Teaching about climate change

You can help.

I've spent the last several days creating a PowerPoint slide presentation about Anthropogenic Global Warming, and the (scientific) case for being a skeptic. I originally thought that I'd make this into a Youtube video; I may still do that, but Youtube is limited to 10 minutes. Even with some major surgery, this presentation is still longer than that.

Should You Be A Global Warming Skeptic

View more presentations from borepatch.

The presentation is an expanded version of this post. There's no audio, so this will be the next step.

If anyone is a teach and wants to use this, you can download the slides from SlideShare (each slide has speaker's notes). If anyone is in the Boston area and wants me to present this to your group, I'm available for the low, low fee of free.

This is a draft, and the OpenOffice spell checker seems to be broken, so I expect that it's filled with misspellings. Any feedback would be very much appreciated, either leave a comment or send me an email: borepatch {at} gmail {dot} com.

Also, please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested. Bloggers, any links to this (or embed the slides yourself) would be a huge help in getting this information out to teh Intarwebs. Long time readers know that this subject is near and dear to my heart. This is intended for a mass audience, because the mass audience needs it.

Oh, and can I just say that SlideShare is teh outrageously cool, filled with win and covered in awesomesauce.

It's nice that he wants to be "just like Daddy", but there are limits

Looks like someone's starting things early down in Chattanooga:

April Wright is 21 years old and is going through a divorce with her husband who is in jail. She says she is not sure how her 4-year-old managed to get out of the house, open a beer, and steal the neighbors presents from under their tree. Now she's just glad he's okay and says she won't let it happen again.

Dad needs to sit that boy down and 'splain things. Maybe during visiting hours:

Once out, Wright says her four year old followed his father's footsteps and was found on Blue Spruce Road, drinking.

"He runs away trying to find his father," she said. "He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that's where his daddy is."

I think there's a country song in this somewhere.

Best wishes for the New Year to Ms. Wright and Hayden, who are obviously not in a Good Place right now.

Security Smorgasbord, vol 1 no 9

Another week, another Day Zero vulnerability from Adobe:

Adobe has confirmed a critical vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2 and earlier versions that could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Adobe recommends customers follow the mitigation guidance below until a patch is available.

Adobe plans to make available an update to Adobe Reader and Acrobat by January 12, 2010 to resolve the issue.

This means that someone can create a PDF that takes over your computer when you view it. It's being actively exploited in the wild, which is why Adobe made the announcement even though there's no fix available. Yuk.

If you run Linux or Mac, you're in better shape. The PDF will cause the Reader application to crash, which is when the malicious code will run. You're unlikely to be running with elevated privilege with either Mac or Linux.

If you open a PDF (say, from an email) and your browser crashes, and then you get prompted to enter your password because a program needs to run, just say no. This is a 100% sure sign that the exploit code is trying to take over your computer. This is where (and when) you stop it.

If you run Vista or Windows 7, the same thing applies to you. Microsoft's security improvements really help you here.

Windows XP users, you're kind of screwed. There's pretty much no way you can protect yourself. About the best you can do is minimize your exposure by not opening any PDF files you get from anyone that you don't know. Or that came from someone you do know, but where the email looks fishy, like a "lol look at this" which could be from an email virus. When in doubt, email back to your friend and ask him if he actually sent it to you.

Adobe has promised a fix in January, so let's be careful out there.

--------------------------------

You know, sometimes I think I can just automatically add a "oh yeah - make sure you go get your latest Adobe fixes" to each week's Smorgasbord post ...

--------------------------------

Big set of fixes from Mozilla, for a bunch (7) of problems. This isn't just Firefox, but is Thunderbird and Seamonkey as well. When these apps say there are security updates available and ask if you want them, make sure to say yes.

And let me just say for the 400th time that Mozilla has an outstanding security update process. Mostly transparent and painless, which means people use it. Internet Explorer 8 needs to adopt this.

--------------------------------

Did you know that the Mozilla team has a security blog?

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SCOTUS to hear texting privacy case:

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a federal appeals court ruling involving the privacy of personal text messages sent and received by a member of the Ontario, Calif., police department on his official pager.

