(and mystification):

Something I borrowed from Charles. Thanks, Charles!

To the three people who might get it: No. Names.

I have been praising the excellence of the new NBC show, Heroes, all year, particularly to my friend Lynn, who I know only likes to watch good shows. By sheer accident (turning on NBC ten minutes too early), she caught the last few minutes of this week’s show, and is now hooked.

Why am I telling you this? Because thanks to Lynn, I found out that all of the episodes—except the first, which is “coming soon”—are available at NBC.com.

If you haven’t watched the show, you are missing the best new show of the season. But don’t take my word for it. Catch up on the episodes and see for yourself. There’s even a toggle switch that lets you watch them full screen.

Then we can start talking about the show when it returns from its hiatus in January.

Haaretz reports that IDF brass has finally made up their minds on the Trophy - the anti-anti-tank missile system.

The Israel Defense Forces will begin equipping its tanks with an advanced, active protection system capable of countering the latest anti-tank missiles. The locally developed system, known by its export name as Trophy, will be installed on Merkava Mark IV tanks, partly in response to the experience of the recent war in Lebanon.

This is rather good news. However, this belated decision raises a couple of questions:

The Rafael Armament Development Authority offered Trophy to the IDF several years ago, but the suggestion was turned down then due to other budgetary priorities. The cost of installing the system on a single tank is estimated to be $200,000-$300,000, if a significant quantity is acquired.

An additional investment of $200,000-$300,000 to save our soldiers in situations that we have seen in Lebanon does not seem like going overboard. So why that decision was not taken earlier, when it was not yet late?

The cost of Merkava 4 (rough estimate) is between $4M and $5M (about half of the cost of comparable US tank), so, even as a matter of economics, addition of that amount to save a tank is not unreasonable.

Speaking about economics, there was another failure related to the strange decision to delay the ordering and installing of Trophy - a failure to persuade US Army that this is a superior solution:

September 2006: The US Army opted to pursue a different system. Earlier in 2006, Raytheon received a development contract to demonstrate and develop the Quick Kill APS, to be integrated into the future FCS systems.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A, Sorenson, the Army’s deputy for acquisition and systems management explained the decision (AFPS) saying the Israeli system is not a “produceable item.” The Israelis have been working on the Trophy system for 10 or 11 years, Sorenson said. “If this thing was ready to go, my question would be, why wasn’t it on the particular tanks that went into Lebanon?” he said. No Israeli Merkava tanks carried the Trophy system, he said.

Granted, the failure to sell the system to another armed force is way below the failure to protect our soldiers on the scale of importance. Still, it is a failure. Granted, Gen. Sorenson’s reasoning is an example of Army brass logic and could be criticized easily, but the point is that the general asks a valid question here. Why indeed?

Maybe it is time to ask the person who was our finance minister a few questions? And a few other people in the Defense Ministry as well.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

How is this man not the 21st-century Hitler?

Ahmadinejad criticized three European states—an apparent reference to France, Britain and Germany—for seeking to deny Iran what he called its nuclear rights.

“If you insist on your path against the Iranian nation’s right, the Iranian nation will count it as enmity against the Iranian nation and the Iranian nation will reconsider its relation to you,” he said, without giving details.

“I’m telling you in plain language that as of now, if you try, whether through propaganda or international organizations, to take steps against the rights of the Iranian nation, the Iranian nation will consider it an act of hostility.”

How is it not obvious that Iran’s goal is to become the nation that controls the Middle East?

Iran’s top national security official urged his Arab neighbors Tuesday to eject the U.S. military from American bases in the region and instead join Tehran in a regional security alliance.

Iran is the nation behind Hezbullah. Iran is funding and training terrorists who murder Americans and Iraqis in Iraq. Iran is the nation that has stated plainly its determination to wipe Israel off the map, and is the only nation in the world where Holocaust denial is not just part of its international policy, but is becoming enshrined in its permanent national message.

What are we waiting for? The invasion of Poland?

All of those ignorant lefties who call Bush Hitler are blind, deaf, and dumb (in the other sense of the word). Ahmadinejad is the Hitler wannabe, and is trying with all his might to remove the “wanna” from that word.

Spengler sees it.

Iran covets the oil reserves of southeastern Iraq, southern Azerbaijan, and northwestern Saudi Arabia. With 30% youth unemployment, 10% inflation, epidemic prostitution and drug addiction, Iran’s fraying social fabric depends on an oil-derived government dole. Within a generation it will have half as many men of military age, and four times as many pensioners. As currently configured, Iran faces economic and demographic collapse eventually. If, as Business Week reports, Iran’s oil exports are falling by one-seventh each year, the reckoning might come sooner rather than later. The theocratic regime is a wounded and dangerous beast, prone to hunt outside its own preserve.

