Logic

An Irishman walks into a Dublin bar, orders three pints of Guinness, and drinks them down, taking a sip from one, then a sip from the next, until they're gone. He then orders three more.

The bartender says, "You know, they'd be less likely to go flat if you bought them one a a time."

The man says, "Yeah, I know, but I have two brothers, one in the States, one in Austrailia. When we all went our separate ways, we promised each other that we'd all drink this way in memory of the days when we drank together. Each of these is for one of my brothers and the third is for me."

The bartender is touched, and says, "What a great custom!"

The Irishman becomes a regular in the bar and always orders the same way.

One day he comes in and orders two pints. The other regulars notice, and a silence falls over the bar. When he come to the bar for his second round, the bartender says, "Please accept my condolences, pal"

The Irishman says, " Oh, no, everyone's fine. I just joined the Mormon Church, and I had to quit drinking."
(from: Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes)

A tragedy

The ongoing Iraq debacle has created so many tragedies that this might be overlooked:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2098272,00.html

Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze or the sand-filled gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from the mounds of fuel dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base compound. But its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to his own most important monument.

Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.

I realize that the human toll in bloodshed is the real tragedy, but the destruction of history is also tragic.

The national museum is not open but shut. Nor is it just shut. Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside. There is no prospect of reopening.

Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the British Museum, on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.

Meanwhile the courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin.

Outside the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to the history of western civilisation, barely 20% yet excavated, are being looted as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When George tried to remove vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad, he found gangs of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and AK47s.

When the histroy of the Iraq war is written, we will look less civilized than the Mongols.

It is abundantly clear that the Americans and British are not protecting Iraq's historic sites. All foreign archaeologists have had to leave. Troops are doing nothing to prevent the "farming" of known antiquities. This is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention that an occupying army should "use all means within its power" to guard the cultural heritage of a defeated state.

Iraq explained

I think this diagram should clarify the situation in Iraq:

Now that we see who's with us and who's against us, it should be easy to come up with a workable plan, right?

Lost in Translation

You would think that we would use any Arabic translators that we can get. Wrong. Gays need not apply.

From Stephen Benjamin's op ed in today's NYT:

The lack of qualified translators has been a pressing issue for some time — the Army had filled only half its authorized positions for Arabic translators in 2001. Cables went untranslated on Sept. 10 that might have prevented the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Today, the American Embassy in Baghdad has nearly 1,000 personnel, but only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers.

I was an Arabic translator. After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq.

But I never got to. In March, I was ousted from the Navy under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which mandates dismissal if a service member is found to be gay....

Consider: more than 58 Arabic linguists have been kicked out since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted. How much valuable intelligence could those men and women be providing today to troops in harm’s way?

I'll add a personal note. I tried to get a translator job with the State Department in 2002, but because I have a (minor) criminal record I couldn't. While I'm not fluent in Arabic, I read and speak it well enough to be useful. But we must follow those conservative values first.

It's Friday

So it's Boobie time:

Happy Friday.

Moving Sweaterman

Helping Sweaterman move yesterday, I was struck by two things. One, the man has good taste in furniture. Two, that means heavy furniture. We'll be finishing the move today, but thankfully most of the heavy stuff is done. Sometimes I wish I had lighter friends.

Better Solar

I started seeing this material at alternative energy conventions a few years ago, and I'm glad to see more of it.

Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half. Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels.

Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day - not so far off - when entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over to feed a surplus back into the grid.

The secret? Mr Sethi lovingly cradles a piece of dark polymer foil, as thin a sheet of paper. It is 200 times lighter than the normal glass-based solar materials, which require expensive substrates and roof support. Indeed, it is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml

We need more and cheaper solar power, so I really hope these guys succeed.

The "tipping point" will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s.

Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt within five years, and 50 cents in a decade.

It is based on a CIGS (CuInGaSe2) semiconductor compound that absorbs light by freeing electrons. This is then embedded on the polymer base. It will be ready commercially in late 2009.

"It'll even work on a cold, grey, cloudy day in England, which still produces 25pc to 30pc of the optimal light level. That is enough, if you cover half the roof," he said.

"We don't need subsidies, we just need governments to get out of the way and do no harm. They've spent $170bn subsidising nuclear power over the last thirty years," he said.

2,000 visits

Hey, I just checked the old sitemeter. We passed 2,000 visits! That's about 1,900 more than I ever hoped for when I started this little blog. Thanks!

