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Just another commercial from the past

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I still can not figure out WTF happened from then to now. Any ideas / solutions from my Fantastic readers out there?

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Very True!

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How the Russian put out a fire with a A Bomb

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Some very good Leadership advice that is really universal – How to Fail as a Major, A Guest Post by Terron Wharton

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October 30, 2013 – Photo by Staff Sgt.Tim Chacon

 
“…the expectations of a Major are very different than those of a captain, and not everyone knows what these expectations are or the impact they have on personal and professional success.”
-MG(R) Tony Cucolo, “In Case You Didn’t Know It, Things Are Very Different Now: Part 1
While attending the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), instructors and mentors constantly drove two points home. First, transitioning to the rank of Major and the expectations of a Field Grade Officer is a difficult and steep learning curve. Second, what made an officer successful at the company grade level does not necessarily translate to success as a Major.
I have been a combined arms battalion S3 for ten months now and during this period I’ve planned, resourced, and executed field training exercises, live fire events, gunneries, an NTC rotation, and spent enough hours on my Blackberry that I never want to see one again.
However, I can definitively say two things about my instructors’ advice: They weren’t kidding about either point … and they vastly downplayed both.
The transition to Major is less of a learning curve and more of a sheer cliff. There is less tolerance for officers who need to “grow into it,” and the expectation is you are value added on day one.
Finally, the room for mistakes grows smaller and smaller. What follows are the hard lessons I’ve learned either through personal shortcomings or watching peers fall by the wayside.
Failure #1: Believe Help is Coming
When things became supremely difficult or complex as a captain or lieutenant, we would often look for a field grade to give refined guidance and direction. The Major knows the answer.
They are the responsible adult in the room. The Major may get cranky and hand out a butt chewing, but they would bring resources to bear on the problem. They were help when we needed it.
As a Major, YOU are now that responsible adult who has the answers and can bring resources to bear. You ARE the help that’s coming.
There is no help coming for YOU. Majors are the Army’s problem solvers and workhorses. If a room of Majors looks around and cannot tell who among them is lead on an issue, then the issue is probably not being addressed.
Majors don’t get to look around and wonder who will solve the problem. They must own the problems as they appear and work with peers to solve them.
Failure #2: Burn Bridges and Fail to Cultivate and Maintain Relationships
Early on in my time as a BN S3 something went wrong during our FTX. A situation changed that was outside of my control and I blamed the brigade.
Over the phone, I got into a heated discussion with the BDE S3 and XO and lost my temper and composure.
When I was done venting, the BDE S3 said something I will never forget: “Do you want to keep complaining or do you want to solve the problem?” Those words stuck with me. I apologized, we moved on, and we fixed the issue.
The argumentative Major, the one who picks fights, protects their own rice bowl, and never gives an inch will quickly find themselves isolated without a seat at the table.
In the end, their unit will suffer for it. Conversely, the Major is willing to give more than they take, willing to put the brigade’s success over what’s easier for their battalion and work well with peers to find solutions and compromises will succeed.
Leaders do not have time for personality conflicts, especially Majors.
The biggest power Majors have is that knowing where to look, who to call, and having a network of friends, peers, classmates, warrants, and NCOs that can be leveraged to solve problems.
Most problems in a brigade are solved by the S3s and XOs sitting around the table, developing a course of action, and moving out to attack the challenge at hand.
That requires well-cultivated and maintained relationships. More than anything, those relationships and connections are the most powerful resource at your disposal.
This is also the point in our careers where many of us will begin to regularly interact with DA Civilians. Do not forget about them.
The GS-14 serving as your Division Chief of Training could well be a retired LTC and former Battalion Commander. They have either been where you are now, or they have seen many in your position come and go, and they often serve as the long-term continuity in higher headquarters and support functions that are critical to your success.
Stop by and talk to your peers regularly. Take time to talk to DA Civilian, get away from email, and drop by offices.
Come to meetings early and stay a little after to talk to each other, even if it’s just letting each other vent for five mins. It will pay dividends when you need to move a mountain and get a short notice task done.
