Taking Ms. Yourish to the Airshow

Today was a real treat. Today was opening day of the Langley Airshow, and I had the distinct pleasure of inviting Meryl to come down and see the tools the USAF uses every day to do its job. It's always fun to go out and crawl through planes, and then watch some of them get put through their paces. Meryl was happy just about right off the bat. As we were approaching the flightline, the US Army Golden Knights were dropping in. Someone observed "It's raining Army Men!" I pointed out to her this wasn't just a movie, and also, jumping out of a perfectly fine aircraft was the sort of thing that Matt gets a kick out of doing.

First up was the C-5. Meryl wondered if Stryker had worked on this particular plane - possible, but sorry, didn't get the tail number - it's a Dover based bird, with a reservist crew. They had the crew entry ladder

up to the cockpit in place, so Meryl headed on up to take a look around. I was a bit dissapointed they didn't have the luxurious aft passenger area ladder open as well.

After we toured the C-5, we took a look at the KC-10 parked next to it. Following that, it was snow cone time, just as the aerial displays began, led off by the F-15 demo. Maj. Anderson put the Eagle through an impressive display of capabilities. It was a real treat to see the demo from the edge of the flightline. I've often seen the practice sessions and check rides from over by the office, but it's nice to have a front row seat. Next up was a

Canadian Air Force F-18 Hornet. Watching the F-18 go through a routine is a beautiful thing. Depending on the fuel load, a Hornet has the capability to basically stand on it's tail and go straight up, accelerating in the process. The Canadian took the plane to the ragged edge of its low-speed high angle of attack envelope, passing by the crowd at around 120knots, to ripping by just a few knots below breaking the sound barrier, evidenced by the screeching noise of the air being rent as he screamed past.

The fast movers were followed by the Wobbly Goblin, the F-117 Stealth Fighter. The Black Jet may be a bit hard to see in this first shot, but hey, that's the whole point, right? We got a chance for a better look as he taxied

to his parking spot following his flybys. The aerial demos continued with a mixed formation of aircraft. An A-10 Warthog, a Korean War era F-86 Sabre, and a pair of WWII era warbirds, the P-51 Mustang, and P-38 Lightning. The P-51 was in red-tail regalia,

echoing the paint scheme of the Tuskegee Airmen, and the P-38 was one that had been recovered from being frozen in glacial ice in Greenland where it got stuck while being ferried to England for combat in Europe. Speaking of the A-10, as it taxied by, I asked Meryl to remind me to tell her about the "Killer Chick". The "Killer Chick" is Capt. Kim Campbell, who had a very, very amazing ride in an A-10 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was so amazing that the A-10 she managed to bring back to base was unfixable, and has since been retired to the boneyard at

Davis Monthan. Her story is a prime example of what happens when you combine a Sierra Hotel pilot with a tough and rugged airplane. We thought that most of the programmed aerial show was done, when a four ship of F-15s returned from a local training flight, and proceeded to do several pattern circuits. After watching them do a few refused approaches, we walked around to check out the static display aircraft. Meryl had me get a shot of her (with her camera) standing next to a Kfir, particularly after I mentioned that it was one of the models flown by the IAF. We also checked out a Block 30/35 AWACS, and a US Navy LCAC. Meryl was amazed at the cutting edge 80s tech of the AWACS, and it took a bit of explaining how the LCAC had probably just been driven up the Back River, over the shoreline, and down the flightline, on nothing more than a cushion of air. Smash probably could have explained it better. Well, by this point, we were both getting a bit tired, and since we thought the aerial portion was over -

which it was, following the 450knot, 300 foot Above Ground Level flyby by a B-1 in full afterburner. Um, just a bit too unexpected and quick to get the camera out for that one, So I had to settle for a shot of it taxiing to parking. That was pretty much the wrap up of the day, until Meryl spotted him. Maybe it was the flash of green, and a kind of 'Hulk moment', I'm not really sure, but all of a sudden Meryl went all 'Fan Grrl'. Over the Geico Gecko. That pretty much put the capper on the day... for me, at any rate.

« Done reading it, close it up again.

Guide to the US election (simplified version)

Here is a complete and definitive guide to the highly complex issues American voters will have to weigh up when they enter the booth in November. I apologise for the length, but as you can imagine there are just so many variable factors I've had to address and nuances to take into account. It's taken myself and a team of researchers more than two years to come up with this, using fifteen Cray supercomputers and the entire Library of Congress.

STIMULUS:

RESPONSE - FIGHT

RESPONSE - FLEE

Any questions?

I'm in a New York state of mind

Something that many Americans often miss is that a lot of us in what I guess they'd refer to as "foreign parts" actually know them better than they know us. Thanks to the movies and television, we've been exposed to so much information about the United States, what daily life is like, how people speak and interact, and even the physical layout of the place that it's not a completely foreign place.

When I went to New York a couple of years ago, I was never struck by a sense of strangeness that you get in a totally unfamiliar place. It was all scenes from my life, albeit it was actually right there in front of me rather than in a small box in the corner of the room or up on a screen in a darkened theatre.

I knew where Rockefeller Centre was, how to hail a cab, the traditions of Thanksgiving, the street slang...it was a bizzare feeling to find myself in a place which had until then been essentially experienced vicariously, at one remove, fictionally. When we get around to finally inventing the Star Trek holodeck, I imagine that's what it'll be like - suddenly finding yourself in a place you'd previously only imagined.

And New York is one of those special places that most everyone seems to have some sort of relationship to. There can't be too many people around the world who haven't at one time imagined themselves living and working there.

