The Insomniac Coder

Image by pvera via Flickr This is a pretty good read. People still have this mindset that military service is where you go to when you can't cut it anywhere else and you only expect three warm meals and a cot. This may have been the truth many years ago, but it is nowhere close to reality . For example, the military is now delaying basic training to some people by up to 14 months. When I enlisted in 1992 my " delayed entry program " lasted about two months. In my case it was simple: they couldn't send me to basic training because I would graduate before my advanced class started, so there was no point in having me pass basic training, only to ride a mop bucket and a lawn mower for a couple months until the next advanced class started. It was a money decision. People don't understand it is a numbers game . Recruiters are sales people with quotas. Notice in the article a recruiter even uses the phrase "quality numbers." The way the quota is structur...

FARK.com: (5577392) Theme of Farktography Contest No. 277: "The Book of Armaments" Details and rules in first post. LGT next week's theme My three entries are from my visit to the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum (right after 9/11) and a much more recent visit to the Dulles annex of the National Air & Space museum (the Udvar-Hazy center ):  Image by pvera via Flickr Model of the Fat Man nuclear weapon  Bell AH-1 Cobra Curtiss P40-E Warhawk Curtiss P-40E Warhawk , it is painted as "Lope's Hope" in memory of USAAC/USAF pilot and World War II ace, Donald S. Lopez (former Deputy Museum Director at the same museum). At the National Air and Space Museum , Smithsonian Institution , Udvar-Hazy Center (The "Dulles Annex"). Related articles by Zemanta World War II Divebomber Lifted From The Depths (luxist.com) Divers work to lift WWII plane from Calif. lake (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

X-37B unmanned space shuttle   This is really cool. Instead of trying to build a new shuttle, somebody actually figured out how to take the parts of the process that work (reusable vehicle that is blasted off like a rocket , then glides down like a plane) and made it smaller (read: cheaper) and unmanned. They also added some interesting capabilities, like the way it scoots in and out of the atmosphere to switch directions, which totally screws with anyone that is relying on basic orbital tracking calculations to figure out where it should be. Related articles by Zemanta Amateur Astronomers Spot Super Secret X-37B Space Shuttle Replacement [X-37b] (gizmodo.com) Secret X-37B space plane lost by sat-spotters for 2 weeks (go.theregister.com) Secret X-37B Space Plane Has Changed Orbit (space.com)