You cannot afford to have personality conflicts or fight with your peers. Ever. Period. Learn to swallow your pride and be the first one to apologize or mend a relationship after a heated exchange.
Failure #3: Confusing Leadership and Management 
Leadership and management are not the same thing and are easily confused when assuming organizational level leadership for the first time.
Leadership is about people while management is about systems. While these concepts may appear obvious, it took me about three months to learn this and I am still working to improve my management skills.
As a Major, your primary concerns are building and managing systems. Majors are about touch points. Identify critical touch points for your organization, develop systems to manage that information, and use those systems to recognize where the train wrecks and pitfalls are.
The Major’s aperture is so wide that there is no way you can directly affect it all with personal involvement or presence. If you try, you will fail.
Time is now your most precious resource. Systems help manage the information flow so you can focus your limited time on things that are commander priorities, mission-critical, or something only YOU can do based on knowledge, skills, or relationships.
For everything else, develop your staff to handle routine business, empower them to make the routine decisions, and train them to know when things require your personal involvement. If you don’t develop systems to manage the massive amounts of information coming in, you will quickly become overwhelmed and remain in crisis management.
This is not to say that personal leadership is not important as a Major. It simply means the balance has shifted. Your personal leadership is still critical in two areas: training your staff and mentorship.
Do not expect to walk into a staff that can do MDMP perfectly with just an occasional guiding nudge from you. You will have to train your staff.
MDMP is just the beginning. How to write emails, brief the commander, write orders, develop courses of action, work as a team, interact with the higher headquarters staff, Army culture and expectations of officers, and a thousand other things you now take for granted after over a decade of service.
All of this requires your personal presence, time, and effort. If you do not teach them, no one else will.
The Major is also a mentor to younger officers, especially the staff officers they interact with daily. This mentorship requires personal leadership and is just as important to the Army’s success as the next round of MDMP is to your unit’s training event.
I am wearing an oak leaf because of the mentorship two Majors provided at critical junctures in my career. Officers in your organization will look to you as a model for future service: how to act, how to look, and the path they should chart through the Army, just as I looked to those Majors when I was a Lieutenant and a Captain.
Failure #4: Fail to Predict the Future
Majors must forecast out, identify implied tasks, determine conditions that need setting, and execute without guidance, FRAGOs, or WARNOs from BDE or higher.
If you fail to do this, the train wreck is waiting and, remember, no help is coming. Your higher HQ may give some guidance, but never enough, and never on the timeline you want it. If you wait, it will be too late.
Predicting the future allows planning to occur that can mitigate future problems. This is critical because at the battalion and brigade level dynamic re-tasking is never dynamic.
As a BN S3, I can pick up the phone and redirect the work, efforts, and lives of 700 Soldiers, officers, warrant officers, leaders, and their families.
However, a battalion has a certain organizational momentum and inertia that is hard to overcome and shift on a dime. Every dynamic shift exponentially increases the chance of details being missed, mistakes being made, and can push you into crisis management.
Look deep, develop a concept, and address potential gaps through FRAGOs, IPRs, and update briefs as necessary.
As Majors our words, actions, and decisions carry serious weight as BN and BDE S3s/XOs, planners, and action officers.
An errant email, simple misspeak, or a rash outburst will affect entire organizations exponentially more than when we were company commanders or staff captains.
As such, the tolerance for those who fail to grasp this and make the transition is low.  Unfortunately, many Majors step into these pitfalls, sometimes irrevocably, without ever knowing they have made a fatal error.
Fortunately, the Army is a learning organization and just maybe sharing my own shortcomings can help another Major avoid failure as they climb the cliff and make the transition.
Terron Wharton is currently serving as the BN S3 for 4-6 IN, 3/1ABCT at Fort Bliss, TX.  An Armor Officer, he has served in Armor and Stryker Brigade Combat Teams with operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
He is also the author of “High Risk Soldier: Trauma and Triumph in the Global War on Terror,” a work dealing with overcoming the effects of PTSD.  His other works include “Becoming Multilingual”, discussing being multifaceted within the Army profession, “The Overlooked Mentors” which speaks to NCOs as mentors for junior officers, and “Viral Conflict: Proposing the Information Warfighting Function” which proposes establishing an Information Warfighting Function.