Last June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Ontario police Sgt. Jeff Quon had a reasonable expectation of privacy in personal text messages transmitted on his SWAT pager in the absence of an official policy regarding pager use.

Sun's Scott McNeally said it, ten years ago. You got no privacy. Get over it.

You should assume no privacy until proven otherwise. Of course, I would say that, having been trained to be paranoid by the Finest Minds in the Free World.

I would say, though, that the Police in particular should assume no privacy when using taxpayer funded equipment.

-----------------------------------------

Online Banking pretty much unsecurable:

Trojan-based, man-in-the-browser attacks are circumventing strong two-factor authentication and proving that any authentication method that relies on browser communications can be defeated. This includes chip cards and biometric technologies.

One of the classic sayings in computer security is that "SSL encryption [authentication in this case] is like using an armored car to deliver money from a park bench to a cardboard box under the overpass." There's big, big money in online financial fraud, which means that the Bad Guys are better funded than the Good Guys.

There's a very good report on this (short, not too techy, on-point) from Finjan.

Quite frankly, I simply don't see online banking as being securable, at least from a Windows computer (or a mobile phone).

Hat tip: SANS. You can sign up for their weekly email summaries.

Why do the Democrats hate poor people?

Now it's Big Bucks to keep the Third World poor in poverty:

"The U.S. is prepared to work with other countries to jointly mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020," Clinton told a packed news conference at Copenhagen's Bella Center. But her offer came with a major caveat: that the recipients of such funds agree to strict and open accounting of how they are spent.

Want to build an electric generating plant to provide power for developing industries that will provide jobs for the teeming poor masses? Are you crazy? Don't you love Mother Gaia?

Y'know, when I was a kid, it wasn't so obvious that the Democratic party hated poor people (ignore that man behind the curtain talking about Welfare Dependency - he's a wingnut hater). Massachusett's Martha Coakley looks like she'll fit right in to this crowd: "we don't encourage self-help."

Or maybe they really, really love the poor - that's why they're trying to create even more of them,

Last chance

Overheard Chez Borepatch:

The lovely and gave-me-one-more-last-chance Mrs Borepatch: Just how many last chances do you want?

Me: All of them.

Well, I do. I mean, it's Christmas ....

You think that you have great Christmas lights on your house?

Do you have 40,000 lights synchronized to 96 channels of Light-O-Rama?



Yeah, me either.



Sadly, they're not doing it this year, because recent surgery prevents them from lifting heavy objects. If they were like me, they'd just leave the lights up all year.

Thank you for this fabulous display of Christmas Shock And Awe, Mr. and Mrs. Starr of St. Petersburg, FL. Best wishes for a speedy and full recovery, for a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and light-filled New Year.

God, what a great country.

And just because I like it, here's SHeDAISY singing Santa's Got A Brand New Bag:

Why Copenhagen was irrelevant from the start

Ken Anderson brings the smart, and wicked smart it is:

Ever since the Copenhagen conference got going, and rapidly turned into an argument over wealth transfer from the rich world to the poor world, it has seemed to me that the exercise is best understood not as an argument about climate change, but instead about international economic development policy.

That is, the basic problem with international development policy is not the usual collective action problem. The usual collective action problem is that which bedevils a Copenhagen deal to replace Kyoto, if one makes the assumptions about the science that, apparently, is beyond question: even if everyone agrees as to the problem and the desirable collective solution, temptations to defect and to free-riding wreck it, either at the front end because no one agrees or at the back end. Everyone has an interest; you just can’t get them all past the prisoners dilemma (or variant thereof) problem.

Many clever international lawyer-academics have quite patiently explained to me how that problem is solved this time around; none of them has convinced me. On the contrary, my lens on this is not as someone coming to this from environmental law — but instead from watching iteration after iteration of crises at the UN that are, in each and every instance, something like the end of the world if the conference does not come to some agreement ... and then it’s not.

It's a long article (for a blog - almost as long as some of mine), but goes into how dressing up what is essentially international altruism as "urgent collective action" is something we've seen before. From the usual suspects.

I'm shocked, shocked to find the international conference in Copenhagen struggling to reach agreement on massive international funds transfers.


Shocked.

