Category Archives: history

Osama Bin Laden’s Hideout Compound Reviews

Posted by Jeff Milner on May 2, 2011 No comments

osama bin ladens hideout compound

Here are some reviews of Osama Bin Laden’s Hideout Compound from Google Maps.

Surprisingly large DVD collection, but overall just average. I was visiting my buddy at the Pakistan Military Academy and he recommended bin Laden’s after the compound I had booked on AirBnB fell through. It was only a few blocks away, which was great. Bed was only a twin, but watching Teen Wolf Too made up for it. Not good for more than three nights.
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Well, It is nicer than a cave.
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My wife and I spent our honeymoon in Abbottabad and stayed at ObLC. The fact that they honor Starwood Hotels points really swayed our decision, not to mention the only other hotel in town is a Holiday Inn Express and I wouldn’t bury a dead terrorist in one of their hotels. Booked online, quite simple thanks to their real-time reservation system. I don’t speak Urdu, so the English language translations were very helpful. Upon check-in the staff was very friendly. The hotel manager-I’ve forgotten his name-was kind, and spoke English well. My room was not available at check-in, evidently some billionaire’s son and his entourage were taking up a lot of space, but they graciously upgraded me to a suite. One downside was the loud construction noise at night. I don’t know what sort of demolition or jackhammering they’re doing there but why at night? Very strange, but the manager was apologetic and paid for our breakfast. And they make you sign a “non-disclosure agreement” upon check-out, I guess maybe it’s a very exclusive resort for that area? A++++++++ would stay again!!

Osama bin Laden – Dead

Posted by Jeff Milner on May 2, 2011 No comments


President Obama's speech on bin Laden in full by itnnews

Does this mean I can bring full sized shampoo on airplanes again?

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada To Americans

Posted by Jeff Milner on February 21, 2010 No comments

I love this:

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada to Americans – YouTube

P.S. Parliament has been prorogued during the Olympics so Harper’s little flag waving speech was actually given at the British Columbia legislature.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter Home

Posted by Jeff Milner on November 23, 2009 No comments

As a private with the 106th Infantry Division, Kurt Vonnegut, along with five other battalion scouts, wandered behind enemy lines for several days during the Rhineland Campaign and became cut off from their battalion. They were captured by Wehrmacht troops on December 14, 1944 and imprisoned in Dresden, Germany.

While a prisoner, he witnessed the controversial fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945 which destroyed most of the city. The Germans held Vonnegut in an an ad hoc detention facility that had originally been an underground slaughterhouse meat locker. This experience was the inspiration for his famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

A month later he wrote his family from a repatriation camp informing them of his capture and survival:

Kurt Vonnegut Letter home

See the rest of the letter at Letters of Note – Slaughterhouse Five.

Jimmy Page in 1957

Posted by Jeff Milner on November 19, 2009 No comments

Jimmy Page on BBC1 in 1957.

When asked by host Huw Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page says, “I want to do biological research [to find a cure for] cancer, if it isn’t discovered by then”.

Instead he went on to form one of the world’s greatest rock bands, Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin in 1969. From left to right: John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones.

(via)

Newsweek Presents The Decade In Seven Minutes

Posted by Jeff Milner on November 15, 2009 No comments

Everything you need to know about the first decade of the twenty first century in seven minutes, according to Newsweek:

[Newsweek Presents The Decade In Seven Minutes | Youtube]

Backmasking Text File

Posted by Jeff Milner on May 2, 2008 No comments

Here’s an interesting little text file from 1983 that Jason Scott has in this vast archive of BBS files, backmask.txt, that delves into the history, technology, and social aspects of backmasking.

From the text file by William Poundstone:

TV programs such as PRAISE THE LORD and THE 700 CLUB have propagated rumors of a satanic plot in the recording industry, no less, in which various albums conceal “backward-masked” demonic murmurings. If THAT sounds too spacey to be taken seriously, consider that it was the fundamentalist groups who were behind House Resolution 6363, a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert K. Dornan (R., Calif.) in 1982 to label all suspect records: “WARNING: THIS RECORD CONTAINS BACKWARD MASKING THAT MAKES A VERBAL STATEMENT WHICH IS AUDIBLE WHEN THIS RECORD IS PLAYED BACKWARD AND WHICH MAY BE PERCEPTIBLE AT A SUBLIMINAL LEVEL WHEN THIS RECORD IS PLAYED FORWARD.”

Many of the original rumours I heard about backmasking when I was a kid are in this file. It’s interesting to note that the claims of what exactly each songs says when played backwards has continued to evolve over the years.

Misquoting Jesus

Posted by Jeff Milner on September 3, 2007 No comments

In 1707, a biblical theologian named John Mill was the first to collect and combine the text of some 100 extant New Testament manuscripts. After 30 years of study he noted over 30,000 various major to mostly slight errors in the different versions of the New Testament manuscripts. His discovery brought to light the fact that so many different versions of the New Testament exist and that the book many people think of as the immutable word of God has an uncomfortably long history of changes.

The following video lecture is a tremendously interesting look at some of the discrepancies by world renowned bible scholar and author Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

“There are places where we don’t know what the authors of the New Testament originally wrote. […]

The problem of not having the originals of the New Testament, though, is a problem for everyone—not simply for those that believe that the bible was inspired by God.

For all of us, I think, the bible is the most important book in Western Civilization. It continues to be cited in public debates over gay rights, abortion, over whether to go to war with foreign countries, over how to organize and run our society. But how do we interpret the New Testament? It’s hard to know what the words of the New Testament mean, if we don’t know what the words were.

And so in this lecture I’ll be talking about not knowing what the words were and what we might know about the originals of the New Testament, how they got lost and how possibly they might be reconstructed.”

[Misquoting Jesus| Google Video]