Category: Random

Apparently "Canadian" is translated into "Strafe and Kill" in American pilot slang

Canadian soldier killed, others wounded in ‘friendly fire’

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. warplanes mistakenly strafed Canadian troops fighting Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and seriously wounding five on Monday in an operation that NATO claims has also left 200 insurgents dead.

This is not the first “friendly-fire” incident involving US pilots and Canadian Ground troops.

On April 18, 2002, four Canadian soldiers were killed in what became known as the Afghanistan friendly fire incident: Sgt. Marc Léger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith. Eight other soldiers were wounded during a night-time live-fire training exercise near Kandahar and Tarnak Farms. The four were killed when an American F-16 fighter pilot, unaware of the exercise, noticed the ground fire and responded by dropping a bomb without determining who the combatants were. These were the first Canadian soldiers to be killed in combat since the Korean War. The pilot, U.S. Air Force Maj. Harry Schmidt, disobeyed an air controller’s order to “standby” while information was verified. Schmidt was initially charged by the U.S. Air Force with 4 counts of involuntary manslaughter and 8 counts of assault. The charges were dropped in June 2003 and in July 2004 he was found guilty of dereliction of duty. [here]

UPDATE: Seems that the Canadian soldier killed on Monday was a track star at Nebraska.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Mark Graham, a former Nebraska track star, died Monday in Afghanistan while serving with the Canadian military. He was 33. [here]

Discovering Nick Drake

On a recent musical connect the dots tour through Wikipedia, I stumbled across a reference to Nick Drake. I had first heard of Nick Drake through a review of his work on All Things Considered months ago.

The sound is ephemeral. The sound is haunting. The sound is a lost gem of our time.
It has shocked me how much the songs he made are what I have needed over the last few weeks.

If you get a chance, watch A Skin Too Few, the documentary of his life; you will have to look in the usual places online to find it, as it hasn’t been released on DVD yet.
Find him. Listen. You will never go back.

I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you’re here
Brighten my northern sky.

Never Eat Alone: The Introvert’s Review

I sat down and finally read my copy of Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. Well, I agonizingly got my way through 80% of the book before I threw it across the room in disgust.

What a load of crap.

There might be a message in the book somewhere. But the book is mostly about Mr. Ferrazzi’s preening ego and self-importance.

He obviously thinks that all the world’s ills can be solved by reaching out your hand and saying, “Hey, I’m important and you need to know me!”.

Keith, get over yourself and your tale of the American dream. Focus on the facts. I don’t need to listen to a celebrity gossip story every 5 pages. In fact, your approach turned me off.

Obviously, if you took the time to get to know introverts, which I am, you would find that doing something is more important than who you know. We are people who don’t care who you know; we want to know what you have done.

Introverts have very tight, very small networks. But if you REALLY need to get something done, you usually end up working with an introvert.

I can truly say that I lost my money on this book. Maybe if he took the time to explore how the over half of the population works, he would find that his approach is seen as vacuous and disingenuous.

It’s not the number you know; it’s how well you know them.

Spend a month focusing on those people who are truly close to you. Then you will never eat alone.

Black and Worn: Weathering a storm of the mind

I wandered around the net today, linking random connections together. Richard Thompson, John Martyn, Nick Drake.

When I visited Nick Drake’s official site (sadly out of date) I found this lovely image dominating the front page.

The front page of the Nick Drake site

A lovely, weathered, black leather notebook.

Nick Drake strikes me as a person that is a lot like I could have been. Painfully shy, suffering from depression, trying to get the ideas out in a world that was not his. When he died in 1974, he was ignored and forgotten.

Now that he is all the rage again, it important to go back and consider his life. Consider what he made in a few short years. The stories he tore out of himself, willing to share this one aspect of his life with us.

The rest, well, they are hidden in the little black book.

Notebook Lust: Minutiae to the max!

For those who capture the minutiae of their lives in a Moleskine or Rite in the Rain, I present the example to which we should all bow.

The Domesday Book is online.

To quote the site

“Domesday is our most famous and earliest surviving public record. It is a highly detailed survey and valuation of all the land held by the King and his chief tenants, along with all the resources that went with the land in late 11th century England. The survey was a massive enterprise, and the record of that survey, Domesday Book, was a remarkable achievement. There is nothing like it in England until the censuses of the 19th century.”

