Damascus Rat

Buttercup: Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.’s? Westley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist. — The Princess Bride Ah, Westley, yes they do (just as yourself found out real fast) and the real world’s biggest, ugliest and nastiest rodent of unusual size resides in Syria — in fact, Bashar al-Assad has gotten so…

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Guns-n-Roses

Firearms ain’t just guns, it’s a state of mind. Remarkably, shopping for guns while your babies boil in a hot van might indicate a redneck asshole, but not illegal: (background via the San Francisco Chronicle): Authorities contacted the children’s mother who showed up two hours late. She drove the children and father home in the…

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Afghan Reverse

UPDATE BELOW From Aljazeera English:   “We are now being told by the police sources that the US soldier left his base at three o clock this morning. It would have been pitch-black wherever he walked,” he said. From the perspective of one neighbourhood in Herat: “The soldier went through three separate houses, shooting at…

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‘Tulip’ Tango

Beyond war crimes: Peter Falstead of Jane’s Defence Weekly says the tail fins look, “very much like the tail fins from SM-240,” also known as the “Tulip Tree” developed by the Soviets in the 1970s. Today it is the largest mortar system used by any military in the world, and the Syrian army is believed…

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Bad Eye on High — Seeking ‘Adversarial intent’

“If this works out, we’ll have the ability to track people persistently across wide areas,” says Tim Faltemier, the lead biometrics researcher at Progeny Systems Corporation, which recently won one of the Army contracts. “A guy can go under a bridge or inside a house. But when he comes out, we’ll know it was the…

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