XBradTC

VICENZA, Italy — American troops continue to be quarantined after returning from missions to aid the Ebola crisis in Liberia and will be charged a day of leave for each day of “controlled monitoring,” Army officials confirmed Monday.

The move is in response to troops lounging around their barracks not doing anything but taking their own temperature, exercising basic sanitation protocols, and washing cigarette butts through chlorine washes.

According to the commander of U.S. Army forces in Africa, Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, quarantined troops have had good morale with internet access and phones, Williams told reporters, a situation that simply wasn’t an acceptable climate for soldiers to be monitored in.

“In order to reinforce traditional Army values we retroactively began to charge soldiers leave days while they are being monitored,” said Williams. “The Sergeant Major nearly had an aneurism when he found out they were sitting around all day not doing anything. They can’t just be having fun like it’s some kind of frat house hosting Halo tournaments, and daily pizza parties. We had to react appropriately.”

via Army To Charge Ebola Quarantine Time Against Annual Leave.

Our “expert” in the previous post warning about the rocket might wish she’d waited a few hours.

Los Angeles (AFP) – A rocket science safety expert on Sunday said Virgin Galactic “ignored” safety warnings in the years leading up to the deadly crash of its spacecraft in California, as investigators hunted for clues to accident’s cause.

Carolynne Campbell, a rocket propulsion expert with the Netherlands-based International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, said she could not speculate on the cause of Friday’s crash without “all the data.”

However, she said multiple warnings had been issued to Virgin since 2007, when three engineers died testing a rocket on the ground.

“Based on the work we’ve done, including me writing a paper on the handling of nitrous oxide, we were concerned about what was going on at Virgin Galactic,” she told AFP.

via Virgin ‘ignored’ space safety warnings before crash: expert – Yahoo News.

In the wake of the crash of Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Two, presumably due to a malfunction in its rocket motor, there is an awful lot of speculation, and of course, “experts” have to pop up and give their input.

And of course, people who read this article have to jump to the conclusion that VG was negligent or otherwise at fault.

But here’s the thing- based on this article, we have no information that would genuinely inform that opinion.

Ms. Campbell may well be a genuine expert on rocket safety. Or she may just work for a storefront. We simply don’t know based on the article.

Further, we have no way of knowing if the warnings she supposedly sent to VG were in any way relevant to the design, manufacture, and testing of the VG hybrid rocket system.

The NTSB will likely take a year or more to conclude its investigation. Real experts will wait to examine it in detail before pronouncing judgment.

An impostor illegally used a New Mexico’s man vote three days before the actual person came in to vote. The incident occurred in Rio Arriba County. When the real person came to cast his ballot, he was at first turned away, being told that he had already voted.

Only when the real person contested, saying he had not in fact voted, did election officials review their files and compare the signatures they had on record and the one signed by whoever voted three days earlier.

The signatures did not match. Why the officials did not check this in the first place has not been stated, and required voter ID laws were not in place.

via Voter Fraud in New Mexico: Voter Turned Away After Illegal Voted as Him; Lack of Voter ID Law Blamed | PUNDIT PRESS.

Public polling has consistently shown that roughly 75-80 percent of the public supports voter ID laws. The ONLY reason to oppose voter ID laws is to enable fraud such as this.

Terrence Popp gave an interview as an aside at the International Conference on Men’s Issues regarding soldier suicides with regard to divorce and child custody battles.

I’m single, no kids, so my experience is second hand. But a soldier facing divorce has the deck stacked against him. He’s almost always in a location away from his extended support group. That is, having joined the military, his duty station is usually away from the friends and family he grew up with. His chain of command is likely not terribly supportive. It’s usually not actively against him, but consider that his company commander joined the service with visions of martial trappings, not marital counseling. Coupled with a widespread misunderstanding of what it means to serve in society and the courts, on top of a family court system already predisposed to side with the woman, that imposes incredible stress on the man. Many, many men react badly. Guys who have a predisposition to taking action to solving problems suddenly take actions that are unhelpful. I think this is an area where more research, an unbiased look at causality, would be very helpful.

An Army Cadet was blasted in the face with a makeshift blowtorch in an unprovoked attack after selling poppies for Remembrance Sunday.

The 15-year-old boy was waiting at a bus stop at 6pm on Saturday evening in Manchester city centre when a man approached him with an aerosol can and lighter and sprayed him with lit fumes.

The cadet, who was wearing his camouflaged uniform, suffered minor burns to his face and singed hairs in his face and right forearm, Greater Manchester Police said. He and his family are in “total shock”.

via Army Cadet suffers burns in blowtorch attack after selling poppies – Telegraph.

You’ll have to click through the link to play “guess the attackers ethnicity.”

I love these old marketing videos.