It is a truly amazing work, and a goldmine for researchers and social historians around the world.

Rotating technology through Europe

When I got to the London office, I started talking about how I had an addiction to sexy GSM phones, and showed off my collection. I then noted that the Motorola Razr seems to be a pretty hot commodity these days in London. My colleagues laughed, and one of them pulled his old Razr out of a drawer, effectively saying that it was so last year.

Since the Razr was unlocked, I asked if he was doing anything with it. So, I am now the proud owner of a first-series black Razr, a London office cast-off.

Seems that all of Europe wants a Sony-Ericsson W-series or the Nokia N-series.

Razrs are so old school.

When I arrived in Germany with my Treo 600 now relegated to backup position by the Razr, one of my German colleagues was bemoaning the fact that any PDA phone was horrendously expensive. I then offered him up the Treo 600, which I had adopted from its previous owner. After a hard reset, he spent the rest of the day fiddling with it, and grinning maniacally.

Sometimes technology just finds its way to the right place.

Monday Morning…Zevon, Caffeine and Viruses

His comrades fought beside him, Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best
So the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead
That son of a bitch Van Owen blew off Roland’s head

There is always something something soothing in the words of Warren Zevon, even when they describe the wandering ghost of a Biafran War veteran. They make the human condition, well, more human.

And the human condition is an important thing to remember on a Monday morning. With headlines shrieking of suffering, you have to sit back and wonder why; why are we still here?

I called up my friend LeRoy on the phone
I said, Buddy, I’m afraid to be alone
‘Cause I got some weird ideas in my head
About things to do in Denver when you’re dead

The virus I have in my system right now has a greater chance of surviving into the next century than the human race does. And sometimes I wonder if Zevon and Gunter Thompson always knew that, and used this knowledge to fuel a life of what we see as madness. In fact, their madness has a stronger truth than the artifical and virtual lives so many of us (including your author) lead.

It’s not melancholy that drives this rambling rant; it is a smiling realization that we are all the same, and in the end, for 99.99% of us, life is pretty darn empty in the end.

Well, I pawned my Smith Corona
And I went to meet my man
He hangs out down on Alvarado Street
By the Pioneer chicken stand

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town

The words of a strung out junkie can ring more true in this world than the pronouncements of great people. The battles we, the 99.99% unwashed masses, face everyday are what keep societies working. Without our willingness to get up and battle every day, the great people would drown in a wave of chaos that makes today’s world seem like a tea party.

Viruses have it easy. The dead have it easy. It’s the living who stare down that dark tunnel every morning, and walk toward the deeping darkness (humans who say they see the light are more deluded than the rest of us).

Embrace viruses; embrace pain; embrace love; embrace every breath you take.

In the end, that’s what you take with you.

Left eye, right eye
Take a look around
Everybody’s heading
For a hole in the ground
And it’s the Dance of Shiva
It’s the Twilight of the Gods
Thunder and lightning
‘Til the break of dawn

Monkey wash donkey rinse
Going to a party in the center of the earth
Monkey wash donkey rinse
Honey, don’t you want to go?

Weird encounters continue…

Standing in the security line at LAX.

Me: Nice Timbuk2 bag.
Guy: How do you know about Timbuk2 bags?
Me: A lot of people I know have them. they are pretty cool. [Editor: Sorry David! When you have a crappy bag like mine, they are cool!]
Guy: Thanks! Good to hear. I own the company.

“Guy” turns out to be Marc Dwight, owner of Timbuk2.

Weird day….


Marc Dwight was no longer at Timbuk2 only a few short months later [here].

Pat Robertson: Insane, Dangerous, and Christian

Pat Robertson is at it again. BBC NEWS | Americas | Top US evangelist targets Islam

Outspoken US Christian evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has accused Muslims of planning world domination, and said some were “satanic”.

On his live television programme, The 700 Club, he said radical Islamists were inspired by “demonic power”.

God is banging his head against the wall while Beelzebub is reserving the 11th Circle of Hell just for Pat.

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