RESCUE IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS: A Navy Seahawk performs a rescue mission on St. Thomas.

RELATED: A more detailed photo of a Seahawk and background on the helicopter.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SYMBOL FOR ZERO:

Carbon dating of the Bakhshali manuscript, a sole surviving copy of a mathematical text, has pushed back the time of origin to between 224 to 383 AD, rather than the 9th and 12th centuries as previous research had suggested. The Bakhshali manuscript is littered with a symbol for zero, as conveyed by a solid black dot, making it the oldest known example of the symbol that would later evolve into a number in its own right.

Yes, Mayans and Babylonians also had the concept of zero as a placeholder.

SPRAYING FOR MOSQUITOES IN TEXAS: A US Air Force Reserve C-130 will conduct aerial spraying missions in Harris County, Texas. Harris County is where Houston is located.

The U.S. Air Force Reserve’s 910th Airlift Wing will fly a modified C-130 cargo plane to conduct the aerial sprays. The plan is to spray 600,000 acres, mostly outside of the City of Houston limits.

The mosquito threat is serious. The spray insecticide is named Dibrom, which is also called naled.

For you pearl-clutching Social Justice Warrior and anti-fa types who start off icked and riled and teeth gnashed about insecticides, here’s some info on mosquito-borne diseases.

If you don’t know what a C-130 looks like, here are several flying in formation. Here’s a C-130 training for an aerial firefighting mission. It’s expelling water. This photo shows two modified C-130s that fly with the Hurricane Hunters.

THE WORLD’S OLDEST PHOTOGRAPH: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the photo in 1826. It’s now at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. The Ransom Center has a very good short video about the photo that is available on youtube. Read the article then watch the video: “View from the Window at Le Gras.”

ENROUTE TO THE KUIPER BELT: The New Horizons spacecraft wakes up, for awhile.

BAAD: A B-2 Spirit sits on the flight-line at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. BAAD is an acronym for Bomber Assurance and Deterrence Deployment.

The military has a lot of acronyms. It also uses a lot of jargon and slang. This guidebook will help those unfamiliar with milspeak.

CONGO’S VICIOUS KASAI WAR: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

SOUTH KOREA PREPARES TO HOST WINTER OLYMPICS:

Just five months from now, South Korea will host the 2018 Winter Olympics. But tensions with North Korea have caused considerable problems for organizers of what is supposed to be a global celebration of sports.

The Games are set to begin in February, but with North Korea in recent months testing missiles and what Pyongyang said was a hydrogen bomb, ticket sales for the event have remained disastrously weak.

Stay tuned.

EMBRACE THE SUCK ALERT: The Second Edition pre-order page is already up at Amazon. So get moving. Don’t stand around looking like a pig with a wrist watch.

MY FIRST 9/11 COLUMN: Written the day of the attack.

The column includes this line:

Waging this war requires a national consensus to bear the responsibility of common defense and a commitment to common purpose.

I think that’s true. I don’t think we’ve done it.

For what it’s worth, here’s a column I wrote in January 2001 about intelligence failures. Donald Rumsfeld had raised the issue in his confirmation hearings. I believe the column ran January 23, 2001 in The Washington Times. The San Antonio Express-News also published it sometime that week.

BONE HEADED TO KOREA: B-1B takes off from Guam on its way to South Korea.

RELATED: Sarah’s post from The Telegraph: British officials fear Iran secretly helping North Korea obtain nuclear weapons.

WHICH GROUP OF PROTESTORS IN PORTLAND IS ATTACKING THE POLICE?

This report from CBS News doesn’t say if it’s anti-fa or the white nationalists.

But this Portland Police tweet certainly does.

From the tweet, at 1:19 pm:

Antifa is throwing irritant smoke and projectiles at police.

The tweet identifying the attackers pre-dates the tweets CBS News quoted.

CBS News in Portland needs to explain why this earlier tweet was not in the later story. It is a very fair question. Was the earlier tweet incorrect? Was the CBS editor unaware of the earlier tweet?

NATO ARMOR ON THE MOVE: The lead vehicle is from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. U.S., British and Romanian soldiers are participating in an exercise in Poland.

EMBRACE THE SUCK: The new, expanded Second Edition paperback has a pre-order page at Amazon.

With more than 500 definitions Embrace the Suck is the perfect gift for the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman in your life—or for the Beltway Clerk** who yearns to speak like one.

Beware the dirty work of Beltway Clerks:

**Derisive term for a Washington political operative or civilian political hatchet man. May refer to so-called “Washington defense experts” who’ve never served in the armed forces.

The Kindle version will be available in early December.

WW2 C-47 DELIVERING SUPPLIES IN HARVEY RELIEF EFFORT: This is a good story. The Bluebonnet Belle was built in 1944. Now she’s flown by the Commemorative Air Force. The plane few six missions over the Labor Day weekend.

HURRICANE HARVEY RELIEF FUNDRAISER: A former college roommate of mine is involved with this fundraiser. He also donated to it. A number of Rice University students suffered losses. He asked me to pass on the link. The athletic department helped organize this drive.

MARINE STALLION WITH A FIFTY CALIBER STING IN THE TAIL: An armed USMC CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter participates in an exercise in Japan. Good action photo.

BEYOND IRMA: Waiting for Jose. Hurricane Jose is already a CAT 4 storm.

EMBRACE THE SUCK SECOND EDITION: Check out the pre-order page at Amazon.

A sample:

Dynamic truth: Basically means “this is the plan when my supervisor gave it to me, but change is already in the works.” In other words, we’re about to waste our time working on this because the orders are about to change. May also mean “we don’t know for certain.” (“Consider this to be dynamic truth.”)

It’ll be out in December as a paperback.

SEA DRAGON ASSIST: A USN MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter on a Hurricane Harvey relied mission. The caption says the Navy helicopter’s mine counter-measures squadron (which is based in Key West, Florida) is conducting logistics support missions for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The photo was snapped August 31.

MEXICO’S EARTHQUAKE: 8.1 to 8.2 on the Richter, so it was big.

…tsunami waves are possible off the Pacific coasts of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Ecuador.

The quake killed 15 people according to early reports.

THE SILPHIUM ENIGMA: The lost herb is the original laser.

YEMEN’S ODD WAR IS A HUMAN DISASTER: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

MAIL CALL IN THE ARABIAN GULF: The photo was snapped on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

OBAMA SYRIA CHEMICAL WEAPONS RED LINE UPDATE: The UN says Syria’s Assad regime used chemical weapons at least 27 times.

A panel of United Nations rights investigators announced definitively on Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces were behind April’s sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people.

The findings were part of the latest UN report on the Syrian civil war presented in Geneva by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. An earlier report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was not authorized to apportion blame or investigate culpability, only to establish whether chemical weapons had been used.

Investigators also revealed that they had documented 33 chemical weapons attacks since the war’s outbreak in 2011. Twenty-seven of those were carried out by Assad’s government forces, including seven between March 1 and July 7 of this year. The perpetrators in six attacks had not yet been identified, investigators said.

Samantha Power and the Responsibility to Protect crowd that damned George W. Bush for failing to respond to genocide in Darfur were unavailable for comment.