If you know nothing about the Yom Kippur war, you should watch this video. It provides a good and reasonable fair minded overview of the war.

I found no information that was new to me on the video, but I did appreciate seeing video footage of how the Egyptians cut passes in the sand wall. It was something that was always hard for me to understand when I read about it.

A lot of things have gone horribly wrong in Iraq. In many ways it can be justifiably considered a disaster. But if you compare it to similar invasions and occupations of other countries, the US military has been doing a pretty good job.
For comparison’s sake, look at how Russia as been doing in Chechnya. Click Here to continue reading.

If Stuart Staniford is wrong, he is making one of the most rigorous wrong arguments I have ever seen. He now has a third essay up making the case that Saudi Arabia is facing involuntary cuts in production.
You would think that his last two essays would have covered all there is to cover with currently Click Here to continue reading.

Licky has found a video that will scare all mothers…

Us muscle bound barbarians (as the troll likes to call us) sympathies with this poor cowboy. More to the point, we admire his skill and audacity at pulling off the perfect high society crime.

I’ve recently been laid out by a painful medical condition; whatever functions weren’t affected by the symptoms themselves were thrown out of whack by the medications. While positioned just so in bed, I was cutting out the pattern for the stuffed dragon I wanted to make for my brother’s birthday (a week from that day, Click Here to continue reading.

The poem this week does not go with the essay at all. Though I suppose you could say that it does speak of something like value. But “How inadequate the howl” is one of my favorite poems by Andrew.

I would have preferred to write a proper essay to accompany the poem before I made it Poem of the Week. But Andrew’s site has a tendency to go down, so I figure that people ought to read this while they have a chance.

I suppose this old essay will have to do for an accompaniment…..

Few things cause people to behave more irrationally then oil. It is drug that every one is on. But funny thing is that few of us seem to love the pushers (i.e. the oil companies). So you have this weird situation were everyone wants cheap oil and yet all of the problems associated with the pursuit of cheap oil they want to blame on the oil companies.

In this week’s rant, Robert Rapier pours scorn on some people’s irrational hatred of their suppliers.

This week’s essay is about the meaning of economy and value. The essay is bordering on the territory of a rant, but we liked it enough that we decided that we would give it the more prestigious position of easy of the week. Besides, the Troll writes better when she is in a fury….

A lot of people get their ideas about what guns can do from TV. And most of those ideas are wrong. For example, most guns are incapable of shooting a lock off like they do on TV. Here is a series of tests that a guy ran to prove that point….