The Animas Trip

Here's a raft entering Smelter rapid. I can tell you it was a rush. Last year the Animas was running about 1250 cfs. This year it was at 3750 cfs. Last year I was in a big 16' raft. This year I was in a little 12' duckie. I don't have much experience in duckies, and hadn't ever run one through rapids as big as these. Talk about adrenaline. All the runs went well, and I had a blast once the pulse returned to normal. Also, the parties...

I'm back

My computer is back to a working post system. I'll put up some Animas photos as soon as I download them.

pet advice from zymurgian

If i ever won the lottery or something, the first thing I would purchase would be a very small dinosaur. Not too cumbersome or voracious. If I had a pet dinosaur, I would keep him in my backyard, which would inevitably render him furious , with great gnashing of feet and crashing of fangs.
He's a good enough pet dinosaur. I named him "Noam".
Noam the Dinosaur's favorite snacks are:
sneakers on the urban trail
children on the urban trail, wearing sneakers.
the occasional SUV
Actually, I haven't told you guys the whole story... You see, Noam is female, and she just gave birth to a cute-ass dinobaby. Thing is, Noam never got knocked up. Far as i know, she is the only dinosaur in Flagstaff. My pet had an immaculate conception!
Now I have two pet dinosaurs to feed. This means many more saunterings to the urban trail and along I40 very late at night. But hey, they don't bark much.

i really like tater-tots

"The people who have conquered the world now have two interests- bread and circuses. "
-Juvenal, Roman satirist.

What if our society wasn't hell bent on convincing us to adore professional sports, movies, TV, fast food and driving everywhere with a cellphone clamped to our heads?
Sometimes when I go to the bar, there is not one dern television on, but FOUR.
The principles of The Declaration Of Independence, and The Constitution, were first discussed in taverns throughout the American colonial era. Shit, I bet ya The Magna Carta came straight outta meadhalls!
This is not a post to proclaim alcohol as championing social change. Actually, it is. I will contend - intellegent people gathering for drinks can and does and did change the world. I mean, beer thirst isn't denominational, right?
The blood in my veins runs melancholic with this- discourse at the modern tavern drowned by the din of Taco Bell commercials.
we all talk to each other less. and less. and less.

added: this was not mine.

It Is With Deepest Regret...

... and profound sadness that I have to inform Pygalgians of the death of Steve Gilliard, yesterday June 2, 2007 after a long battle with illness.

I first read Steve after he'd been front-paged at DailyKos, and I immediately learned to how to read (and look forward to) his posts. He was unapologetic, loud and ascerbic, but damn he knew how to write. When he began his own blog, the writing only got better and better as the Gilly community grew and grew. How could it not, when a blogger picks a slogan ("We Fight Back!") so provocative? If a Dem could ever have him as a speechwriter, the neocons and the Republican party in general would collapse into dust overnight.

And the topics! From an incredibly astute study of history, to food, to social forces, politics, war, technology, futbol, and most importantly Iraq, Steve was so spot-on that it scared you, as well it should for he was correct far more often than not. If I was ever to try my hand at blogging (not likely, mind you), Steve's blog, The News Blog, is the ideal I would strive towards.

All of us were hoping our most fervent wishes that Steve would make it out of the hospital soon, but it was not to be. There are far better tributes other places on the internets - check firedoglake or DailyKos or wikipedia - but I feel that when one who fights the good fight falls down, we honor them and throw our weight to their fights, because that's the way we, as a community work. We value the contributions of each of us, and when one of us cannot continue, we continue on for them, because we believe in the justness of their cause.

I had a high-school history teacher, who, lamenting the state of America in the late 70s, would sigh and say foolish things like, "There were giants in those days," as if we'd all fallen down since then. Well, let me tell you there were giants in these days too - and Steve Gilliard was one of them.