I sometimes find myself daydreaming about the place. My imagined New York is in filmed in glorious black and white, vaugely 1940s Runyonesque, with a soundtrack by Gershwin, Rogers and Hart and (of course) Mr Sinatra. The men all wear hats, the girls are in 1948 style fashions (and you can call them "toots" without getting a lawsuit), and I flick a bright shiny quarter to the shoeshine kid on the corner as I head in to work at the "New York Global News Post Herald Times", which is of course in the Empire State Building on 42nd Street, just next door to the Lincoln Centre and across the corner from Central Park (hey, daydreams don't have to be geographically accurate, ok?)

As the soundtrack plays the Ella Fitzgerald "Puttin' On The Ritz", I stride purposefully along the street, the famous reporter, man about town, featured in the society pages with a string of blondes. The name's Hill. Bruce Hill. You might have heard about me. I work the crime beat for the "Times". New York is full of plenty tough characters, but I can handle them. It's my town. I own it. Working on a story right now that's gonna blow the lid right off City Hall. Corruption that goes all the way to the top.

As I bound up the steps to the newspaper's gigantic marble entrance, taking a last bite of my breakfast corned beef on rye from Katz's deli, the doorman (played by Scatman Crothers, of course) says "Morning Mistuh Hill. You better get in there, sounds like the City Desk editor is plenty mad. I hear Hizzoner called the legal boys about that front page lead you wrote yesterday. Looks like the boys downtown talked to the boys in Washington. You watch your back, hear?" I grin, adjust my hat, wink at Scatman, and prepare for another Manhattan day.

"The camera pans around behind Scatman as he adjusts his doorman's heavy coat. "Yes sir! New! York! City! 42nd Street, Times Square! Crossroads of the world!" Fade up "Stompin' At The Savoy" by Benny Goodman as the camera wheels up and pans across the skyline.

Heh. A man can dream, can't he?

Operation Smile - something to smile about

The Hampton Roads area has been the site of an ongoing miracle, that a lot of people have probably heard about, in passing, but never really considered.

Operation Smile.

Like a lot of folks, I'd heard of Operation Smile for a few years now. The impression I'd gotten was from a documentary piece on television, detailing one of the organization's trips to a small Central American country, where they set up shop in a small clinic, and did a marathon round of reconstructive surgeries for children with profound facial deformities. The patients they were accepting had no other hope of living a normal life - with conditions so severe that many could not go outside of their homes, much less to school - and whose families were unable to pay for the procedures to bring a level of normalcy to their child's lives.

A noble cause - but my understanding of the effort was sorely incomplete. I was under the impression that it was a small group of doctors that simply got together and spent their vacations helping a small number of kids once a year. Maybe that's how it started, but it has grown far beyond that initial concept.

My re-introduction to Operation Smile came via Alice Cimino, and her husband Bill, and the interest in what they're doing was peaked by one of the patients they're assisting right now. The local news has carried the story, with fairly prominent placement - the patient, a 13 year old girl named Eman, is from Iraq. Operation Smile learned of her case when her father sold quite a number of the family's possessions to make a trip to Jordan to seek help for his daughter. Since the situation in Iraq isn't stable enough yet for the organization to mount a project there - they brought the little girl here.

But here is the part that is not mentioned in the trimmed down spots featuring the 'local charity helps Iraqi child' angle - Eman's trip wasn't just a one-off extension of charity driven by current events - where she came from is actually secondary to the story. She's a participant in Operation Smile's ongoing Physician's Training Program. She was actually one of a dozen children, all of them tough cases. And they were all brought here, not simply to be healed - but to be the core of an international teaching effort of the overall operation. These children were helped by a team of doctors from literally dozens of countries, and the techniques and methods they used were being passed on to physicians from many others. The majority of the doctors are participating in this specific project as a learning experience - so that they can return home and replicate the model started by Dr. William Magee and his wife Kathleen over 20 years ago.

And I got a chance to meet some of these doctors, and the people that are facilitating the work of Operation Smile last night, at the celebration culminating the end of this latest round of teaching, learning, and caring. These folks were letting their hair down, and for good reason. They'd been hard at work conducting the marathon of surgeries that are the hallmark of the organization, the last of which lasted 18 hours and wrapped up at almost 5am the morning of the celebration. But it wasn't celebrating the end of the project - it was just a breather after the stint here in Virginia. Most of the visiting physicians are on their way to New York today for further case study and research into the specialized procedures the Organization has helped develop and employ.

The people involved are absolutely amazing. Fernando, the Oral Surgeon from Ecuador, who was raised by his brother, approached by a colleague about Operation Smile, and is now very active in Ecuador extending the works of the organization, as well as helping establish clinics and schools for the poor. Billy, the young college graduate from PA, who heard about it the program from a friend, drove down for an interview, and a week later was on the ground in the Philippines, carrying a little girl out of surgery in a small clinic in one of the outer Provinces, being overwhelmed and humbled by the gratitude of the little girl's extended family. In the past two years, Billy has traveled and worked throughout South East Asia setting up missions to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Ayad, the student from the London School of Economics, who got involved and served as the guardian/chaperone/translator for Eman, the little girl from Iraq - helping facilitate the trip from Jordan, and arrange for Imam's father to travel here to be with her for her surgery. Tom, the journalist from China, who left behind his family to come and work as a photographer and PR rep to help document the case work for use in Operation Smile's educational outreach programs.

