So the call to worship mohammad will not be heard from the bell tower of the chapel at Duke University. They caved to swift and heavy pressure:
In the face of mounting controversy, Duke University reversed itself Thursday afternoon and announced it will not allow a Muslim call to prayer from its iconic chapel Friday.
The Durham university had said earlier in the week it would permit a weekly, three-minute chant by members of the Duke Muslim Students Association to be “moderately amplified” via speakers in the Duke Chapel’s bell tower.
Years ago, way back around 9/11, in that military group I was in, a very strange but very brilliant woman said that mohammad would be preached from the pulpit of Oxford to the total exclusion of Jesus Christ during her lifetime. Back then I thought she was wrong, now, I’m not so sure.
I fear it is only a matter of time before this kind of thing becomes a regular reality.
And to those who say “oh, look, Duke already gives very special treatment to Christians in the form of having services in the chapel, so you’re just a hypocrite!”. Please. First of all, who founded Duke? Methodists. Secondly, what is the religion of the vast majority of its students? See above. Thirdly, there is an enormous difference between allowing a facility to be used for PRIVATE services and the public proclamation of a certain religion from the ostensibly Christian chapel. The tolling of a bell is not in any way equivalent to public broadcast of prayers.
Universities today go to very great lengths to make sure any Christian activities that take place on their premises are private. They repeatedly take steps to block many forms of expressing the Christian faith in public. So this was a very significant move. “Tolerance” was going to be granted to one favored religion – what one might call the de facto religion of the United States and most of the West – that is not shown on the same scale or degree to the other, actually dominant religion of the land. It was hypocrisy of the highest order, and shows once again that liberal shibboleths will not stand against strong and martial religious conviction, at least islamic conviction.
That’s not lunacy, that’s reality. And no your comments won’t see the light of day.
Herro. I don’t have much today, one for lack of time and two for lack of preparation. I was trying to find some material on how radar warning receivers work. There was a really informative video I saw on Youtube once but I can’t find it now. All I can find now is a bunch of video game/sim stuff. BORING. I’ll take the real thing, thank you.
Anyway, not that any but one or two of you care, you get reftover frightrine Friday, Rastro. Just a couple of videos of Phantom F-4s:
The video above features all three USAF fighter aces of the Vietnam War, Steve Ritchie, Chuck de Bellevue (who lives in OKC), and Jeff Feinstein. There have been growing rumors that Robin Olds might have gotten 5 kills, too, but he gave the credit to a wingman to keep from being rotated out of theater.
So, I learned a great deal about Linebacker and the lengths USAF went to to try to get an ace in Vietnam after the Navy got theirs in Duke Cunningham and Willie Driscoll on May 10, 1972 at the start of the Linebacker raids. Ed Rasimus gives some very interesting scuttlebut. The 555th TFS (Triple Nickle) at Udorn was staffed with the best air-to-air pilots USAF had, all graduates of the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis. They were given the choicest assignments of MiGCAP on the most challenging targets in order to increase their chances of getting kills. But what I did not know, until reading Rasimus (who was in the 34th TFS at Korat at the same time, flying F-4Es), was the USAF did all kinds of ludicrous tricks to try to make sure only Udorn guys got MiG kills, in order to produce an ace, and to the detriment of the overall war effort. The Triple Nickle crews out of Udorn got their own “secret” radio frequency separate from teh rest of the strike force, so they, and they alone, could be vectored onto the MiGs. There was a very rudimentary and not terribly effective early AWACS plane called College Eye or Disco that could pick up MiGs taking off. Disco would actually vector other flights from the strike force into various positions to either serve as bait for the MiGs (so the 555th guys could get kills), or put other Phantoms from other squadrons (like Rasimus’) flying MiGCAP into blocking positions to also try to increase the probability of kills.
During Linebacker II, when Rasimus was flying SAM suppression missions every day (probably THE single most dangerous mission to fly in North Vietnam), he chanced to get a fat 6 O’ clock position on a MiG-21. He was just lining up his shot, when the Udorn guys he didn’t even know were around dang near caused a midair with him and his wingman as they blasted by at 650 kts chasing the same MiG. Following proper procedure, Rasimus pulled up, lost his shot, but probably prevented a collision. The MiG may have gotten away. He was slightly upset, as you can imagine. Not that the guys at Udorn weren’t really solid warriors and very capable pilots. They were. It was the USAF brass that so wanted an ace to compete with the US Navy that set up the screwball situation.
The Japanese Air Self Defense Force still flies F-4E Kai (improved) aircraft. They have the radar from an F-16 and other avionics improvements. Airframe and engines are the same as a regular F-4E. Interesting scramble exercise at an airshow in Japan in 2010:
Uff da. Five minutes to get them rolling. That is not a quick alert. That is embarrassingly slow.
Might be boring for most, but this video @~2:00 shows one of the biggest failings of the Phantom. There were critical knobs and switches in incredibly inaccessible places that the pilot had to use in the middle of combat. So instead of being able to keep his eyes fixed on his target, he had to look way down in the cockpit, find the knob, then try to reacquire the target. In the second or two it took to do that, he could be dead. In the video above, you see way below the control stick the armament panel. There were all kinds of buttons and knobs that had to be moved to drop a bomb, fire a missile, or whatever. Not good. Today pilots see almost everything they need on the HUD, and can fire all weapons (and switch between them) using switches only on the throttle and stick. It’s a concept called HOTAS: hands on throttle and stick. It works great.
One more:
A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics 