Wow

The latest attack ad from the Obama campaign slams McCain as being out of touch because he admits he doesn't know himself how to use a computer or send an email. Thing is though, he makes daily use of these technologies with the help of his wife and/or his staff. See, he has a bit of trouble using a keyboard. Something to do with having had many of his bones broken multiple times in a North Vietnamese prison. He also has trouble tying his shoes and combing his hair, are they going to make fun of him for that, too?

Incidentally, in this interview with the New York Times [HT Jonah Goldberg], McCain sounds like he's got a reasonable level of online engagement for someone of his age. For that matter, I don't really give a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys whether my president keeps up on all the top blogs or not. If he's not farming that work out to some (extremely) junior staffer I'd have serious doubts about his ability to delegate responsibility.

Finally, the line "things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn't" could just as well come from a McCain ad. Do they seriously not realize this is one of the reasons we like him? Even those of us who wish he were more ideologically conservative respect the fact that he is a man who has, from 1982 to today, voted according to his own convictions rather than flapping in the breezes of public opinion and party lines.

UPDATE: InstaPundit has a great recap of the response to this ad. A few favorite comments:

"It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief knows how to send an e-mail ...but not how to do a five-minute Google search."

"I think they spent months trying to figure out how they can position Obama as better qualified than McCain, and basically came up with the fact that Obama can type."

Ants!

I've got ants! In my bed! Not just any ants, fire ants! Why are they there? Nobody can explain. I keep my room clean and I live on the third floor! And yet there are ants in my bed. And no place else in the room. Not in my food, not under the fridge. Just in my bed. I washed the sheets yesterday, thinking they were attracted to something. But no. They came right back. It defies rational explanation.

I feel like this guy.

Bibliophibians

Wondermark, as usual, has me pegged.

Today is September 11

And we must never forget. Even more importantly, we must remember correctly. Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of flight 77, the plane that was flown into the Pentagon, has this vital reminder, published last year, but ever more important. A few excerpts (emphasis mine) :

There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts that result in loss of life, with "body count" being the primary factor that keeps it in the top spot of "worst in the nation's history."

Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn't the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup.

Our fellow human beings were not "lost" in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts.

LHC Dangers, Pt. II

Shane alerted me to yet another reason to fear the Large Hadron Collider: apparently, Gordon Freeman works at CERN! For those not big into video games, Dr. Gordon Freeman is the protagonist of the extremely popular Half-Life series of games, in which researchers at a secretive facility accidentally open a rift in space-time, allowing montrous inter-dimensional life forms to break through onto Earth. Kind of a spooky parallel, no? I'll be scanning the news for any suspicious reports out of Switzerland in the next few days.

UPDATE: Apparently one of the villains of the game has been spotted in the CERN publicity spots as well!


Wierd. Eerie.

The Tree-Sitters Give Up

Zombie reports from Berkeley on the final acquiescence and removal of the so-called "tree-sitters", a group of hippies who have been living in a grove of trees on the U.C. Berkeley campus for the last 21 months, in order to save them from being felled to make way for a new athletic complex. It's a classic Zombie photoessay, and typically amusing. My favorite moment is towards the end:

As a hilarious side note, the construction company which had built the scaffolding in record time must have seen how many people were taking photos of the scene, so two workmen quickly attached a sign to the poles to take advantage of the free publicity. Some guerrilla capitalism amidst the anarchy!

Too, too perfect.

The Large Hadron Collider

Scientists at CERN are ready to fire up the Large Hadron Collider. They assure us that there's no chance of it destroying Earth, though the fact that we need the assurance is itself not exactly reassuring. Jeffrey Rowland has his own take on it, in which his zombie cat Joanna decides to stop the LHC (new to webcomics? This is just the first strip, just keep clicking the right arrow link under the comic for the rest of the story).

Bridge to Somewhere

It amazes me that the Obama people are still squabbling over whether or not Governor Palin actually killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, to the point of accusing the McCain campaign of outright lies. Thing is, Alaska Democrats seem to think she did. And Alaskan newspapers. Regardless of the merits of the argument, is this really an issue the Obama campaign wants to draw attention to? Did they really think nobody was going to look up how Senators Obama and Biden had voted on that particular amendment? In fact, knowing that they had both not only voted for it once, but then voted specifically against diverting the "Bridge to Nowhere" funds to Hurricane Katrina relief, you'd think they might have wanted to just let the story die.

Customer Service

USAA's customer service is clearly underworked, and I say that because their agents had time to chat casually with me for close to an hour. I love their customer service, mind you, they're great. At the same time, though, if I had been in a hurry to get this done it might have been a pretty frustrating experience.

The Af-Pak War

It'd be a tough call to say what I expect to be the most tricky foreign-policy challenge of the next few years, but I can think of three that must be on anyone's list: confronting Russia's regression to imperialism, containing Iran's nuclear ambitions, and preventing a complete collapse of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The third is the most troublesome in that it is a situation where we really have very little control over the outcomes. And I refer to both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single situation (following Michael Yon, who has named it the Af-Pak War) because it is impossible to deny any longer that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is still receiving safe haven and quite probably material support from elements of the Pakistani government. In the current New York Times Magazine, Dexter Filkins interviews Pakistani government officers, tribal leaders, and Taliban militants on the Pakistani side of the border about their perspectives toward Pakistan's supposed role as an American ally in the war against the Taliban. A few excerpts:

“I cannot lie to you,” [Taliban commander] Namdar said, smiling at last. “The army comes in, and they fire at empty buildings. It is a drama — it is just to entertain.”

Entertain whom? I asked.

“America,” he said.

When it comes to the militants in their midst, it’s easier for Pakistan to do as little as possible. “There is a growing Islamist feeling in the military, and it’s inseparable from anti-Americanism,” I was told by a Western military officer with several years’ experience in the region. “The vast majority of Pakistani officers feel they are fighting our war. There is a lot of sympathy for the Taliban. The result is that the Pakistanis do as little as they possibly can to combat the militants.”

... [a] retired Pakistani official offered another explanation — one that he said could never be discussed in public. The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive... “Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the official told me. "The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works. [...] The U.S. is being taken for a ride."

