Franz Kafka International

I'm pretty sure I've been through this airport. Or maybe it's just that all airports start feeling like this after a few consecutive days of air travel.



Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Blogging at Work!

I can't believe it, I'm blogging from work! I know that for most of you, this isn't a revolutionary concept, but things work a little differently in the wonderland that is Army. See, for the longest time, all DoD internet connections have blocked anything having to do with blogs. Anything that even had "blog" somewhere in the URL was automatically blocked, on the assumption, I presume, that all bloggers are either ne'er-do-wells intent on compromising national security or inane timewasters. Because we wouldn't want our soldiers reading such trash as Tom Ricks, Kings of War, or Abu Muqawama. They should be reading serious commentary such as they'll find on "real news" sites like CNN or FoxNews.

Let Them Fight, Already

Tom Ricks has been talking deployments, specifically, why on Earth is there still such a large contingent of Soldiers and Marines who have never deployed? An Army officer familiar with these matters weighs in. After explaining several case examples of eager soldiers who've unwillingly spent their whole careers in non-deploying positions, he explains the heart of the problem:

So, my point is the numbers don't tell the whole story... The vast majority of those who haven't deployed can be reasonably explained based on current personnel policies. Yes, some people are avoiding deployment, but nowhere near all of them.

Current personnel policies are the true problem... We are operating our service personnel programs under a peacetime model. There is no appetite for creative thinking. There is no willingness to examine and understand the issue. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that manpower management does not exactly attract all-star players. It's hard to think outside the box when you don't really understand what's inside the box.

Is there an answer? Maybe. We could throw some money at the problem. If we are going to deploy Soldiers and Marines we could come up with interesting ways of taking care of families without jerking them around with unnecessary PCS moves. We could force the G1s [personnel branch] and G3s [operations branch] to talk to one another. Maybe if the 1s understood the scope of the operational requirements they would have a greater motivation to provide viable solutions. We could also take a chance that non-traditional career patterns won't hurt chances for promotion and retention.

Here's my own suggestion: find the flexibility to make use of those soldiers who are chomping at the bit to deploy again and again. I would happily have spent my entire contracted service in Iraq, with maybe a few months between tours at most. I know I'm not alone in this either; a goodly proportion of my buddies are of the same mind. Many of us have never planned anything but a five-years-and-out Army career path, so burnout or interrupted career advancement are irrelevant. It doesn't make the news, probably because it's far more difficult for civilians to identify with, but for every soldier profiled on CNN, burnt out and struggling with the separation from his wife and kids after his third or fourth deployment, there's a single soldier languishing in garrison who would give anything to get back to the desert. I know the Army isn't a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but it really grinds my gears to see soldiers with critical skills that are desperately needed in theater scraping paint and pulling weeds in garrison, particularly when those soldiers would give anything just for the chance to do their jobs. I've heard of soldiers in my unit get denied a transfer to sooner-deploying units because their job is listed as "Critical Need", so they had to stay here and pull weeds for a year before we deploy again. Rather than wrap their minds around that one, most of them just left the Army instead. Fighting multiple long wars isn't going to "break" the Army. Hopelessly squandering the human resources we need to win them just might.

Down With Big Cul-De-Sac

I hate modern subdivisions. I hate getting lost in the cul-de-sac maze with no way to escape but to retrace my route, because Morningheatherspringwood Lane doesn't actually connect anything to anything else. I hate having to get in my car to get anywhere. And we can be bipartisan on this: Matthew Yglesias gives some progressive reasons to hate them, too, as they force people to drive far further and also make biking and walking less practical:


In reality, there's no reason for this to be a necessarily partisan issue. Last time I checked, the Republicans weren't in hock to Big Cul-De-Sac. And the New Urbanism is, at its roots, profoundly conservative. It is saying "lets build cities the way we did 100 years ago". Yglesias's final point is also a conservative one, or at least a federalist one: "Fundamentally, though, the role of state and local agencies is always going to be important to this kind of decision-making, and things will only improve if people pay more attention to politics at this level." Agreed.

Classic Moments In Soldiering: The Guy Who Just Left Did It

There's a weird phenomenon in the Army, which apparently also happens in civilian life as well: people who are about to leave the unit suddenly get incredibly proactive in their last few weeks. They reorganize storage units, delete important documents, and generally just make a slew of unilateral decisions right before they leave the unit forever. At least, that how it plays out for the month or two after they're gone:

Classic Moments In Soldiering: Sketchy Booze

When the 'arf-made recruity goes out to the East
'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks like a beast,
An' 'e wonders because 'e is frequent deceased
Ere 'e's fit for to serve as a soldier.
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

--Rudyard Kipling, "The Young British Soldier"

Things haven't changed much since Kipling's day, and we soldiers still love our drink. In the last few months, a collective fashion for Carolina wines has hit our barracks. A buddy of mine (who we know by his nickname "Ice") recently picked up a suspiciously cheap bottle of North Carolina "Pomegranate" wine.

Me: So whatchya drinkin' on tonight?
Ice: Some of this here "Pomegranate"?
Me: Wait, how does that work? Is it actually made from pomegranates?
Ice: Hmmm... label says "real grape wine with added flavors".
Me: Wow, that sounds pretty sketchy.
Ice: Yeah.... Not sketchy enough for me not to drink it.

A Great Movie

Bruce Gee reviews The Lives of Others, one of my very favorite movies, over at Pagans and Lutherans. My own review finds its way into the comments.

Dretful Scorn Goes Viral

Daniel Hannan sounds a bit befuddled by the viral breakout of the verbal blitzkrieg he launched at Gordon Brown on the occasion of the Prime Minister's visit to the European Parliament. The clip became the most-watched video on YouTube in less than 48 hours. As he says, he has "been making similar speeches every week and posting them on YouTube for the past seven months." But for whatever reason, the wisdom of the masses chose this particular speech, and in 24 hours an obscure representative to an opaque transnational government that few Americans know or care much about has gained an international following:

How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting.

Breaking the press monopoly is one thing. But the internet has also broken the political monopoly. Ten or even five years ago, when the Minister for Widgets put out a press release, the mere fact of his position guaranteed a measure of coverage. Nowadays, a politician must compel attention by virtue of what he is saying, not his position.

It's all a bit unsettling for professional journalists and politicians. But it's good news for libertarians of every stripe. Lefties have always relied on control, as much of information as of physical resources. Such control is no longer technically feasible.

All Hail the New Media!!

