Your pictures of war-zone graffiti can find a home at Unconventional Military Art, founded by a former soldier and his friends to collect the touching, funny or jarring images of art from overseas. Read about co-founder Jaeson Parsons, an Iraq veteran and former medic, in this week’s OFFduty, on news stands now.
Anti-DADT activist Dan Choi, a former infantry officer, is under attack for using sexist language to lambaste Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Choi may be persona non grata in the military these days, but his comment reflects a negative current in the services.
Once in a great while… OK, every week, there comes a new YouTube sensation. Antoine Dodson. The 82nd Airborne Lady Gaga dancers. The trampoline bear. We say, why not Safety Ape? He loves near beer, hates daisy chains in your CHU and he’s 100 percent ready for prime time.
At the Army Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center’s booth at AUSA, it was hard to take my eyes off a prosthetic hand so lifelike it looked like there was dirt under the fingernails. Beneath its silicone flesh was a mechanical pincer that, manipulated by the motion of an amputee’s arm and shoulder, opens and closes the thumb, pointer and forefinger. But after filling me in on the hand, TATRC research scientist Jason Ghannadian wanted to talk feet. Since the start of the current wars, there have been more than 16,000 amputations across the services, an overwhelming number of which…
Katherine Hammack, one of the newest and probably the greenest Army official said the service is aiming toward “net-zero” energy and water usage at all installations. “We need to improve energy security, we need to become less dependent on fossil fuels and we need to do it now, and I’m proud to say our installations are stepping up our game, they’re becoming creative,” said Hammack, seated beside Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, Commanding General, U.S. Army Installation Management Command, on an AUSA panel here. Appointed assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment on June 28, Hammack has more than…
Your boss tells you what to do at work, but your B.O.S.S. tell you what to do with your free time. B.O.S.S. is Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers, a Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation program that provides single soldiers with wholesome recreation, like cookouts, deep water cruises and white water rafting trips. Though its not a new program (it was set up in 1989), one wonders how well it dovetails with the Army’s efforts to steer soldiers away from “risky behaviors.” B.O.S.S. looks like the Army-issued alternative to those behaviors–which may or may not seem cool to you. “We…