So how should America respond? Well, that's the hard part. Frankly, despite its long position in the public mind as "the right war", the chances of seeing something resembling victory in Afghanistan are to me far slimmer than they ever were in Iraq. Quite simply, and very much unlike Iraq, the plot of land currently labeled "Afghanistan" has simply never been a functioning country. From the time of Alexander the Great forward it has been the redoubt of bandit warlords, the mountain waste between the empires that have ever fought each other to hold this or that slice of it. The reason Pakistan is inseparably tied to it is that a good-sized chunk of that ungovernable mountain waste lies on Pakistan's side of the border, and the sizable population of that region's ungovernable mountain people have no interest in having anything to do with Pakistan or Afghanistan. And we pay Pakistan ludicrous amounts of money to fight the Taliban; is it any surprise they aren't particularly interested in winning?

I know it's just old colonialist instincts, but I just can't help wondering if the rest of the world might be better off if we drew a new line around the Pashtu homeland instead of through it, and just left them alone in their medieval xenophobia. Talibanistan. It's got a nice ring to it.

Would You Like Fries With That?

From Melody's farm report, in reference to their new calf:

His name is Jr. Cheeseburger, a tribute to his size, heritage (part dairy, part beef) and destiny.

Hahahaahahaa.

Palin and the Media, pt II

Jonah Goldberg writes today about the media reaction to the Palin selection, offering at least a partial alternative explanation for the frenzy:

But another part of the answer is that the press was simply surprised. Cockroaches scatter when shocked by a flipped light switch. Grizzly bears attack when startled. And when caught napping by big news, the press corps floods the zone. Editors scream at underlings who missed the story. Networks fret they’ll be scooped. And all of a sudden, the norms and standards become a blur in the race to be first.

High Noon

Speaking of the current Weekly Standard, you might enjoy the cover image:

Palin and the Media

William Kristol uses the current Weekly Standard to thank the liberal media for their ultimately self-defeating attacks on Sarah Palin. An excert:

By the end of the week, after Palin's tour de force in St. Paul, the liberal media were so befuddled that they were reduced to complaining that conservatives aren't being narrow-minded enough. Thus, Hanna Rosin--who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, and has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times--lamented in a piece for Slate: "So cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin's wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison." I suppose it was ungenerous of conservatives, in our broad-mindedness and tolerance of human frailty, to have let Ms. Rosin down, just when she was counting on us to bring out the tar and feathers. But she gives us too much credit when she suggests we make the liberal media look stuffy and slow-witted. They do that all by themselves.

This Rosin character pretty clearly confirms what I suspected early on: much of the liberal media (and particularly the hard-left blogosphere vanguard in all of this) seemed to have honestly expected conservative Americans to be shocked and outraged by the Bristol Palin pregnancy story, and they still don't understand why we're not. Now we're hearing "hypocrisy" thrown around, as if holding an ideal of behavior that isn't always easy to maintain makes one a hypocrite.

On Education: Prerequisite Reading

As I continue my own reading and musing on the topic of education, I'd like to suggest the essays of Paul Graham, particularly Why Nerds Are Unpopular. I recommend reading the whole thing, but the gist of it is that the society American students have created for themselves has profoundly twisted ideals, especially for an institution supposedly preparing students for the "real world". In adult society, the phrase "popularity contest" is used derisively to characterize a decision-making process that has lost all reference to valid criteria, and yet we seem to have no problem that the social climate of our institutions of secondary education consists of little else, and little curiosity as to why this should be the case. Intelligent students with real-world ambitions end up behaving much as an adult would if dropped into the same situation: they get what they can out of it academically, make no great effort to fit in, and pay the price for it socially. A few great quotes:

If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.

Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it. In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to.

A lot of people seem to think it's good for smart kids to be thrown together with "normal" kids at this stage of their lives. Perhaps. But in at least some cases the reason the nerds don't fit in really is that everyone else is crazy. I remember sitting in the audience at a "pep rally" at my high school, watching as the cheerleaders threw an effigy of an opposing player into the audience to be torn to pieces. I felt like an explorer witnessing some bizarre tribal ritual.

Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose. What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates.

Okay, that's quite a few quotes. Read the whole thing. There'll be a quiz.

Preservation Bias

No, I'm not talking about my favorite jams and marmalades (though while I'm on the topic: elderberry and bitter orange), I'm referencing an interesting point brought up by today's Dinosaur Comics. T-Rex raises the issue that our view of the past is exclusively based on those artifacts of the past which survive to the present day, and thus with increasing temporal distance we rely on less and less necessarily representative evidence. As T-Rex puts it, "maybe millions of years ago life was awesome and surreal, but only the boring specimens got preserved. Maybe the non-chumps knew how to avoid riverbeds and tar pits! Maybe dragons don't fossilize." I'm not arguing for dragons here, but the principle is important to remember when considering ancient history. The classicist in me cringes with every popular depiction of early civilizations as primitive and exotic, because they simply weren't. The problem, which is very difficult for many to look past, is that the artifacts by which we judge these ancient societies have all run the gauntlet of about two millenia's decay, so most of the truly fine workmanship has perished in the meantime, which is why I love to see exhibitions of fine craftwork in those few materials that do survive through the ages. Early safety pins are unmistakably familiar. Roman glasswork looks like something you'd pay way too much for at an antique shop. Mummies of nomadic Scythian warlords wear some pretty awesome tattoos (that some people are now having done themselves) and were buried with beautiful works in gold. What I love about these things is how familiar and almost unremarkable they are. I love the overwhelming feeling of shared civilization one gets studying the ancients. Reading Bronze Age epic poems (which bear traceable echoes of Stone Age stories!), one is filled with a sense that people throughout time and place have shared similar hopes and fears. This is not coincidentally related to similar feelings that come from world travel. Human nature doesn't change, not over time nor distance. This is why movies like Apocalypto and shows like HBO's Rome work so well, and why 10,000 BC bordered on the insulting.

Hollywood Comes to St. Olaf

My alma mater will be part of the backdrop for the new Coen brothers movie, A Serious Man. Set in the Twin Cities suburbs, the story focuses on a middle-American college professor in the middle part of the 20th century. The directors needed some classrooms that fit the image of mid-60's academia and found a fit in the fortuitously vacant Science Center at St. Olaf, which has just been replaced with the opening of the New Science Center Regents' Hall (that'll take a few years to sink in, after everyone calling it the New Science Center for the last half-decade of planning and construction).

Food Meme

What a great way to finish off my block leave: a food meme! Shane pointed me to this list of the Omnivore's Hundred, or as Shane puts it, 100 Things to Eat Before You Die, originally from the Very Good Taste blog. Items I've had in the past are in bold, my commentary is in italics, and items I've had in the last two weeks of leave are in red, just for kicks.