Dretful Scorn

If only we had politicians who could stand up and give a browbeating like this (HT Strange Herring):



I aspire some day to achieve Daniel Hannan's mastery of dretful scorn. Is there any way we could lure this guy over here? Maybe we can offer him asylum if Britain sinks beneath the waves, as seems likelier by the day.

The Four Deadly P's

A perennial topic of conversation in the barracks is, unsurprisingly, what's wrong with the Army and what could be done to fix it. I've argued for a while now that all our biggest frustrations have common roots in that top leadership is trying to be a wartime and a peacetime army at the same time. It's the mindset that has soldiers in Iraq returning from long patrols to get browbeaten because their pants are bloused below the 3rd eyelet of their boots. It's the mindset that has soldiers coming back from a year's deployment to an atmosphere not of "we're going to try not to waste your time so you can spend some more of it with your families", but rather "better buckle down, because we've got a year's worth of hoops to jump through and boxes to check". Well, leave to it Tom Ricks to have already given it a catchy name: The four deadly P's, the Persistence of Peacetime Personnel Processes.

Longest Weekend Ever!

... but in a good way. An "I can't believe we did all that stuff in just two days!" sort of way. A spontaneous road trip built on the ashes of a plan that fell through, we headed out with no plan, just a vague destination: the Outer Banks. And this is what we ended up with (click to embiggen):


Along the way: open-faced turkey sandwiches, the Plymouth lighthouse (which is literally just a house with a light on it), an ironclad replica, a German tourist commenting to her husband how much she liked my hair, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, the Wright Brothers' memorial on Kill Devil Hill (not actually in Kitty Hawk!), far too many billboard innuendos, the Bodie Island lighthouse, several completely inappropriate posed shots with said lighthouse, driving on the beach, some remarkable multi-colored sand dunes, a big bridge, a bromantic sunset, ribs and shrimp with some very friendly (and very drunk) rednecks, an invitation to go deep-sea fishing with aforementioned drunk rednecks, a very dated motel so lovingly maintained it was like going back in time, a delicious breakfast on styrofoam plates, the most iconic lighthouse in the country, more adolescent photo ops, another beach, off to the ferry terminal to see if the schedules might line up for us, a decision to go for it, a short ferry hop to the next island, then a furious drive down the length of it to arrive just as the next ferry is loading up for our trip back to the mainland, and an uneventful return trip. What a weekend, and a highly-recommended itinerary for anyone road-tripping in the area.

Third World America: Sacramento Tent City

Sacramento is considering routing utilities to a tent city that has grown in the shadow of the California state capital. Do we really need to explain why its a bad idea to haphazardly legitimize and make permanent establishments out of unauthorized housing (or tenting, as the case may be)? Anyone who doesn't think this is a problem, I've got a movie you ought to see.

Scandal! Outrage!

Get the torches and pitchforks, friends. Have you heard? AIG spent nearly 1/10th of 1% of their government bailout money to pay previously-contracted bonuses for employees who had no connection to risky securitizations! Scandal! Outrage! Wait, that's not quite how you've heard it on the news? Huh.

Randall Monroe has great commentary, as usual:

Of course, when you live to be outraged, it's a lot more fun to pretend the latter.

Straw Men and Chimney-Sweeps

Sometimes I wonder what we could accomplish in the realm of education in this country if we could all actually debate each other rather than our own strawmen. For instance, I'm sure Matthew Yglesias and I could have a great conversation about education policy, once I managed to convince him my ideas weren't all just a secret plot to turn poor kids into chimney-sweeps.

More of that Change We've Been Hearing About

The Obama administration doesn't believe it should need so much as a search warrant to get cell tower records on American citizens, which can be used to track callers. And after all the (mostly justified) caterwauling about "warrentless wiretaps" during the Bush administration, where's the outrage here? At least the good folks at Wired's Threat Level are still paying attention.

Incidentally, this is a great lesson to conservatives who defended the Bush administration's stance on wiretapping. Any increase in government power &mdash even when wielded for good by an administration you trust &mdash will be inherited by future administrations, for good or for ill. And then they might just go and one-up you in the process.

African Obamamania

The enigmatically-named Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing blogs today about the personality cult of Obama in Benin. Even surrounded in a such a warm cocoon of Obama-love, however, she can't help but throw a barb back at our former President:

Bush, as I recall from being here previously, did not enjoy any such popularity, and for good reason. He dropped by Benin in 2008, but is said to have spent all of three hours in the country, never once leaving the airport.

Oh, really? What do you think, Ms. Jardin, are the odds that President Obama will find his way to Cotonou in his presidency? I'm going with slim to none, seeing as Bush was the first US President ever to visit Benin, (not to mention a host of other heretofore neglected statelets). Were many Beninoises disappointed he only spent three hours in their country? I'm quite sure they were, but that in itself is a measure of how remarkably well-liked Bush was in most of Africa. You don't hear many Europeans complaining a Bush visit was too short, after all.

On Festivals

I've got mixed feelings about participating in the rites of religions I don't hold to. On the one hand, outside the West, nominally religious festivals are simultaneously cultural and civic events, and it can be great fun to seek out these events when visiting foreign countries. On the other, however, active participation in a ritual could potentially violate my own faith, and in a way disrespects those who do believe in it. I guess it comes down to a case-by-case basis. Anywho... this is all by way of introduction to Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, which just looks like way too much fun.

Sigh...

Here's another reason to love the stimulus that hasn't gotten much press: the developed world's insatiable hunger for global capital to fund their fiscal stimuli is going to leave the developing world fighting for the leftover scraps of sovereign debt. All the unwashed masses who had presumed to aspire to first-world standards of living in their lifetimes will now stay mired in their destitution. If we can seal the deal with the next-generation Kyoto Protocol, we'll have them successfully locked in abject poverty forever. The delicious irony that we will claim to be doing it for their sake is just icing on the cake.

Help Me Wrap My Mind Around This

So when the Democratic Party holds a contest to create a billboard denigrating a private citizen for the unpardonable sin of publicly wishing for the failure of an agenda he believes disastrous, this constitutes "leav[ing] behind partisan attack politics"? Good grief.

Fiscal Responsibility, Two Ways

Fearless Comrade has a piece of earth-shattering advice on the economy: let's at least consider listening to people who've been proven right. And while we're at it, let's stop listening to (and appointing to high office!) people who've been repeatedly and embarrassingly wrong:

If an economist didn't see it coming, why listen to anything he says about how to fix it? If you had a heart attack, would you go to the curmudgeonly, slightly bonkers doctor who had been warning you about an impending heart attack for the last two years, or go see the affable, soft-spoken guy who gave you the 2nd opinion and told you everything was fine?

