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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! September 14, 2005
25 TrackBacksChilling news released from Pakistani authorities today, confirms one of the United States’ worst fears, that terrorists have acquired unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The light weight craft are used primarily for aerial reconnaissance in dangerous a... Read More Looking at the transcripts of the questioning John Roberts faced in day two of his confirmation hearings a few things jumped out at me. One, Judge Roberts long answers were half the length of the questions themselves. Sometimes less. Some of the que... Read More I'm finding this difficult to believe that the Red Cross or FEMA couldn't control the types of items to be purchased with these debit cards. I know with any corporate credit card the type of items can be limited by different categories. For example l... Read More Perhaps a few people noticed that yesterday, when President Bush took responsibility for the federal response to Katrina, he was being visited by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. I find it of extreme importance to maintain focus on Iraq and the Globa... Read More Sfgate.com reports: (09-14) 10:59 PDT San Francisco (AP) – A federal judge has declared it unconstitutional to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. (link via Michelle Malkin) The secularist jihad against America continues. All... Read More Fresh on the heels of his ruling the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton is at it again. Late this afternoon before a courthouse packed with news people, Karlton took things a step further by ruling the Read More After he died, three well-known liberals spoke about Chief Justice Rehnquist. One, a Harvard law professor, didn't agree with the others. Take a look at what they said. And then read what a fourth person, also a Harvard professor, said many years ... Read More From German courts we are learning about a young girl who had been forced to marry her cousin in Turkey when she was only 15. When whe turned 17, she left him and her family to live by herself in Berlin, Germany. While awaiting a bus in Berlin, she w... Read More The mysterious ethos of Americans’ work being almost an end unto itself probably comes from the founding of the ancient colony under British rule. The early adventurers and pioneers had to be both builders and warriors or they could not have sur... Read More Hat tip to California Conservative Update: The Becket Fund Vows Immediate Appeal. It’s gonna be a big time fight. Judge Declares Pledge Unconstitutional Watch The FOX News Video Coverage The Pledge of Allegiance was ruled unconstitutional W... Read More I’m sure that many other bloggers have commented on what I’ve written below waaaay before this post but the other day I reflected on how large of an event Hurricane Katrina actually is and I decided to type it up Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... Homecoming Wednesday! Read More Goes to Kansas City Chief running back Larry Johnson. Read More I was curious after hearing a statement by another soldiers' angel, "Native Americans have a high percentage of service in the military" (refering to population vrs service). I decided to do a little research. I knew of the code talkers and other stori... Read More When a chemical leak of methyl isocyanate killed thousands in Bhopal, the impact was felt a half world away in Charleston, WV, in Institute, where the only other methyl isocyanate plant exists. Read More The Washington Post reports that state officials ordered a mandatory evacuation of the Outer Banks in the wake of Hurricane Ophelia. Read More The enemy is not elusive. Contrary to popular misdirection, he does not hide beneath layers of stealthy subversion. The mask he wears does not hide his face but rather, reveals the true face of his amoral sub-nature. He shows us Read More (A post from Mrs. Dadmanly). In the midst of the sadness in New Orleans and the continued separation from our soldiers I wanted to share a “sweet” story about love of family and caring for others, even when we feel at times that we do not have anything... Read More This is from a 1SGT in an old unit of mine. He has provided a superb end of tour report which I have broken into two parts. You will see some 'xxx' in places where some names have been redacted. Welcome home Top! Read More SPECTER: So how would you rule on this particular upcoming case? ROBERTS: Well, I would go along with the judicial process. That means that I would set aside my own personal feelings about how I think the laws should read, listen to the lawyers on th... Read More Independent Sources reports that the U.S. government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina was a direct result of a well-documented dislike of French people by the Bush Administration. As stated by Larry King live on CN... Read More YOU HAVE 4 HOURS LEFT!!! IF YOU HAVEN"T COMMENTED, PLEASE DO SO NOW!!! Read More Tom Peters once said about managing airlines, "If the tray tables are dirty, they don't do their engine maintenance." Lack of attention to detail is not confined to a single block in the org chart. It is usually systemic. And... Read More I think a new US Army Recruitment ad like this one might work pretty well. Read More I've recently become a fan of open-source software, which is basically free software with open source code that can be modified or improved by anyone. Instead of Microsoft Office, I use the similar, and completely free, Open Office. The amazing... Read More |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
