Dan from Madison – Page 108

Spices and Wine

January 14, 2008January 14, 2008 by Dan from Madison

Over the holidaze I received two books as gifts. I finally finished the second one yesterday.

The first one I read was The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice. This book is about how cities that gained large shares of the spice trade were able to turn that trade into bigtime wealth, prestige and power. Firstly, the book dives into the tale of Venice, which is by far the most interesting of the three, imho. The author does a good job of describing just what exactly the old maritime empire of Venice did and how they did it to become one of the most powerful middlemen in history. He also does a fine job of describing how folks way back then used spices in their cooking – not an easy task with a small stack of literature to choose from on this topic that is available.

ChicagoBoyz Physical Fitness Series Continued…

January 10, 2008 by Dan from Madison

Zenpundit has mentioned several times that he is a big fan of lifting weights. Over the past several months, Jonathan and myself have also begun lifting. Being a competitive bunch we decided to make a gentlemen’s wager on who could lift the largest atlas stone. We made a video and have used false identities so as not to draw attention to ourselves, being the modest persons that we are. I hope you enjoy the video as much as we did making it.

Phalanx Gun

January 9, 2008 by Dan from Madison

Most of you have seen or read that some Iranian boats buzzed a few of our ships that were steaming in international waters near the Straits of Hormuz. The US ships were a cruiser (USS Port Royal, CG 73), a destroyer (USS Hopper, DDG 70) and a frigate (USS Ingraham, FFG 61).

Here is some raw video of the incident:

Tonsils and Adenoids

January 9, 2008 by Dan from Madison

An interesting experience this past week.

Both of my children went into the hospital to have their tonsils and adenoids taken out this morning. Those links go to wiki photos that are very good by the way that help you to see what exactly these things are.

Daimler Dingo

December 31, 2007 by Dan from Madison

It is funny how things work out sometimes.

I am a big fan of reading about armored cars and other types of scouting vehicles from the WW2 era. There have been millions of pages written about the famous tank battles like Kursk. On top of that, there are many, many picture books that feature WW2 tanks. A few subjects that don’t get quite as much attention are armored cars, scout vehicles, and transports. Heck, Patton once said that his greatest weapon was the good old two ton truck.