The height of the celebration came seeing these dedicated physicians, patient's families, and Operation Smile workers and volunteers - people from Morocco, Australia, China, Iraq, India, Brazil, plus many others, all doing the Electric Slide at the urging of the founder of the entire venture, Dr. Magee. It was somewhat symbolic of the entire effort.

These people are doing good works. Not pontificating about what should be, but seeing what can be done, and doing it. Just because it is the right thing to do.

Coward gets his day in court

Let's recap. This guy fled a life of poverty in the Central American country he was born in, was naturalized as an American citizen, joined the Army Reserves, for whatever reason, then bolted while on leave from a combat zone, hiding out for five months, before 'turning himself in' in a staged media event.

When he pops up, he's surrounded by all sorts of anti war supporters absolutely gleeful to have a poster boy in uniform for their cause. Now, he's amended his long list of rationalizations (which don't seem to include he got scared when things got rough) to include that he was ordered to abuse prisoners.

The lad is one piece of work.

He could get thrown in jail for a year. Boo hoo.

Instead of a year in jail, let's do one better. Let's strip him of his US citizenship, bar him from ever re-entering the country, and ship his yellow-streaked nutball butt back to where he came from.

It's disgusting he is even allowed to wear that uniform for the proceedings.

Well, he likes things intricate and detailed

Via Steven Den Beste - wishlist for a "War Sim".

Sounds complicated.

I want that "Public Support" meter to rise and fall according to Troops Lost, Length of Conflict, Innocents Killed and Whether or Not There is Anything Else On TV That Week. I want to lose 200 Public Support points because, in a war where 8,000 units have been lost, one of my Mutalisks happened to be caught on video accidentally eating one clergyman. Then, later, my destruction of an entire enemy city goes unnoticed because the Nude Zero-Gravity Futureball championship went into overtime.

WMD Update

Since its usually best to re-check a story a couple of days after it pops out for new twists, turns and developments, let's see what's turned up over the last couple of days vis-a-vis the Sarin shell found in Iraq...

It seems that further testing has confirmed the contents of the shell. Not a false field test positive, this time.

Also, it appears that binary type artillery shells were never declared at all by Saddam. Looks like the 'maybe it was a pre '91 shell already tagged by the UN' theory just took a hike.

Stand by for the flood of media scrutiny. As an interesting exercise, let's take a guess. That scrutiny will most closely resemble -

• Shell? What shell?
• Yes, BUT chemicals aren't really WMDs
• Oh look! Kobe/MJ/Friends Episode!
• Somebody must have built it because of Abu Graib
• It took those incompetent buffoons this long to find this?
• Karl Rove, Cheney, and Halliburton are behind this
• How far up the chain of command did this go, and why weren't we notified sooner?
• Rumsfeld obviously didn't plan on this, now did he? How utterly incompetent.

McAuslan at the charge

"Private McAuslan, clean that bayonet! It's dirty. If you stuck that in someone, they could get blood poisoning!"
"Ah'm no dirty..."

Outnumbered British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.

When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway — and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.

An Army spokesman said: “This was an intense engagement.”

The last bayonet charge was by the Scots Guards and the Paras against Argentinian positions.

Turns out they don't like it up 'em!

Memo to MOD, Whitehall:

If this incident was caused by a lack of ammo, then it's not bloody well good enough. If there's another bayonet charge in Iraq, I expect to read in the Times about how it was heroically led by senior MOD procurement officials. You get a posthumous OBE, so it's not all bad...

By the way, do you remember seeing this story in the papers? No, me neither...

Have you forgotten?

Here are some blog entries. They're nothing special, but read them anyway. Stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Kottke.org

A trail of two cities:
Tokyo, San Francisco and the naming of places echoes some thoughts I've been hearing about San Francisco lately, mostly through conversations with locals and visitors. Also somewhat related is a conversation I had with Bryan about his recent trip to Tokyo. He said (and I'm paraphrasing badly here) that Tokyo was constantly but consistently reinventing itself.

==============

The Tin Man

(Whoa, I just noticed a major error in my entry regarding Friday night's events. Wes and I have slept with each other, of course. Many times. I've mentioned that before. I think I accidentally implied otherwise in this entry. This might change your perception of things. Anyway, I've fixed the error; sorry for the confusion.)

==============

Ideapad

Anti-brand proponent Naomi Klein responds to The Economist's brand articles from Friday. Will be interesting to see whether The Economist runs her letter to the editor next week. (I'd guess yes, based on past precedent, but her letter is more vitriolic than clarifying.)

==============

Exegesis

I've always wondered what it would be like to participate in the praise and worship of King David's court. The passion, the excitement and the humility are often spoken of with awe. Praising with the Hillsong worship team is the closest that I've come to that so far. If you have the chance to, definitely check them out live and be prepared to sing your heart out! It was reported that about 5000 people were gathered in and around a church in Wayne, NJ to join the service. God was in that place and I could feel the Holy Spirit flowing amidst the congregation too. We were all so blessed.

==============

Chopstick Version

The GWU shutdown has made the front page of the Washington Post. There was also a live chat with GW University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg in which he defended his position to shut down the university.

==============

Sapphireblue.com

You know what, it's just too complicated anymore. I'm on the wagon. We'll see how long it lasts.

==============

Ambivalent Attitudes

To clarify: on Friday the barber trimmed my eyebrows. In other words he cut away at the unruly hairs. He didn't pluck my eyebrows. I still have dense eyebrows punctuating my face. Only now they are just a little tidier. C'est clair?

