It seems hardly a day goes by where I don’t read an article, overhear a conversation, or see a news segment about how these young men and women lack ambition, are over-entitled, require “Trigger Warnings” and “Safe Spaces” to shield them from ideas they disagree with, are abusing drugs and alcohol at an alarming rate, and/or are enchanted by the ideas of affable lunatic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Clearly, this is a generation adrift.

And there are a lot of them. A few minutes spent searching the web places their numbers somewhere between 75 and 90 million, with the Census Bureau pegging the number at 83.1 million. That means that there are more of them than the previous champions in the Huge and Self-Important Generation Game, the Baby Boomers.

Thankfully, the oft-discussed Youth Vote is notoriously difficult to mobilize (see “abusing drugs and alcohol” above) but it’s clear that we’ll need to do something with this roiling mass of navel-gazing hipsters before they sober up, come to and figure out which day the election falls on and turn us into the next Venezuela—but what?

Well, I’d like to suggest that we eat them.

via www.westernfreepress.com

Our old friend Sean Moore as a suggestion.

The Heads Up Display (HUD) is showing CCIP, or Continuously Computed Impact Point. In CCIP, the avionics, well, continuously compute the impact point for the selected dumb bomb type. CCIP was first introduced in the late 1970s, and was a vastly more accurate bombing system than the simple visual dive bombing techniques that had preceded it. Another radar bombing mode available on the F-16 (and F-4 and quite a few other jets) would be Dive/Toss, where the radar is boresighted (that is, pointing straight ahead), and the pilot maneuvers the pipper over his selected target. When the pipper is on target, he squeezes the commit trigger, and the radar can then determine slant range to the target, as well as velocity of the aircraft, making for a fairly accurate system (Dive/Toss corrects quite nicely for headwind and tailwind components, but can’t account for crosswind. That’s still the pilot’s problem to solve).

Of course, today, while both CCIP and Dive/Toss are almost universally available to attack pilots, the near ubiquitous use of laser and GPS guided munitions means neither option is used much in combat.

The F-16XL itself was a lengthened F-16, with a new, much larger cranked delta planform wing, to fulfill a strike/interdiction mission for the Air Force. In the event, it lost out to the F-15E Strike Eagle.

(URR here.)  Muhammed Ali was arguably the greatest heavyweight boxer in the history of the sport.  His loud boasts and impromptu poetry were almost always backed up with his fists and his flamboyant ring style.  Ali was a cagey fighter, six-foot three and 220 pounds in his prime, with lightning quick hands and reflexes.  Ali will always be associated with Joe Frazier, and the savage fights those two engaged in.  Frazier beat Ali in 1971, in Madison Square Garden, the first loss of Ali's career.  Ali would win the next two, over four years, but each of those were no-quarter brawls.   As someone who has done some bit of boxing, I can appreciate his speed, grace, and ring savvy.  Ali, in his prime, may have been the best ever.

Ali, of course, won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics as Cassius Clay, before his conversion to Islam.  But alas, like so many athletes, Ali blew through his considerable prize and endorsement money, spending lavishly on cars, women, and comfort.  He was forced to fight well past his prime, and much of the physical and neurological ailments he suffered later in life were, IMHO, a direct result of the beatings he took, even in fights he won.  

At age 35, Ali fought Spaniard Alfredo Evangelista, a decidedly mediocre opponent whom Ali would have dismantled quickly just a few years before.  But Evangelista managed to go the distance against the former champ, even landing a number of big shots to Ali's head.  Then came a beating from an over-the-hill Earnie Shavers, though Ali somehow was given a unanimous decision.  Ali's famous clowning in the ring could not disguise the fact that Shavers landed two dozen head shots, hurting Ali, whose punches lacked the old power, and whose reflexes had so badly slowed.

Then came a pair of fights with Leon Spinks, the first an embarrassing and damaging loss in which Ali suffered another thumping.  While a few months later he managed one more semi-miracle in defeating an unprepared Spinks in a rematch to regain the title, Ali lost badly to Larry Holmes at the advanced age of 38.  In that fight, as well, Ali took tremendous punishment.  However, Ali made one more foray into the ring, at age 39, against a young Trevor Berbick.  Ali was flabby, and his speech was already slurred.   Berbick tore Ali apart in a sad display of someone who never should have been allowed to fight again.   (Berbick, for his part, was savaged by a young Mike Tyson a few years later.)