Encryption? Whatever.

Seems that Achmed the terrorist has been playing "hi mom!" with the unencrypted video feeds from Predator drones.

"But Borepatch," I hear you say, "Isn't encryption the first thing any security n00b adds to the system?" Why yes it is, and full marks to you. It looks like the DoD needs a higher caliber n00b for their security. Or something might go wrong:

U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they apprehended a Shiite militant whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds. In July, the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops, leading some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds.

[Headdesk]

A senior defense official said that James Clapper, the Pentagon's intelligence chief, assessed the Iraq intercepts at the direction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and concluded they represented a shortcoming to the security of the drone network.

Ya think?

"There did appear to be a vulnerability," the defense official said. "There's been no harm done to troops or missions compromised as a result of it, but there's an issue that we can take care of and we're doing so."

I have to call Bravo Sierra on this. The Bad Guys are watching your recon feeds, and this doesn't impact any missions?

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be a new problem:

The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said.

Because our adversaries are all morons. Good thing we don't ever fight any of those smart adversaries. Or someone might get hurt.

So how did this happen? The usual way:

Fixing the security gap would have caused delays, according to current and former military officials. It would have added to the Predator's price. Some officials worried that adding encryption would make it harder to quickly share time-sensitive data within the U.S. military, and with allies.

"There's a balance between pragmatics and sophistication," said Mike Wynne, Air Force Secretary from 2005 to 2008.

Mike Wynne you lying SOB. You failed in your mission, which was to run the shop at least arguably in a competent way. You saved $80 on a $12M drone by not including encryption. There's no way to spin this, so just STFU.

[That sound is the sound of steam coming out my ears.]

Via Slashdot, where the comments are pungent:

Turns out the drones use bluetooth. Just the other day my laptop asked me to sync to one when I was put a pringles can on the antenna.

"Windows has found a MQ-9 Reaper, would you like to connect?"

At this point I was (a.) terrified and (b.) glad that somebody with some clout was going to do something about the increased crime in the area.

Hey, at least he won the Nobel Prize!

Always trust content from Borepatch! Right after last year's election, I wrote:

The best case scenario is that we get something like what's happening in Massachusetts right now. A young, charismatic african american democrat was elected on a transformational message 2 years ago. He hasn't accomplished anything so far, even with a strongly democratic legislature. By "nothing" I mean I literally cannot think of a single thing that he's gotten done.

Healthcare? Tanking. Cap and Trade? Stick a fork in it. The Economy? The voters will let you get away with a massive "stimulus" payoff to your cronies, but you'd better deliver the goods. So far, that doesn't look like it's happening. I blame all those Republican fillibusters. What's that? There haven't been any?

Gee, just like Massachusetts. I'd pat myself on the head for my far-sighted prediction, but you don't need Spidy-sense to see this coming.

Punked in Copenhagen

They made the hippies cry, right there. Some pretty sweet GPS triangulation, from the coordinates in the pictures (I presume JPegs) that Greenpeace posted. Ha! That's what you get for sleeping through your math classes, hippies!

From Joanne Nova, who is all over this climate issue.

Make Big Money, doing Climate Research from home!

Well, I don't know about the "work from home" part, and whether you need to stuff envelopes, but the money's sweet: $79B since 1989, just from the US Fed.Gov. Add in the fellow traveler Euro.Govs and you've maybe doubled that.

Note that's "B" as in "Billion". Skim a lot off the top for Department of Energy and other bureaucrats, and there's plenty of cold hard cash, as long as you toe the line:

• The US government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
• Despite the billions: “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
• Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for more carbon-trading. And experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion making carbon the largest single commodity traded.
• Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
• The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into one theory, have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?

Silly me, thinking that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy was going to send me bushel baskets of unmarked bills for all my Denier ravings. The Big Money's all on the other side.

And yes, I know that this was posted months ago.  I'm a little slow sometimes.

Soldier refuses to shake Gordon Brown's hand

Gordon Brown is Prime Minister of the UK. On a recent visit to see the Lads on the front lines, his reception was (ahem) less than cordial.



At least President Obama can tell himself he doesn't have it as bad as Gordie.

hat tip: The Lone Voice. (mildly NSFW language)

Well look who came to the party ...

