A Batch of Topics

This post will cover a few articles that I found interesting today. The first one I'd like to address is this one. Here's a snippet from it:

Scientists have found evidence that the kind of low-level exposure to sarin gas experienced by more than 100,000 U.S. troops in the first Gulf war can cause lasting brain deficits...

They found apparent changes in the brain's connective tissue -- known as white matter -- in soldiers exposed to the gas.

The extent of the changes -- less white matter and slightly larger brain cavities -- correspond to the extent of exposure...

So, it would appear that perhaps our warriors from the first Gulf war that came home complaining of puzzling symptoms were not full of shit like the VA and Pentagon have contended. You know the interesting thing is this. The democrats like to pitch a hissy fit over the conditions at Walter Reed and the "shoddy" care the Bush administration has provided for our veterans... You know, Bill Clinton, a democrat sat in that same office for eight years, all the while listening to the complaints of symptoms from GWI veterans and didn't do a god damned thing to help them. Now this tidbit of information surfaces of course you'll see no indictment of Slick Willy's treatment of troops from any mainstream media source.

Moving on to the next article... Here's a snippet:

A man went on a shooting rampage in his central Japan home Thursday, killing a policeman, wounding three other people — including his son and daughter — and taking his wife hostage...

The shooting was the latest in a series of unusually violent attacks in Japan, a country known for its low crime rates and tight gun laws.

So there you have it, definitive proof that gun control laws do not work. The gun control laws are very stringent in Japan. The Brady gang would dance for joy there. and yet, there are a series of shootings in Japan. Criminals will get guns despite your stupid gun control laws. All your gun control laws do is disadvantage law abiding citizens!

Moving on along to the next article... Again a quote:

Three U.S. soldiers slaughtered in a grisly kidnapping-murder plot south of Baghdad last June had been left alone for up to 36 hours in a poorly planned mission, a military investigation concluded. Two officers have been relieved of their commands.

Neither of the officers faced criminal charges as a result of the litany of mistakes that left the soldiers exposed.

If you do not remember this event. It was the 3 soldiers from the 101st airborne that were taken hostage in Yousiffiya that were tortured to death, their bodies desecrated and then left on the street booby trapped. Last June I published a post asking these very questions. How were these men left alone without oversight and back up for so long. So I guess I pegged that one right. In fact, my exact words were, "The fault for this probably falls more squarely on the shoulders of the company CO or platoon leader that planned his unit's deployment and left these men out there as low hanging fruit".

Now on to the last story...

Scientists have located a extra-solar planet named GJ 436 b. This particular one has a few interesting traits. GJ 436 b is a Neptune sized planet that circles a red dwarf star 30 light years (about 176 trillion miles) away from us. It's about four times the diameter of Earth and 22 times more massive. It orbits its host star at an amazingly close distance of only 2.5 million miles, fourteen times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun. Now comes the very interesting part... Scientists surmise that it is composed completely of water. There is so much water there that it would be compressed into ice in spite of the fact that the surface temperature is estimated to be 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The ice that would exist there would be what is called "exotic" ice. You see there are more than one type of ice. This specific kind of ice occurs because of pressure and not temperature.