Free Republic

June 21, 2006 This remarkable image must constitute one of the greatest collections of leading edge technology ever assembled in one place and part of an amazing photographic gallery for this story. And the sizeable chunk of war machine is just a fraction of what’s being put through its paces on and around Guam this week in Operation Valiant Shield, a U.S. Pacific Command exercise which focuses on integrated joint training and interoperability among U.S. military forces while responding to a range of mission scenarios. The exercise is designed to make sure U.S. forces have a seamlessly integrated environment...

A vision system that helps soldiers plan a route through the chaos of the battlefield will undergo tests on both sides of the Atlantic. The system, called Primordial Soldier, will provide soldiers with a real-time picture of where troops are in relation to each other and a digital rendering of the route they should follow. It is about to undergo trials with US special forces and has been bought by the UK arm of MBDA Missiles. MBDA plans to carry out conceptual research on the system to learn how using such technology affects a soldier's decision-making capability in the field....

Japanese researchers find new giant picture on Peru's Nazca Plateau The new Nazca Plateau image discovered by the research team from Yamagata University. (Photo courtesy of Yamagata University)A new giant picture on the Nazca Plateau in Peru, which is famous for giant patterns that can be seen from the air, has been discovered by a team of Japanese researchers. The image is 65 meters long, and appears to be an animal with horns. It is thought to have been drawn as a symbol of hopes for good crops, but there are no similar patterns elsewhere, and the type of the...

The idea of persistent surveillance as a transformational capability has circulated within the national intelligence community and the Department of Defense (DOD) for at least 3 years.1 Persistent surveillance, also known as persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); persistent stare; and pervasive knowledge of the adversary, is an often-used term to describe the need for and application of future ISR capabilities to qualitatively transform intelligence support to operational and tactical commands.2 The idea surfaces in many forms, including defense program reviews and congressional testimony.3 Each expression envisions a system achieving near-perfect knowledge and removing uncertainty in war. Persistence means that...

A 16-year-old boy was arrested Wednesday after postings on the popular Web site MySpace.com allegedly showed him holding handguns, authorities said. The teen was being held at a juvenile detention center facing three misdemeanor charges of juvenile possession of a handgun, said district attorney spokeswoman Pam Russell. He is due in court Feb. 27. Police searched the boy's home after receiving a tip from Evergreen High School on Feb. 10, the same day he was suspended, officials said. School spokesman Rick Kaufman said parents were calling with concerns and some kept their children home after photographs posted on the boy's...

Explanation: Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. In Iceland in 1991, the volcano Hekla erupted at the same time that auroras were visible overhead. Hekla, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, has erupted at least 20 times over the past millennium, sometimes causing great destruction. The last eruption occurred only six years ago but caused only minor damage. The green auroral band occurred fortuitously about 100 kilometers above the erupting lava. Is Earth the Solar System's only planet with both auroras and volcanos?

Human remains unearthed in Miami form picture of Tequesta Indian life By Madeline Baró Diaz Miami Bureau Posted January 19 2006 Ancient Florida history is meeting the modern building boom in downtown Miami, where archaeological excavations at two construction sites have unearthed 2,000-year-old human remains. Archaeologists said the discoveries are helping them piece together what life was like for the ancestors of the Tequesta Indians, who lived at the mouth of the Miami River in what is now the Brickell section of Miami. Archaeologists had previously found evidence of a village in the area, but not a cemetery. The remains...

Identity thieves are always looking for new ways to pry out personal information, from trolling through trash cans to phishing for bank accounts online. But here is one method they may not have tried: using fake fingers made from Play-Doh and gelatin, or taking digits from a cadaver's hand. In a study, researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., tested 66 fake fingers to see if they could outwit biometric devices, which identify individuals based on the physiological properties of their fingerprints or other body parts. The fake fingers went undetected more than half the time. "Even if it comes...

BLURRY snaps could be a thing of the past with the development of a digital camera that refocuses photos after they have been taken. The camera could be useful for action shots taken by sports photographers or for CCTV surveillance cameras, which often produce fuzzy shots due to poor lighting. In an ordinary digital camera, a sensor behind the lens records the light level that hits each pixel on its surface. If the light rays reaching the sensor are not in focus, the image will appear blurry. Now, Pat Hanrahan and his team at Stanford University have figured out how...

One of the most famous portraits of English playwright William Shakespeare is not him after all, Britain's National Portrait Gallery announced Friday. The Grafton Portrait is one of the most iconic images of the literary giant. However, after nine months of restoration work and research, the National Portrait Gallery announced that it has no evidence to support the view that it is of Shakespeare. Scientific investigation proved that the picture, painted in oils by an anonymous artist, dates back to 1588, when the playwright would have been 24. An inscription on the painting records the date of 1588 and the...

If Hillary wins in 2008... Ya know... it'd almost be worth it...

October 7, 2005It's time for the annual HelloWeenie award! Last year's recipient was flip-flopper Sen. John Kerry. This year's recipient is cut-n-run Cindy Sheehan. (click here to see it reeeeeeeally large)

One of the terrorist captured today in England.

Shocking Photos Show Nurses Abusing Infants Korea's active netizens are outraged about shocking pictures posted on a website that show nurses treating newborn children like toys in an obstetrics and gynecology hospital. A nurse identifying herself as Lee, 24, posted on her homepage on Cyworld about 20 photos of women who look like nurses appearing to treat newborn children like objects. Pictures show a nurse squeezing a newborn's face with her fingers, putting heart-shaped paper on a newborn's cheeks, and apparently placing a newborn in a plastic bag. They also include off-color images of two newborns posed as if...

That's the man I want to protect my home. God bless President Bush.

Happy Easter! Last week the subject theme for the photography thread was Sunrise, wherein someone suggested that sunrises are better than sunsets. That sounds like a challenge to me! Let's see if we can top the sunrise thread with some beautiful sunset shots. Please post your bestest sunset photos here - your own work, please.

alt="Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao gestures as he speaks at a press conference after the closing session of China's National Peoples' Congress in Beijing Monday March 14, 2005. During the session legislators voted to approve an anti-secession law aimed at preventing any moves by self-governing Taiwan towards independence. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)"

"Strainer girl stricks again. You never know what [your niece] will put on her head next. This is homeschooling hard at work."