==============

Brooklyn Kid

Sundays are fun days. Yesterday, helped red tape a birthday video for birthday girls Kiera and Gina. They frolicked with boas on the Brooklyn Bridge and wrestled playfully on the lawn just yards from City Hall. Oh yeah, and I was lucky enough to have a camera handy...

Take a look...

==============

Flutter...glub...meow

not much to report, so i'll keep this brief... you know how you feel like the world's going to explode when your ex and your present are in the same room? or your parents and teacher? or your dog and your neighbor's cat? so it's kinda like that, but much better. all the cool west coast gay bloggers got together this weekend and the world didn't explode. check out Philo's full documentation of the event

Ok, here comes the cheap trick - all those entries were the last things the authors wrote in their blogs before the sun came up on September 11th, 2001 ands the world we all knew went away forever.

It's sort of banal, isn't it, this world of September 10th? Meeting lovers and ex-lovers, who is sleeping with who, I just got my eyebrows trimmed, Naomi Klein is having some sort of ideological disputation with the editorial board of the Economist...the sun would come up, the paycheque would arrive, Guliani would be rude to someone, and we could go to a dinner party and make witty, cutting remarks about the Flordia recount which all our friends would laugh at.

These scribblings from September 10th now strike me almost as archaeological aretefacts - reminders of a long-vanished world in which people looked like us, but whose lifestyle, thoughts and beliefs are now almost forgotten relics, in need of reconstructing by pale young students with PhDs in cultural anthropology.

Not too much actually happens of note in September 10th Land, and what does tends to occur out of sight, over the curve of the earth in far-off places few have heard of, or could find on a map. Kandahar, Fallujah, Ramallah, Bosnia. The Russians were vaguely disapproved of for using excessive force against those poor Chechnyans, and the Israelis were foolishly giving the cycle of violence another spin with their latest punitive expedition into Gaza. Why don't they just do what Tom Friedman suggested in his most recent Times column? It's perfectly sensible and reasonable. Give them what they say they want, and the violence will stop.

But it's also an inviting world. Summertime, and the living is easy. The Dow keeps rising, my 401k is doing real well, and my real estate agent says my apartment probably makes more money per week than I do. America stands astride the world like a vast, benign colossus, Francis Fukayama says history is over, and guess what? We won! Alright! Way to go, us! Lets go to the beach!

It's so inviting that I think part of today's problem is that people want to go back to it. Let's just edit reality a bit, pretend that one day in September never happened, get over it, move on. I mean, why get obsessive about one day? Surely that's not healthy. It was years ago. And besides, it hasn't happened again, has it? Well then, where's the danger?

I'm sure it's Bush's fault somehow. He must have antagonised them somehow. Yeah, that's it - we made them mad by fighting them. So if we stop fighting them, they'll stop fighting us! Brilliant! It stands to reason, I mean we're all human beings. I hope the Arabs love their children too.

That white stuff falling down on my street? It's not ashes and dust, it's...snow. Yeah, snow. My neighbour's brother Jimmy who got that job at Cantor Fitzgerald? Oh, uh, he died. It was sad. But life goes on, right? Those GIs fighting and dying on the TV? Shame, isn't it? We should bring them home so they'll be safe. That nice mullah on the TV says bringing in sharia law courts for Muslims here is reasonable, because otherwise we'll be infringing on their right to freedom of religion. Well, I guess that would be okay. I don't want anyone to think I'm intolerant. President Kerry is quite right to cut off aid to Israel, maybe this will curb their enthusiasm for massacring Palestinians, like in that documentary about Jenin I saw on TV.

Gosh, that snow falling down is cold, isn't it? Very cold. I'm feeling a bit tired. I think I'll just lie down for a bit. Actually I'm feeling a bit warmer now. It's nice to know we're doing the things that make the other people in the world happy. I'm glad they're happy. Happiness is good...I'm kind of sleepy...a new Iraqi strongman? Maybe that's what they need...mass graves?...well, we didn't do it, and it's not our country, after all...very warm now...so sleepy...Let me alone, it's so peaceful...look...pretty light...big cloud, looks like a mushroom...let me alone, it's so peaceful.

Attention New Zealand, you are about to be bribed.

Next week, the Minister of Finance will bring down his fifth Budget. It is abundantly clear from the size of the fiscal surplus that the Government has been over-taxing hard-working New Zealanders for some years. Indeed, the extent of that over-taxation has probably never been greater in New Zealand’s history. Now we are about to see the Government use that over-taxation to buy political support by oiling every wheel which squeaks, or which might possibly squeak between now and the next election.

It is important that all New Zealanders understand that they are being bribed with money which belongs to them in the first place!

Don brash
Leader National Party

I suggest we all take our slice of the 7.5 BILLION surplus, throw a "ding dong the witch is dead" party and vote their asses the hell out of OUR parliament.

These are the people who have introduced 15 NEW taxes in the last year. These are the people who will stoop to taxing cow farts. These are the people who have utter contempt for you.

By all means take the money, it's yours anyway, but don't buy the BS the way they're trying to buy you.

Review of "Colonial House"

Even PBS has gotten into the 'Reality TV' phenom. Their offering is a series documenting the exploits of a group of modern people living in the manner of 1628 Colonists. Colonial House.

An interesting experiment - and while this seems to have done a fair job of plopping modern folks into a technically challenged environment - there were some major holes, some big enough to drive a truck through.