1. Venison (though only in the form of garlicked summer sausage, which could be made from fetid dingo's kidneys and nobody would know the difference).
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue (though the last time I had it, I had so much and was in such a bad mood, I'm not sure I ever want it again).
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear (yeah, remember field exercises in Texas? I hate to get my revenge on the buggers somehow).
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (though seriously, I think only once. I'm a quarter-pounder sort of guy).
56. Spaetzle (best. staple. starch. ever).
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores (do they count if I never have to patience to actually roast the marshmallow?).
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (only if you count using Kaopectate, and I don't).
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (heck yeah county fair!).
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (wait, just hare? or does rabbit count?).
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

52. Just over halfway there.

On Education: A Good Place to Start

As I said in my previous post, I'm not yet prepared to dive fully into fever swamps of education policy in America. But here's a place we can all start: parental involvement. Daniel Akst shares some good common sense in today's Wall Street Journal, namely, that high-performing students tend to have encouraging, involved parents who focus on education as a collective goal of the whole family. He also scratches the surface of a deep cultural problem that I believe will continue to undermine American education for the foreseeable future, namely the indifference and opposition of many parents toward education. We all complain that many parents don't value education, but nobody seems to acknowledge that many parents actively undermine education. They disparage the curriculum, subvert students' respect for their teachers, and lobby for easier workloads and lower standards. Teachers who try to combat these tendencies are seen as engaging in a power struggle against the families. And there most certainly are some educators who are trying to subvert the influence of families on young students, which just feeds the perception of education as a struggle between opposing camps, instead of the partnership it ought to be.

On Education

I've been formally requested, now, to write a piece (or what will probably amount to several pieces) on education. Problem is, I've got to figure out exactly where I stand myself. I've got some reading to do, see. But one thing I am convinced of, however, is that the whole culture of mass education in America is misguided at best. I definitely agree that college is not for everyone. Thing is, I'm pretty sure high school isn't for everyone, either. Or oughtn't be. But I've got some reading and pondering to do before I can get my thoughts into a coherent order on this remarkably convoluted subject.

I Want One: Everything-Proof Convergent Phone

For the inauguration of my "I Want One" category, I bring you the everything-proof convergent phone from Sonim. It's waterproof, shockproof, and dustproof (a huge plus in this line of work), plus it includes such non-standard "apps" as a compass, thermometer, barometer, and altimeter. Which is to say, not only can it survive water, shocks, and dust, but it could also make itself very useful in places where such hazards are to be found. Needless to say: I want one. Apparently the manufacturer is still looking for a distributor, so I might have to wait a bit to get one of my own, but you know I will, if only to show up all those hipster iPhone users. "Ooooh, you're phone goes 'boing' like Mario while you jump up and down? Sweet, but can it tell you the ambient air pressure? I didn't think so."

The Hurricane Has Won

In discussions on the proper prosecution of anti-terrorism strategy the argument often comes up that if we, as Americans, change our behavior or compromise our shared political ideals, then "the terrorists have won", by successfully changing our behavior in what is fundamentally a culture war. So why, after making such a show of maintaining our American spirit in the face of terrorism, have we completely capitulated to a hurricane? Nobody at the Republican Convention can do anything one way or another to prevent damage from Hurricane Gustav to the city of New Orleans. It's not like they're putting their activities on hold so they can all head down and sandbag the levees. But it's a sign of the Oprahization of America, apparently, that it's now apparently insensitive to go about your business when someone (or in this case, someone's property) may be suffering, somewhere. Sensitivity requires us all to put our lives on hold so we can sit around wringing our hands in the face of any incipient potential "tragedy".

Sidenote: New Orleans is deserted. The evacuations were mandatory and thorough. There will be no tragedy. If the city were to sink below the waves, the only people to go with it would be the unconscionably foolhardy. And the reporters. No tragedy. I know it would be pretty hard on all the people whose homes would be devastated yet again, but in light of this world of ours, I can't quite bring myself to get too hung up about a bunch of people losing their stuff.

Un-Wired Weekend

Just got back from a relaxing weekend up in the northwoods, but now I'm realizing how much news I missed while I was fishin' and drinkin' beer among the birches. New Orleans is again threatened by a serious hurricane, which some Democrats find comic, and proof that God is on their side. Also: Sarah Palin. Need to do a lot more reading before I can make any real judgement on that decision, but I do have two observations: Governor Palin is probably the most attractive national-level politician we've yet seen (in this country, anyway, other countries are far more advanced in this particular regard), and secondly, it's so great to hear a nice Northern accent in national politics!

Embed This Ad

While the Obama campaign's busy trying to prosecute political non-profits for saying things they don't like, the McCain campaign has put out a pretty powerful one of their own. Again, this ad focuses on Obama's friends and colleagues, but this time its his friends and colleagues in the Democratic party who take center stage, with all their reservations and concerns about whether Obama could be an effective president in our dangerous and unstable world. Of course, all these clips are from before he became the presumptive nominee, and they've all had radical changes of heart as to his competence and readiness (particularly Joe Biden!). Too bad the videotapes couldn't disappear as easily as their concerns did:

On Vista

I'll either be buying or building myself a new desktop computer sometime in the next month or three, and I'm already debating whether (assuming I don't take the Mac plunge) to install Windows Vista on my new machine, or just stick with good ole' XP. I think Jeffrey Rowland may have convinced me:

I wasn't sure exactly why everyone was so angry at Windows Vista until I actually tried to use it for an actual, real-world reason. This god dang thing sucks, y'all. It's like somebody just took a good-lookin' car that ran good and there was nothing wrong with it, and they came in and screwed a bunch of fancy-looking crap to it and redid the wiring so none of the gauges or lights work. They put some fancy, spinny rims on it but crap gets stuck in them and the tires go flat all the time. And then it assumes you're an idiot so it constant ask you things like "are you sure you want to change the radio station?" Oh look, the cupholder just broke off because the radio is too shiny. Wait, the cupholder came original with the car. Hopefully in a couple of years they'll make a cupholder that I can replace it with; until then I'll hold the beer between my legs.

If you didn't notice the fine-print on the comic, it says "Microsoft Vista was invented because of a bet between Bill Gates and the Pope to see if it could just completely put people off of computers for good."

Obama and Friends

We're seeing some pretty disturbing behavior from the Obama campaign on the one hand, and the Denver police (in presumable cahoots with Democratic party event organizers) on the other.

