlikely to get restored unless I get lucky and find a more recent backup that is complete and not damaged.