Old Sailors' Almanac - Month 03 - MARCH 2023 (Fluid Design based on percentage of screen platform

U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan on March 01, 2002

U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan: On October 7, 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States “war on terrorism” and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

Dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom” in U.S. military parlance, the invasion of Afghanistan was intended to target terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization, which was based in the country, as well as the extreme fundamentalist Taliban government that had ruled most of the country since 1996 and supported and protected al-Qaida. The Taliban, which had imposed its extremist version of Islam on the entire country, also perpetrated countless human rights abuses against its people, especially women, girls and ethnic Hazaras. During their rule, large numbers of Afghans lived in utter poverty, and as many as 4 million Afghans are thought to have suffered from starvation.

In the weeks prior to the invasion, both the United States and the U.N. Security Council had demanded that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden for prosecution. After deeming the Taliban’s counteroffers unsatisfactory - among them to try bin Laden in an Islamic court - the invasion began with an aerial bombardment of Taliban and al-Qaida installations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Konduz and Mazar-e-Sharif. Other coalition planes flew in airdrops of humanitarian supplies for Afghan civilians. The Taliban called the actions “an attack on Islam”. In a taped statement released to the Arabic al-Jazeera television network, Osama bin Laden called for a war against the entire non-Muslim world.

After the air campaign softened Taliban defenses, the coalition began a ground invasion, with Northern Alliance forces providing most of the troops and the U.S. and other nations giving air and ground support. On November 12, a little over a month after the military action began, Taliban officials and their forces retreated from the capital of Kabul. By early December, Kandahar, the last Taliban stronghold, had fallen and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar went into hiding rather than surrender. Al-Qaida fighters continued to hide out in Afghanistan’s mountainous Tora Bora region, where they were engaged by anti-Taliban Afghan forces, backed by U.S. Special Forces troops. Al-Qaida soon initiated a truce, which is now believed to have been a ploy to allow Osama bin Laden and other key al-Qaida members time to escape into neighboring Pakistan. By mid-December, the bunker and cave complex used by al-Qaida at Tora Bora had been captured, but there was no sign of bin Laden.

After Tora Bora, a grand council of Afghan tribal leaders and former exiles was convened under the leadership of Hamid Karzai, who first served as interim leader before becoming the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan on December 7, 2004. Even as Afghanistan began to take the first steps toward democracy, however, with more than 10,000 U.S. troops in country, al-Qaida and Taliban forces began to regroup in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They continue to engage U.S. and Afghan troops in guerilla-style warfare and have also been responsible for the deaths of elected government officials and aid workers and the kidnapping of foreigners. Hundreds of American and coalition soldiers and thousands of Afghans have been killed and wounded in the fighting.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / New World Encyclopedia.org / ARMY.mil / Airforce Magzine / NAVY.mil / Rand.org / Media.Defense.gov / CFE.org / Global Security.org / U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan on March 01, 2002 (YouTube)

Understanding Military Terminology

Reconnaissance

(DOD) A mission undertaken to obtain, by visual observation or other detection methods, information about the activities and resources of an enemy or adversary, or to secure data concerning the meteorological, hydrographic, or geographic characteristics of a particular area.

Also called RECON.

Joint Publications (JP 2-0) Joint Intelligence

Recovery

(DOD)

1. In air (aviation) operations, that phase of a mission that involves the return of an aircraft to a land base or platform afloat.Joint Publications (JP 3-52) Joint Airspace Control - Intelligence Resource Program

2. The retrieval of a mine from the location where emplaced.Joint Publications (JP 3-15) Barriers, Obstacles, and Mine Warfare for Joint Operations

3. In personnel recovery, actions taken to physically gain custody of isolated personnel and return them to friendly control.Joint Publications (JP 3-50) Personnel Recovery - Intelligence Resource Program

4. Actions taken to extricate damaged or disabled equipment for return to friendly control or repair at another locationJoint Publications (JP 3-34) Joint Engineer Operations - Intelligence Resource Program

The Old Salt’s Corner

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet - (Basic)

A - Alpha Tango

B - Bravo

C - Charlie

D - Delta

E - Echo

F - Foxtrot

G - Golf

H - Hotel

I - India

J - Juliett

K - Kilo

L - Lima

M - Mike

N - November

O - Oscar

P - Papa

Q - Quebec

R - Romeo

T - Tango

U - Uniform

V - Victor

W - Whiskey

X - X-ray or Xray

Y - Yankee

Z - Zulu

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet - (Basic)

“I’m Just Sayin”

“It is a wise father that knows his own child.”

