Index – The Best of Neptunus Lex

On March 6, 2012 we lost Lex. He died doing what he wanted to do, teaching Naval Aviators how to be even better.

For many of us, the Lexicans, he became more than just a blogger but a friend.  Carroll “Lex” LeFon not only enjoyed writing, but he enjoyed the interaction of the “commentariat”, many of whom he called “the best friends I never met”.

Soon after his accident, his website, Neptunus Lex, went down. If it weren’t for one Lexican, who copied and pasted most (about 70%) of his posts for later reading, “the lightness of Lex”, all 9  years’ worth of his work, would have disappeared into the digital ether.

In Memory of CAPT Carroll “Lex” LeFon, and the Wonderful Community He Fostered

Welcome. The idea was floated that a ‘talk amongst yourselves’ blog would be a good addition to for the Non-Facebook Crowd. Here it is.

Boston Travelogue

By lex, on August 10th, 2010

I have been here before, but it was a depressing space of time ago: I was a lieutenant down at Key West, having completed my first sea tour and working as an adversary pilot. Forward quarter missiles and tactics was my subject matter of expertise, and Raytheon had something new in the works, the development of which it was though I could contribute to, at least from a user’s perspective. I was scarcely 30 years old, and the town has a very different feel today than it did back in 1993.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Lunch

By lex, on August 9th, 2010

Durgin Park, she said. You won’t regret it, she said.

Durgin Park – “Established Before You Were Bahn.”

“The special today is the lobstah roll,” the waitress said. Her honor being a lady of certain age. “It comes with beans, fries and cole slor.”

Cole slor?

How could I resist?

In faith, I had never had a lobstah roll before. I didn’t know how to eat it. I asked my neighbors if they were from Bahston, and they said no. “New Hampshah.”

Does one carve it up, or what, I asked, pointing delicately with my fork.

“You pick it up and eat it,” said the patriarch. A look of abiding contempt in his gimlet eye. “Whaa you from?”

Parts else, I was forced to admit.

Try the Indian Pudding, I was told. The waitress set it down, cautioning, “Cahful, it’s haht.”

Which it  had ice cream atop.

“This is lo-cal,” I stated more than asked. “Right?”

“Let’s put it this way, hon: You won’t have no prahblem sleeping.”

“What’s in it?”

“Cahn meal, molasses and brown sugah.”

Right glad am I that this is but a short stay

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Going Sinker

By lex, on July 20th, 2010

Hate doing this to you again – I do so enjoy our little chats – but life has this habit of getting in the way of hobbies. I’ve got some serious stuff to work through on the home front, and it may be a little while.

Please feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

For the Anglicans in the crowd, BCP  Prayer #56 is solicited.

 

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Friday Open Thread

By lex, on July 23rd, 2010

First, thank you for all your expressions of concern and interventions with the Big Guy/Positive Energy. It’s very much appreciated.

Second, I realize that the previous post is a poor place to leave an invitation for the community to “talk amongst themselves.”   So here, hopefully, is a more congenial place for the regulars to chat about issues of common interest while I attempt to decide what it is I want to do with this space going forward.

Rights and Responsibilities

By lex, on July 17th, 2010

Douglas Murray says that modern day Britain has done a whole lot better job of defining the former than requiring the latter:

“A lot of young Muslims have said to me in recent years, ‘You ask me to integrate, but what are we integrating into? What is Britain, what are British values?’ It’s very hard to tell people to integrate if you don’t tell them what they are integrating into. It’s very hard to tell them to be British if they don’t know and you don’t know what Britishness is. The fact is that we have been very poor in saying what we are and we have also been very poor is saying what we expect people to be. We’ve been very good in stressing what rights people get when they come to Britain and very bad at explaining what responsibilities come with them.”

He also appears to have the drop on the whole multi-culti thing, as well:

“Pluralism or multiracial societies seem to me to be good and desirable things,” he says. “Multicultural societies, where you encourage group differences, seem to me to be a very bad thing.”

For Murray, multiculturalism is a moral vacuum, and “into a moral vacuum always bad things creep.”

The Eton and Oxford educated Murray quotes Saul Bellow in his introduction to The Closing of the American Mind: “When public morality becomes a ghost town, it’s a place into which anyone can ride and declare himself sheriff.”

“Once so-called multicultural societies decided that they didn’t have a locus, that they didn’t have a center of gravity, anyone could ride in and teach the most pernicious things,” Murray expounds. “It didn’t matter. It was just another point of view.”

Divide et impera, Douglas me lad. Dividing the polis into aggrieved victim groups is a classic path to power.

Of course, there’s a world of difference between conquering and Conquering. But in the interim, there’s so much fun to be had. And the muddle-headed multi-culti set might just get lucky.

They might get eaten last.

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Parenting for Pilots

By lex, on July 17th, 2010

Sent along by an occasional reader –

Some of you may have wondered how I disciplined my children to turn out so well. Most people nowadays think  it improper to discipline children, so I  tried other methods to  control my kids when they  had one of ‘those  moments.’

Since I’m a pilot, one that I have found  very effective is for me to just take the child for a flight in the  plane during which I say nothing and give the child the opportunity to  reflect on his or her behavior.

I don’t know whether it’s the steady vibration from the  engines, or just the time away from any distractions such as TV, video games,  computer, iPod, etc.

Either way, my kids usually  calmed down and stop misbehaving after our flight together. I believe  that eye to eye contact during these sessions is an important element in  achieving the desired results.

I’ve included a  photo below of one of my sessions with my son, in case you would like to use  the technique.  It also works well in  cars.

 

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Chechen Snipers

By lex, on July 15th, 2010

US forces engage in a sniper duel in Paktika Province, Afghanistan:

Battalion intelligence overheard Afghans talking about foreign fighters in the village. A few days later, the company overheard traffic in a language its interpreters did not recognize. To kill the marksmen and to find out if there was indeed any foreign connection, the company commander, Capt. Joshua Powers, requested snipers.

In the last week of May, a platoon and a sniper team patrolled toward Palau, hoping to pick a fight with the sharpshooters.

From a roof, the sniper team watched as a pair of men with long rifles, clad in hooded desert camouflage jackets, moved toward the platoon’s position.

“We saw them, they saw us, and it was like a mutual ‘Oh crap, snipers,’ kind of thing,” recalled Cpl. Henry Uken, the American sniper team leader.

For the next two-and-a-half hours, the American and insurgent marksmen traded shots. The gunmen’s rate of fire and their arm movements, visible through scopes, suggested to the corporal and his gunner, Specialist Garrett Taylor, that the shooters were using bolt-action rifles like the famous Lee Enfield.

The fighters used their camouflage to move from place to place, firing at the sniper team from two directions.

Eventually, darkness came and the shooting stopped.

The “game” re-commenced the next day, and ended with a helicopter strike.

Whatever happens, we have got Air support, and they do not.

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