And on the microeconomic side, consider this radical program to revolutionize your family's finances:

Paglia On Limbaugh

Camille Paglia at Salon, writing on the Obama administration and Rush Limbaugh:

President Obama -- in whom I still have great hope and confidence -- has been ill-served by his advisors and staff. Yes, they have all been blindsided and overwhelmed by the crushing demands of the presidency. But I continue to believe in citizen presidents, who must learn by doing, even in a perilous age of terrorism. Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.

Case in point: The orchestrated attack on radio host Rush Limbaugh, which has made the White House look like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys... Has the administration gone mad? This entire fracas was set off by the president himself, who lowered his office by targeting a private citizen by name. Limbaugh had every right to counterattack, which he did with gusto. Why have so many Democrats abandoned the hallowed principle of free speech? Limbaugh, like our own liberal culture hero Lenny Bruce, is a professional commentator who can be as rude and crude as he wants.

And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey. Rush Limbaugh is an embodiment of the American dream: He slowly rose from obscurity to fame on the basis of his own talent and grit. Every penny Rush has earned was the result of his rapport with a vast audience who felt shut out and silenced by the liberal monopoly of major media. As a Democrat and Obama supporter, I certainly do not agree with everything Rush says or does... Nevertheless, I respect Rush for his independence of thought and his always provocative news analysis. He doesn't run with the elite -- he goes his own way.

Paglia actually understands what opposition is all about.

On Japan

Does it feel strange to hear Japan referred to as the world's second economy? They've played such a background role since the last time they tried to, you know, take over the world, that it's easy to forget abut them. But then again, I'm one of those that thinks the Japanese really deserve to play a stronger role in international geopolitics than they recently have, so that probably makes me a fascist in and of itself.

Building Bridges

China is building bridges in Africa (h/t Tom Ricks), both literally and figuratively. The question is, bridges to where?

I am not sure what China is up to in Africa. But I have the nagging thought that we will figure it out in 15 years and be sorry.

Yeah, that thought's been more than just nagging me.

The Special Relationship

Here's a question the White House Press Corps is unlikely to ask: Does the administration confirm or repudiate the claim by an unnamed State Department official that there is no longer a "special relationship" between the U.S. and Great Britain? Because that would be, you know, kind of a story.

On Wal-Mart

A Round Unvarnish'd Tale shares Charles Platt's fascinating apologia for Wal-Mart. I really suggest you read the whole thing. All other things aside, the crux of his argument comes to two points: one, Wal-Mart's business model and treatment of employees are typical of the retail sector in general, and better than any of its competitors; and secondly (emphasis mine)

To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?"

The truth hurts.

On Irony, Again

I find it a bit odd that a computer game I purchased legitimately with my own hard-earned money obstinately refuses to run with the official disc in the drive, but when I rip a disc image and mount it on a virtual drive as if I had pirated it, it runs just fine.

See Slumdog Millionaire, No Matter What Rushdie Says

Salman Rushdie is a brilliant author, but he's apparently a bit deficient in irony. He recently criticized the plot of the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire as a "patently ridiculous conceit". The conceit? That a boy from the slums of Bombay could have an incredible series of experiences in which he learned precisely those facts he needed to win on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". Unlikely? Of course. But "patently ridiculous"? Mind you, this two criticism is from an author whose most celebrated novel begins with two men who survive their jetliner exploding 35,000 over the English Channel, and who won the Booker Prize for a novel whose protagonist has telepathic powers by virtue of his superhumanly runny nose.

Postscript: If you haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, please do. It's easily the best movie I've seen in several years.

Whose Babies Do We Mourn?

All the photographs in this collection "Portraits from the Congo" are deadly serious. But that didn't stop me from have a fleeting thought on seeing this picture:

"Huh. Mail order baby."

Back to a serious note, my sister wonders whether the world only cares when white babies die. I don't think that's true. It's just that which brown and black babies the world cares about is desperately subject to fashion. We care about Tibetan babies, but not Uyghur babies. We care about Darfuri babies, but not Congolese babies. And the fashions for which suffering peoples get highlighted in the international media and NGO racket seem dependent on which cases better support the worldview of those communities. A racist conflict over water and exacerbated by climate change becomes a cause celebre. Where a tyrant has, in one generation, succeeded in making the continent's healthiest and wealthiest nation into the poorest and sickest in the world? Well, you don't hear too much about that. Why not? Because what Robert Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe seems to argue — rather forcefully — that decolonization was a disaster and Kipling was right. And rather than confront ugly realities and have the difficult discussions about their implications, it's a lot easier just to focus on those conflicts that support our worldviews.

Best Thing Ever (Yet): Ukrainian Army Recruitment Video

While the current US Army recruitment campaign continues to blather on about building true virtue, with videos exploring the theme of "strength" to a soul-stirring martial soundtrack, the Ukrainian military has apparently decided to go for a slightly less nuanced approach: being in the Army counts bigtime with the ladies:



Translation:

Girl 1: would you take us for a ride on your BMW?
BMW-driver: even to the end of the world!
Soldier: hey, I'd like to down some vodka, girls!
Girl 1: just a second!
Girl 2: where do you live?
Soldier: right here- daytime at work, and at night in the clubs!
Girl 1: which work?
Soldier: contract of course!
Blonde girl: contract? marriage contract or what?
Girl 3: army contract, stupid!
BMW driver: hey, don't you wanna ride in my car?
Girls: forget it, take yourself for a ride!
Narrator: it's about time for new heroes! with contract based service in the Ukrainian armed forces!

Ash Wednesday

The line I'd like share tonight isn't even properly a Lenten hymn, tho' the "Evening" section of the hymnal does seem ever more appropriate in this season:

Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die that so I may
Rise glorious at the awesome day.
--Thomas Ken, c. 1674

I really am a Dark Lutheran. There's no denying it.

On Opposition

I read lefty blogs for my intellectual health. Not HuffPo mind you, but comparatively reasonable liberal writers. This morning "publius" at Obsidian Wings had an interesting comment on the GOP in opposition with regard to the stimulus.

The House GOP is playing a long-term game. In the spirit of parliamentary opposition, they're looking ahead to the next election. What the public thinks now is not necessarily relevant to what the public will think 18 months from now. They've gone all in but haven't seen the flop yet. It's important for Obama, then, to do all he can to make sure the policy works as best it can -- and fraud or waste needs to be met with swift Old Testament-style vengeance. Because if the stimulus doesn't work, the GOP is going to be able to draw a very clear contrast on the issue.