What became most noticeable, but never really addressed, was the complete and utter lack of firearms. Anyone that has visited either Jamestown or Williamsburg here in Virginia would notice that firearms were an integral part of early colonial life, just as surely as an ax, or a pipe, or an iron cooking pot. The series is oriented so that it really isn't a discussion point - even when the colonists get their first 'encounter' with native Americans. It is quickly mentioned that in 1628 the Colonists would have put on Armor and carried arms at the first sign of strangers. The reason why the "colonists" are totally unarmed is never really mentioned. The lack of firearms again becomes obvious, but isn't directly addressed, when the colonists food supplies that had been brought along begins to severely spoil - and they begin to talk about cutting rations, and contemplate consuming rancid bacon. No one ever makes the suggestion of going out into the woods hunting for food. It isn't even considered. The colonists do have a small boat, which they use to occaiosnally go on fishing expeditions - but the tackle is on a survival level, and the efforts not very effective.

In addition to the lack of any firearms whatsoever, the meeting with the Indians is used to recount the "genocide" of native Americans by the early settlers. It isn't mentioned until the end of the diatribe detailing the aboriginal population decline over the first 75 years of European presence, with several references to confrontation, that the primary reason for the population decline was lack of natural resistance to disease among the Indians. But the impression is left that the infection of the Indians was almost intentional, particularly by the use of the term genocide to describe the situation.

While the participants are to be commended for immersing in the environment - the 21st century outlooks and viewpoints are too deeply ingrained, and several 1628 mores are very quickly jettisoned. Not to dive into the issue, but one of the cast members announces to the rest of the colonists that he's in fact gay. The guy 'comes out' first to his 'masters' (he is playing the role of an endentured servant), then eventually pops up during the Sabbath service and announces himself. It's stressed several times that in the time period that is being replicated and play acted, that the authority figures would have taken him out and executed him almost immediately. It isn't mentioned that during that period, probably all of the rest of the congregants would have helped. The reaction of the modern colonists was completely modern - he received a round of applause for his personally courageous display. This, after the colonists had just gone through a self examination that they weren't towing the 17th Century line, had given 'cracking down' a try, and had it fail utterly, with the 'Governor' abandoning the draconian rules in the face of open rebellion.

The participants also endure a lot of grief reconciling their 21st Century PC-ness with the 17th century level of governance. The lieutenant Governor, under who's reign for a couple of weeks the colony had devolved into something just short of a Woodstock experience, begins carping about not being consulted about the newly returned Governors attempts to impose discipline - measures that he'd previously voiced support - he carps on a number of occaisions, to no one in particular. Not that he has any better ideas, nor acknowledging that he'd been all for it in concept - just no one consulted him later on when the Governor starts summarily lowering the boom on people. His wife later stages a protest, instigating a direct act of civil disobedience 'on principle' over some of the modesty rules. Possibly the only thing missing was a pink tutu or papier mache effigy head.

While these folks made a tremendous effort, and the conditions certainly looked like they were quite horrid - these folks had the luxury of realizing that if push ahd come to shove, the modern world was only a few miles away through the woods - it certainly detracted from the 'edge' of the entire re-creation. How this would be overcome, I have no idea. Thus, like the earlier similar program, 'Frontier House', it's pretty obvious early on that in an actual colonial setting, these folks probably would not have survived the first winter, nor been deemed a success by the folks back in England.

The physicality of the period was replicated, but the dynamics were viewed definitely through a lens - and not necessarily just the lense of the camera.

Denial of Sanity Attack

For almost an hour this afternoon, a comment spam engine spewed close to 200 spam comments at SR. They used a character string not on our MT Blacklist Listing, and focused on about 6 posts, all several months old.

This doesn't seen to be a marketting ploy - seems almost like an attempt to chunk up the database. Pretty lame if that was the aim. The items lived maybe an hour and a half at most - and the tables have already been purged and compacted. Certainly script generated - randomly but properly formatted bogus e-mail addresses, random body text dropped in, routed/sent from a rotating/dynamic set of class C IP ranges.

If it was actually marketting - what a buncha morons. If it was some sort of targetted assault of some sort - again, what a buncha morons - had about the same effect as a water balloon against a sidewalk.

Stupid jackasses.

Awwwwwwww

CRAP!!!!!!!!!

Orrin Hatch is whistling a sigh of relief today.

WANTED

Well informed and articulate Trolls who have a grasp of reality for work on blog site comments section.

Current batch infantile and racist. Have nothing to say except overly verbose confirmation of their anti-Semitic agendas.

Nazis, Al Gore, Ted Rall, current or former DU members and greenie extremists need not apply.

Low wages, long hours, and possible derision included in employment package. Generous vacation benefits. No papier mache puppet duties.

Why Yassir Arafat is still alive

Seems to be a fair question - if Israel is knocking off the terrorist leadership that's engineering the attacks against women and children, why haven't they gone after terrorist number 1?

Because he isn't terrorist number one anymore, except in his own mind, and on the social calendars of the continual stream of western lickspittles that beat a path to his display cage to grab a photo op hugging their little fuzzy buddy. Otherwise, he's completely irrelevant. Overtaken by events. The Israelis don't kill him, because there's no point in it. The Palestinians pressing the fight aren't listening to him, or to his toadies.

It's beginning to seem that the Israelis probably realized that Arafat's control over 'his' people was illusory at best in the first place - and the destruction of the Muqtada compound, short of actually capturing or killing him, was possibly partially based on this theory. The IDF could have levelled the entire place, with a lot less of the drama than was present, in fact they could 'reach out and touch him' practically any time they choose.

