Militaria

Today's interesting URLs:

The Classic 100 213 Things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army. Examples :

7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
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24. Must not tell any officer that I am smarter than they are, especially if it's true.
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31. Not allowed to let sock puppets take responsibility for any of my actions.
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40. I do not have super-powers.
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57. The proper response to a lawful order is not “Why?”

...and hundreds of others.

Then there's the Sea Stories of Neptunus Lex. This guy is one of those complete madmen select few who are Naval Aviators. The guys who take off by being bodily flung into the air in front of a giant ship (and hope they have enough airspeed not to hit the water). The guys who sometimes have to land on a heaving flight-deck the size of a small backyard, at night, at speeds that would make a Formula 1 driver blanch.

From one of them.

Fear and Loathing on the Flight Deck

When it's all going horribly wrong...

When I was a young lieutenant junior grade, I was a flight instructor in Meridian, Mississippi. Some of our students were foreigners: Their countries paid their "tuition." Sometimes we found that language barriers presented an obstacle.

We had Spanish students, for example. From Spain, you know. They fell into two categories, in terms of airmanship: Brilliant, and execrable. We determined over time that the brilliant had been selected for our flight school based on their superior skills, while the execrable had been selected based on their superior connections. Over time, we began to realize that the longer and more hyphenated the last name, the more difficult the student....