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For the History Teachers out there – A great intro to Western Civilization, The day the Universe Changed Video Clips

For me at least, this series about the History of Technology was a real eye opener to me. Hopefully you might enjoy them also! Grumpy

Western Civilization documentaries: The day the universe changed by James Burke

Click here for a link list of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series as well as James Burke’s connections 1.
The day the universe changed is also created by James Burke and follows a similar style as that documentary. In this one, though, it tends to focus on how the development of a revolutionary big idea has tended to shape our understanding of the world and/or universe.
Hence the title. Honestly, the concept for the series leans a little too relativist in that respect for my liking, but not in an extreme way that is common in post-modernism.
Its true enough that new data can change your perceptions about reality, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t or wasn’t an objective reality that doesn’t give two cents for what you happen to be perceiving, right or wrong.
I would think that Burke himself would basically agree with this point, while also stating that for us, at least, these changing perceptions have had very important consequences. True.
Anyway, it is a mainstream documentary so it tends to have the same problems you can expect from most of those, but since its old (1985), generally pro-western civilization, and vaguely conservative leaning, as a result, it is quite easy to look past that and enjoy a well produced documentary the likes of which you are unlikely to find produced today. Please enjoy the ten episodes linked below:
Episode 1: The way we are: It started with the greeks.

Episode 2: The light of the above: medieval conflict – faith and reason

Episode 3: Point of view: Scientific imagination in the renaissance.

Episode 4: A matter of fact: Printing transforms knowledge

Episode 5: Infinitely reasonable: Science revises the heavens

Episode 6: Credit where its due: The factory and marketplace revolution

Episode 7: What the doctor ordered: Social impact of new medical knowledge

Episode 8: Fit to rule: Darwin’s Revolution

Episode 9: Making waves: The new physics – Newton revised

Episode 10: Worlds without end: Changing knowledge, changing reality
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Well I thought it was neat to watch!

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Something only Americans have seen in real life -An Earth rise!

https://youtu.be/1R5QqhPq1Ik
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From the Daily Time waster – He deserved a better War!

There is a long-standing adage in combat arms branches that says “you haven’t had a full career until you’ve gotten an Article 15.”

Well, this Vietnam War veteran had his share non-judicial punishments (authorized by Article 15 of UCMJ), racked up 115 confirmed kills and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was also one of the most decorated soldier in American international combat, even eclipsing both Alvin York and Audie Murphy.
Born in the summer of 1938 in South Carolina, Joe Ronnie Hooper was relocated as a child to Moses Lake, Washington.
Originally a Navy man, Hooper first enlisted in December of 1956. He worked in naval aviation, eventually reaching the rank of Petty Officer 3rd class, the equivalent of an Army or Marine corporal (E-4). He was honorably discharged in 1959.
The next year, Hooper enlisted in the US Army as a Private First Class. After graduating Basic Training, he volunteered for Airborne School. From there he did tours of duty in Fort Bragg, Korea and Fort Hood, eventually making his way to Fort Campbell’s 101st Airborne Division.
Now a Staff Sergeant, Hooper requested a tour in Vietnam but was sent to Panama instead as a platoon sergeant. Unable to stay out of trouble while he was there, he was the subject of several Article 15 hearings and was eventually demoted to Corporal.
However, he eventually got his Sergeant back and deployed with the 101st to Vietnam in December of 1967, taking on the role of a squad leader.
On February 21st, 1968, Hooper and his company were beginning an assault on an enemy position when they came under fire by everything from machine guns to rockets.
According to his Medal of Honor citation, Hooper’s unit “was assaulting a heavily defended enemy position along a river bank when it encountered a withering hail of fire from rockets, machine guns and automatic weapons.
Staff Sergeant Hooper rallied several men and stormed across the river, overrunning several bunkers on the opposite shore.
Thus inspired, the rest of the company moved to the attack. With utter disregard for his own safety, he moved out under the intense fire again and pulled back the wounded, moving them to safety.
During this act Hooper was seriously wounded, but he refused medical aid and returned to his men. With the relentless enemy fire disrupting the attack, he single-handedly stormed 3 enemy bunkers, destroying them with hand grenade and rifle fire, and shot 2 enemy soldiers who had attacked and wounded the Chaplain.
Leading his men forward in a sweep of the area, Hooper destroyed three buildings housing enemy riflemen. At this point he was attacked by a North Vietnamese officer whom he fatally wounded with his bayonet.
Finding his men under heavy fire from a house to the front, he proceeded alone to the building, killing its occupants with rifle fire and grenades. By now his initial body wound had been compounded by grenade fragments, yet despite the multiple wounds and loss of blood, he continued to lead his men against the intense enemy fire.
As his squad reached the final line of enemy resistance, it received devastating fire from four bunkers in line on its left flank. Hooper gathered several hand grenades and raced down a small trench which ran the length of the bunker line, tossing grenades into each bunker as he passed by, killing all but two of the occupants.
With these positions destroyed, he concentrated on the last bunkers facing his men, destroying the first with an incendiary grenade and neutralizing two more by rifle fire. He then raced across an open field, still under enemy fire, to rescue a wounded man who was trapped in a trench.
Upon reaching the man, he was faced by an armed enemy soldier whom he killed with a pistol. Moving his comrade to safety and returning to his men, he neutralized the final pocket of enemy resistance by fatally wounding three North Vietnamese officers with rifle fire.
Hooper then established a final line and reorganized his men, not accepting (medical) treatment until this was accomplished and not consenting to evacuation until the following morning.”
While he was discharged from the Infantry upon his return from Vietnam in 1968, he managed to re-enlist and serve as a Public Affairs specialist until President Richard Nixon awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1969.
Hooper eventually managed to finagle his way back into the Infantry, serving a second tour in Vietnam as a pathfinder with the 101st Airborne.
By 1970, he had been commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, though he was discharged from an active commission shortly after due to inadequate educational requirements.
Discharged and a little sour about it, Hooper managed to retain his commission in the Army Reserve’s 12th Special Forces Group before being transferred to a training unit.
Though he was eventually promoted to Captain, he was discharged a final time in 1978 after a spotty drill record.
Much like the war he fought in, Hooper is not as well known as other Medal of Honor recipients of his stature. According to accounts, he was a likeable guy who partied hard, drank a lot and related to veterans.
However, he was allegedly rather troubled by America’s treatment of soldiers and attitudes towards the war in general.
He was found dead in a hotel room in Kentucky on May 5, 1979, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep. He was 40 years old.
In addition to the Medal of Honor, Hooper was also awarded two Silver Stars, 6 Bronze Stars with “V” Devices, an Air Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm and 8 Purple Hearts.
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How to Shop Online Like a Security Pro