It serves several purposes, however, to keep him alive. Although the Israelis don't necessarily bow to outside opinion from the chattering classes of elite Euro opinion, why exacerbate the situation if you don't need to. And Arafat is the titular head, at any rate, of supposed PA authority. The prime opportunity to deal with him is long past - pointedly, when he was in the sniper's crosshairs as he walked up the gangplank to make his succesful escape from Lebanon to Algeria.

Today, killing him is more trouble than it's worth.

One reason we've never seen Arafat stand up and offer anything more forceful than a suggestion that suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians should stop isn't because he doesn't believe that ceasing these activities would be in the better short term interests of the Palestinians - it is simply that he can't do any more than 'suggest'. Because to insist or demand that the extremists of Al Aqsa, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad cease their murderous ventures would reveal very pointedly and very quickly the fact that they aren't listening to him. He is no longer in control. He truly is irrelevant, and much more so than the irrelevancy or obstacle that he was labelled as by the current US administration. He was rejected as being an obstacle. Now he's just become a sad spectacle at the side of the road. A freakshow attraction for those in the world community that choose to slow down, pull off, and gawk at.

The only thing that would rehabilitate him, in Palestinian eyes, at any rate, would be if the IDF were to put him out of his misery. If that happened, the same terrorists that barely bother to acknowledge him any longer much less follow his direction would suddenly be tripping over themselves to express their outrage at the loss of the greatest leader their people had ever known. Translating this new found admiration and respect, of course, into redoubled efforts to murder as many Jews as possible.

No, better to let him sit in the midst of his own pile of poo in the shell of a building, while not dismissing the notion that he's near the top of the target list, and thus keeping him contained, and fearful of making a public move or appearance without a requisite string of five year old kids to act as human shields.

And let the idea permeate that he's not really in charge of anything save his own bowel movements, and that only at the whim of the IDF. He probably realizes this, even if he won't admit it. Which is quite a satisfying thought, if you ponder it.

Media quick to poo poo inconvenient facts

What!?! No, no no no, noooo. It's just background information folks...

Prior to the war, U.N. inspectors had compiled a short list of proscribed items found during hundreds of surprise inspections: fewer than 20 old, empty chemical warheads for battlefield rockets, and a dozen artillery shells filled with mustard gas. The shells had been tagged by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s but somehow not destroyed by them.

[...]

Since the war ended, the U.S.-led coalition has found several caches that tested positive for mustard gas but later turned out to contain missile fuel or other chemicals.

In January, troops discovered 36 mortar rounds believed to hold a blister agent, but later tests showed there was no such chemical inside.

[and the best one...oops, slipped in some stock boilerplate it looks like]

The Bush administration cited allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as a main reason for launching the war in Iraq last year, but no evidence of such weapons has been found.

The references to the terrorist that rigged the thing not being aware of the contents is quite plausible. One of the best ways to 'hide' something is in plain sight. And since the shells are of a type that was denied completely by Saddam, and quite probably not from the 'magical 20' that the UN found in '91, it may be an indication that 'in plain sight' is exactly where the regime hid their banned materials. Mixed in with conventional ordinance, possibly only bearing a subtle indicator of the special nature of the contents, if at all.

This of course, is pure speculation, but it is certainly more plausible than the fervent denial or disputation of any and all evidence of the presence of WMD material in Iraq.

And if the folks responsible for setting the Sarin laden device are apprehended, by all means, let's remember not to make them wear women's underwear in an effort to get them to divulge where they found the shell in the first place.

More Torture of Iraqis

This provides a bit of context for the folks wailing about how badly the terrorist prisoners of Block 1A were mistreated - no, it doesn't justify that they were subjected to the absolute terror of having the contents of a chemlight poured on them, the abject humiliation of being made to masturbate, the unspeakable cruelty of being forced to put on women's underwear, or the stark mortal danger of being menaced by a dog on a leash, with a bite or two.

But that looks pretty juvenile compared to being thrown off of buildings, scourged 100 times with a lash, or having their fingers cut off.

Brace yourselves now - any second, Teddy Kennedy is going to now lash out at the new US management of Abu Graib for lack of imagination or not being tough enough on crime. Sit back and get yourselves a snack, then set the dial to CSPAN for wall to wall coverage of a full Congressional inquiry. Get your TiVos ready to catch every last second of the intense media focus on the investigations of the chain of command responsibility for these newly released videos? Will there be a hue and cry that the gents tossing bound prisoners off the roof were merely following orders, and couldn't possibly have dreamt that up on their own?

Anyone? Senator Levin? Senator Kennedy? Mr. Jennings? Bueller?

Found via Late Final

::Update:: AE Brain has some additional material.

That wall will never solve anything redux - by the numbers

No additional commentary required. The numbers speak volumes.

Via Josh Harvey and Meryl

Ancient Greek Fight Club

Ok baby, here's the pitch. We do Homer's "The Iliad", ok? But get this. No gods. None at all. I don't want to buy a fight with Franklin Graham, ok? And we need solid numbers in the South, so no pagan gods. Hey, look on the bright side, it saves on the special effects budget. You know how much that asshole Lucas is asking for one shot of Apollo shooting plague-arrows into the Greek camp? This way we don't need it.

And we gotta drop the whole fag bit, ok? Brad Pitt isn't gonna want his audience thinking his character is diddling this Patrick guy. Patroclus, yeah, sure baby, whatever. It's bad enough the guys all have to be in skirts, know what I mean?