In the first case, there's a shocking disregard for First Amendment rights inherent in the Obama campaign's demands for criminal prosecution of the leader of a political non-profit which has been running (a fairly effective) attack ad against him, raising questions about his relationship with "guilty as hell, free as a bird", "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" Bill Ayers. Now, I'm no campaign strategist, but it seems to me that when someone runs an attack ad, your best bet is either to counter its claims point-by-point, or to offhandedly dismiss it as slanderous lies, as if it were below your concern. Reacting with outrage while refusing to address the points -- which would be pretty easy to refute, if by chance they weren't true -- then demanding the incarceration of the people responsible for the ad, well, that just strikes me as protesting too much. Besides the, you know, appalling disregard for the First Amendment. (The Obama campaign has released a "factcheck" on the Obama-Ayers relationship. I'm not going to get into whether the editorial pages of liberal newspapers qualify as sources, or whether Ayers' continuing and proud admissions of guilt might not make "he never served time" the best argument in his favor.)

As far as the Denver police go, I just wonder who it was they were so intent to protect from an ABC News camera? Or was it just that someone's getting tired of the public seeing how much good old-fashioned money is behind the Obama campaign?

Seven More Years

Seven years until this girl's dad is fighting off the hordes of soldiers and various gun nuts wanting to marry her. Then again, she could probably hold her own.

http://view.break.com/562090 - Watch more free videos

Remaking the Highway Trinity

Gas, Food, Lodging... and Wi-Fi? Louisville, Nebraska thinks so, but the state disagrees. Mike Elgan of Mike's List says Wi-Fi has become a "universally valuable service" deserving of a position along with the familiar highway trinity of Gas, Food, and Lodging. An increasing number of states are providing free Wi-Fi at public rest stops, with roadside placards advertising the service, so why not mark exits where the service is available? While I've only been in this position once or twice, I can certainly imagine situations where it would be very useful to know which exit had businesses offering Wi-Fi, particularly as the use of Blackberrys, iPods-Touch (I pluralize how I please, thank you very much), and Wi-Fi/VoIP phones continues to grow.

In related news, I noticed on my recent visit to Minnesota that different states have varying protocols as to whether they note coffeeshops on their freeway exit signs. Minnesota lists Starbucks and Caribou on the "Food" signs; I hadn't ever noticed it, but I don't think other states do this. It's nice, since most coffeeshop chains sell enough food for a substantial snack. And it precludes the need to add a "Coffee" sign. To which I, of course, would in no way be opposed.

The Temple Of Obama

This one just speaks for itself.

UPDATE: Behind-the-scenes video of the INVESCO Obamodeon! Skip to around 4:00 for the close-up of the stage.

Amatuer Surgeons and Professional Educators

The indomitable, unmatchable, and utterly irreplaceable Thomas Sowell weighs in today with a typically pithy piece on the failure of central planning of economies. This sort of thing is Conservatism 101, but he illustrates it with an example I thought much of my readership might appreciate:

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.

Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master’s degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student — which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12. Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having “professional” expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.

Thank You Kathleen Parker

Thank you for finally acknowledging that the real issue behind last week's Purpose-Driven inquisition of Obama and McCain at Saddleback is not who "won" but rather, why on Earth are our presidential candidates prostrating themselves before Rick Warren as if he were some sort of evangelical Pope? This sort of thing might be appropriate in a nations with historical establishment of religion. It is wildly inappropriate in America.

Olympics

I'm staying with some old friends here in Tennessee, and we've been watching quite a bit of the Olympics. I hadn't really seen anything until now, so I didn't really have much commentary. I still don't have much you haven't already heard, whether it's musing on the age of the female Chinese gymnasts or griping about the problem of incompetent judges. One thing I haven't heard much about is the jarringly bizarre program commentary provided by NBC's Olympic commenters. I'm accustomed to the stereotypically-accented rants of Olympic veterans like Bela Karolyi, but the networks own commenters are hardly more coherent at times.

Now That's Journalism

A Georgian reporter was shot and slightly wounded by a sniper during the recent Russian kerfuffle.  Her reaction is spectacular: she just keeps reporting.

Growing Up

Overheard from a buddy's phone conversation about financial matters with his fiancée on our drive to St. Louis:

Yeah, I'll just talk to my parents. They know a lot more about this than we do... Boy, what my Dad would have paid to hear that 10 years ago.

It's funny how, in the right contexts, relying on one's parents is a sign of maturity.

Trip Update

2,000 miles covered already. I need an oil change, but when I detoured through Asheville to look for a JiffyLube, I realized it's not exactly an oil-changin' sort of town. It's the sort of place where even the McDonald's bears a facade in the style of the Biltmore estate, Asheville's primary tourist trap. All in all, though, it looks like a very classily touristified slice of Americana, the sort of place that might make a really nice family vacation destination. And you really can't beat the mountains around here. By the time I got settled for the evening, everything was closed, and unfortunately I'm guessing most places will be closed tomorrow, so my poor car will just have to deal. Right now I'm staying in a hotel in Knoxville, TN, and I'm really wishing I had researched the city a bit more before I made my reservation here on the edge of town; if I had known Knoxville was such a nice city, I'd have gotten a downtown hotel so I could get out a bit instead of spending a Saturday night drinking Sailor Jerry's rum and blogging in my hotel room. Oh well, lessons learned.

So True

Xkcd nails it again. Now, I'm a solid devotee of Google Maps. I probably have a rather unhealthy attachment to it, honestly, to the point that I feel a shudder of horror at the thought of using something so positively primeval as MapQuest. But it does occasionally have some snafus. Or more accurately, this world of ours doesn't quite live up to the perfect order implied by Google. And of course, Google's employees like to leave little jokes here or there. For a while, requesting directions from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe would direct you to New York harbor, followed by the line "swim the Atlantic", continuing with road directions from Calais. Google's got jokes.

Driving

So friends, I'm noticing that I've got quite a bit of driving coming up in the next month. Like, just shy of 5,000 miles worth (destinations are approximate and unrepresentative, crazy stalker people!):


View Larger Map

So, who's got some tips for enjoying long lonely drives? I'm no stranger to the open road myself, but I've covered most of this terrain before and I'm a bit worried boredom might get the best of me.

Putin Went Down to Georgia

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm sure I'm not the first to make that joke.

I realize I'm uncharacteristically slow to comment on the "situation" developing in Georgia. Namely, you know, the Russian invasion and air campaign against a sovereign neighbor. I seem to think there's a term for a high-speed armored invasion with overwhelming close air support: oh yeah, blitzkrieg. In any case I'm not hugely read up on Russian and post-Soviet geopolitics, much less on Caucasian studies, so it's taken me a few days to pull together enough to make some informed comments.