‘Tis the season when even those who know a thing or two about Internet scams tend to let down their guard in the face of an eye-popping discount or the stress of last-minute holiday shopping. So here’s a quick refresher course on how to make it through the next few weeks without getting snookered online.


Adopting a shopping strategy of simply buying from the online merchant with the lowest advertised prices can be a bit like playing Russian Roulette with your wallet, for the simple reason that there are tons of completely fake e-commerce sites out there looking to separate the unwary from their credit card details.
Even people who shop mainly at big-name online stores can get scammed if they’re not wary of too-good-to-be-true offers. For example, KrebsOnSecurity got taken for hundreds of dollars just last year after trying to buy a pricey Sonos speaker from an established Amazon merchant who was selling it new and unboxed at huge discount.
I later received an email from the seller, who said his Amazon account had been hacked and abused by scammers to create fake sales. Amazon ultimately refunded the money, but if this happens to you around the holidays it could derail plans to get all your shopping done before the expected gift-giving day arrives.
Here are some other safety and security tips to keep in mind when shopping online:
-WHEN IN DOUBT, CHECK ‘EM OUT: If you don’t know much about the online merchant that has the item you wish to buy, take a few minutes to investigate its reputation. After all, it’s not uncommon for bargain basement phantom Web sites to materialize during the holiday season, and then vanish forever not long afterward.
If you’re buying from an online store that is brand new, the risk that you will get scammed increases significantly.  How do you know the lifespan of a site selling that must-have gadget at the lowest price? One easy way to get a quick idea is to run a basic WHO IS search on the site’s domain name. The more recent the site’s “created” date, the more likely it is a phantom store.
-USE A CREDIT CARD: It’s nearly impossible for consumers to tell how secure a main street or online merchant is, and safety seals or attestations that something is “hacker safe” are a guarantee of nothing. In my experience, such sites are just as likely to be compromised as e-commerce sites without these dubious security seals.
No, it’s best just to shop as if they’re all compromised. With that in mind, if you have the choice between using a credit or debit card, shop with your credit card.
Sure, the card associations and your bank are quick to point out that you’re not liable for fraudulent charges that you report in a timely manner, whether it’s debit or a credit card. But this assurance may ring hollow if you wake up one morning to find your checking accounts emptied by card thieves after shopping at a breached merchant with a debit card.
Who pays for the fees levied against you by different merchants when your checks bounce? You do. Does the bank reimburse you when your credit score takes a ding because your mortgage or car payment was late? Don’t hold your breath.
-PADLOCK, SCHMADLOCK: For years, consumers have been told to look for the padlock when shopping online. Maybe this was once sound advice. But to my mind, the “look for the lock” mantra has created a false sense of security for many Internet users, and has contributed to a dangerous and widespread misunderstanding about what the lock icon is really meant to convey.
To be clear, you absolutely should run away from any e-commerce site that does not include the padlock (i.e., its Web address does not begin with “https://”).  But the presence of a padlock icon next to the Web site name in your browser’s address bar does not mean the site is legitimate. Nor is it any sort of testimonial that the site has been security-hardened against intrusion from hackers.
The https:// part of the address merely signifies that the data being transmitted back and forth between your browser and the site is encrypted and can’t be read by third parties. Even so, anti-phishing company PhishLabs found in a survey last year that more than 80% of respondents believed the green lock indicated that a website was either legitimate and/or safe.
Now that anyone can get SSL certificates for free, phishers and other scammers that ply their trade via fake Web sites are starting to up their game. In December 2017, PhishLabs estimated that a quarter of all phishing Web sites were outfitting their scam pages with SSL certificates to make them appear more trustworthy. According to PhishLabs, roughly half of all phishing sites now feature the padlock. 
