Monday links

Busy, so let me point you towards some stuff that is well worth your time.

Sonic Charmer offers a Grand Unified Theory of Bernie Madoff, Credit Default Swaps, the Housing bubble, and the financial crisis.  It's blindingly simple, pretty depressing, and exposes the utter bankruptcy of both the Coke and Pepsi parties.

Isegoria offers a story of how the Soviet Spetsnaz platoons captured Manchurian airfields from regiments of Japanese troops.  We don't hear much about The USSR's August 1945 offensive (probably because the war was looking pretty over by then, at least in hindsight), but the tactics on display are pretty significant for the Cold War period, if not today.

We see in the press that ZOMG 2010 was the hottest year evah!!!1!! Via Al Fin, we get an accessible nazzo fast moment.  Related: the number of people who think that the planet is not warming has doubled in the last 4 years.  Maybe it's all the Global Warming they've been shoveling off of their driveway?

Jenny offers belated advice to German U-Boat POWs escaping from prison into the Tennessee hill country back during the War.  Whatever you do, absolutely, positively do not act like Yankees.

And To Old To Work, Too Young To Retire brings a musical tribute to the recently departed Charlie Louvin.  God Speed.