Quick Roundup 12

I normally have a meeting first thing in the morning on Thursdays, and it's business as usual this week. So I'm composing this "morning post" Wednesday evening still tired after yesterday's blogging marathon and in a bit of a hurry.

As you might expect, this post will be mostly light.

You might be a redneck...


(HT: Hannes Hacker, whose email title I also ripped off.)

Objectivist Mil-bloggers

When I first encountered the term "mil-blogger", I thought about bloggers whose primary or only focus is the military. But over time, I came to realize that the term covers two partially overlapping sets of people: those with military experience and those who do a substantial amount of their blogging about their area of military expertise or interest.

Consider some examples from the submarine bloggers in my neighborhood. Bubblehead, author of The Stupid Shall Be Punished, is a retired submariner whose passion is submarines, although he'll blog about almost anything else when the news about submarines is slow. He is a mil-blogger in both senses of the term. Alex Nunez of The Noonz Wire, on the other hand, is a civilian with a strong interest in submarines -- a civilian mil-blogger. Yours truly served for awhile as an officer aboard a fast-attack submarine and writes only the occasional post on submarines. I was a little surprised at first to find myself called a mil-blogger since I blog almost exclusively on political and social issues, but I've since gotten used to the idea.

Over the course of blogging for the past fifteen months, I've become acquainted with a decent number of Objectivist mil-bloggers. Here's the list. (And please let me know whether I have missed anyone.)

Robert Tracy of Illustrated Ideas, is a Jarhead who focuses on art and aesthetic issues. He blogs more about the military than any of the other Objectivist mil-bloggers.

Myrhaf used to translate Chinese for the Air Force -- during the Carter years.

Classics blogger Jason Roberts recently said in passing that he is serving in the military.

Nick Provenzo recently mentioned having served in the military. Turns out he's another Jarhead.

I make five with my experience in the submarine force.

Blogging Milestones

The Secular Foxhole recently saw its 10,000th hit. Congratulations, Blair!

And the same to Alex Nunez on his 15,000th site visit at The Noonz Wire.

Posing with Balls ≠ A Ballsy Pose

Instapundit says, "If Kanye West had balls, he'd pose as Mohammed."

The Gaijin Biker similarly thinks that a certain student protest would take more cajones to carry out in China.

All I'm Going to Say About Joel Stein

Read this column and take it as a little reminder that the battle of ideas is not over in this war. The fifth column is alive and well in America and must also be defeated.

Innovation in Astronomy

Reader Adrian Hester relayed this link to me, which describes the most earth-like extrasolar planet discovered yet.

Prior to this discovery, the smallest extrasolar planet found around a normal star was about 7.5 Earth masses. Earth-sized planets have been detected, but only around dying neutron stars.

The newfound planet, named OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, is probably too cold to support life as we know it, astronomers said. With a surface temperature of -364 degrees Fahrenheit (-220 degrees Celsius), it is nearly as frigid as Pluto.

It was discovered using a technique called "gravitational microlensing," whereby light from a distant star is bent and magnified by the gravitational field of a foreground star. The presence of a planet around the foreground star causes light from the distant star to become momentarily brighter.

Astronomers hailed the discovery as the first of a new class of small, rocky worlds located at far-out distances from their stars.

The planet and star are separated by about 2.5 astronomical units (AU). One AU is equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Until now, no small planet had been found farther than 0.15 au from its parent star.

The finding means planet hunters are one step closer to detecting their holy grail: a habitable Earth-like planet that can sustain liquid water and support life. [most links omitted]

JIB Awards, Round II

Cox and Forkum are in the running for "Best Jewish Humor Blog" and "Best Overall" stop by to lend them your support.

-- CAV

This was posted in advance.