Skip to main content

The Valkyries

The government of Japan put the number of casualties from the recent earthquake and tsunami at more than 10,000. It has been more than a week and recovery operations around the devastated area goes on. It is quite inspiring to learn of stories of survival amidst the ruins as well as the efforts at saving as many lives as possible in the aftermath.


Valkyrie
A valkyrie is a female Norse mythological figure who decides who will live and who will die in battle. This belief emphasizes the randomness by which events happen.


In 1964 March 27th, the City of Anchorage, Alaska felt the earth move with an intensity 9.2. It will suffer through an 8.2 meter tsunami as well as ground liquefaction and landslides. It was called the Good Friday Earthquake and the valkyries took 131 lives.

It was not all nature's fury when it comes to death. Man can arrange wars and throughout history the valkyries were busy-choosing who to take into the afterlife.

Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff was a high ranking German officer in Hitler's Army. He discovered the mass graves of the Soviet atrocities in Katyn done to Polish officers, 4,000 of them shot by the soviet secret police. He was recruited to assassinate his fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. His own plan calls for a series of explosions including a bomb strapped to his body. He is a suicide bomber and his target is a madman.

He survived the war. He was captured by the Americans. He was one of the few who plotted against Hitler and escaped capture. Most of those who tried to kill Adolf Hitler (there were at least 15 attempts) were made to stand against a wall and shot. No trials. He died at the age of 74 in 1980.

Yes. The valkyries spared this one.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mailvelope, Encryption for Webmail

Encryption is the topic of week. I wrote about it in a related post here. While encryption is a very good idea, doing it and doing it every day as part of your work flow is another thing. My view is that if you're already using an email client then it is easier, simpler and more convenient to adopt encryption. That is not the case if you're using a webmail service. If you are using the browser to check, compose and send your email, what are your options? The answer is: it's complicated. Looking for a way to do encryption with Google Chrome and Gmail, I found this. I also read that Google just released code for email encryption as open source. But it's a long way to being used by end users. The extension for Google Chrome works fine if the recipient also uses Google Chrome. But I went ahead and check this on Evolution.

Donald Trump Is The 45th President of the United States

     and he is preparing to move with his transition team into the Oval Office. His election is a shock to many political observers and the world in general. Donald Trump, the president-elect, ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and for many the most qualified candidate for the presidency in many years. This has led to many post election analysis of how this upset happened. The numbers of votes for each candidate and the comparisons with previous presidential elections point to the fact that the white vote for Mr. Trump is solid all throughout but the minority and black votes did not come for Mrs. Clinton. This is what happened in crucial States like Michigan and Florida. The Republicans kept Congress and the Senate. It is quite notable that Russia and in particular, Vladimir Putin, is happy that they are going to talk to Mr. Trump rather than Mrs. Clinton. It is also a ...

Webapps in Unity

So it has been 4 months since Ubuntu 14.04 came out. This is LTS and supported for 6 years by Canonical. The first mobile device with Ubuntu pre-installed is promised to come out later this year, 2014. It's time to check out how the apps perform so far. It is a good idea. I use Gmail and Twitter and Facebook. Why not a webapp in a desktop? So I start the Twitter and Gmail webapp. So far it has crashed my computer 6 times. Not a very good sign. On the other hand it does work but not as stable as opening them in Firefox. -- Use my PGP key if you want to encrypt your replies/messages to me. You are invited to also send me your PGP keys so we can communicate in private.