New tactics in the Gaza war

An extremely interesting article in the New York Times about new tactics in the Israel-Palestinian war.

The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks.

Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.

The New York Times: A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery

Afghan war carpets

It’s scary to see how the war thematics have moved to all spheres of life in Afghanistan even to carpet weaving skills. Previously this Middle-East country, lying on the border with Russia was famous for its hand-made carpets with beautiful Eastern ornaments. These days weavers make carpets with war.

UPDATE: A site dedictated to these carpets is Warrug.com (they also sell them).

English Russia: Afghani War Carpets

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PS. In the feed update sent out via email I noticed a funny footnote:

If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Gay Bomb Nazi Castle, c/o FeedBurner, 20 W Kinzie, 9th Floor, Chicago IL USA 60610

Great they thought of this, for those lazy people who want to be spared to click on a link to unsubscribe.

Hitler's new chancellery

For building the Neue Reichkanzlei (Reich Chancellery), Hitler issued a blank cheque to his favorite architect Albert Speer. (In fact, the total costs exceeded 90 Million Reichsmark, more than a billion dollars today.)

Hitler wanted to create an impressive building to wow foreign diplomats, who were supposed to be intimidated by having to walk hundreds of meters through the building on expensive yet slippery marble before they would meet the Führer.

The sheer dimensions of the rooms and hallways (some up to 20 meters in heights) and the extravagant decorations (nearly 150 paintings were bought from museums) were designed to reflect the power of the Third Reich and instill in the visitor a sense of worthlessness.


Even though the building was only lightly damaged by air bombings, the Soviet occupation force decided to tear it down shortly after the ending of the war, as it had become one of the symbols of the Nazi reign. Some pieces of the extraordinary marble mosaics are said to have been reused in a Berlin subway station.

einestages: 70 Jahre Neue Reichskanzlei

Colani's spacecraft designs

Some incredible space ship designs by German industrial designer Luigi Colani, for the US, USSR and Japan respectively.

McTodd69/Colani - Photobucket

Paolo Parente's Dust

This seems to be a quite interesting game, notinsomuch as it seems to be a "Risk" clone, but regarding style and story. I just ordered a copy (together with "Cosmic Encounter") and we'll give it a test run at the GBNC lair soon.

UPDATE: First test run took 3 hours, but it's as full of suspense and addictive as a game of Starcraft on the computer, transformed to the board. Awesome!

Fantasy Flight Games: Dust

The crazy science of Nikolas Tesla

Serbian inventor Nikolas Tesla (1856-1943) is often touted as the most important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth". In the above photo we see him creating metre-long electric arcs and millions of volts with his "Magnifying Transmitter", a variant of his most famous invention, the Tesla coil. Next to these he also conducted experiments with x-rays, the first wireless radio transmission, memory recording, radar, weather control systems, death rays, anti-gravity airships, teleportation, time travel .. you name it.

io9: Everything You Need to Know About the Madness of Nikola Tesla

Dinosaur carving at Angkor

Photo of a relief carving at Ta Prohm temple, Angkor Wat at Siem Riep (Cambodia) depicting a Stegosaurus, which by many Creationist Christian believers is taken as a proof that dinosaurs were present a few thousand years ago and lived together with humans.

1000 Wines: Dinosaur Hunting in Angkor

Star Wars last supper mosaic

Mosaic made up of 67,000 stills from the Star Wars movies. Man.

Star Wars Last Supper Mosaic

AAAAAAAAA!

I don't know why but this strikes a nerve with me. I really don't get what's going on on Uncyclopedia but it's incredible funny.

AAAAAAAAA! - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia

The Shining family movie

Oldie but still funny, this is a good example of a video that spawned an Internet meme.

The Long Watch, 1948

The Long Watch by Robert A. Heinlein, 1948. Heinlein hardly ever disappoints, but this story of the solitary soldier wasting his own life to save Earth is grippingly told and pushes all the "I-want-to-be-a-hero-and-martyr-too" buttons for me.

Nine ships blasted off from Moon Base. Once in space, eight of them formed a globe around the smallest. They held this formation all the way to Earth.

The small ship displayed the insignia of an admiral--yet there was no living thing of any sort in her. She was not even a passenger ship, but a drone, a robot ship intended for radioactive cargo. This trip she carried nothing but a lead coffin - and a Geiger counter that was never quiet.

From the editorial After Ten Years, film 38, 17 June 2009, Archives of the N.Y. Times

Read Robert A. Heinlein's The Long Watch

Neil Armstrong in landing module

A great photo taken inside Apollo 11's Lunar landing module immediately after Neil Armstrong's historic moonwalk in 1969.

nasa.gov: Apollo 11 Image Gallery

Will ecstasy be a crime

Some great promotional posters for the 1956 movie version of "1984", a much better adaptation than the later movie of the same title.

✈ ▌▌

A very strange phenomenom on Google Trends, the ASCII art of a plane approaching the World Trade Center towers has reached "Volcanic" activity.

Search Engine Land: Google Trends Features ASCII Art Of 9/11

Final cylon stationary

This is something I'd need. As they advertise, it's "perfect for taking notes or plotting out the demise of the human race".

Etsy :: paperphilia :: Battlestar Galactica Jotter Notebook - I Am The Final Cylon

Death of a president

I still remember when i watched the whole film on this video player 2 years ago, the quality is quite bad but the film is very gripping.

The Dead Alewives: Dungeons & Dragons

The 8bit reenactment by cybermoonstudios.com:

"Summoner Geeks" version:

Moonwalk on a soccer field

On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. He didn’t moonwalk alone – ‘Buzz’ Aldrin joined him on the surface – and he didn’t walk far.

After travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the landing crew of the Apollo 11 lunar mission barely covered an area the size of a football pitch.

Strange Maps: You’ll Never Moonwalk Alone

Iron Sky teaser trailer

Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.

From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.

Now it’s 2018, the Nazi invasion is on its way and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom.

IronSky.net