R.I.P., Steve, Godspeed and FTFY.

dogstar fern

I used to believe in nothing, than I believed in a god, than I believed in Nothingness, than I believed in many gods. Today I believe all these things.
My favorite of my two houseplants, is this rabbit-foot fern i got perched over here under the window. It is waving in a slight breeze, altogether resplendent, given the dungeon-like nature of my crib. Effulgently emerald she is! The fern, seems to long to crawl out the window. I think it stays because an atomizer of misty water admonishes its intentions to creep from here to the Oregon coast. Who says houseplants don't make great pets! TO HADES WITH THE CANIS FAMILIARIS FIXATION. Kitty cats never needed us in the first place. Clipped parrots are an abomination.
I just feel dubious about this notion of pets. Does any other lifeform on earth, that we know of, eschew "pet ownership", besides homo sapiens?
Here's an eyebrow lifter for ya- DOG is not even of this planet. Ancient Eskimo Cuneiform tablets, probably six thousand years old, recovered from a melting glacier just north of Yellowknife, are believed by modern experts in Eskimo Cuneiform at a certain reputable think-tank , to describe a rather intricate account of how dogs infested our planet. A leading scholar of the much debated Eskimo Cuneiform tablets, Berthold Gknowitaal, PH- super-fucking D, translates :
"The canoes They (the spacefolks) paddled from the belly of the northern lights( surmised academically to be Sirius) would make the biggest whale swim away in terror. The fiercest bear would bury itself. We, the People, were a little scared too. The Sirian visitors( implied... see www. fullofshit.com or something) said they had too many dogs on their space canoe. They needed to unload a few of 'em on us, upon the earth. "The Ones Who Can Scare Big Big Whales with A Single Glance" unleashed a maelstrom of dogs upon the People, and brazenly proclaimed-
"Greetings Earth Folk! We have paddled a long journey from deep in the belly of the northern lights (Sirius) and we, uh, just have way too many dogs on our space-canoe. So, umm, it kinda looks like you guys could use a few dogs, and well, we have to paddle all the way to Casablanca....Whoops!-I meant Cassiopeia. Anyway- wormhole's about to close up- we need to unload all these dogs on your pathetic planet, not only because they're shitting all over my spaceship, but if we can instill a pet-fixation on you earth folk, this will reinforce your propensity to neurosis. Sorry we can't linger for what you might consider tea, but we must be off. You see, neurotic civilizations are less of a galactic threat to us. "
This all, mind you, painstakenly translated by scholars way fucking smarter than us.
Have you ever walked a dog at night, under clear, starry skies, and seen the dog slowly tilt its head to the light of distant, twinkling Sirius, and heard the dog softly whine?

Off to the Animas

I'm off to Animas River Days for the weekend (and both of these ladies will be there again this year), so hopefully the rest of the gang will post their brilliant and diverse thoughts. Enjoy your weekend.

Shopping with Joe

This pic kinda sums up our position in Iraq:

Sen. Joe Lieberman buying sunglasses. Notice that the only person NOT wearing armor is the one who lives there. I'm sure that Lieberman will see this as a sign of progress in Iraq.

Your Friday Boobie

It's a Redfoot, as you can see.

The "South Korea" model

So our great shrub says that he wants Iraq to be in the "South Korea model". What? Commander clueless shows that he has no grasp of history.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6671660,00.html

As usual, Juan Colehttp://www.juancole.com/ says it better than I:

So what confuses me is the terms of the comparison. Who is playing the role of
the Communists and of North Korea? Is it the Sunni Arabs of Iraq? But they are
divided into Iraqi/Arab nationalists and Salafi Sunni revivalists. (The secular
Arab nationalists are the vast majority according to recent polling). So they are not a united force. They are fighting with one another in al-Anbar. And, the Arab nationalists and the religious Sunnis cannot both play the role of the Communists. Some Arab nationalists are allied with the United States (Egypt, Tunisia, etc.) Others are not (Syria). Some religious Sunnis are allied with the US (Saudi Arabia,Afghanistan). Others are not. So where is the analogy to International Communism? Who is China and who is the Soviet Union? Is it Syria and Iran? But both are ruled by Shiites, not Sunnis!

But let us say that the Sunni Arabs are North Korea. Who is South Korea? Is it the Shiites of Iraq? But they are allied with Iran (isn't it playing the role of China?) And the vast majority of them don't want US troops in Iraq according to polls. There is zero chance that the Shiites of Iraq will put up with a long term presence of US
bases in their areas of Iraq. The British base in Basra takes heavy fire all the time.

The only place in Iraq that looks at all like South Korea is maybe Kurdistan. But it is also allied with Iran behind the scenes, and it is in a troubling way giving asylum to Turkish-Kurdish terror groups that are infliction harm on the US's NATO ally, Turkey.

