Matt Hardigree

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Eight U.S.-built C-130 Hercules military transports bought by Libya are sitting in a field on the grounds of Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia. Moammar Gaddafi bought the planes but, when politics shifted, the U.S. military grounded them. Now the crazy dictator wants a $70 million refund.

The planes are the ultimate ran-when-parked proposition, appearing to have not been used in the last 30+ years. Though they technically belong to the Libyan government, who purchased them in the early 1970s, the current military action in the country and the “no fly zone” make it unlikely they’ll be leaving any time soon.

It’s also unlikely the DOD’s going to be giving a refund to Gaddafi, even if he wants one. They say it’s up to Gaddafi to find a buyer for the aircraft, though he hasn’t even tried to put them up on eBay or anything yet.

There’s a chance they can be sold for scrap if they’re non-functional. A local aircraft museum needs a C-130 and maybe, just maybe, Gaddafi’s crazy enough to give them one. It’s a write-off, isn’t it?

(Hat tip to Jason!)

Awesome

Watch as a modern PC gets Windows 1.0 installed, and upgraded through every major version up to Windows 7. Not sure what’s more amazing; that this screencast is possible today in a VMware virtual machine, or that applications installed in Windows 3.1 still worked through every upgrade to Windows 7, representing nearly 20 years of compatibility. (via kottke)

This is great

Still on the “I can’t believe Trent Reznor has an Oscar” tip: Reznor has already said he’s keeping busy with his kid; working on a full How to Destroy Angels release (his band with his wife, Mariqueen); and on another David Fincher project, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake. The latest, according to Badass Digest, is that he’s reteaming with Atticus Ross to creat the score for Timur Bekmambetov and Tim Burton‘s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Pure Awesome. Excited for the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake too.

Pope Benedict XVI exonerates the Jewish people as a whole from responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in a new book due to be published this month, prompting praise from Jewish groups.

The pope wrote that the condemnations of Jesus Christ came from the “aristocracy of the temple” in Jerusalem and from the “masses” who acclaimed Barabbas instead of Jesus — not from “the Jewish people as a whole”.

Extracts from the book, the second volume of a biography of Jesus Christ, were published by the Vatican’s official Osservatore Romano daily on Thursday.

The World Jewish Congress in a statement praised the pope “for unequivocally rejecting the argument that the Jewish people can be held responsible.”

Congress head Ronald Lauder said: “2,000 years after the event it really was high time that the head of the Catholic Church made a clear statement on this.

“It sets an important marker against anti-Semitism in the Church,” he said.

“Jews suffered from brutal persecution and anti-Semitism because Christians held them collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus Christ, even though he was himself a Jew and was crucified by the Roman rulers,” he added.

Marco Politi, a Vatican expert at Italian daily Il Fatto, said the pope’s words were “a positive signal for the Jewish people, showing that Benedict XVI absolutely does not consider the gospels as a basis for any anti-Judaism.”

Tensions between Judaism and Catholicism have been high for centuries because of Catholic blame of the Jews for Christ’s death.

A Vatican Council in the 1960s that exonerated the Jews failed to end tensions, which have resurfaced in recent years under Benedict’s papacy.

In 2007, the pope reinstated a “prayer for the conversion of Jews”.

The following year he infuriated the Jewish community with a decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson.

There have also been Vatican moves to sanctify World War II-era pope Pius XII, whose public silence on the Holocaust has been widely criticised.

Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

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