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.”

“What's done can't be undone.”

“To do a great right do a little wrong.”

“Listen to many, speak to a few.s”

“A fool thinks himself to be wise,

but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

“If you prick us do we not bleed?

If you tickle us do we not laugh?

If you poison us do we not die?

And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”

“All the world's a stage,

and all the men and women merely players:

they have their exits and their entrances;

and one man in his time plays many parts,

his acts being seven ages.”

~ William Shakespeare

“Thought for the Day”

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”

“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

“It's always too early to quit.”

“We tend to get what we expect.”

“Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them.”

“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away,

it's best to let him run.”

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side;

my greatest concern is to be on God's side,

for God is always right.”

“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?

Four.

Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.”

“You can fool all the people some of the time,

and some of the people all the time,

but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

“What I Learned”

“The future starts today, not tomorrow.”

“Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it.”

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like,

but in having the right to do what we ought.”

“An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie,

for an excuse is a lie guarded.”

“Social justice cannot be attained by violence.

Violence kills what it intends to create.”

“As the family goes,

so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”

~ Pope John Paul II

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: If the Universe Is Expanding, What Does It Expand Into?

The universe doesn't have to be expanding into anything in order to expand. I know that sounds ridiculous, so let me give you a different example that is easier to understand.

Imagine that you have a line that goes on forever. On that line, you have a mark every inch. There are an infinite number of inches. Now move each marker so that they are separated by two inches. The whole pattern has expanded. It still goes to infinity, but the markers are further apart. The pattern has expanded, but the length is still infinite.

Now a new example: Suppose you have a long piece of rubber, going all the way to infinity. (That piece of rubber represents the universe.) The rubber has marks on it every inch. Now stretch the rubber, until the markers are two inches apart. It still goes to infinity - but it has expanded.

Physicists think of “space” not as emptiness, but similar to a piece of rubber. (But they don't call it rubber; they call it the “vacuum”. “Particles”, in physics, are just vibrations of the vacuum.) The vacuum can expand, just like the piece of rubber. But because it goes all the way to infinity, it doesn't need more space. A clever way to say it is that “there's lots of room at infinity”. (That's clever, but it doesn't really explain anything.)

Now here is something new that might confuse you, or might help. In the standard physics theory, the galaxies are all getting farther apart; that is the expansion of the universe. Yet in the way the theory describes it (I mean in General Relativity Theory), none of the galaxies are actually moving. All that is happening is that the amount of space (vacuum) in between them is increasing.

No, you will not learn this in school, or even in college (unless you have an extraordinary professor). It is usually taught in graduate school, when you are earning a Ph.D. degree. At that point the language you will encounter is this: “In the Big Bang Theory, all galaxies have fixed coordinates. (That means they are not moving.) The 'expansion' is described by the 'metric tensor,' which describes the distances between those fixed coordinates. In the Big Bang Theory, it is the metric tensor which is changing; that represents the expansion of the universe, even though the galaxies aren't moving. The recent discovery of accelerated expansion means that the rate of expansion is increasing.”

Maybe you've read about the curvature of space. Put a black hole between two unmoving objects, and the distance between them will suddenly increase—even though they haven't moved. So “distance” is not as simple as people thought. It was Einstein who came up with the remarkable idea that “space” (that is, vacuum) is flexible; it can curve and stretch.

I expect you will find this to be very confusing. That's not a bad sign; it is a good one. When you learn new things that are completely different than you ever imagined, then “confusion” is the first step.

Cornell.edu • Library Of Congress • Mental Floss • Phys.org • Quora • Wikipedia • What is the Universe Expanding Into? (YouTube)

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

0-Dark-Hundred: 0'dark-hundred (pronounced “Oh Dark Hundred”, because the “ZERO” in time expressions was verbally pronounced “OH” in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army as late as the 1980s:

A slang term for any time between midnight and daylight. Used to convey that the time is when people are usually asleep. e.g. “We have to get up at 0-dark-hundred.” It is not a reference to any particular time.

