As reported across multiple news outlets earlier this month, for the first time a woman has successfully completed a Naval Special Warfare (NSW) selection and training program, earning her designation pin as a member of the NSW community. Understandably, there was some initial confusion as to whether this was the long-awaited arrival of the first […]
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Breaking down Prince’s 2004 Rock n’ Roll HOF masterpiece
LifestyleThis month, a director’s cut of the iconic Prince shred-fest that took place in March of 2004 at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that posthumously inducted former-Beatle George Harrison was released by Joel Gallen (the aforementioned Director of the ceremony). Harrison wrote the Beatles’ song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and on […]
‘For All Mankind:’ Alt-history Cold War epic shoots for the stars
LifestyleWhat if the Soviets had landed a man on the moon before the United States back in the 1960s? What if they had then landed a woman on the moon before the United States? What if the Cold War did not end in 1990 because Gorbachev never took power in the USSR, and the Space […]
How Admiral McRaven got fired from SEAL Team 6 (and what we can learn from it)
Military AffairsLast month, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, physician to the President of the United States, delivered a “charge for the graduates” — a brief commencement speech — to graduating students of the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, where he is also an associate professor and senior medical advisor. Dr. O’Connor, who was appointed […]
How do Navy SEAL trainees recover after the brutality of ‘Hell Week?’
Military AffairsFor those curious about Hell Week, that fabled and terrible ordeal that all prospective Navy SEALs endure during Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, there is plenty of information out there in the various forms of media to satiate that desire to experience second-hand a small slice of that infamous week. There are countless books that […]
A CIA officer’s 5 favorite spies from TV and movies
LifestyleThere are a lot of fanciful and ridiculous depictions of intelligence officers and operations to be found in the realm of fiction — let us dispense with that caveat from the outset. Be that as it may, there are also some great characters out there in that vast wasteland, standing tall above the detritus and […]
A Navy SEAL applies the ‘Art of War’ to a new enemy: Fire
LifestyleThe perennially-cited ancient Chinese General Sun Tzu, author of “The Art of War,” instructed all contemporary and future practitioners of warfare to “know thy enemy.” In a hundred battles, he assured them, “you will never be defeated.” Sage advice indeed, and as many times as it has paid off handsomely for history’s most successful military […]
A Navy’s SEALs list of post-apocalyptic novels that should be movies
LifestyleIf you are strange like me, and dealing with today’s pandemic-saddled world by devouring novels, television shows, and movies about the apocalypse, pandemics, and post-apocalyptic existence, then you have probably come across these five novels. All five describe either the threat of human extinction — and the struggle to prevent it — or an Earth […]
10 worthwhile take-aways from the Year of COVID
LifestyleWe are a year-plus into the COVID-19 pandemic here in the United States, and — knock on wood — the worst seems to have finally passed us by. Yes, I know that we are not yet completely out of the woods, nor is the disease done adding to its grim toll. I also know that […]
Two former Navy SEALs’ plan to map the ocean floor
TechAccording to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), less than ten percent of the global ocean floor is mapped using modern sonar technology. If we put that into dry-land terms, for those of us who inhabit the (small) portion of the Earth that sits above the great seas, it would be as if […]
