If Uranium Fever comes on before I go to bed I'm stuck lying awake for a half hour before I can… ah, fuck. Started thinking about it and there it is.

That game's system was nuts.

Maaaan… My dad was born in 1950, so I grew up listening (and loving) a lot of oldies, even though I was born at the midpoint of the eighties, and hearing that song while surveying nuclear devastation put that song in a creepifying new light I never imagined before. I know there's no thematic connective tissue between…

Dated a girl whose parents were moon-landing denialists, and it came up a day after I'd just been in the observatory all night bouncing laser beams off the reflectors that got left during the Apollo program. That was… an interesting dinner…

That was probably the biggest blood-pressure elevators for me, hearing people I respect dismiss the story out of hand as "kid-lit, consequence-free violent escapism," based on only seeing the first movie. It basically boiled down to me holding my tongue and saying, "Just wait."

X-wing really nailed the purpose behind the ships. Especially if you catch the WW2 inspiration angle.

The ones that can be stopped, and saved, should be. The incredibly difficult work being done to deprogram child soldiers in Africa is one of those things that gives me hope for the human race, but, the difficult part is going to be stopping those that can't be saved, without creating the conditions that just create…

I've devoured a couple dozen pounds of books on Iran and there's a little blinky light in my brain that will never shut off that basically just says "something something Mossadegh".

A lot of it is the disconnect hate provides, and the carnage made possible by modern weaponry. If you have dehumanized a group enough, you're not murdering untold innocents, you're just holding a 7lb. weight against your shoulder and squeezing your index finger.

I've spent my whole life repairing machines, and a lot of the assignation of blame has to me always felt like confusing the diagnosis for the correction.

I think one thing to keep in mind is few of the nations in that part of the world have had a stable, strong, functioning civic system since at least the 1920s. Whether through internal dysfunction, outside interference, or just random dumb fucking luck (economic instability caused by factors outside their control/crop…

If they could only overhear the opinions servicemen have expressed to me on "Wal-Mart Patriotism"

This is one of those man-up decision-time moments for France. Do they carefully consider the situation, and try to move forward in the best way possible, or take the bait and go down the very road they tried to warn us off of a decade ago.

Stay safe, sir!

I got a 110lbs Malamute half in my lap and a slightly smaller Husky at me and my wife's side. It feels idiotic to feel *I'm* the one that needs comforting, but here we are.

I was about to change my profile pic for the first time in 6 years to the GIGN insignia, realized how fucking tasteless that would be and decided instead to come here. I feel I made the right choice.

WALL-E over here.

To me I always see that reaction as the mewling of a scared child. They see a situation as horrific as this and their mind blanks, so the only way they can cope and make the world make sense is to say "Well, if I'd been there, with my AR-15 and its 3,000 attached accessories, I would have stood my ground and shot…

You're right. I was getting a bit ahead of myself. I was specifically thinking about reports the guys were hucking grenades. The dust is far from settled. Everyone has that Hollywood mental image of terrorists running wild with a full-auto AK-47, and while it's likely that's what they were packing, I haven't seen it…

Shattered kneecap kept me out of the Army in '05. That would have put me in Iraq in '06 depending on assignment. Of course I got to keep in touch with the kids who made it, and 3 of them never came back. I went in not wanting to "kill terrorists". I wanted to keep my friends safe, and make sure if someone was going to…