How ISIS used a sandstorm.

"The sandstorm delayed American warplanes and kept them from launching airstrikes to help the Iraqi forces, as the Islamic State fighters evidently anticipated."

The fighters used the time to carry out a series of car bombings followed by a wave of ground attacks in and around the city that eventually overwhelmed the American-backed Iraqi forces.

Once the storm subsided, Islamic State and Iraqi forces were intermingled in heavy combat in many areas, making it difficult for allied pilots to distinguish friend or foe, the officials said. By that point, the militants had gained an operational momentum that could not be reversed....

IN THE COMMENTS: SJ said: "It's hard to fight a war without putting soldiers on the ground in the area. Airplanes are useful, but they can't win a war by themselves." Surfed said: "Right out of the 1965 operational playbook of North Vietnamese General Vo Giap. Get close and intermingle in combat - it negates America's strengths in airpower and artillery. One place - Ia Drang Valley."

Why little David wasn't shocked when he peed on an electrical outlet.

In yesterday's post about toilets, the commenter David-2 recounts a story of getting up in the middle of the night to pee when he was a little boy and not only missing the toilet, but hitting "a very badly placed electrical socket."

I still remember the fireworks show! I wasn't shocked (electrically, I mean) or hurt ... just damn surprised!

A nice thing about blogging one commenter's lifelong mystery is solved by other commenters. SJ takes the first shot, but kind of misses:

And I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out why you didn't receive an electric shock... The path-of-least-resistance for electricity was from the +110V AC wire to the neutral wire, and not through the urine to you. Now, I'm no longer surprised that you weren't shocked.

That brought correction from sojerofgod:

Actually, that is not why he wasn't shocked. Water does not actually flow in a stream. The surface tension of the liquid is such that it actually forms discrete droplets that are invisible to the eye due to the "analog" nature of vision. (See: Visual persistence.) Only if the voltage had been high enough to arc from droplet to droplet would the electricity have found him. -or if the distance was very short, which would kind of blur the line between "accidentally" and "deliberately" if the boy chose the latter, well, lets just say its a weird way to light up your life...