He later goes on to mention how the Democrats have not historically been this good in opposition. I agree, but I'd argue he's missing his own point. The GOP's opposition to the stimulus is not just playing politics for the next election; it is also shaping Democratic policy for the better. Here's the key: "It's important for Obama, then, to do all he can to make sure the policy works". Whatever your position on it, nobody is even trying to argue that the stimulus bill is a lean, targeted affair. By reminding overreaching Democrats that they'll be waiting in the wings if the thing fails, congressional Republicans have given them a very powerful incentive to make it succeed. A functional opposition, even if it doesn't have the votes to change a single outcome, still has an invaluable role to play.

Saturday Dinner: Pasta Two Ways. And Then Pie.

Yeah yeah yeah, it's Tuesday night. Sue me. Djyah want your recipes or no? Yeah, in the plural. Moving on.

So Saturday night my congenital indecisiveness got the best of me, leading me to make a ridiculous amount of pasta. See, the idea of making pasta alla puttanesca had gotten lodged in my brain, (probably triggered by an unwitting reference to A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, a charming book which features the puttanesca in a subplot). Sadly, several of our dinner guests expressed an aversion to olives, which feature prominently and irreplaceably in the puttanesca. I suppose I could have just chosen a different dish. One of our guests, however, had expressed a love of olives, and this guest, for multitudinous reasons, particularly deserved a very special meal. In conjuction with my own strange compulsion to attempt the puttanesca, this left the matter completely out of my hands. Two pastas it would simply have to be.

Pasta alla Puttanesca: (heavily adapted from Wikipedia, which will reveal the meaning of this dish's slightly scandalous title) :


olive oil
3 cloves garlic
6 anchovy fillets
1 tiny jar (around 1/4 cup?) capers, rinsed
1/2 cup good green olives (like, from the deli, not a can)
1/2 cup Kalamata olives
2 15oz. cans diced stewed tomatoes

Heat some oil. Sautee the garlic and anchovies until the little fishies dissolve into stinky nothingness. Toss in the capers and olives. Since I really don't know what the heat is accomplishing at this point, throw in the tomatoes, too. Heat it all until it's hot. (This isn't a particularly tricky dish). Oh, and hopefully you threw in some entertainingly-shaped pasta before you started with the sauce. Otherwise you'll be eating this on bread, which is also seriously delicious, I promise.

Sidenote: I never understood the whole anchovy thing until this dish. And... wow. It's seriously just cheating. If you didn't already know what they were, you'd never know they were there. You'd just wonder "huh, it tastes like someone is kicking me in the mouth with a boot made of pure deliciousness".

Pasta Arrabiata (this one's all me)


1 lb hot Italian sausage
1 green pepper, halved and sliced into 1/4" strips
1 sweet onion, halved and sliced in 1/4" strips
4 cloves garlic, brutalized
2 15oz. cans diced stewed tomatoes
1 tsp. red pepper flake
grated parmesan to impress the ladies

Brown the sausage. Chop up your pepper and onions while that's happening. That whole 1/4" thing? Yeah, do whatever you want with that. It's seriously not going to matter. Short of tossing the pepper and onion into the pan entire, you're not likely to mess this step up. Set the sausage aside when it's cooked through, leaving as much delicious sausage grease in the pan as possible. Sautee your onions and pepper in the delicious sausage grease. And by sautee, I expect to see some browning on those veggies. Feel free to burn 'em a bit, if need be. We're looking for Torquemada here. Good. Now toss in the garlic. Toss it all around for just a minute or so and add the tomatoes and red pepper. I actually didn't have red pepper flake on hand, but powdered cayenne worked pretty well, too. It's all a matter of taste, people. Let that heat up and simmer for just a few minutes and you're ready to serve. Again, assuming you started a pot of pasta about 20 minutes ago. Yeah, I'm not going to get nominated to write any cookbooks anytime soon. And throw some grated parmesan on top. We're all about gilding the lily around here.

And after all of that, our friend A. made pie. This post really belongs in the "Are Ya Serious?" category. Yeah, she's serious. How serious? This serious:

Yeah. Life's not all bad 'round here. 'Specially not on Saturday nights.

Dubai's Good Times Come to an End

I've never understood the fascination many people have with Dubai. The whole idea of the place has never really appealed to me. It's one enormous open-air shopping mall, and that in one of the world's most miserable climates. It's the Paris Hilton of world cities, a mockery of what fashion and celebrity once stood for. It seems that even in Dubai, people are starting to catch a whiff of reality.

The New Iraq's First Tourist

Serious tourists (who, of course, would never let themselves be called that; they are travelers, scoff, scoff) live to one-up one another by dropping mentions of exotic destinations: "Oh, yeah, Thailand's nice, I guess, but it's a bit too commercial for me. You should really visit Burma." Visits to crime- and disease-ridden third-world countries are of course played like trump cards. This guy, then, has all-time hands-down bragging rights.

Are Ya Serious? : Citibank Falls for Nigerian Email Scam

Well, they weren't quite sending their account numbers to an exiled prince in exchange for a cut of his fortune, but this is pretty close. Really?

The Three Laws and Then Some

Asimov had one critical failure in imagination when dreaming up his future worlds inhabited by robots, or maybe he was just giving humanity too much credit. He completely missed the possibility that the greatest initial demand for highly autonomous robots would come from the military. He may not have considered them, but the military is certainly not ignoring him. The Office of Naval Research has released the first full military report on the potential ethical considerations of using semi- and fully-autonomous robots in combat, "Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design" (.pdf). It's fascinating, if slightly disconcerting, but it's an important topic. Congress has mandated that 1/3 of deep-strike aircraft be automated by 2010, and the same portion of ground vehicles by 2015. Whether we decide to allow a gun-toting robot to pull its own trigger, questions of robot ethics are important for more mundane 'bots, too. The first fully-autonomous ground vehicles will likely be transports for convoy operations. Just autonomous trucks. But how will the truck react if a child runs into the street? What if there are crowds on the sidewalks? It seems straightforward that robots would be programmed to be pure utilitarians; after all, we can expect a computer to successfully calculate the course of action leading to the least human suffering, at any rate far better than a human operator can. Then again, human cost can't be the only consideration: if autonomous trucks can safely be forced to crash simply by jumping in front of them, they wouldn't serve their purpose very well. Any fully-autnomous robot bigger than a Roomba might have to make a life-or-death decision; we need to be ready to face the implications of that.

States Rights and Such

Introduced in the Texas legislature, a bill demanding that the federal government actually, you know, uphold its founding document (.pdf!). Scary thought, I know. But never you mind, John Derbyshire assures us, "whoever was responsible will be hunted down and brought to justice."