Outside the ring, Muhammed Ali has been venerated as an icon to many.  But in reality, Muhammed Ali was a draft dodger who refused to serve his country.  Revisionists will be quick to tell us that refusing induction into the Army in 1967 was somehow braver than facing the fire of the enemy.  It wasn't.  Ali, unlike Willie Mays and Joe Louis and other athletes in their prime who served their country when called, claimed he "didn't have no quarrel with no Viet Congs".  Due to unpopularity of the war in Vietnam and the rise of the "Black Power" movement, Ali became a counterculture hero.  Interesting, though, that he claimed Islam did not permit him to go to war….  In the end, though he was banned from his sport for a little over three years, Muhammed Ali amassed a great fortune, some $80 million dollars in personal wealth, and worldwide fame, unlike nearly all of the men who answered their nation's call.  

Muhammed Ali was a tremendous boxer, and a bigger than life personality.  One of the sport's greats.  But the offering of platitudes all over the news today, from Barack Obama on down, as a "man of integrity" who "gave up everything" is but a false narrative some fifty years in the making.  Muhammed Ali was a charismatic and charming man who parlayed his skills and personality into substantial wealth, but he was a man whose character and integrity was sorely lacking.   Ali's new religion of Islam was, I suspect, an excuse to avoid service.  He was a notorious womanizer who drank heavily at times.  He was also a raging bigot who once called for interracial couples to be hanged.  His seedier and less flattering side, carefully buried by the media who fawned over him, coupled with his dodging of the draft, makes him far less than the effusive praise we will hear in the coming weeks would ever make one suspect.  While indeed a great heavyweight, he was far from a great man.  

For all that, he will be missed.  

Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ve been busy, what with travel and whatnot. Today, a quick trip to Randolph AFB and Lackland AFB yielded a couple of pictures and a very short video clip.

Prone to quoting Yeats and waxing eloquent on the merits of Guinness, LeFon always struck me as a sort of renaissance man that young men aspire to be but can never really achieve – full, vibrant and accomplished. It seems rather banal to say I looked up to him, but it’s true.

via nation.time.com

On this Memorial Day, I fondly remember our friend.

Retired, but still serving, as it were.

Fair winds, old friend.

Via Insty:

Has the Internal Revenue Service been systematically evading federal record-keeping laws? On Monday the Cause of Action Institute sued the IRS and commissioner John Koskinen for refusing to preserve electronic employee communications that concern official business.

Cause of Action says that in 2010 the IRS struck a little-noticed agreement with the National Treasury Employees Union not to record employees’ instant messages. The watchdog group also says that in response to its Freedom of Information Act requests for text messages sent by senior IRS officials, the agency replied that due to “routine system housekeeping” and “spacing constraints,” IRS text messages are retained for only 14 days before they are deleted.

Of course, the staff at IRS sees this illegal deal with the union as a feature, not an unfortunate bug that they simply cannot overcome.

Mind you, when I worked in the financial industry, our IT department disabled all instant message services (even the proprietary in-house version) and blocked all access to third party email systems.  It was primarily a means of avoiding getting hammered in litigation. Should a client sue us, pretty much everything would be liable to discovery, and the ban on IM and third party email made it easy to show we weren’t trying to hide any records from discovery.

The IRS, however, much like so many other federal agencies, feels that the inconvenience of federal laws specifically mandating that they preserve information in such a manner is too likely to align the citizenry against them, and thus, rules and laws should not apply to them.

If you have not ever done so, I urge you to program into your next trip abroad a visit to an American military cemetery. There are quite a few in Europe, and some in Asia. You can find a list online.

These cemeteries are settings of an awesome serenity and beauty, immaculately kept by the American Battle Monuments Commission. As Americans, we must thank the architects who designed these settings and the workers who over the decades and to this day have kept them in their immaculate condition.

via www.wsj.com

After the end of World War II, next of kin of the fallen were given the option to repatriate the remains of their soldier to the US, for interment in a national cemetery, or a private plot. Or, they could opt for their loved one to be reburied in on of the several overseas cemeteries. A surprising number chose to have their kin rest for eternity in the soil they fought on.

During the war, the dead were buried in temporary, expedient cemeteries. It wasn't until after the war that today's immaculate, beautiful monuments were designed and laid out.

To paraphrase GEN Colin Powell, when America fights overseas, we seek only enough territory to bury our honored dead.