0-Dark-Thirty: 0'Dark-Thirty: A slang term that is used to describe that the commencement time of an operation or exercise is after midnight and before daylight; most typically when people would be deep asleep. It is not a reference to any particular time.

13 Button Salute: Navy flight suit, generally fireproof Nomex.

1D10T or ID10T: A mythical substance that new Sailors are sent in search of as a joke. Pronounced as “one dee ten tee”, “one delta ten tango”, “eye dee ten tee”, or “idiot”.

1MC: The General Announcing system on a ship.

1st Division: The division, in most aviation and afloat commands, which is responsible for the material condition and cleanliness of the ship.

On ships equipped with small boats, the First Lieutenant or “First” (First Division Officer or Deck Department Head) is in charge of these boats and the sailors who maintain and run them. On small boats, the “First” is in charge of boatswain mates and deck seaman.

On larger ships, the “First” may be in charge of air crew. Work for 1st division varies among ships depending on size. Small ships only have one division, while larger ships like carriers or amphibs can have 5 or more.

On Submarines the 1st Looey (1st Lt) is usually an non-qual Ensign and he runs “seaman gang” responsible for, among other responsibilities, all the gadgets necessary for handling and storing of mooring lines, materiel condition of Topside (chipping and painting), escape and rescue equipment like life vests and Steinke Hoods back when they were carried.

Seaman gang, the 1st Lt's folks, are often non-quals who are E-4 and below with a first class or senior second class petty officer as leading petty officer.

When the wardroom is short on baby Ensigns and/or in shipyard overhaul periods the 1st Lt may be a Chief Petty Officer.

Wiktionary.org

Just for you MARINE

03 Hump-A-Lot: Pejorative used by combat support Marines to refer to Infantry Marines.

1st Civ Div: 1st Civilian Division. Civilian life, usually applied to Marines facing discharge or retirement. As in “getting assigned to 1st Civ Div.” Also occasionally referred to as “1st Couch Company”. Also referred to as “Camp Living Room” a play on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. 1st Civ Div, Camp Living Room, Zenith Remote Operator (new primary MOS).

Wikipedia.org

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

HT-28 Helicopter Training (HT) Squadron TWENTY EIGHT - nicknamed the “Hellions”

United States Navy - Marine Corps Commander, Helicopter Training Air Wing FIVE - Naval Air Station Milton, Florida. / HT-28: November 1, 2006 - present

Wikipedia.org

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client:”

Meaning: Literal meaning.

History: This proverb is based on the opinion, probably first expressed by a lawyer, that self-representation in court is likely to end badly. As with many proverbs, it is difficult to determine a precise origin but this expression first began appearing in print in the early 19th century. An early example comes in The flowers of wit, or a choice collection of bon mots, by Henry Kett, 1814:

...observed the eminent lawyer,

“I hesitate not to pronounce, that every man who is his own lawyer, has a fool for a client.”

Phrases.org.uk

Science & Technology

FEATURE: Earth's inner core may have started spinning other way: Study • “Golden boy” mummy was protected by 49 precious amulets, CT scans reveal

Study discovers immense diversity and interdependence in high temperature deep-sea microorganism communities • Milky Way found to be too big for its “cosmological wall” • A new model for dark matter

How a 3-centimeter glass sphere could help scientists understand space weather • A method to enable robotic paper folding based on deep learning and physics simulations • When chronic stress activates these neurons, behavioral problems like loss of pleasure, depression result

Neuronal molecule makes prostate cancer more aggressive • Click beetle-inspired robots jump using elastic energy • Webb Space Telescope unveils dark side of pre-stellar ice chemistry Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

FEATURE: Fish-on-Chips: An optofluidic platform to investigate the neural and chemosensory axes of zebrafish • Study sheds new light on the origins of sound-evoked activity in the mouse visual cortex

Assessing weathering conditions around the globe to understand rate-limiting factors for major rock types • A model that predicts wrinkle patterns on the surface of toroidal structures as they expand or contract • Low emission energy systems can create water conflict without smart design

First observation of de Broglie-Mackinnon wave packets achieved by exploiting loophole in 1980s theorem • A new way to identify stresses in complex fluids • Novel technique developed to produce hydrogen peroxide without emitting carbon dioxide

Measles virus “cooperates” with itself to cause fatal encephalitis • One of the causes of aggressive liver cancer discovered: A “molecular staple” that helps repair broken DNA • An Artificial Intelligence (AI) bot passed this Wharton professor's exam. Here's why he's not concerned Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

Bizarre News (we couldnt make up stuff this good - real news story)

Flying saucers to mind control: 24 declassified military and CIA secrets

From programs to build supersonic flying saucers to atomic bombs, here are the most fascinating declassified military and CIA secrets.

