More about those suicides at Gitmo

No need to go into background information. Most readers already know (or imagine they do) and have formed opinions. I took cynical note of the event at the time. Like it or not, anything happening at Guantanamo is happening in the name of every American. I, for one, don't like being associated with the story.

Here is a followup from a critical source.

...somehow, in circumstances that the Pentagon has succeeded in keeping totally obscure, late on Friday, 9 June, three detainees, all weak and emaciated after months on hunger strike and being force-fed, managed to tease bedsheets through their cells' mesh walls, tie them into nooses and hang themselves. With the cells little taller than the height of a man, they stood no chance of breaking their necks: the only way they could die was slowly, by hypoxia.

'That would take at least four or five minutes, probably longer,' said Dr David Nicholl, consultant neurologist at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who has been co-ordinating international opposition to Guantanamo by physicians. 'It's very difficult to see how, if the landing was being properly patrolled, they could have managed to accomplish it.'

Shafiq Rasul is a former prisoner, er, detainee from Guantanamo. He is the source of a good deal of information in this story from Britain. Since he was there it means he hasn't much credibility for anyone who wants to argue against what he says...except that he has the advantage of having been an eye witness, personally observing and experiencing what he relates.

Rasul said: 'I was shocked by what happened, though not surprised, because I saw it almost happen so often. It was always scary: I would see people deteriorating mentally in front of my eyes until they tried to take their own lives, and you always thought: "That could be me". There were even times when I thought about it myself, but I wanted to be strong for my family. When I did, believe me, it wasn't because I was trying to hurt the United States, but on days when I'd just been told I'd never see England again, and that I was a terrorist, and when I denied it they wouldn't listen.'

This is a sad, sad report. Speculation upon speculation. When direct observation is denied, all that remains is speculation. It is reasonable to conclude that if that speculation is in error it can be contradicted by revealing the facts.

According to newly declassified testimony by another prisoner shortly before the suicides, a guard recently told him: 'They have lost hope in life. They have no hope in their eyes. They are ghosts and they want to die. No food will keep them alive right now.' This prisoner, the former British resident Shaker Aamer, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that the three dead men and other hunger strikers were so ill whenever their feeds contained protein that it went 'right through them' causing severe diarrhoea.

SBU -- Sensitive but Unclassified

.
Thanks to the Duck of Minerva I have learned a new abbreviation. SBU. Sensitive but unclassified.

This post, citing a rather long and incriminating cable from Iraq [WaPo link here. Cable link is PDF, six pages], contrasts official policy with realities on the ground in Iraq. It is not surprising that anyone connected with the US presence in Iraq is subject to what we might call in this country "peer pressure." Unfortunately, in Iraq the consequences can be a bit more harsh than not being invited to the next backyard barbecue or wedding shower. Drill and study this post as though you were buying an expensive piece of jewelry. You are apt to find more than you expected. These ivory tower guys are not all isolated from reality, you know. More here.

The folks in the the PA [Public Affairs] section in Iraq get this information from their own employees, that is to say, Iraqi civilians working for the US Government in Baghdad. All embassies use some local labor for non-sensitive administrative tasks. In the cable, you have the Embassy personnel relating the stories of how difficulty it is to live and work with Americans in Baghdad.

It's bad, and getting worse.

So, on the one hand, we can now claim that yes, the US government is fully aware of the situation in Baghdad, how bad it is, and that its own employees--those who work for the US and one would assume are about as pro-US as they come in Baghdad--are under constant threat because of their job.On the other hand, had this cable not appeared in the Sunday Washington Post, reprinted in its entirety, to be read by everybody who is anybody here inside the Beltway, its doubtful that anyone above the Assistant Secretary level would have paid serious attention to the dispatch. It would have disappeared into the National Archives, to be discovered by some grad student with a FOIA and a dissertation about Iraq 20 years hence. Now, you can bet Tony Snow will get a question about it Monday (fearless prediction, lets see if I'm right!)

Paul McCartney turned 64 yesterday

Nuff said.
One of my favorite songs of all time.
Catfish pays homage with a picture of the classic album cover and a link to the tune.
I heard today on Morning Edition that even Berkeley ain't what it used to be. Too many conservative young people moving in.
Plus ça change...
Sigh.

Speaking of change, check out this picture. That would be Bill Gates in the first row, bottom left.

H/T again to Raymond Ward.

Spin...er, meet the press

Jack Murtha was a guest on Meet the Press yesterday. I didn't watch. A video is available, but I still haven't watched. "Why?" ye ask incredulously! I'm glad you asked. It's because words and appearances often have less impact than spin, and here is an illustration of spin at it's curiousest.

Rachel Sklar describes Murtha's performance with glowing appreciation.