Sure, bubeleh, I hear you, no, of course we're gonna have to make some cuts, I read the book too. Talk about unfilmable! So we lose a few minor characters, big deal. Which ones? Well, Clytemnestra and Electra. We already got enough backstory to explain at the start thanks.

So how does Aggamemnon die if he doesn't have an old lady to come back to who whacks him with an axe? I dunno, maybe we'll just get him offed in the climactic final battle or something. Well, that's why we have writers.

Oh, and we test marketed Cassandra and the responses came back real negative. I'm telling you, three thousand years dead, that bitch is still a major downer. So we lose Cassandra.

Yeah, so we got the girls all hot and moist with Brad Pitt in armour, we got Orlando Bloom doing his LOTR archery shit again, and plenty of RSC alumni prancing about in robes and declaiming at max volume, but we need some jiggle interest, am I right? Huh? Huh?

So, Rose Byrne playing Briseis, how about that? What, you never heard of Briseis? Well, no, I guess a lot of people never heard of her, she's in the story for all of seven seconds, look it up. Okay, yes, I had the writers pump the role up a bit, now she's a sexy virgin priestess, gets given to Achilles as a sex toy, got some mild bondage action, nothing R-rated, badda bing, we got your horny guy demographic.

Yes, of course we finish with the Trojan Horse. What, am I crazy? Everybody knows that's how it happens. I know, I know, it isn't in Homer, it's from the Aeneid. Big deal baby, both Homer and Virgil are way out of copyright. Hey, last I heard, Virgil was doing the whole Universal Studios tour guide shtick in Hell. Uh, not sure, I think it's somewhere past Compton.

Hey, while I got you on the line, about this Jane Austen chick, I see she's getting some sweetheart adaptation deals these days. Any chance we can get her to fly over and take a couple meetings? Ah, you're signal's fading, I gotta go. Just remember baby, who says great art and Hollywood can't mix?

Nuance! We MUST have more nuance!

Hey, you know that disgusting anti-semitic "artwork" that Melbourne City was helping pay for? Turns out (according to the Age at any rate) that by supporting it's removal, I am as bad as the Taliban!

No, seriously, take a look...

Last week, the City of Melbourne changed its funding guidelines to artists following outrage over an anti-Israel artwork displayed in a Flinders Street shopfront.

In 2001 an international outcry met the Taliban's destruction of two colossal Buddhas at Bamian in Afghanistan. The Buddhas were nearly 1500 years old, large and revered. Their cultural importance was beyond dispute, and to most people they were visibly about love, forgiveness and spirituality. The Taliban were increasingly viewed as villains intent upon wiping out all signs of the Buddhist faith and culture in their region. It was a no-brainer.

The outcry isn't nearly as large when one person, acting alone and often on impulse, damages or destroys a new artwork. But in many ways the violation is the same.

Yes, you heard it here first. Melbourne's cultural elite want you to believe that a gigantic racist turd in a shop window has the same cultural value as 1500 year old objects of religious veneration. Post-modernism has brought us to this. If everything has the same value, then that value will soon be nothing.

And writing a letter asking that a lying racist propaganda placard not be erected with our money is on a par with blowing up priceless Buddhist artefacts with dynamite and heavy artillery. I guess it's time to crank the po-mo gibberish generator into overdrive to stun the readers with one's sensitivity and insight.

Most surprising is attackers' simple refusal to entertain paradox, to see art as a coalescence of grey areas, ambiguities and multiple interpretations.

Art's job is to provoke thought in ways that are difficult to resolve and uncomfortable; it's a relatively neutral place to experience the unresolvable issues that dominate real life, to practise a kind of abstract flexibility that might move us toward resolution in real life.

Anyone who can decipher an actual meaning in the above words is invited to attempt a translation into English, using the comments section provided. I await the results with interest.

Are we the men our grandfathers were?

You have to wonder sometimes. This current trend towards grovelling to Arab leaders whose own torture chambers and execution grounds are most certainly not open to inspection strikes me as ridiculous. Abu Ghraib is a glitch, a footnote, and it was exposed and is being dealt with by our own systems.

Which is more than can be said for the previous tenant. I mean, we could interview the people Saddam put through the shredder about how emotionally traumatised it made them but oops, they're all kinda dead right now.

Being hard enough to win doesn't mean becoming as bad as the enemy. Here's a little story about the greatest generation, our grandparents who grew up in a depression, won the war, and wondered why their kids abused them for wanting a quiet life, a nice house and a little bit of money.

The British naval base in Singapore is HMS Terror (RN chappies not being au fait with the latest PC theories on signalling the extreme peacefulness of your intentions and eschewing anything smacking of aggression). In the 1970s, at the mess there, was a very elderly Chinese steward. He couldn't walk very well, and his service was consequently as slow as a wet weekend in Wanganui. His nickname was, of course, "Speedy".

Every now and then some officious Whitehall warrior would be out in Singers seeing what other bits of the UKs defence apparatus east of Suez he could close down that week, and Speedy would bring his dinner stone cold and there'd be a complaint.

At this point, whichever RN officer was handy would pull the complainant aside and have a quet whisper in his shell-like and no more would be said about the matter. Turns out that Speedy, arguably the worst mess steward in history, had something of a past.

He'd been not much more than a boy working at the HMS Terror mess when the Japanese marched in. In the confusion of the invasion and surrender, he'd taken the mess silver and buried it somewhere safe. In the fullness of time, the Japanese got wind of this fact, and being the Japanese, they tortured him hideously for a fortnight solid, demanding to know where the mess silver was. They crippled him for life, but he didn't talk, and eventually they threw him out into the street. He crawled away and rather obstinately declined to take the glorious sons of Nippon up on their suggestion that he do the world a favour and just die.