Government and military secrets can range from terrifying to amusing to downright absurd, but most are nothing short of intriguing. From a secret U.S. Air Force project to build a supersonic flying saucer to a now-famous World War II-era research program that produced the first atomic bombs to a plan to train domesticated cats to spy on the Soviet Union, here are 24 declassified military and CIA secrets.

Project 1794

In late 2012, the U.S. Air Force declassified a trove of documents, including records of a secret program to build a flying saucer-type aircraft designed to shoot down Soviet bombers. The ambitious program, called Project 1794, was initiated in the 1950s, and a team of engineers was tasked with building a disc-shape vehicle capable of traveling at supersonic speeds at high altitudes.

The declassified documents reveal plans for the plane to reach a top speed of Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound), and reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,480 meters). The project's estimated cost was more than $3 million, which in today's dollars would be more than $26 million.

Project 1794 was canceled in December 1961 after tests suggested the flying saucer design was aerodynamically unstable and would likely be uncontrollable at high speeds (let alone supersonic speeds).

Project Iceworm

In the 1960s, the U.S. Army embarked on a secret mission to build a series of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The objective was to house medium-range missiles close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union.

The program was codenamed Project Iceworm, but to test its feasibility, the Army launched a cover research project called "Camp Century" in 1960. Under this guise, engineers built a network of underground buildings and tunnels, including living quarters, a kitchen, a recreation hall, infirmary, laboratories, supply rooms, a communications center and a nuclear power plant.

The base, which was kept secret from the Danish government, operated for seven years. The program was canceled in 1966 after shifting ice created unstable conditions. Today, the crushed remains of Project Iceworm are buried beneath Arctic snow.

Project MK-ULTRA

During the Cold War, the CIA initiated Project MK-ULTRA, a secret and illegal human research program to investigate potential mind-control systems. The program's operators examined the effects of hypnosis, biological agents and drugs, such as LSD and barbiturates, on human subjects. Some historians suggest the program was designed to develop a mind-control system that could be used to “program” the brains of potential assassins.

In 1973, then-CIA director Richard Helms ordered that all documents from Project MK-ULTRA be destroyed, but a formal investigation into the program was launched several years later. The project became the basis for several movies, such as “The Manchurian Candidate” and “The Men Who Stare at Goats”.

Area 51

Almost no other site has garnered as much attention from conspiracy theorists and UFO-enthusiasts as Area 51, a remote desert tract near Groom Lake in Nevada, roughly 83 miles (134 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. The intense secrecy surrounding the base sparked peoples' imaginations, and Area 51 was commonly linked to paranormal activities, including pervasive theories that suggested Area 51 hid aliens and UFOs.

In July 2013, declassified documents from the CIA acknowledged the existence of Area 51 for the first time, and confirmed that the top-secret site was used to test a variety of spy planes, including the well-known U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.

While Area 51, which operates as a detachment of Edwards Air Force Base in neighboring California, has never been declared a covert base, the research and activities conducted there were some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets.

Continued ...

Live Science (01/27/2023)

SONG FACTS

“Heart-Shaped Box” - Nirvana
Album: In Utero
Released 1993

Kurt Cobain, Nirvana's frontman and the song's author, claimed that “Heart-Shaped Box” was inspired by a television report of children suffering from cancer. However, many believe it was really written about his shaky but passionate relationship with his wife, Courtney Love. The lyrics do tend towards this latter interpretation, since they seem to concern themselves with an unstable romance between two individuals. It's worth noting that the lyrics mention Pisces and Cancer, Cobain's and Love's respective astrological signs. Love, after their second meeting sent a small heart-shaped box, containing, among other things, a doll's head, to his hotel room. This is believed to have inspired the song's title. Cobain and Love both shared a love and fascination of dolls.