In light of Russia's bombing of civil infrastructure, and particularly the attempted bombing of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that connects the Caspian oil fields to world markets, circumventing Russia's regional petrohegemony, I think it is difficult to see this invasion as anything but blatantly imperial. Russia's transparent excuse to be protecting Russian citizens in South Ossetia from Georgian aggression, well, that one's sort of been used before. True, there's a strong separatist streak in South Ossetia, but the Ossetians in Russia have little more interest in being part of that country, either. So Russia's claim to the moral high ground is pretty difficult to accept.

I'm pleased (and unsurprised) to see Senator McCain's unequivocal condemnation of Russian aggression and his support for our Georgian allies. I'm also saddened (and similarly unsurprised) by Senator Obama's refusal to take sides. Initially, his campaign completely refused to place blame: "It’s both sides’ fault — both have been somewhat provocative with each other." This from his foreign policy advisor Mark Brzezinski. Later, Obama toughened his line. He now "condemn[s] the outbreak of violence in Georgia". Well good for you, Senator Obama, give that outbreak a stern talking-to! Maybe invite the outbreak in for talks, or threaten the outbreak with sanctions. Maybe, if push comes to shove, our military strength might be used to influence the outbreak of violence to behave itself. Senator Obama also says that "Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected." Does he fail to realize that this statement is completely meaningless to a party that has disputed what constitutes Georgia's territory since that country's independence? Yesterday, Obama finally got around to sounding a little bit less like a Kremlin stooge and more like an American President, or in this case more like McCain's initial (and impromptu) statement. Taking 48 hours to reach the same position your elderly opponent came to when questioned on the airport tarmac doesn't really engender confidence for the proverbial 3:00 A.M. phone call.

Response to Shane's Response to Lewis

Shane brought up some very good points in response to Cheryl's quote from C.S. Lewis that I posted yesterday. His points and my responses were really far too long to molder in the comments, so I post them here.

I largely agree - I still love reading what the libertarians at Cato are publishing, and generally prefer non-interference in other people's matters. The main thing that still makes me a liberal who thinks that government does have a role to play in pushing health and safety because:

a) current government policies of subsidies and spending promote unhealthy habits (for example, corn subsidies and sugar tariffs have spawned an industry pushing cheap HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup] as sweetener, leading companies like Coca-Cola to make the average serving size from 8 oz to 20 oz, while government subsidizes driving and discourages walking by building highways instead of mass transit and bicycle lanes).

Absolutely. If a government policy (particularly an already dubious one like massively distortionary ag subsidies) is demonstrably detrimental to the health of citizens, I can't see how any reasonable person could defend it on libertarian grounds: "It offends the dignity of my humanity to pay the market price for unhealthful sweeteners!" Yeah, not so much. As for the driving subsidy, that's a tricky one, isn't it? Clearly, building highways is overwhelmingly more popular with the voting public than trains and bicycle lanes, and it's pretty tempting to believe the public just doesn't know what's best for them in this case. It's also tricky in that transit is extremely messy to privatize; there's no way to accurately judge the market for trains where there simply aren't any. So again, in this case, subsidizing mass transit or bicycle lanes or providing kickbacks to pedestrians or what-have-you to provide some sort of counterweight to all the money going to highways doesn't offend my sensibilities a bit, especially when transit availability is such a liberalizing factor in broadening access to job markets and essential goods and services, particularly for the poor. I've got no problem with subsidies per se, so long as there's transparency as to what we're really paying for, and an awareness that any subsidy will distort incentives and have unintended consequences. There are few cases of an unqualified good in public policy, very few win-win situations, and I wish politicians would acknowledge that.

b) In some cases the public is ignorant, misinformed, or outright deceived of some sources of harm. I can't see how the FDA's core functions can be successfully privatized. I also support laws requiring restaurant chains to publish nutrition facts and disclose their usage of trans fats, etc. In most of these cases, I'd prefer transparency over outright bans, though.

True. On the whole, however, I'll take the harm we can do ourselves through ignorance over the harm we can do each other through creeping totalitarianism any day. And no, the FDA probably couldn't be privatized, but its approvals need not be 100% binding, for example by allowing desperately ill people to give informed consent to use experimental and unapproved medications. It of course follows that I'm completely with you on transparency vs. prohibition. To me, the role of government in this situation is simply ensuring that citizens have the information available to make informed decisions.

c) Some issues are just collective action problems, and pragmatically speaking, the government might be the most efficient coordinator of aggregate behavior.

Yes, sometimes. The earlier example of transit is a great one; do the libertarians honestly yearn for a world in which every road and sidewalk is subject to toll and could be closed and opened at the owner's whim? The issue here, of course, just comes down to deciding which issues are best solved by civil and market forces vs. by government intervention.

In summary of this sprawling treatise, I don't take Lewis's quote to be an indictment of collective action in general -- his politics were never so strident as that -- but rather an admonition to always be on guard against creeping authoritarianism, however it may be disguised. Americans are pretty quick to recognize wanton powerlust in its traditional cloaks of nationalism, militarism, and greed (indeed, some tend to see it so pretty much everywhere), but the same motivating force also veils itself as charity, as genuine concern for public health and the environment. For that matter, "national security" falls into the same category and hides similarly insidious dangers. I don't think "liberal" totalitarianism is any worse than the old-fashioned types, I just think it's more dangerous because America today is mostly blind to it.

Hope and Struggle

I just had a bit of a Eureka moment reading Susan's Pendulum reflecting on Romans 8:23-24 :

23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (ESV).

As Susan points out, we will never escape from sin in this life; that's the whole point of this passage. We wait eagerly for that day, we hope for it, because we have not seen it. The Christian life is a daily struggle against the sinful nature, and it is a struggle we daily lose. The frustration that comes of this daily Fall, however, should not lead to despair (and this is what so struck me), for the blessed life free of the burdens of sin is precisely that which we eagerly await, for which we hope but cannot see. Too many voices in our lives tell us that we can achieve this blessedness on Earth, if only we were good enough, faithful enough, self-controlled enough. But there's no chicken-and-egg issue here, these virtues are fruits, not prerequisites. We will never earn them for ourselves, nor can we by willfully practicing them avoid facing the consequences of sin in our lives. Instead, we groan inwardly, we wait eagerly. In short, we hope.

She's Got Jokes

Some cheap geopolitical humor via Thursday's Child:

UN Survey

Last month, a worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a huge failure because:

In Africa they didn't know what 'food' means.

In Eastern Europe they didn't know what 'honest' means.

In Western Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' means.

In China they didn't know what 'opinion' means.

In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' means.

In South America they didn't know what 'please' means.