Two atom bombs and a ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri later, Mounbatten arrives back in Singapore with the rest of South East Asia Command. A Royal Navy advance party arrives to see how quickly they can re-start operations at Terror. Speedy hobbles up to them, tells them his story, and leads them to where the mess silver is buried. He never told the Japs where it was, and he didn't sell it for food, which under the grim circumstances the locals found themselves in during their involuntary participation in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, was rather remarkable.

The RN group took Speedy down to the intelligence boys, who managed to locate several Japanese interrogators who'd been at the prison where he'd been tortured. There was a lineup, and Speedy was asked which ones did it.

"That one, that one, and that one" Righto then, sergeant could you organise a firing party and a grave-digging detail please. You three, stand against that wall. Bang, bang bang. No trial, no Geneva convention, and certainly no appeal. And no subsequent inquiry either, although the facts were known to all.

Speedy got his job back. He was slow, he got the orders confused easily, and he sometimes just stood there, staring out across the causeway at Johore. But he had a job at HMS Terror for the rest of his life. And no complaints about his performance were ever officially recieved.

Not after the complainant was told the story anyway.

Our grandfathers were hard men. They weren't monsters, they were hard. There's a difference. Are we hard men? I fear we're going to have to be, if we want to survive

Ok, who let Rumsfeld write an Op-Ed piece without running it past the PR guys first?

Hopefully, this is just a first draft. It's fine for content, just needs a touch more polish.

I heard about the Israeli rocket attack on that old handicapped Hamas guy, and I'm sure a lot of people had the same reaction I did: Whatever reason the army had for doing it, blowing up a guy in a wheelchair with a missile is unbelievably, absolutely fucking awesome!

Now, let me say this: I realize the guy was one of their big rebel leaders over there, or something, and I guess he called for the deaths of tons of innocent people and so on, and that was the excuse they needed to take the old guy out. But that's not the point. The point is they totally fucking launched a missile at the guy's wheelchair from a helicopter!

That's some grade-A Bam Margera video-game shit, and I for one am fucking stoked that they did it. I don't know how much that one missile cost, but it was utterly and completely worth it to know that some coot on wheels got rocket-launched into the middle of next year.

This sort of thing needs to happen more often. The U.S. military would be a lot more popular if they concentrated on pulling off cool-ass shit like this.

They couldn't have dreamed this up by themselves...

That's got to be one of the more ridiculous claims being made about the Abu Graib abuses. Sure, it sounds reasonable on the face of it - a combination of willing denial that anyone as lowly as Privates and Buck Sergeants would have the initiative or imagination to dream up the disgusting things done to some of the prisoners in block 1A.

While not going off on a rant about the inherent denigration of the reponsibilties and self initiative of enlisted folks in the US military, probably the answer to this willful denial about the possibilities of what level a small group of individuals are capable of sinking to in the absence of direct supervision is a Single word. Mepham.

In that instance, while the abuses are strikingly similar in some respects, it doesn't appear anyone wasted any time suggesting that the high school students involved were in any way goaded, influenced, or directed to commit those acts by their coaches. Everyone hammered the coaches, quite rightly, for a lack of Supervision. Which is exactly the main point that Gen. Taguba pointed to based on his initial investigation, and testified to in front of Congress.

But that obvious point does not serve the purposes of the folks grabbing TV and spotlight time to call for heads and count political coup.

Sen. Carl Levin is one of the louder and more egregious opportunists making as much hay as possible out of the situation. He's the epitome of what happens when perspective and facts are discarded in favor of political agenda. Chris Wallace, interviewing Levin on Fox News Sunday, pointed out some of the uncomfortable facts about Levin's position of professed absolute shock and bewilderment, sprinkled with proclaimations and avowals to 'get to the bottom of this'. Wallace asked Levin what he'd done over the previous year while a stream of items were brought forward concerning the treatment of prisoners in US custody. From the International Committee of the Red Cross, from the Pentagon itself. Levin was very quickly tap dancing and dismissing or minimizing or disqualifying any and all of the indications that there was an issue there, it was identified, and was being addressed by the Pentagon - with reforms instituted, and prosecutions already underway of those that had gone over the line. And while he continues to lament the supposed scapegoating of the junior enlisted personnel involved, he conveniently ignores that a number of officers in the chain of command at Abu Graib have either been relieved and replaced, or received reprimands already, with the possibility of prosecution remaining a very real possibility. And not just the lieutenants, Captains, Majors, or Colonels - so far this has gone all the way up to the flag officer in charge. Anyone that has been associated with the military understands that a flag officer is pretty well up into the executive management structure of a military unit. And that there are a myriad of things that will either not be brought to the attention of the GO in charge - or that if a GO is under the impression that everything is hunky dory, that's the picture they'll pass on up the chain - thus effectively cutting them out of any 'chain of concern'. And the fact is, that as that 'chain of concern' did become aware things not being right - they took action. Not that they're getting any credit whatsoever for doing so.

The only thing consistent about the whole thing is the tendency of folks that normally don't really care about the slightest details of an issue climbing all over each other to micromanage the 'hot topic' of the day.

Well, I think I caught the 1952 movie version on cable around 2am once...

Along comes a listing of 101 Great Books that are recommended reading. Michele has done it, Russell has done it, so here we go. Bold with Commentary on the ones I've read - or notes on other works from the same author...