Dry Spell

It's been a pretty good while here since my last post, particularly since I had been hitting such a stride. A lot of factors involved, but it's mostly been application of the great kindergarten lesson "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". Also, one of these days my gracious corporate overlords at Time Warner will get around to spending some of their precious time to address my humble petition that they, you know, provide me the service that I'm paying for. It's not like they're in any hurry, I mean, what am I going to do? Just give up the Internet? Some days, I tell ya...

Talk Amongst Yourselves, I'll Give You A Topic: Funistrada

What amazes me most about the strange story of funistrada, the only food known solely for the fact that it doesn't actually exist, is that nobody has yet created a dish to fit the name.  I mean, we should be able to pull this off, right?  The -strada makes me think "strata" as in layers.  How about an Italianate vision of moussaka, layers of winter squash and panchetta baked in a casserole under a creamy blanket of bechamel?  Game on, folks, what does funistrada sound like to you?

Unholy Union

Conservatives distrust the government and celebrate the free market.  Liberals are wary of corporations and are big fans of most things prefixed by "public".  I wish both sides would recognize that one of the biggest threats to both good business and good government comes from the unholy union of the two.  You know, like when red-light camera companies collude with the police to rake in additional fines.  Or when kiddie prisons bribe judges to send more juvenile felons their way.  When government contractors waste billions intended to rebuild Iraq.  And worst of all, when mercenaries private security contractors endanger American soldiers and hinder our success in Iraq by alienating, enraging, or massacring the locals.

Advice For Young People

John Derbyshire shares practical wisdom for today's youth, specifically for "academically non-brilliant young from un-wealthy families":

If you have a high threshold of boredom and cherish financial security above all else, get a government job — any one will do. Master a few bureacratic survival tactics — avoiding responsibility, advancing by stealth, etc. Settle back. Life's a couch.

If you're more adventurous and independent, learn a useful skill that you can parlay into a small business and take with you to another country if you get the travel bug, or if the U.S.A. folds. Stay clear of the college racket and the student-loan sharks. Keep fit. Life's an adventure playground.

Don't get me wrong, I loved college and it was great for me, but I won't deny that it's basically a racket.  Seriously, how much of a typical humanities program is spent reading a book and then discussing it with a group of people?  You can do that for free, it's called a "book club".  And at a real book club there's a higher likelihood that the others had actually read what they're opining about.  I'd probably be evaluating the value of my college experience very differently if I were still paying off my loans, instead of handing them over to the American taxpayer.  (Thanks guys!)

Climate Day at Boing-Boing

It seems to be climate change day over at the ever-worthwhile internet digest Boing-Boing.  Guest blogger Charles Pratt quite knowingly opened a can of worms this morning with a series of posts on "Climatic Heresy", that is to say questioning "the interdisciplinary scientific consensus on the reality of deadly human-caused climate change", as Cory Doctorow puts it in one of a series of refutations.  Boing-Boing's ideological eclecticism and tolerance of dissenting views are pretty atypical for the blogosphere.

I'm not going to delve deep into this issue here, as there are far more who write about it far better than I could, but I do want to address again this idea of scientific consensus, which Doctorow expressed so stridently.  Firstly, science simply does not work by consensus.  To borrow an example from the late Michael Crichton, one would never say "the scientific consensus is that the Sun is about 93 million miles from the Earth".  It just sounds wrong, because we know intuitively that science doesn't work that way.  Secondly, I can't even fathom the cognitive dissonance of someone who praises great scientific pioneers like Galileo and Copernicus while shouting down all skeptics, saying "we've reached a consensus, the science is settled, no alternative hypotheses are worthy of examination".

Fitting the Narrative

One can only imagine what the media would be saying if a hypothetical President McCain had dined on Wagyu beef in the now-subtropical West Wing after a storm killed scores of poor people and left millions without power in freezing temperatures, while FEMA responds even more ineptly than they had following Katrina.  Thankfully, we don't have to consider such an ugly situation.  Since this is President Obama we're talking about, the media simply aren't saying anything at all.

Google Becomes Self-Aware, Declares Entire Internet "Harmful"

That's about the only way I can take this story.  I mean, it's the only thing that makes sense.

Saturday Dinner: Chicken Groundnut Stew

One of my only frustrations with my living situation here in the barracks is that we have kitchen available. Our rooms have a fridge and microwave, but there's no range or oven available anywhere. I have a (technically contraband) hot plate and toaster oven, but there's only so much you're willing to do with one burner and no ventilation, especially when you're cooking in your bedroom. It's also a huge event to get everything out of the boxes I keep it hidden in, cook, clean up, and pack it back up again. Long story short, I don't cook during the week, which is why I'm really glad we've gotten into a routine of holding Saturday evening dinner parties at a buddy's house. While I'm hardly one to start competing with all the fantastic food blogs available, I figured it'd be fun to start sharing what goes through my head, culinarily speaking. Last night our coterie feasted on a sack full of extremely ill-tempered blue crabs, courtesy of our host, and I made up a big ole' pot of chicken groundnut stew. Enjoy.

Chicken Groundnut Stew (adapted from Epicurious)

2 lbs chicken (recipe calls for a whole chicken in pieces, I just used 2 packages of drumsticks for ease of eating out of the stew)
1 qt chicken stock
1 15 oz can diced stewed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
1 large sweet onion
4 cloves garlic
1/2 c natural creamy peanut butter (or Skippy. I doubt anyone'll notice)
1 1/2 tsp African cayenne (or your favorite hot stuff)
2 sweet potatoes
1 lb bag frozen cut okra

Salt the chicken and let stand for a few minutes to draw off surface moisture. Set a skillet heating. Pour your stock, tomatoes, and tomato paste into a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over medium heat to start heating up. Pat chicken dry and brown off in hot skillet with a bit of oil. No need to be fancy, just get some nice color on the skin. (Or just forget this step and drop the chicken into your stewpot as is; this dish is hardly going to be lacking in depth of flavor). Add chicken to stewpot with stock and tomatoes. When stew comes to a boil, turn it down to a simmer and make note of the time. While stew simmers, rough-chop the onion and toss in skillet. Cook on medium-high heat until onion is translucent and beginning to brown on edges. Turn down heat and allow onions to continue to caramelize while you make use of your favorite technique to turn garlic cloves into smashed garlic paste. Toss garlic in with onions for just a few minutes to heat up, and add to stewpot. Now's as good a time as any to add the cayenne and peanut butter. When the stew's been simmering a good 30 minutes or so, peel and chunk the sweet potatoes and add to stew. Toss in the frozen okra, and bring the whole thing back to simmering until the sweet potatoes are fork-tender but not falling apart, about 12 minutes. Salt to taste. Serve in bowls or stew plates, over rice or by itself.