And I have reported many times before: Holocaust survivors are scared to death. They see the exact same thing happening today that happened 70 years ago. The world is once again letting its Jew-hatred out in the open. You cannot go anywhere on the internet without seeing any discussion about Israel devolve into anti-Semitism. Every. Single. Time. And the anti-Semites protest the loudest that they have nothing against Jews. No, it’s just Zionists that they hate. Zionism—the movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews in their national homeland—is the world’s greatest evil, not the mad mullahs in Tehran about to get nuclear weapons.

There is a huge difference between the 1930s and today, however. When we said “Never again,” what we meant was: Never again will we let you murder us in the millions. Never again will we go down without fighting with every means at our disposal.

This time, the Jew-haters are going down, too.

Have you seen that ad on Google every time you do an Israeli-related search? It’s to a Foreign Affairs magazine article “A World Without Israel.” It goes something like “Imagine a world without Israel.” It’s a paid link, so I never read the article.

But I have a different side to that question: Imagine a world without Iran.

Because I think it’s a distinct possibility that if Iran gets the bomb, and launches one at Israel, we will see what the world is like without Iran.

Yes, the people who are being driven out by the Muslims still have more than enough Jew-hatred to go around. They’re blaming Israel for spreading AIDS to palestinians.

“Israel is trying to hurt the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people also by means of exporting AIDS, drug trafficking, promiscuous norms, and making prostitution legal,” warned president of the sharia religious court in the PA, Sheikh Taissir Tamimi, and spokesman of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Atalla Hanna.

Thanks so much, guy. Because it’s not like the second the Israelis left, the pals wouldn’t murder, forcibly convert, or drive out every last Christian remaining in the “waqf” of “Palestine.”

The blood libel lives, updated for this, the age of AIDS.

Archbishop Hanna said that Israel is conducting a battle against Palestinian societal values.

“A few weeks ago, the Israelis wanted to organize a parade of sexual deviants who wanted to demonstrate for their right to be sexual and moral deviants all in order to damage our values and the holiness of Jerusalem. These people wanted to hold the parade in Jerusalem of all places,” he said.

Hanna also said that he had read in one of the Palestinian newspapers about a young AIDS-infected Israeli woman who, according to the article, arrived in Jerusalem in order to infect young Palestinians with the disease. The archbishop called the Palestinian public to beware of such dangers.

I’m thinking that is not the rate in central Virginia, which is where I happen to live.

For the past two years, I have been working at various temporary jobs in various Large Companies while trying to get a permanent position, either in Large Company or in other places. I’ve sent out my resume about a zillion times (that’s a rough estimate). I have had temporary jobs as a tech writer, web content manager, and writer of training documentation. Since I am thin in the marketing writing experience, that’s about the only type I haven’t landed. And frankly, it’s not my first choice of writing position, which probably influences my and their decisions.

While I’ve been on the job hunt, I’ve seen three positions at two different Large Companies disappear into thin air, two right out from under me, due to cutbacks, budget freezes, and the like. I have to tell you, it’s almost worse to actually land a position through the interview process—only to be told that your manager’s superiors won’t sign off on it, and you can’t have the job, after all—than it is to not get a position you interviewed for (and yeah, there’s been more than a little of that).

The upshot: I’m looking for another job, hoping to get one before my temporary assignment runs out the end of December. I have various agencies looking for me again, except for the one that’s pissed at me because they didn’t get their cut of my current assignment because I’d already applied for a position here myself (thanks to a reader of this blog).

But I gotta tell ya, it’s been two friggin’ years since the job hunt went into intensive mode, and I still have not landed a permanent position.

I am re-evaluating staying in Richmond. I am realizing that the employment situation here is too unpredictable. I am going to be forced to move northward. I’ll be looking in Fredericksburg first, but if I can’t find something permanent, soon, I am going to have to give up on Richmond. I need security. I’m tired of jumping from job to job, losing sleep over interviews, losing sleep over worrying whether I’m going to have a job at the end of the month, or whether I’ll be able to pay the bills, or whether I can afford to pay for a doctor’s visit or COBRA or the medicine that isn’t covered by the COBRA.

I don’t know where they’re getting the 2.7% unemployment rate, but I’m betting it isn’t from Richmond. And of course, I don’t even count on that statistic. Sure, I have a job, but it’s a temporary job, over in a few weeks, and they won’t count me on the rolls of the unemployed unless I register. Which I probably will do, come to think of it.

I am soooo tired of the job hunt.

I really don’t want to move. But I think I’m going to have to.