In the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' means.

Shamelessly Cribbed Quote of the Day

Cheryl at A Round Unvarnish'd Tale shares this quote from C.S. Lewis, a good reminder of the dangers of spiraling do-gooderism:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment".

Now I'm no Objectivist, and Lewis certainly wasn't either. I wholeheartedly believe in personal charity, not least because Christ was sort of big on it. But Ayn Rand does hold a sliver of truth in the potential of charity to become tyrannical, particularly charity institutionalized or nationalized. There's a strong streak of Prohibitionism in America these days, and it seems to be getting stronger; Elephant's Child is right to reference Liberal Fascism.

Language Peeve

I'm currently reading Three Cups of Tea, a book which has been recommended to me again and again, and which is pretty much living up to its reviews. The spirit of Midwestern do-gooderism struggling to build schools in the cold shadow of K2 is pure Olaf, really, and it warms my heart a bit to read. What doesn't warm my heart, however, is shoddy transliteration of Muslim (originally Arabic) names, which brings me to today's peeve. Fairly early in the story, we meet a character named Abdul. Popular conception would seem to suggest that the Muslim world is full of men named Abdul; indeed, I'm guessing if you started asking Americans to list five tradition Muslim names, Abdul would be on many if not most of those lists. One problem: no such name is possible in the Arabic language, whence traditional Muslim names around the world derive. The word abd means "servant" or "slave", and while it can be a name in and of itself, it is generally part of a compound name, as in the familiar name Abdullah, abd-Allah, "servant of God". This construction is the source of innumerable Muslim names such as Abdulrahman "servant of the Merciful", Abdulrahim "servant of the Beneficent", Abdulqadir "servant of the All-Capable", Abdulzahrah "servant of the Flower", Abdulrazzaq "servant of the Provider", Abdulaziz "servant of the Powerful". Indeed, any of the ninety-nine names of God could be made into names by this construction. While these phrasal names are separate words in Arabic, the traditional transliterations divide them in the wrong place (i.e. Abdul Rahman), leading to the misconception that there exists such a name as Abdul. This is rather like an Arab noting the vast number of northern Europeans bearing the last name of Son. Correct yourselves, friends, and please correct others. If a space is necessary, it should go before the article al- (i.e. Abd al-Rahman), but since the space just tempts us to read one name as two, let's just agree to leave it out entirely.

Someday I'll dive into my rant on pronunciation of Arabic names and place names. My opinion may surprise you. But today is not that day.

Cherry Jump

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of completing my "cherry jump" with the 82nd Airborne. I'm not finding much online explaining the tradition of the cherry jump, so here goes:

Here in the 82nd Airborne Division (and elsewhere), a new soldier to the unit is known as a "cherry" (I'm assuming you can follow the connotation), and his first jump in Division is known as his "cherry jump" or "cherry blast". While this part of the tradition has now been gutted in an ill-targeted crackdown on "hazing", the cherry soldier used to be given a cherry-red helmet cover to single him out (which would also, to my mind, rather helpfully alert the jumpmasters to his inexperience). The cherry is also given a cherry pie to carry in his pocket during the jump, which he then eats on the drop zone after his landing. Complicating this process, however, are his fellow paratroopers who, through much good-natured punching, ensure he lands with nothing but a charleyhorse and a pocketful of cherry goo.

So that's the tradition, but I missed out on most of it. One of my buddies had indeed bought a full cherry pie (instead of the usual Hostess single-serve pie) for the three cherries in our platoon, but I ended up in a different "chalk" (a single planeload of paratroopers) and so managed to jump without my pocketful of pie. Oh well. I've got that out of my way, and got my first precious scrap of Airborne credibility.

Which is not to say the jump went off without a hitch. After a shockingly early wakeup call and zero-dark-thirty manifest formation, we arrived at the drop zone to find that, in all-too-classic fashion, our unit had failed to procure both parachutes and working aircraft for the day's jump. One could be forgiven for incredulously exclaiming that these are, in point of fact, the two sole necessary elements of an airborne operation. But, you see, you would be applying sense, and the fact of the matter is that, particularly in garrison training operations, the Army rarely makes any. Eventually, though, 'chutes were scrounged and a bird was summoned, and we jumped. And I'll never understand what makes a sky full of paratroopers such a beautiful sight, but maybe I've drunk just a bit of that Airborne Kool-Aid, because this is awe-inspiring:


Next time I jump I'll try to post a good short video of the jumpers coming out of the bird. It's awesome.

All aside, it was a good jump and a safe landing, even if it was a bit harder than textbook. It's well and good to angle your body to adjust for your direction of drift, but they never really tell you what to do when you're falling straight down. Land like a sack o' potatoes, apparently. Oh, and the green patch that looks thick and soft from 200 feet up? Yeah, that's blackberry briar and it's nowhere near as soft as it looks.

Protestant America

Joseph Bottum of First Things shares a fascinating historical perspective on Protestantism in America. Having been educated in the limestone tower of Mainline Lutheran (ELCA) academia, much of Bottum's analysis rings true as things I'd known, without knowing I knew. (And apparently I can simultaneously channel Plato and Mr. Rumsfeld). I really like his analysis of American society resting on the three-legged stool of democracy, capitalism, and religion, and his social and economic analysis of civil religion's role in general. As to where that society can be headed on a two-legged stool none of us can say for certain, but neither politics nor economics has a good track record in trying to fill the role of civil religion.

Cake Wrecks

A new fun blog: Cake Wrecks. A gallery, with commentary, of some truly appalling cakes (and a few totally awesome ones). My favorite is titled I'll Take My Chances. That or the cake-entombed baby. Yeah, you read that right.

Zucchini

Big Doofus reveals the truth behind the Zucchini Conspiracy. Concerned citizens beware.

Priorities

Apparently Obama's got 'em, but they don't reflect particularly well on him, as PowerLine reports. What amazes me more than his preference for sightseeing rather than visiting wounded soldiers in Germany is that -- again -- the allegedly masterful campaigner seems unaware of or indifferent to the sort of message these choices send. We must conclude that is either a) a fool, or b) cynical enough to write off the yellow-ribbon crowd as already lost to him and not worth the trouble of pandering.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's a very good book, and its popularity gives me faith in the American book-reading public. I know he made his name with The Kite Runner, and they already made a movie and all, but this book is better. Hosseini's storytelling talent and incredibly, almost painfully honest portrayals of the guts and grit of human relationships, which made The Kite Runner so rightfully popular, are here refined even further. So, too, is the pain and torment, the heartbreak, the devastation of a whole country told through so many devastations of individual lives.

