She shielded the wounded, to get them to help, with her body as mortars exploded around her. Five of the soldiers in her unit were wounded by an IED. And in the midst of battle, she found courage. As insurgent gunfire popped with a murderous vengeance around her and her
friends, she found valor.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown (19) is only the second female soldier since WWII to receive the Silver Star in the Afgan War. As she saw the a convoy attacked in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007 in Afganistan. The Humvee holding soldiers was under fire, she said she grabbed her medical bag and went to help. She helped the men, trying to get out of the Humvee to safety citing she went into “robot-mode.” She said her greatest fear was not of the attack, but getting the wounded to a safe location.

Women are prohibited to serve on the front lines of combat. The problem in Afghanistan and Irag is there are no clearly defined front lines in these wars. The other woman to receive this honor is Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester who received the honor two years ago after her convoy endured an insurgent attack.

Brown will receive the Silver Star in Texas later this month.

The military, in giving this honor to Brown, cited “bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat”

Margaret O’Callaghan had a need for a new type of kitchen utensil.  The round-bottomed ladle and the spatula are just not good enough when you’re dealing with things like crock pots and serving dishes.  That’s why she invented the scrudle, a combination ladle and spatula designed to scrape the deliciousness from any sort of cooking […]

Every day, Tom Baker deals with the issue of traffic.  Given Southern California’s massive concentration of cars, it’s no wonder that Baker would get frustrated dealing with the daily traffic routine.  That inspiration resulted in these great images of Los Angeles without the cars.   Here’s the full image gallery, and it’s awesome.
I love the […]

Have you ever wondered where salt comes from?  I mean, salt is in everything from fertilizers (potassium chloride) to the dinner table (sodium chloride), but where does it actually come from?  Why, salt mines, of course!  They’re not just for horrible industrial accidents or mad scientist lairs anymore.  English Russia has a great look inside […]

For some reason, the kids these days love the Twilight saga.  Believe me, it pains me to call it the Twilight saga, because to me a saga is a great, sweeping work of masterful literature, not a teenage vampire romance novel.  Either way, the latest movie based on the Twilight books, New Moon (officially The […]

People worry about all kinds of crises as the world ends, but as the movie Zombieland taught us, sometimes it’s our snack foods that are most important to our happiness.  For Tallahassee, it was his beloved Hostess Twinkies.  If your favorite food is the humble Eggo waffle from General Mills, then you’d best head to […]

I love goofy little websites like this.  From the Wal-Martians to quality engineering, I love a nice, odd corner of the Internet to investigate.  If it’s something that can result in some comedy thanks to random word generation, even better.   That’s why when Mysterio offered to predict my holiday gifts, I jumped at the […]

Linguist d’Armond Speers is an odd bird.  How else could you explain someone that taught his son Klingon as his first language? For the first three years of his son’s life, Speers spoke to his son only in the fictional alien language Klingon from the Star Trek universe.  His reasoning?  It was an experiment to […]