Flyin' special forces!

Elite special forces troops being dropped behind enemy lines on covert missions are to ditch their traditional parachutes in favour of strap-on stealth wings.

The lightweight carbon fibre mono-wings will allow them to jump from high altitudes and then glide 120 miles or more before landing - making them almost impossible to spot, as their aircraft can avoid flying anywhere near the target.
...

Now German company ESG has developed the strap-on rigid wing specifically for special forces use.

Resembling a 6ft-wide pair of aircraft wings, the devices should allow a parachutist to glide up to 120miles, carrying 200lb of equipment, the manufacturers claim.

Fitted with oxygen supply, stabilisation and navigation aides, troops wearing the wings will jump from a high-altitude transport aircraft which can stay far away from enemy territory - or on secret peacetime missions could avoid detection or suspicion by staying close to commercial airliner flight paths.

The manufacturers claim the ESG wing is '100 per cent silent' and 'extremely difficult' to track using radar.

Once close to their target landing zone, the troops pull their parachute rip cord to open their canopy and then land normally.

Weapons, ammunition, food and water can all be stowed inside the wing, although concealing the 6ft wings after landing could prove harder than burying a traditional parachute.

ESG claims the next stage of development will be fitting 'small turbo-jet drives' to the wings to extend range even further.

Flyin'. Special. Forces.

PS, I don't believe a word of this story. Still, it's fun to pretend.

Thanks to Chris.

VIDEO UPDATE: Cool video of "wingsuit jumping." Not really the same thing; "wingsuits" are flexible-cloth wings used to glide, whereas the pic above is of a rigid wing.

Still, the basic concept works.

And, admittedly, a bunch of dudes with M4's flying down at you on these things would be pretty scary.

Thanks to Ilbis.

Even More Video: With a wing-landing instead of a parchute one, and no Red Hot Chili Peppers, if you don't like them, or did like them until they started doing crap like "Aeroplane." Here.

Thanks to JSinger.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (35)
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Link finally fixed.

Not exactly what I was ranting about last week, but related:

How do most people form their political views? Almost nobody forms their political views by looking at the two parties and deciding which has the best philosophy. They form their political views usually by inheriting them from their parents. Or in their early 20s, they look at the party that is filled with people like themselves. ItÂ’s social identity that comes first. Once you find the
party thatÂ’s filled with people like yourself, then the ideas come. Political scientists have measured this through surveys and studies: Philosophy comes after the social identity.

That doesnÂ’t mean the philosophy is unimportant. Once people come up with their philosophy, it shapes them and helps determine what they believe in. But that doesnÂ’t mean itÂ’s primary. WhatÂ’s primary, especially today, is the partisanship, which is a team-spirit tribalism. You can get vicious attacks based on very small political differences, but which reflect differences of social identity about which virtues you think a leader should have.

May be obvious to some, but this occurred to me (perhaps late) a year or so ago. Real politics -- the way most feel and experience politics -- is less about "issues" than it is about social-group tribalism.

And I don't think there's a huge difference between liberals and conservatives on the basics of this. There are differences in the ways liberals and conservatives use this tribalism -- liberals, I think, tend to use the "right" political views more openly and overtly as tribal signifiers; they "wear their politics on their sleeves" in the same way they criticize religious conservatives for being overt and chatty about their religious beliefs -- but still I think most political views derive from basic personality type, temperament, and culture.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 PM | Comments (262)
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Is this for real?

This guy has no shame.

Trump University Elite

Because your education should be yuuuuuuge.

Thanks to chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 03:40 PM | Comments (15)
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The Anti-MILF bleats again.

I would give her some points for her honesty, but the fact of the matter is that she's too stupid and crazy to lie.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (47)
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I'm told this is hy-sterical. Of course, I can't hear any of it, but I'll take Feisty's word for it.

Content warning... I think. It's a commercial from Philips, I think, about how their razors can make your junk look bigger. By, um, shaving down to add an "optical inch."

I've tried this theory myself, usually placing D&D figures in my netherhair to create an illusion of greater size. But as of yet no one has said "My God, you're bigger than a Displacer Beast!"

Posted by: Ace at 10:15 AM | Comments (62)
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A tale of two candidates, one too vain to accede to the wishes of his party's base, another who doesn't have the courage to match his fire-breathing leftist rhetoric with concrete policy positions.

McCain's a genuine danger. He can't win the Republican nomination, nor does he see much interest in even trying to, but he's certainly determined to become president in January 2009, one way or the other.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (31)
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He was hot, then he was ice-cold, now he's hot again.

So what does this guy do? He goes and pledges support to George W. Bush.

The former boxer says, "George is doing a hell of a job during very difficult times, more power to him. Screw all them people who don't like him."

Rent Sin City again. He was really good in that.

Thanks to Dave.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (24)
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It's fun!

And it's safe. Before trying cornhole in real life, why not see if you like it with this STD-free demonstration.

Thanks to "Staffy."

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (6)
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This is the first time all day I've managed to make it to the posting screen. I keep getting "Forbidden/You don't have access errors."

Maybe it's fixed now... if not, I'll try posting some at the blogspot address, www.ace-o-spades.blogspot.com.

There's a cornhole post up there already.

Update: Seems liked it worked. For now, I guess it's working.

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (6)
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Hi everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, on Saturday mu.nu was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), which took out one of our servers, Yuri - the server that hosts most of our blogs. I posted here because Ace's blog is hosted on a different server and was one of the few blogs still up.

I moved all the blogs to our other server, Kei, and after a few hiccups, we were up and running again.

About sixteen hours ago there was a brief attack on Kei, and then four hours ago the attack resumed in full force, taking out pretty much everything.

With the help of our hosting providers I have now firewalled off enough of Eastern Europe and East Asia that the servers are more-or-less coping. I'll need to keep a constant watch on things though.

I think - just maybe - we may have pissed somebody off.

Anyway, bedtime for me (it's 3AM here in Oz). See you all later.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:06 AM | Comments (26)
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