You know that your data's questionable when the Russians say that the numbers have been fudged:

Today another example of CRU having their foot on the scale, Russian papers are reporting that the Russian surface station data was sorted by CRU to use the highest warming stations only.

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

...

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

In Soviet Union, the future is always known. It is past that always changes. Looks like the gang at the Hadley CRU have taken that to Version 2.0.

Stick a fork in Global Warming, folks. The data is a total mess, people all over are taking a hard look at the numbers, and any reputable scientist is going to be extra careful before publishing anything.

My take is that this will reset the science to pre-1998 (before Michael Mann). There's good science to be done here, but that can't happen until the politics is drained from the system. Opening up all the data is the fastest way to get that done, and that looks like it's happening at warp speed.

Quote of the Day - Climategate edition

From Samizdata, about the collapse of the theory of AGW in general and Copenhagen in particular:

During the 1980s I vividly recall being told, by people whose pessimism about the Cold War was so profound that they might as well have been Soviet agents of influence for all the use they were to the side they claimed to be on, that merely proving that despotic state centralism was an economic disaster would make no difference. Those wicked Soviet Communists - who were, they claimed, so very much cleverer than any of us - would still eat us all alive, and all the more horribly on account of having run out of stuff to eat in Russia and surrounding parts. Well, it turned out that winning that argument counted for quite a lot. And winning this one will count for a lot too.

I remember them, too. If it's true that all the old Reds turned Green at the end of the Cold War, they've lost twice.

Order Donate before midnight tonight!

Wikipedia is having a fundraiser. Tosh.0 has seen this sort of thing before:

"Come on, baby. Remember how I was there for you? I helped put you through college. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't of had the resume to get your job at the Bank of America. So now, I come, asking for money this once, and suddenly you don't want to help me out? You wouldn't be makin' that money at all if it weren't for me!"

Then you ask Wikipedia what he needs the money for. "I need a lotta space," he responds.

And then you're like, Why don't you earn your own money?

And Wikipedia's all like, "I ain't gonna sell out! I'm an artist! I got street cred!!"

F' you, Wikipedia! You ain't freeloading off my dime anymore! Go sell yourself on the street for all I care. Get some goddamn advertising!

No, no, I didn't mean it, Wikipedia. I love you. Here's a couple bucks. You stay just the way you are.

I mean, where else can I find historically-suspect information about Rutherford B. Hayes? Nowhere. You're one of a kind.

Heh. Can't have too much historically-suspect info about Rutherford.

Just in time for the Holiday Season

I do like me some Reba, but this just cracked me up.

Corporate Dinosaurs

Via the Machiavellian comes the best rant about Hi Tech business I've ever read, from The Fake Steve Jobs, comparing the iPhone to "Meet The Beatles" to AT&T's Randall Stevenson:

Now, the thing about that album was, on the day it hit the U.S. the whole world changed. Like, before that day, the world was one way, music was one way, culture was one way — and then after that day the world was never the same ever again, and as soon as you heard that album you knew that, and even if you were only nine years old, which I was, you just knew. You knew. Sales were crazy. I mean nuts. The thing was a huge smash hit. By April, twelve weeks after that album came out, the Beatles had the top five spots on the Billboard chart.

Now there was a lot of demand for that record — so much that the plant that printed the records could not keep up. Now here’s the lesson. Do you think the guys who were running Capitol Records said, Gee whiz, the kids are buying up this record at such a crazy pace that our printing plant can’t keep up — we’d better find a way to slow things down. Maybe we can create an incentive that would discourage people from buying the record. Do you think they said that? No, they did not. What they did was, they went out and found another printing plant. And another one and another one, until they could make as many records as people wanted.

Randall is like, Okay, I get your point. I’m like, You know what, I don’t think you do, because if you did, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation, would we? I mean if you did understand how to do things, your guys wouldn’t be standing up at Wall Street conferences and complaining about how much traffic you’re getting. Instead, you would be running around like a fucking maniac trying to build out your fucking network and make it the best network in the world — and the only reason you would ever need to talk to me would be to thank me for creating a phone that’s so amazing that it draws people to your shit network in the first place.

There's more. I'm in awe, really.

One of the best arguments for small government is big business. The bigger the business, the more likely they will spend more time lobbying Congress for unfair advantages, rather than working to win the market by providing goods and services that their customers would rather buy. Google "regulatory capture" for a million examples.

Look, I'm not even an Apple fanboi, and I broke down and got another iPhone. Yes, it's a closed system (spit) that won't work with Linux. Yes, I have to take it the way His Steveness wants, because it's His way or the highway (no cut-and-paste until version 3.0).

It's the best damn piece of pocket tech ever created. I can open my address book, and click on someone's location, and it will read me driving directions to their stinkin' house, via GPS from a satellite in outer freaking space. And then I can post on my blog about what we did. It's so good that I use it despite the inability to sync with my Linux computers. And AT&T wants to slow this down?

When Jobs (the real one) introduced the iPhone, people missed the most important thing he said. "It's the Internet in your pocket." I guess that Randall Stevenson missed that, too.

Hey AT&T, any time you don't want my stinking iPhone bits on your network, just let Verizon take over the contract from Apple. You won't have to worry about too many customers, slowing everything down.

Taunton, Massachusetts: where the inmates run the asylum

Via JayG we find that Taunton, Massachusetts is back in the news:

A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.

Got that? This kid - who has never been in trouble - was not only sent home from school for drawing a picture about Jesus, but required to undergo counseling before he could return. For drawing a picture about the son of G-d. For practicing his religion.

Why did he draw a picture of Jesus, you ask?

He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.

THE SODDING TEACHER ASKED HIM TO.

It makes you wonder: what's a problem to the Good Burghers of Taunton, and what's not a problem to the same said Burghers? Well, we see from this that a ten year old completing school assignments is a Clear and Present Danger. So what's not a Clear and Present Danger?

Remember this?

Tekmage has great post about Massachusett's idiot Attorney General, Martha Coakley. For those who haven't heard, here's the Cliff Notes version:

1. Pervert molests 4 year old in [Taunton, MA] public bathroom.
2. Kid's (ex-Marine) dad catches him, and goes all Semper Fi on perv's ass.
3. Police show up, take one look at situation, and arrest the dad.
   

When Atty Gen Coakley was asked WTF was up with this, her reply was "We don't encourage self help." Well now.

This is from the very early days of this blog, and needs updating. Martha Coakley is indeed an idiot Attorney General, but she is now an idiot US Senate candidate.

What does this have to do with Taunton? Well, the local Po-Po let the molester go:

Although Rodriguez faces a felony charge, police decided not to arrest the suspect at the scene due to his advanced aged and lack of a criminal record.

Guess who was an illegal immigrant, and who - surprise! - skipped the country before his court date?

"But Borepatch", I hear you ask, "what does this have to do with the ten year old hardened Thought Criminal?" This:

At first blush, it seems that the $64,000 question is "Why would the authorities not want the public's help?" Suppose that the Mass.Gov really wanted to reduce child abuse. They'd give the dad a medal, and haul Mr. Feely off to durance vile. Then everyone would retire to the local saloon: Whiskey for my men and beer for my horses.

That's sure not happening. So the real $64,000 question is "Why not?" The answer is ugly.

It's not ugly because the idiot police let the molester go free, although that's pretty ugly. While the molester is a threat to the community, he is not a threat to the authorities.

What is a threat to the authorities? Mr. Marine Dad, who wasn't a good victim, who didn't go running to the Nanny State for help, who handled things.

How's the Mass.Gov supposed to justify more spending on public safety when the public is, well, keeping itself safe. Can't have that. Listen to Ms. Coakley again:

We don't encourage self help.

You'll know that you understand her completely when a shiver runs down your spine.

I hate to point to one of my own posts and tell you to RTWT, but if you want to understand how they think down Taunton way, go RTWT.

Ask yourself, what is threatening to a liberal, Democratic political machine? Alternative power centers. Whether they are individual (Marine Corps Dad) or collective (a Church), both provide a counterpoint to the political establishment's cozy exercise of power. Can't have that.

