(Vic meets the Colonel in Yokosuka, 1980, Larry Jensen, RIP, and lovely Paula Brown, and a pensive Paula in watchcap.) So, Florida State apparently beat Auburn in the last seconds. That would have been news to me last night, but my head was lolling in its customary place and when my eyes drifted shut, the […]

(Mars, the planet an average 140 million miles further from the sun than Earth, had the same temperature as Canada this week. Photo: Google Images). I fell asleep in the brown chair after watching Pacific Rim, a blockbuster special effects extravaganza re-imagining the Godzilla monster flicks of our childhood into something edgy and unsettling. I […]

The ice and biting wind kept me pinned down in the apartment all day- it is a pleasant place. I can simulate work by toggling periodically over to the company email, and on the whole, it is a pleasant way to pass a day that would otherwise feature slipping around, perhaps a fall or two, […]

 It is bitterly cold and blowing here. It started late in the afternoon, the front whipping its way toward Boston, but cuffing us with an icy sleeve as it went by. Rain at first, rain with an edge, and then it turned to fluffy flakes and then to crunchy heavy snow. I tramped over […]

(The Army-Navy Club on Farragut Square in downtown DC. An easy walk from the former Department of War, State and the Navy, it is a class act. The photo shows the place in the 1930s.) I was getting used to the idea of “2014,” rolling it around on my tongue, and decided I liked it […]

(Stranded: The MV Akademik Shokalskiy stuck in the ice off East Antarctica. Photo The Guardian of the UK). OK- that is out of the way. I typed the date without falter or miscue, and now realize fully that we have leapt the annual shark and arrived here in the familiar terra incognita of the un-knowable […]

31 December 2005  Editor’s Note: For a perfectly good series of reasons, we are recycling this morning. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? More from the Brave New Year. Vic I am confused, but I maintain it is not my fault. It is the press of events, the acceleration of the Holidays. […]

I imagine you saw the big news in the New York Times. The whole Benghazi thing was exactly what the talking points said they were when then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on the five Sunday talk shows to read the message. It is a relief to know that the 2016 campaign has officially commenced with […]

(Fine Art Print by Frank Tozier, depicting the conversion of implements of war into agricultural tool.) Anyone with brains or heart has to be opposed to the very concept of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Those of us who happened to be in the deterrence business may have a better idea of all that was involved […]

  (The Saturn V booster, with Apollo capsule affixed, took the US to the moon. Photo NASA.) “Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years and emits a very weak beta particle.” – US EPA I was standing at the Redstone Arsenal a few years ago, back when I had a reason to be in Huntsville, […]