There was a particular point that caught me, though, in the midst of all the terror and destruction wrought by the waves of utopian revolutionaries, Soviet "liberators", counterrevolutionaries, and holy warriors of all stripes whose various crusades all but destroyed Afghanistan. At one point in the novel, a character is standing trial before a Taliban judge, who explains in the sentencing that while the circumstances of the crime tempted him to mercy, he was himself nearing death, and feared that he would be held to account for his failure to uphold God's law. He imagines God standing judgement upon him saying, "But it was not for you to forgive, Mullah". Probably the second-most common Muslim epithet for God is al-Rahman, the merciful. Every letter, every document, every memo in the devout Muslim world is headed by the phrase bismallah al-rahman wal-rahim. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Benificient. Islam hangs all hope of salvation on this, the mercy of God. Does God really then hold a monopoly on mercy?

This point struck me so because it is the complete reversal of a Christian understanding. My God is indeed not merciful, not in the sense of a pitying judge who pardons the truly guilty, for He is just, and justice demands payment for sin. This payment has been made. Our sins are not pardoned out of mercy, they are absolved by Christ's redeeming sacrifice. All of which allows us to leave divine judgement where it belongs, in God's hands. A judge, no matter his personal faith, does God's work when he rules wisely according to the law of the land. We ought not be so bound by the Law that we fear damnation for encroaching on God's mercy, for stepping on His toes.

Back at Bragg

For my four readers who aren't family members or reading this on Facebook, I'm now safely back in the best country on the planet: Not Iraq. Specifically, America. Or 'Murka, if you're Toby Keith. We've been having lots of free time since we got back, which is rather nice. Still waiting to get most of my stuff out of storage and get fully moved into the barracks. It's definitely a different feeling, settling into a place with the expectation of staying a while, rather than just living out of one's bags, waiting to leave again. I haven't gotten internet in my room yet, but there's at least coffeshops and such here I can use, so I'll likely be posting on a fairly regular basis again. I've got a lot of material in my mental queue, so expect plenty of stories and reflections from my deployment.

Classic Moments in Soldiering: Hey, Try This!

This exchange came as we scarfed down the goodies out of a care package that had been handed to us as we sat around the chaplain's tent today. We found a bag of peanut butter M&Ms that was already torn open, spilling some into the box, which I snatched and tossed into my mouth.

Me (chewing): Uh, this bag wasn't sealed and these kinda taste like diesel exhaust.
Sgt D (eating): Yeah, definitely diesel exhaust.
Me: So, uh, you gonna stop eating them?
Sgt D (still eating): Hmmmmm, thinkin' about it.

So we stopped eating, but we definitely didn't throw them away, because we had to offer them to anyone who came into the tent. And it wasn't like we were tricking anyone:

Us: Hey, try one of these. They taste like diesel.
Them: Awesome. (tries one). Gross.
Us: Yeah, ain't it?

It's the little things.

Soundtrack to My Life

Oh, it was getting about time to participate in another silly meme. So here we go, courtesy of IndianaJane.

Here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...
7. Include commentary

Opening Credits: Zak and Sara, Ben Folds Five.
Pretty good start, to a quirky romantic comedy. Which is not at all what I imagine my life to be.

Waking Up: I Can't Help It, Johnny Cash.
Starting the day with unrequited longing? At least the dragging beat fits my typical morning mood.

First Day at School: Wolverine, Sufjan Stevens.
Fitting: hesitant, understated. "Take it in stride, take it in stride, take it in stride. It's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault". I wish someone had told me that then!

Falling in Love: It's Been So Very Long, Plankeye.
Pop-punk's a strange genre for love, but the lyrics are perfect: "It's been so very long, since I've been man enough, to be the kind of man, if I'm'onna hold your hand."

Fight Song: La redecouverte. Yann Piersen (Amelie soundtrack).
The fight occurs in surreal silence behind a lilting waltz of an accordion, a glockenspiel, maybe, what is that, a klavinette? Is that the right name for that? Anyways: Awesome.

Breaking Up: Pancho and Lefty, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
I throw my banged-up guitar into my rusted musclecar and tear off down a dusty country road. Cue montage of me drinking my sorrows away in a series of increasingly shady roadhouses, finding myself down and out in a gutter, pulling out that picture of my girl that I just couldn't let go of, throwing away my fifth of cheap whiskey in disgust (which shatters, because in movies even cheap booze still comes in glass) and climbing onto a bus headed for home.

Prom: Oh, Fugazi.
This soundtrack rather optimistically imagines my high school to have been much hipper to the indie scene than is plausible for rural east-central Wisconsin. Also, you can't dance to this, but it'd be amusing to see someone try.

Life's Ok: This Is Not a Love Song, The Juliana Theory.
This would make for a very bittersweet sort of "Life's Ok" moment. Maybe this is fitting for a Dark Lutheran? "and you're so far away, and I'm sitting right here. It's ten o'clock your time, and it's one by mine".

Mental Breakdown: Take the "A" Train, Duke Ellington.
Hahahahaha. I love it. My soundtrack is so very appropriately surreal.

Driving: Janine, Soul Coughing. This is more than just a trip, this a journey. A journey of self-discovery. Contemplative, mournful, dirty acoustic guitar scratching, and the gonzo touch of a lo-fi answering-machine recording of a woman singing "The Lemon Tree" (tune-and-rhythmlessly) playing in the background through the length of the song.

Flashback: It's a Scientific Fact, Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans (the Singing Science records). Definitely a flashback, but not exactly what we were going for. "It's a scientific fact that there are belts of radiation in outer space that are a hazard for future space travelers to overcome."

Getting Back Together: Lady Eboshi, (Princess Mononoke soundtrack).
Haunting orchestral melody, pizzicato strings opening to an oboe solo, brimming with mournful hope. The past cannot be forgotten or overcome, but the pain strengthens our love.

Wedding: The Colony Room, The Sea and Cake.
Now is the time for something understated and light-hearted. We don't want to overdo anything.

Birth of Child: Amazon, M.I.A.
What better to commemorate the birth of a child than underground Lankan-British trip hop self-produced on a 4-track mixer in a London basement?

Final Battle: The Gash, The Flaming Lips.
The song is about not quitting, as much as any Flaming Lips song is about anything. I suppose that works. I just wish it had been "Fight Test". That'd have been perfect. Oh well.

Death Scene: Narcolepsy, Ben Folds Five.
I guess that works. It's sort of epic-tragic anyway. I'd like to think of my life as more the former than the latter, but you take what you get.