You'll understand quickly why I like using just the drumsticks in this stew, because then you can just pick them up out of the stew with your fingers. I suppose there's more mannerly ways to eat this, but that just strikes me as way too much work.

Next time I'll try to remember to take a picture or three, but I won't be emulating the Pioneer Woman anytime soon.

Digging Holes

An important reminder from N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economist, to be skeptical of government "stimulus" spending, and particularly of the statistics used to justify it:

If you hire your neighbor for $100 to dig a hole in your backyard and then fill it up, and he hires you to do the same in his yard, the government statisticians report that things are improving. The economy has created two jobs, and the G.D.P. rises by $200. But it is unlikely that, having wasted all that time digging and filling, either of you is better off.

HT to John Derbyshire, who suspects "there'll be a lot of $100-hole-digging in the nation's near future".

The Most Strategic Resource

If there is a single irreplaceable fuel running the Unites States' war machine, that fuel is coffee. Ewan McGregor's character in Blackhawk Down gripes about it in this clip, but he probably doesn't realize how vital his role is.



Entropic Memes has some fascinating excerpts and commentary on a 1951 DoD report about procurement and consumption of "The Essential Beverage" in the military. Most interesting to me is the military's acknowledgment of coffee's status as the only major military supply which cannot be substituted for, and which the United States is not capable of producing.

I can say from personal experience that an interruption in coffee supplies would be absolutely devastating to productivity and morale both in theater and in garrison. The only real change in this situaion since 1951 is the recent boom in the popularity of caffeinated energy drinks. Coffee is still king on the FOB, but outside the wire our soldiers are being fuelled by Rip-It, an energy drink company that has resurrected a time-honored marketing plan: donate boatloads of your product to the "war effort" in order to gain total saturation of a captive market. Those customers then return home to spread the word; it's viral marketing in the "Spanish influenza" sense of viral.

Hurray for Babies!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I don't know if seeing the title of an upcoming book has ever made me this happy: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, to be released this April. Here's the publisher's blurb:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.

You have no idea how happy this makes me.

A Terrible Thing To Waste

The indomitable Thomas Sowell is wondering why it is that the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress have been in such a goshdarn hurry to pass an emergency stimulus package, the overwhelming majority of which won't be paid out for years. What exactly are they buying?

They are buying what politicians are most interested in—power. In the name of protecting the taxpayers’ investment, they are buying the power to tell General Motors how to make cars, banks how to bank, and, before it is all over with, all sorts of other people how to do the work they specialize in, and for which members of Congress have no competence, much less expertise.

Like doctors, for example, who could face tax penalties if they insist on offering their patients procedures that haven't yet met the approval of yet another federal medical gatekeeper. Because clearly the problem with American medicine is that the federal government doesn't hold enough sway in your physician's office. For all the talk of helping out Main Street and saving us all from the next Great Depression, let's not forget what Rahm Emmanuel so helpfully reminded us, "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste".

The Future Is Now

I always thought that the whole "high-tech energy-beam weapon requires enormous diamond of mystical properties" trope was just a ridiculous plot device of terrible movies. Apparently not. I know "directed energy weapons" (in other words, rayguns) have been just over the horizon of practicality since the 50's, but it seems like we're actually getting them now. The Active Denial System (the "Pain-Ray") is ready for deployment. Honest-to-goodness laser guns are being demonstrated to shoot down enemy drones and have been suggested as a convenient way to detonate roadside bombs from a safe distance. Soldiers don't think twice about deploying alongside robots.

We're totally living in the future, and it's pretty awesome.

Best Thing Ever (Yet): Best Headline Ever

Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

Obama on Al-Arabiya

The Muslim world's not quite sure yet what to make of President Obama. That's okay, because most of us aren't, either.

''I can't be optimistic until I see something tangible,'' said Hatem al-Kurdi, 35, a Gaza City engineer who saw parts of the interview. ''Anyone can say nice words, but you have to follow with actions.''

''He seems very interested in the Middle East issue but he didn't say exactly what he's going to do about it,'' Kurdi added.

I'm curious myself.

Journalistic Fear-Mongering is Lost on Me

All I got out of this article was a serious craving for doner kebab.

Among the kebabs sampled - without salad or sauces - the average doner contained 98% of an adult's recommended daily salt and 148% of their daily saturated fat allowance... The worst doners inspectors came across contained 1,990 calories before salad and sauces - over 95% of a woman's recommended daily calories, 346% of a woman's saturated fat intake and 277% of an adult's daily salt intake.

Mmmmmmm... kebab.

Cheering For Goliath

Entropic Memes has some interesting commentary on the recent defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known simply as the Tamil Tigers:

It’s kind of a shame, really, because I always liked the Tamil Tigers (and, to be honest, have always kind of secretly supported most ethnically-motivated secessions.) Yes, yes, I know they’re considered “terrorists”, and I know that supporting them is frowned upon by the government. And, yes, a lot of their actions (recruiting child soldiers, for a start) were, frankly, reprehensible. Ignore the politics and rhetoric for a moment; the Tigers had style.

I think that at some point in the future, when the whole post-9/11 obsession with “terrorism” fades, people are going to look back at the Tamil Tigers and realize that they were the last great “freedom fighters” on the planet. I mean, come on - a thirty-something year-old insurgency with a quite effective navy and air force? How can you not like that?

On one level, I can understand the admiration. There's that natural affinity for the underdog, especially when the messy details of the conflict are obscured by distance and media indifference. But while I understand the motivations, I can't share the admiration, and it goes far beyond the child recruitment problem — though honestly, that ought to be enough. For one, chalking up the Tigers' designation as terrorists to a "post-9/11 obsession with 'terrorism'" is a bit ironic when they are the group generally credited as having invented the suicide vest and the VBIED and perfected their use over the last 30 years. Tactics aside even, the Tigers have dragged their country through three decades of conflict for the sake of an independent Tamil "homeland", the prospective residents of which have never been shown to support this pipe dream. Not that the Tigers ever cared much what other Tamils wanted; indeed, the worst atrocities of this conflict have been perpetrated by the Tigers against war-weary Tamils denounced as "collaborators". This is one "classic David-vs-Goliath matchup" where I'm happy to see the giant win.