The “Heart-Shaped Box” could be a reference to a uterus. The lyrics talk about the situation of an aborted fetus from the first-person viewpoint.

There are many possible interpretations for the “Heart-Shaped Box”. It could be a box for Kurt's needles, an actual heart, or a box of love letters. There is no clear explanation, which was probably what Cobain had in mind.

According to the book “Come As You Are” by Michael Azerrad, the idea of the song came from Courtney Love when she presented Kurt with a heart-shaped box full of precious possessions. The song switches meanings between Kurt's feelings over Courtney and his feelings on how women are treated.

After Lana Del Rey did a gentle “rendition of this song” at a 2012 concert in Australia, Courtney Love took to Twitter to give her take on the song. In a series of quickly deleted Tweets, she wrote:

“@LanaDelRey you do know the song is about my vagina right? Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back umm. On top of which some of the lyrics about my vagina I contributed.”

The original title was “Heart-Shaped Coffin.”

There is a plastic-fetus collage on the back cover of “In Utero” that was designed by Kurt Cobain. This contributed to the album almost getting banned at K-Mart and Wal-Mart. The stronger reason that Wal-Mart wanted to ban the album was that it included a song entitled “Rape Me” . However, Wal-Mart in the end did NOT ban the song, because Kurt Cobain conceded by providing them with a version that was slightly altered on the exterior, with the song “Rape Me” listed as “Waif Me”, and with the image on the back being a zoom-in of one small part of the original back cover, so that it was difficult to tell that the image was of plastic fetuses. Bassist Krist Novoselic has commented that he told Kurt it wasn't worth it to pander to Wal-Mart like that, and recalls that Kurt responded by saying that Wal-Mart was the only store he could go to when he was a kid and that he didn't want any young fans to be unable to buy their album because of this.

Nirvana's songs “Milk It” and “Marigold” also appeared on the single.

The lyrics, “Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back” could be Cobain's way of saying that he wants to climb back into his mother's womb and restart his life. Calling it an umbilical noose indicates his suicidal tendencies.

Evanescence recorded an acoustic version that was released on their “Going Under” single in 2003.

The video, directed by Anton Corbijn, is rather odd and depicts a little girl in what seems to be a Ku Klux Klan uniform and an old man with a Santa hat on dressed like Jesus and tying himself to a cross. It also shows a rather large woman wearing a suit of meat for the verse “meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet”. Later in the video her uniform turns black and she tries to snatch unborn babies from a tree.

Another prevalent theory is that Kurt Cobain wrote the song about a stash of old love letters his wife, Courtney Love, was given by former flame Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.

“Heart-Shaped Box” is also the title of Joe Hill's (Stephen King's son) debut novel about a lonely retired rock star who receives a mysterious heart-shaped box in the mail. Hill explained the significance of the title and its connection to Cobain: “‘Heart-Shaped Box’, the song, is likewise about feeling trapped and isolated. Also, the novel is in part about the way a certain kind of very unhappy person will use loud, intense music to hold self-destructive urges at bay, something I think [Kurt] Cobain tried very hard to do. But I only made a mental connection between the two things because of a lucky accident. I was writing the scene where UPS delivers the ghost–in reality, a haunted suit–and I was listening to iTunes, and Nirvana's ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ just came up on random play. So I put the haunted suit in a giant heart-shaped box, and, eventually, it became clear that ought to be the title.”

Initially, “In Utero” was going to be called “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die” - Kurt Cobain's typical response to “How are you?” The final title was taken from a poem written by Courtney Love.

A live version appears on 1996 Nirvana album “From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah”.

Kevin Kerslake, who had previously directed videos for “Come as You Are” , “Lithium” , “In Bloom” and “Sliver” , sued Nirvana over this video. He did some work on it before Nirvana elected to go instead with a Dutch director named Anton Corbijn. Cobain brought a highly detailed treatment to Corbijn, who ended up using this vision for the final shoot.

The distinctive video became the most-played MTV spot, officially declared as such by Billboard on November 20, 1993. However, Kerslake returned to the scene and sued the band for copyright infringement, claiming that his ideas were the ones Cobain had presented Corbijn with. The band settled with Kerslake out of court.

Continued ...