Funeral Song: Cinders and Smoke, Iron and Wine.
"Give me your hand, take what you will tonight. I'll give it as fast, and high as the flame will rise. Cinder and smoke, you ask me to pray for rain, with ash in your mouth, you ask it to burn again." Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

End Credits: Brazil, Grant Green.
(from the Brazil soundtrack, which is something like 17 different versions of the same tune).
A nice electric jazz guitar version of the old standard. A fitting end to the strange movie of my life.

The Face Of Hope

Meet Sheikh Ahmad Fatah Khan al-Rishawi. He and his late brother Sheikh Sittar (assassinated by al-Qaeda last fall) have been architects of the "Awakening" movement that since summer of 2007 has seen Sunni tribes in Anbar province join with each other and with coalition forces to rid their lands of al-Qaeda, and which has become the archetype for American counterinsurgency efforts throughout Iraq. Now he's offered to send his tribesmen as advisors to Afghanistan.

Remember hearing how Iraq's tribes were going to be such a stumbling block? We don't know anything about their relationships, it's a dangerous wildcard, we told ourselves. Seems nobody had the optimism to believe that a social institution that has provided a coherent framework for Iraqi life through millennia of upheaval just maybe could turn out to be a stabilizing force.

And So The Luster Fades

In a few short months, my opinion of Senator Barack Obama has degraded considerably, to say the least. At the start, when I knew nothing of him but what he chose to present of himself, I was suitably impressed. I never thought much of his policies (or lack thereof), but I at least believed in his idealism. When his church was shown to be a hotbed of racial contempt and grievance-mongering I at least admired his willingness to stand by his associates, even while he artlessly dodged the implications of those associations. I lost the last of my personal respect for him when, so soon after defending his pastor of 20 years, he publicly sacrificed the Rev. Wright on the altar of political expedience. Call me old-fashioned, but loyalty still means something to this soldier.

Then came Mr. Obama's autohagiographic commencement speech this past Memorial Day weekend, with its strangely limited conception of service. For Obama, improving the lives of others apparently only counts as "service" when you're an underpaid left-wing rabble-rouser or organ of a maternalistic government bureaucracy. Referencing the economic challenge of India and China, Obama calls for graduates to become not engineers, scientists and tradesmen, but teachers and administrators. He quotes a young man who joined the Peace Corps “because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.” This young man has seemingly never seen an Armed Forces recruitment ad anywhere, ever. And those men and women many of us think of first when we think of "service" -- firefighters, policemen, armed servicemen -- who daily protect Americans from those people and forces that would do them harm? Ironically for a speech on service, "the Service" earned not even a mention from Mr. Obama.

After all that, however, it was Senator Obama's victory speech last night in St. Paul that turned my ambivalence to disgust. There are a lot of things in this speech I could write pages about: Obama's disingenuous mischaracterizations of John McCain; his arrogant naivety in thinking that handing out international legitimacy like party favors counts as "tough, direct diplomacy"; his Obamessianic promise to retrochronically create the fields of health care and employment while channeling King Canute's promise to command the tides (and without the good King's pious intent); his fascistic sanctification of "change", as if we live in the worst of all possible worlds and any change must be for the better; or his adolescent whinging that McCain hasn't given him an attaboy for his (unsuccessful) campaign to get asbestos removed from some Chicago tenements at the same age McCain was having his bones broken in a North Vietnamese prison camp. But I'll leave all that aside for the one unforgivable quote of the speech:

[I]t's not change when [John McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians.

Mr. Obama, before now I was thinking that you really need to visit Iraq, to understand the imminent victory from whose jaws you are so intent on snatching defeat. But after that remark, I truly wish you wouldn't visit Iraq -- though I know political expedience will force you to -- because you have no right to stand alongside the Iraqi politicians you sneer at. If you must go, however, I wish their examples might teach you what hope means when it's not just a pleasant buzzword. These men risk their lives daily to build a future for their country; many have had family members kidnapped and killed. We ask nothing?! They risk everything! They risk everything because they. have. hope. Hope for the future and faith in their countrymen. You would present yourself as an expert on hope, but your denial of the courage and determination of these brave men -- and your cynical reliance on the ignorance and indifference of your supporters to the undeniable political progress being made in Iraq -- has made me realize that whatever you mean by that word, it's something I don't even recognize.

Basrah, After

In March the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police, with limited support from American and British forces, took back control of the port city of Basrah from assorted bands of smugglers and puritanical thugs under the aeges of the Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) and Iranian-supported "special groups". While Prime Minister al-Maliki's new-found willingness to confront Shi'a extremist groups closely tied to his political base was a welcome development, at first the rather slapdash execution of the operation rightly made concerned observers a bit nervous. I stated back in April (a bit boldly, in hindsight) that the IA had proven the naysayers wrong, and it seems the center continues to hold as IA and government-aligned civilian militias keep the peace. Basrah joins the majority of Iraqi cities on the path toward a semblance of normalcy, something even the Washington Post can celebrate with a photoessay of life cautiously coming out of the shadows. At the start of the Basrah operation, I called these "dangerous but hopeful times for Iraq". The danger is most certainly not past, and any progress is reversible. But these pictures speak to the power of hope.

Hiatus

Looking ahead at some changes coming down the pipeline, I figure I should give my loyal readers the heads-up that I'll probably be taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging. Things are getting busy as we prepare for redeployment in a few months, and at some point we'll be moving into tents to make room for our replacements coming in. Long story short, since I don't know exactly when I'll suddenly find myself without internet access, I'm letting you know now so you don't worry if I stop posting for a month or so.

Camel Spider

I have now truly been to Iraq. I have seen the quasi-mythical camel spider. I say quasi-mythical because the creature soldiers tell stories about and the actual beast are pretty much two separate things. The one I saw was just scuttling alongside the path to the bathroom the other night. It was pretty creepy, but I managed to refrain from stomping it. And I'd still prefer that to a scorpion. Haven't seen any of them yet, surprisingly. I would have imagined this place to be crawling with them.

So let me let you in on a little secret, should you ever find yourself out here in the desert. I haven't actually needed this advice, due to the aforementioned lack of scorpions and seeming rarity of camel spiders in this area, but I figure I'll pass it along. Apparently some soldiers like to pull a fast one over on the new guy by taking bets on a staged battle between a camel spider and a scorpion. After all the horror stories he's heard about them, the new guy will always bet on the larger, more fearsome-looking camel spider. But here's the secret: scorpion always wins. There. I just saved you 5 very hypothetical bucks.