This was as effective a performance on Meet The Press as I've seen, and demonstrated not only that Murtha is right but that he's good. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he did it expertly. Right off the bat he took the offensive, hammering away at Republican talking points and emphasizing and re-emphasizing his own.

...and a chorus of Amens follows in the comments.

Meantime, Ann Althouse whom I love and respect -- a Democrat, for goodness' sake, or she used to be -- pans Murtha right out of the gate. Oh, and yes, another chorus of Amens follows here as well...

Did somebody misprogram him?

It sounds as though he was repeating a pep talk someone gave him before the show. It's easy! No, it's not. The polls! You're going into the campaign season, when people are going to start paying attention to the arguments. Are you just going to tell us that we already agree with you?I'm sure Rove enjoyed that pathetic performance.

It makes me tired, all this straining to influence public opinion. it would be different if public opinion were translated into policy, but it rarely is. And when it is, by the time it slips on the mantle of policy and law, that same public opinion has often reversed itself, either because of unforseen unintended consequences or because it is more interested in who might become the next American Idol. Nothing here, folks. Keep moving.

(Posts like this lose readers and illustrate why no one wants to subscribe to my little blog. Sorry 'bout that. I calls 'em like I sees 'em.)

Pascal on conflict resolution and a purpose-driven life

Been looking at Blaise Pascal. As the introduction said, [m]uch of the theological argument implied in these utterances has little appeal to the modern mind, but the acuteness of the observation of human life, the subtlety of the reasoning, the combination of precision and fervid imagination in the expression, make this a book to which the discerning mind can return again and again for insight and inspiration.

I am humbled by the fact that the man lived over three hundred fifty years ago and died short of his fortieth birthday. I'm sure this is old hat for seminarians, philosophers and other scholars. But I find some of it is as fresh as the morning news. One of the rewards for not being overly well-read.

122
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves. It is like a nation which we have provoked, but meet again after two generations. They are still Frenchmen, but not the same.

Here is part of an essay on Pascal that sounds very much like an argument for -- please excuse the phrase -- a purpose-driven life. As I said, this looks pretty fresh to me.

In his analysis of man, Pascal focuses on two very contradictory sides of fallen human nature. Man is both noble and wretched. Noble, because he is created in God's image; wretched, because he is fallen and alienated from God. In one of his more passionate notes, Pascal says this:

What kind of freak is man! What a novelty he is, how absurd he is, how chaotic and what a mass of contradictions, and yet what a prodigy! He is judge of all things, yet a feeble worm. He is repository of truth, and yet sinks into such doubt and error. He is the glory and the scum of the universe!

Furthermore, Pascal says, we know that we are wretched. But it is this very knowledge that shows our greatness.

Pascal says it's important to have a right understanding of ourselves. He says "it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his own wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer who can free him from it." Thus, our message must be that "there is a God whom men can know, and that there is a corruption in their nature which renders them unworthy of Him." This prepares the unbeliever to hear about the Redeemer who reconciles the sinner with the Creator.

Pascal says that people know deep down that there is a problem, but we resist slowing down long enough to think about it. He says:

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he faces his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness. And at once there wells up from the depths of his soul boredom, gloom, depression, chagrin, resentment, despair.

Pascal says there are two ways people avoid thinking about such matters: diversion and indifference. Regarding diversion, he says we fill up our time with relatively useless activities simply to avoid facing the truth of our wretchedness. "The natural misfortune of our mortality and weakness is so miserable," he says, "that nothing can console us when we really think about it. . . . The only good thing for man, therefore, is to be diverted so that he will stop thinking about his circumstances." Business, gambling, and entertainment are examples of things which keep us busy in this way.

The other response to our condition is indifference. The most important question we can ask is What happens after death? Life is but a few short years, and death is forever. Our state after death should be of paramount importance, shouldn't it? But the attitude people take is this:

Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

Pascal is appalled that people think this way, and he wants to shake people out of their stupor and make them think about eternity. Thus, the condition of man is his starting point for moving people toward a genuine knowledge of God.

Toddlers and today's Dads

Scary.

In the last twenty-four hours I have come across stories of little kids that are waaay too far ahead.

Henry Schally had a News Hour theme for his party. Picked it himself already!

Steve Dillard at Southern Appeal says his son could name all the Supreme Court Justices at age three.

It was this little exchange by Mark Lynch that set me to thinking about the current crop of toddlers.

A few minutes ago, my 3 year old daughter looked up from the Wiggles and said "what are you blogging about, daddy?"

I said "Iraq." She nodded seriously and then went back to Pirate Dancing.

And I found myself contemplating with horror a world in which three year olds know what "blogging" is.

All I can say is Sheesh!