Even as we speak, in Iraq's north, Turkish military forces and now 20 tanks are massing on the Iraqi border, apparently poised for "hot pursuit" of Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have safe harbor in Iraqi Kurdistan but go over to Turkey and blow things up. There is some danger that the US will be in the middle of all this, though it is allied with both the Kurds and the Turks. Last week US fighter jets based in Iraq made an unauthorized incursion into Turkish air space that the Turks are protesting.

Do we really want to be in the middle of that?

More from Right Wing Christian Terrorists

Ya, Ya, I know, I'm beating a dead horse here, but I am trying to make a point. One of the CF warriors came out of the ether at Jerry Falwell's funeral. This is a very disturbing phenomenon we have going on in the USA. The "moral majority" try to convince us that they are good people, but they have some serious issues regarding violence and holy war. Seriously, these folks are as nutty as the radical Muslims, but they get little press. The thing is THEY ARE ALL AROUND US!!! McVeigh wannabees are much more dangerous to our lives than the Islamic terrorists because they are already here, number in the millions, and are supported as a legitimate social group.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/diary-of-a-christian-terr_b_49167.html

Visitors to Mark David Uhl's Myspace page will quickly learn that Uhl is a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, that he is a devoted Christian, that his name means "Mighty Warrior" -- and that he likes Will Smith's saccharine tear-up-the-club track, "Switch." Uhl reveals his career ambitions on his page as well: "I will join the Army as an officer after college." Already, Uhl was preparing in Liberty's ROTC program

Uhl waited until he was offline, however, to reveal his plot to kill the family of itinerant Calvinist provocateur Fred Phelps (famous for their "Fag Troops" rallies outside soldiers' funerals). The Phelpses planned to protest Falwell's funeral, a bizarre stunt designed to highlight Falwell's somehow insufficiently draconian attitude towards homosexuals. Uhl made several bombs and allegedly told a family member he planned to use them to attack the Phelps family.

He was arrested soon after and charged with manufacturing explosives. On the surface, Uhl appears to be the latest version of Virginia Tech rampage killer (and "Richard McBeef" author) Cho Seung-Hui. Indeed, both Uhl and Cho were alienated young men who conceived or carried out campaigns of mass murder on college campuses.

But there is a crucial difference between Uhl and Cho: while Cho's motives remain a source of intense debate, Uhl was an a devout evangelical Christian who advocated religious violence in the name of American nationalism. Uhl's blog, featured on his Myspace page, offers a window into the political underpinnings of his bomb plot. In one post, Uhl implores Christians to die on the battlefield for "Uncle Sam." He justifies his call to arms by quoting several Biblical passages and reminding his readers that the "gift of God" is eternal life.

"Christians, we have been given life after death and we should help others receive it and not sit here in our big buildings and sing to ourselves so we can go home and feel good about ourselves," Uhl writes. "Christians, fear of death, fear of death. The fear of death shows you don't believe."

Uhl concludes, "God needs soldiers to fight so his children may live free. Are you afraid??? I'm not. SEND ME!!! "

Uhl's imploration sounds eerily like the battle-cries of another, more notorious religious radical: Osama bin-Laden. Consider what bin-Laden told the Independent in 1993. "`I was never afraid of death... As Muslims, we believe that when we die, we go to heaven. Before a battle, God sends us... tranquility."

Christian right leaders from the late Falwell to James Dobson have turned Muslim-bashing into a cottage industry, using the words of bin-Laden and his acolytes to allege that Islam is an inherently violent religion that "breeds" terrorism. After meeting with President George W. Bush two weeks ago about Iran and Iraq, Dobson conducted a hysterical five-part broadcast hyping the threat of radical Islam. (CD's of those broadcasts will soon be available on Focus on the Family's website, with all proceeds going to support Dobson's kulturkampf -- and his paycheck).

The response of Dobson and his allies to Uhl's arrest will reflect more on themselves than on any impressionable 19-year-old college student. The Christian right has warped religious doctrine to advance a Utopian political worldview that promises to purify the land of liberal decadence. Through one of its flagship universities, the Christian right produced a terrorist. Their hysterical warnings of the threat of radical Islam sound increasingly like projections.

But then again, maybe it's all Will Smith's fault.

Question

In the wall-to-wall coverage of the XDR TB guy, I have a really simple question. The guy traveled to Greece WITH his fiance to get married. Has anybody tested the bride? Because if she hasn't been infected, I think the rest of us are reasonably safe.