California Cannonball Melee

The crew of Mythbusters sent a cannonball shooting through a residential neighborhood during filming for a recent eopisode where they were trying to measureits speed.  The shot wound up leaving some very clean holes in a nearby house, in which the family was sleeping, and without injuring anyone bounced around before exiting the structure, bouncing across a busy street, off the roof of another home, and ending up coming to rest inside a parked mini-van.

Update - Intrepid

My previous post regarding the repatriation of the remains of the 13 Sailors of USS Intrepid crew from Libya has gained considerable attention.  Of course, I have deep sensitivities to our Navy's history and heritage.  I also have a moral obligation to defend my service.  And so I'm doing my best to see the issue of repatriating the remains of the Intrepid crew from the Navy's point of view.  As anyone giving even a glimpse to the argument can tell, the issue is a complicated one.  So let me play devil's advocate and see what shakes out.

Fossilized Pearl

There is a lot of media attention this year for the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Pearl Harbor.  And much of it seems to be rightly recognizing that our living connection to that event - our veterans - are slowly fading away.  Consequently many articles this year focused on the stories of that day told from those who lived it.

But what will we remember of the event when everyone associated with it has passed on?  What do we remember of any event when the chief reminders are monuments silently extolling the unspecified sacrifice of faceless names, lost ships, and numbered unit designations?

Navy abandons its dead? or honors them?

There has been significant press lately on an issue more than 200 years old: thirteen American Sailors, often referred to as the first predecessors of today’s Navy SEALs, remain buried on Libyan soil. The families of some of those Sailors want the remains repatriated to the United States. Navy officials argue that the early practice of burying its dead at sea and along foreign coastlines near the site of death constitutes an official burial, and therefore considers the matter closed. Is the Navy honoring its dead? or doing an injustice to their memory? The issue is hotly contested.