And the voters of the Commonwealth keep returning these shysters to office. As I said before:

You couldn't assemble enough brain cells to feed a zombie if you collected every Democratic voter in Massachusetts.

So what's to do? One idea is for freedom-loving people to take a leaf from the Activist Left, and use the court system as a club to beat the establishment over the head. I left a comment over at Jay's that I'll reproduce here, because it lays out the strategy:

The issue is the maze of rules that the education bureaucracy has set up - I expect that the teacher had little/no leeway.

The solution is to sue those responsible for enforcing the rules - the School Board. Sue them individually and collectively, along with the school district and town. Sue the Mayor and Selectmen individually and collectively.

Make it "up close and personal", and you'll get less "our hands are tied" next time. Even if you don't win.

The Activist Left took this path because their agenda was unpopular with the voters, and would never win at the ballot box. The Freedom Bloc (for lack of a better term) would use this because the game is rigged, and the People's Voice is not able to be heard at the ballot box.

A ten year old is a threat to the Taunton authorities, so they took action against him. We need to show the Taunton authorities that there are more serious threats to their authority, threats delivered in Summons form.

UPDATE 15 December 2009 15:55: Good think he wasn't twirling braids. Something might have got out of hand.

I don't need to outrun the Zombie ...

And speaking of shotguns, this would be useful for a Zombie infestation:



Hat tip: Tom McMahon.

Recommended Reading - Vietnam: No Regrets

In the Army, there is teeth, and there is tail. The teeth are the front line fighting soldiers who go after the enemy day in and day out. The tail are the rear echelon people who keep the teeth supplied with fuel, ammo, and what the teeth need to beat the enemy. America does logistics better than anybody, but the result is that there may be ten people in the tail for every warrior in the teeth.

This book is from one of the warriors in the teeth.

J. Richard Watkins is a Massachusetts man who joined up because it was the expected thing to do. His family had served their country, his friends all served, and when he turned 18, he did, too. He found himself in Vietnam in the very point of the tooth, as a radioman assigned to search and destroy patrols. This is his story of his eighty-odd missions.

It's his story, written by him. No ghost writer, no "... as told to ..." His words, as he set them down on paper. That makes this stand out.

I figured that if I got the radio off my back and laid it on the ground a few feet to my left, they would concentrate their fire on it. I was hoping the dumb bastards would still figure I had it on my back and I think they did just that, considering the amount of bullets that continued to hit the ground around that radio.

The radio was now off my back, but I could still reach over and talk through the phone to call in the artillery support we were starting to need so desperately. "Two Zero, this is Two Zero Echo Bravo, fire mission. Over," I yelled frantically into the phone.

...

The lieutenant yelled into the phone, "Drop fifty, Right fifty and Fire for Effect, Fire for Effect. Over."

The most interesting parts of his book are not the combat scenes. While intense, they're short (perhaps the way they were in the field). There's quite a bit about the tension between the teeth and tail units:

I would be one of ten guys to get a medal this day, for the combat that we had been involved in the previous six weeks or so. As I looked down the line at my fellow soldiers, it came over me that the way we looked was the way we always looked. We always seemed to be coming in from a mission or going out on one, so for us to stand at attention with a clean new uniform on would have been hypocritical. The way everyone was dressed was a much clearer representation of who we really were and we were very proud of who we were. Let the "Base Camp Warriors" get their "Bullshit" medals all dressed up with their boots shined. I was proud to represent the "Wolfhounds" by looking the exact same way I did each and every day in the jungled and rice paddies of South Vietnam.

I had the pleasure of meeting Sgt Watkins at the Fitchburg Gun Show, where I bought his book. I believe that what he has done - writing his memoirs of those years, in his own voice - is terribly important for future generations. If we've learned anything from the "Greatest Generation" who stormed the beaches at Omaha and Iwo, it's that too many held off talking about it. Many are now gone, and their stories will never be told.

Sgt. Watkins, thank you for your service to your country, not once but twice: once in the jungles of Cu Chi, and again telling your story.

Very, very highly recommended. This book isn't polished like the ghost written memoirs, but it's the real deal. If you're looking for a holiday gift for someone who digs military history - especially from the Grunt's perspective - you can find it online here.