An Interesting Question

What's the right time to panic? Jay Nordlinger brings up this dilemma in today's Impromtus column:

What is the right time to panic? A tricky question. Panic too soon, and you’re just foolish. Panic too late, and—well, it’s too late.

He's right, after all. And when the specific topic of conversation is genocidal pogroms against Jews, which have been a more-or-less centennial event in Europe since, you know, close to forever, it's well worth concerning oneself. If you're a Jew, anyway. If you're a descendant of all those Europeans who have always managed to look the other way, well, I guess you can just keep on keepin' on.

Your Government Cares... How Much You're Costing Them

Whilst commenting on what Nancy Pelosi thinks of you, Fearsome Comrade uses an excellent example to ask why many people trust the government to solve the nation's problems:

Remember: To the government, you are a number in a computer. You think your insurance company doesn't care about you? How about if your insurance company had guns and the means to enforce its will on the population? How much would they care then?

For serious! People gripe about how corporations like banks, HMOs, and particularly insurance companies are so uncaring, impersonal, and exploitative. And it can certainly be true, but at the end of the day that company is still making money off you. You may be nothing more to them than the pasture on which they grow fat, but at least you're that. You're still on the black side of the ledger. To the government, you are a liability, an expense. You're still just a number, but to them that number's in red.

Eeeew

Apparently my visceral dislike for medical facilities isn't entirely unwarranted (HT: The Renaissance Biologist):

Some medical personnel wear the same unlaundered uniforms to work day after day... 65% of medical personnel confess they change their lab coat less than once a week, though they know it's contaminated. Fifteen percent admit they change it less than once a month. Superbugs such as staph can live on these polyester coats for up to 56 days.

Family Tradition

Huh. Of all the things that run in families, I wouldn't have suspected a predilection to presidential assassination, but apparently so. The father of John Wilkes Booth has been shown to be the author of a letter threatening the assassination of Andrew Jackson. Wierd. Eerie.

Also, how does English not have a specific word ending in -cide for the assassination of presidents? C'mon, English. You're better than that.

Doing "Business"

The Fearlesssome Comrade, a blog I just recently discovered, has some words for those industries — specifically journalism and higher education — that hate having to admit to themselves that they are, in fact, industries:

If you rely on people willingly paying you, you're a business. If you rely on people unwillingly paying you, you're either a crime syndicate or the government.

These days, it's getting hard to tell the difference.

UPDATE: It's the Fearsome Comrade, not "fearless" as I originally had it. Apologies. Though I have no doubt he is also fearless.

Hollywood's Pledge

With reference to "the Pledge", Andrew Breitbart has more than a few choice words on the Hollywood Left's newfound love of country. For those of you short on time, his last sentence pretty well sums it all up: "Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell."

A Long Time Falling

A few days ago, some of my buddies and I were wondering who holds the record for most jumps by a US paratrooper, and generally, what that record might be. I'm not sure whether he holds the record or not, but CSM Jeffrey Mellinger's over 3,700 jumps has got to be close. 33 cumulative hours spent in freefall. Incidentally, CSM Mellinger is, as far as anyone knows, the last draftee still on active duty in the US military.

Sign Hacking

So I know it would be reckless and illegal to modify one of those flashing LED road signs if it were displaying an important traffic message. Luckily for me, I see blank ones flashing all the time, because I really want to make use of this particular hack:

Bad Bad Bad: 40 Al-Qaeda Members Die of Plague

The UK Telegraph is reporting that 40 members of an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror cell in Algeria have died of the plague. It is not improbable that the living conditions in a terrorist training camp in the Algerian wilds may have led to the disease (plague being endemic in North Africa), but striking 40 at once does seem a bit suspicious. A thought on the supposition that they may have been working with plague as a potential bioweapon: sending infected members to mingle with a target population as "suicide vectors" would be a pretty ineffective dispersal technique, particularly for plague, but it would be chillingly effective as a terror weapon. Remember: actually killing you is just icing on the cake; a terrorist's goal, by definition, is to frighten you into changing your behavior.

Meeting the Press

Well, I guess we knew President Obama would have a very different relationship with the White House press corps than his predecessor did. I wouldn't have suspected he'd start right off the bat scolding journalists for asking substantive questions:

"Ahh, see," he said, "I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here."

The Pledge

Wow. This would be hilarious if it weren't so terrifying.

Are we so deaf to the echoes of history as to let the line "I pledge allegiance to the folk" get past the editors? Seriously?

"I pledge to be a servant to our president, and all mankind." I'm bound by oath to obey the President's orders, and proudly so, all politics aside. But you won't find me pledging to be his servant.

On Freedom

Yesterday's inauguration should be a reminder to us all that most of the world does not enjoy the freedom that we do. In particular we should remember those who live in the appallingly topsy-turvy world that is Arabia today. A few weeks ago, a journalist threw his shoes at the President of the United States. For that act he deserves to be slapped on the wrist to the fullest extent of the law. Sadly the nation in which is imprisoned (and the nations to which he could be transferred) has a strange sense of justice:

He is in danger over there," [his lawyer] said in a telephone interview Monday. "He's also in danger in other Muslim countries because people who support his action could try to make him a martyr.

Read that again. And again. It took me until the third read to realize what the shoe-thrower's lawyer was saying: He's in danger, because people who whole-heartedly agree with him might well kill him in order to strengthen the cause of opposition to the American mission in Iraq. And people wonder why I can't bring myself to look at the Middle East with enthusiasm.

On Joy

Joy is an interesting topic. I've found it on YouTube. A few times. It's one of the Fruits of the Spirit, to begin with. And it is encouraging to me, in the etymological sense, to know that President Bush understands joy:

I tell people that, you know, some days happy, some days not so happy, every day has been joyous.

Just A Word

So many comments. So much to be said. Most of it has already been said or will shortly be said by others, so I'm not going to bother. I have but one comment on the inaugural address itself, this portion in particular:

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.

So, what you're saying, Mr. President, is that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. And I wholeheartedly agree.

I apologize, friends, if this is taken as flip. The excoriation of Senator McCain for that statement is the single bitterest jab of the campaign, and the only one that still sticks with me.

The Obligatory Inauguration Day Post

May God grant our new President the talent of Wisdom in his governance. And I hope for integrity and justice and temperance and humility and intelligence.

Twitter Along for the Rescue

"There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy."

More YouTube Joy

Western culture takes a lot of flak for bubblegum pop music, mostly from ourselves. And yet, when a group of talented independent musicians gets together with the goal of elevating bubblegum to an art form, somehow it works. And they're called The Go! Team.