-CHECK THE SHIPPING
Often times, items that are advertised at steeper discounts than other online stores make up for it by charging way more than normal for shipping and handling.
Be careful what you agree to: Check to make sure you know how long the item will take to be shipped, and that you understand the store’s return policies. Also, keep an eye out for hidden surcharges, and be wary of blithely clicking “ok” during the checkout process.
-DON’T TAKE THE BAIT
Be on guard against phishing and malware schemes that take advantage of shopper distraction and frenzy during the holidays. In years past we’ve seen both leverage emails crafted to look like they were sent from a name-brand store claiming that there was a problem with your order or some component of the shipping process.
One perennial phishing and malware scam that seems to kick into high gear around the holidays is spam that purports to have been sent by the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS or some other shipping service, warning of a wayward package.
When in doubt about such a message, visit the e-commerce or shipping site directly, and avoid clicking on links or attachments in email — particularly missives that warn of some dire consequences unless you act quickly. Phishers and malware purveyors typically seize upon some kind of emergency to create a false alarm that often causes recipients to temporarily let their guard down.
-SCOUR YOUR STATEMENTS
Some credit card companies offer cardholders that ability to use “virtual credit cards” — apps that generate a unique, ephemeral credit card number that is good for just one purchase or for a short period of time. The idea being that if fraudsters compromise the virtual card number, your bank doesn’t have to issue you a new card and you won’t have the headache that comes with entering new card details at all of the sites where you’ve set up automatic monthly payments.
These virtual cards are nice in theory, but I’ve never been a big fan. Probably because in many cases they require users to have risky add-ons installed and enabled — like Java or Flash Player. But, hey, if this works for you, great.
Most importantly, keep a close eye on your monthly statements. If I were a fraudster, I’d most definitely wait until the holidays to cram through a bunch of unauthorized charges on stolen cards, so that the bogus purchases would get buried amid a flurry of other legitimate transactions. That’s why it’s key to closely review your credit card bill and to quickly dispute any charges you didn’t authorize.
-BUDDY UP
If you’re planning to spend time with friends and family this holiday season, consider giving the gift of your time and helping out with a security checkup. This might involve making sure that new or old PC has up-to-date security software and the requisite software patches, or locking down their wireless router by enabling security features and disabling risky ones.
If you’re visiting parents or older relatives, consider helping them plant their flags at various online sites and services if they haven’t already done so, such as at the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Postal Service, or their wireless phone provider and/or Internet Service Provider (ISP).
You’d definitely make it off of Santa’s naughty list if you helped your loved ones take stock of which online accounts could benefit from more robust multi-factor authentication — and perhaps even guiding them away from SMS/text messages for multifactor toward more secure app- or key-based options, where available. You might even take a minute to explain the perils of re-using passwords across multiple sites, and see if they’re interested in using a password manager.
While you’re at it, ask your friends and family if they’ve frozen their credit files at the major consumer credit bureaus. If not, talk with them about what this entails and how it can help ward off identity theft. If they’re game, you might even consider helping them set it up and ensuring that freeze PINs are securely stored so the information is easily available when and if their credit files ever need to be thawed.

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Pity That they can't use the HBO's Rome in the Class Room!

But then I guess that some Helicopter parents might have a stroke or something! GrumpyImage result for hbo romehttps://youtu.be/-vJTNGH4Ib0

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