Military gear-heads like to boast about how this or that latest technology that they’re fond of – or that their company, or country, is pushing – is a “game-changer.”
BattlelandMissile Defense
BattlelandMissile Defense
Sandy Exposes 90-Year-Old Shipwreck on Fire Island
While the storm devastated the popular vacation spot, it also unearthed a decades-old schooner buried beneath the sand dunes.
5-Hour Energy Cited In 13 Deaths and ‘Spontaneous Abortion’
New reports implicate an additional brand of energy drinks in deaths.
“I was often jealous because he had four enlisted people helping him all the time.”
— Former defense secretary Robert Gates explaining the perks of military rank that he witnessed while living next door to Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He told a Chicago conference Thursday that he would complain about it to his wife: “Mullen’s got guys over there who are fixing meals for him, and I’m shoving something into the microwave. And I’m his boss.”
Can a Payday Lending Start-Up Use Facebook to Create a Modern Community Bank?
Social media and big data are being used in an innovative new payday loan banking model that’s more Silicon Valley than Wall Street.
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The 13 Hidden College Expenses
With rising tuition rates, the cost of attending college might be more than what many students and parents anticipated when they began saving for a college education.
“I have not been included in those conversations.”
— Marine General Joseph Dunford, soon to command U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, on whether he has been involved in U.S. talks on how fast to draw down the 68,000 U.S. troops still there. “Boy, that's interesting to me,” Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., said at Dunford’s confirmation hearing Thursday before the armed services committee. Part of a pattern, apparently: Dunford has never served in Afghanistan, either.
Planning a Presidency That Never Was: Inside the Romney Transition Team
Of all the operatives working on the presidential election, Mike Leavitt was one of the most important and the most invisible. He was the head of the Republican nominee’s presidential transition team, the man charged with …
How to End Blackouts Forever
Come hell or high water — and Sandy brought both to many Americans— most of us can’t get the electricity we need.
BattlelandAfghanistan
“America Wages War Like the World’s Biggest NGO”
You don’t want your military described as an “NGO” — that stands for non-governmental organization, like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. It’s just one of the criticisms lobbed by Mark Steyn about how the nation is …
“There has been no real cuts yet to the Pentagon. There just hasn't been the hoped-for desired increases in spending, and so therefore if we didn't get the increase in spending, we call that a cut in Washington.”
— Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla., releasing a report Thursday called “Department of Everything,” where he says the military is spending too much money unrelated to national security. “On 16 or 17 bases in the United States, we have military-run schools,” he said. “The average cost to educate a child in that school per year is $50,000, almost four times what the rest of public education costs.”
Spyfall
Paula Broadwell stepped off the stage at the Aspen Security Forum on July 28, fresh from criticizing the news media for heedless disclosure of secrets.
BattlelandMilitary Women
Modern Marine Couple: Let Women into Combat Units
Marines will react to male and female Marines serving alongside one another in combat as they have reacted to openly gay men and women serving in their ranks: no big deal.
That’s the argument a pair of Marines – married to …