Just Don't Go Down There, Seriously

Just in case I haven't been absolutely clear on this subject: squid are terrifying.

Modernizing Monopoly

I'm a big fan of Monopoly. It was one of our favorite board games when we were kids, and our introduction to the principles of legalism and bureaucracy as we were forced to negotiate the ever-shifting "house rules" in our friends' homes. Sadly, however, the classic game has begun to lack in verisimilitude, so why not update it with some new Chance and Community Chest cards, as suggested by Radio Free New Jersey:

• Your Property is seized through Eminent Domain. Give your most expensive property to the player to your right.
  

• Homeowner Lending Bailout: You must buy the cheapest property the bank holds and give it to the player with the least cash.
  
  
• Government Job! Collect $100 from the next player to pass GO.
  
  
• Spotted Owl Found! You are charged for environmental impact studies. All new houses will cost you double the original price.

An Unlikely Event

So I used to think all the talk of "in the unlikely event of a water landing your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device" was just hooey to placate the irrationally paranoid. Actually, I thought the whole "water landing" idea was in the same category. Apparently not:

NEW YORK (AP) - A US Airways plane crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after striking a bird that disabled two engines, sending 150 on board scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities say. No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported.

God be praised for that. And those pilots had better get a promotion.

I Want One: Atlas of True Names

A husband and wife team of German cartographers has just released the English version of their Atlas of True Names — a pair of maps that translates the etymological roots of placenames into plain English, transforming the familiar landscape of the upper Midwest into a Tolkeinesque realm where one could travel from Mudwater (Winnipeg) to the Land of the South Wind People (Iowa) by way of Father-of-Waters (the Mississippi). The British Isles fare even better, where one can travel from Hillfort (London) to the Land of the Wanderers (Scotland) where one finds the Isles of Sea Monsters (the Orkneys) and Beyond the North (the Outer Hebrides).

This is just so me, you know? Which is why I'm buying it.

I Don't Really Know What You're Planning Here

I'm not surprised that 3M makes "nuclear grade" duct tape, "especially ideal for applications in the shipbuilding, nuclear power plant and stainless steel industries". I'm a bit intrigued that Amazon suggests a Rubik's Cube as the item frequently purchased with nuclear grade duct tape.

Honeymoon Over Before the Wedding

Dang, folks, that didn't take long.

Industrious in Gaza

I haven't written much about Israel's invasion of Gaza. It's not that I don't have a lot to say about the situation, but I'm just so weary of it. John Hinderaker makes a point, however, that I feel I have to share. We've heard a lot about how HAMAS uses "human shields" by storing weapons caches in or firing rockets from schools, markets, and hospitals,

but the truth is really worse than that. Hamas doesn't endanger civilians in hopes that it will deter retaliation; it does so in the hope and expectation that civilians will be killed and wounded. This tactic is part of a larger strategy to create tragedy and disaster, which the Palestinians have developed into something akin to an industrial process.

He goes on to comment on the role professional "atrocity" photographers play in encouraging a continuing market for civilian casualties, and the disturbing context of some of these photos, particularly the innumerable photos and videos taken within hospital emergency rooms:

One can only imagine what an American nurse would do to a photographer who tried to pull a stunt like this. Apart from interfering with the treatment itself, photographing injured people in this manner would be viewed as a gross invasion of their privacy. But in Gaza, even the exigencies of medical care yield to the overriding need to serve Gaza's one successful industry: the production of death and disaster, and the reproduction of images of that death and disaster for world-wide consumption.

Babies Love Robots. It's a Proven Fact.

The Steampunk inventor CrabFu (real name I-Wei Huang) shares this adorable video of his award-winning SwashBot meeting his son, who is nicknamed, of course, ShrimpFu.

Somali Pirates?

We've been hearing all about the Somali pirates. I've written a bit about them myself. But something struck when I looked at the Somali coast on this map of attacks:

All the news stories speak of these attacks occurring off "the Somali coast". Thing is, most of them are happening practically in sight of Yemen. I don't really know what to make of that. I suppose the ships are probably just crossing to the other side of the street, as it were, and the pirates are just going where the ships are, but at least some of the pirates are Yemeni, and many more seem to be funded or supplied from Yemen. It still seems a touch strange that this situation isn't being made clear. Is it just easier to blame the chaos of Somalia, or is there a particular reason Yemen isn't in the spotlight on this?

Epiphany Around the World

The Boston Globe's "Big Picture" photoblog shares a beautiful roundup of the Christmas season around the world. It's fascinating for two reasons: 1) to see a major media outlet recognize that the Christmas season ends in January, not on Boxing Day, and 2) it features a great many pictures of Christmas and Epiphany celebrations from parts of the world it is easy to think of as being somehow "outside" Christendom, like China, Iraq, Gaza, and Turkey.

Objectivism in the Fast Lane

I really enjoy the writing of Ayn Rand, and I've been putting off diving into her masterpiece, so I'm happy to say that after a 24-hour shift on watch duty I'm about 1/3 of the way through Atlas Shrugged and hopelessly hooked. (I wasn't reading the whole shift, else I might well have finished it). At some point I'll get around to writing a critique of the Randian worldview, which is so alluringly right about so many particulars of the human condition while being so appallingly wrong about the whole. Today's not that day. Today is the day that I comment on how T-Rex shares my driving habits, but for reasons of which Ayn Rand might herself approve!

On the State of Man; or, The Labyrinth of Filth

Never have I seen so tragic and poignant an allegory of the human condition.

Morning Inspirations

Get your day started right, with the most inspirational 2 minutes of video ever edited together:



(HT Randy Barnett at the VC)

Gaza's Tunnels

The maze of tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt have often been described as the Strip's "lifeline" under the Israeli blockade. Well, it's nice to know that the good people of Hamasistan have their priorities in order. I'd hate to hear that they had to cut back on shipments of Viagra, iPods, and 122mm Chinese rockets to make room for, you know, food and medicine.

I'm a Waffler

I've had a sudden reversal of opinion. These things happen. I have been immediately and completely convinced of Caroline Kennedy's qualifications by three little words: Senator Bill Clinton.

Decimation

Today Dinosaur Comics reminds us that precision in language is a virtue, with reference to a particular linguistic peeve of my own: the use of "decimate" to mean "utterly destroy". As the comic points out, and any pedant worth his salt ought to know, "decimate" means "destroy one tenth". I understand that "decimate" is a pretty cool word, but what I don't get is why people don't use "annihilate". It means precisely what most people intend to mean by "decimate", and sounds even cooler!