Fathers Day, 2006

This time last year I was putting together the most satisfying post of my bloogging experience. My correspondence and interactions with an Iraqi father began some time before when I posted a tragic snapshot of the war, Nihad had to Die, by the screen name Abu Khaleel. One thing led to another as our cyber-friendship unfolded. I'm sure it's because I am involved, but reading over the posts still gives me satisfaction. We are very different people, but we can agree on one point: the US presence in Iraq, whether or not it started well, should now come to an end. Without arguing background, it is plain now that the presence of US forces is doing more harm than good.

Rather than go off on a rant about the war, I encourage the reader to go back to last year's Fathers Day post to capture something better, an account of how two fathers were able to reach one another in the midst of a horrible war and find common ground with a civil exchange of emails and blog posts. It is a long post but worth the time it takes to read.

Ibrahim Al-Shawi is the author of A Glimpse of Iraq, the blog listed on the sidebar as "Abu Khaleel, Glimpse." now available in book form. This articulate, patient, very patriotic Iraqi gentleman presents a picture of his country that should be required reading for anyone who wants to be informed about Iraq. Here is a sample insight you might find. It seems like a trivial point, but those who ignore it do so at someone's peril, if not their own.

It is probably perfectly normal for an adult American to be seen chewing gum in public. In traditional Iraqi society, the act of chewing a gum is reserved to women, but never in public. Country folk utterly despise city boys when they see them chewing gum. They regard it as feminine. Even little children are discouraged from doing it. The sight of grown, armed men chewing gum must have been one of the causes of many people losing their respect for those armed men! It simply conveys an unintentionally ‘undesirable’ image!

This also reminds me of a young US soldier manning the Iraqi side of the Iraqi-Jordanian border. He glanced at our passports with a lollypop in his mouth. I couldn’t help but notice the reaction on the taxi driver’s face: Utter contempt!

I really cannot blame those American boys for doing some things that are completely natural and normal. There was no way that they could have known that those little normal acts could be misinterpreted by others. But here I am talking about how perfectly normal actions can be seen from across the cultural divide. I cannot address the rights and wrongs of this. People’s cultures are different; we may see some of their attitudes as wrong or detestable, but that view will not change those attitudes, especially if they hold to them in their own environment and in their own country.

Dixie Chicks Video

Raymond Ward links to an Amazon video of the Dixie Chicks on Bill Maher's show.

Two performances with an interval of chat inbetween.

I didn't follow the flap abouot their political faux pas in England, but I heard all I wanted. I got it and it didn't particularly bother me. My patriotism is not so fragile that I find entertainers all that threatening...or politicians either, come to think of it.

Maher speaks of "Dixie Chicks two-point-o..." Good line. And if their second song is any indicator they don't seem to be all that, what, repentant?

All in all, I enjoyed the video.

Whoah!
I just figured out that this is not snipped from TV.
This is an episode from an internet show sponsored by Amazon, now in its fourth or fifth production. Just like late-nite TV with a live studio audience. Neat!
They don't have a Bloglines subscription feed so I added a link to the sidebar for my own convenience. Check it out.

Scheduled to appear on the June 22 episode of Amazon Fishbowl: Janet Evanovich (discussing Twelve Sharp)
Frank Coraci and Henry Winkler (discussing Click)
T-Bone Burnett (performing songs from The True False Identity)
Jim Cramer (making a UPS Special Delivery of Jim Cramer's Real Money)

Okay, then. Your universe just got bigger.

(Yo, Boortz! You gettin' this? This is how Amazon is selling books...and ideas.)

Amnesty in Iraq to avert civil war

Donald Sensing posted a good piece advancing the case for amnesty in Iraq as a plan to avoid all-out civil war.

According to radio news reports this morning, some members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have gone ballistic over the proposal of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to offer amnesty to some Iraqi insurgents. Financial Times reports:

The new Iraqi government, led by Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia Islamist prime minister, is launching a number of national reconciliation initiatives including the release of thousands of detainees and possibly an amnesty for sectors of the overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency. Alongside these carrots, Mr Maliki plans to use the stick of a massive security clampdown centred on Baghdad, where scores of Iraqis are dying each day in sectarian carnage.

Is this a good idea? I think it is, although of course the devil in the details has yet to be fleshed out. (And al-Maliki is no “Islamist,” as FT says, though he is certainly Muslim.)

Read the whole thing. Donald Sensing is one of the most respected links on my blogroll. I have a lot of respect for him.

This morning I see that the idea is being blown to hell and back by all kinds of people -- left and right, both parties, smart and stupid. The dove of peace has been on the endangered species list longer than any other of God's creatures.

Going Probiotic

Meryl Yourish is fighting stomach problems. Looks like a possible setup to get ulcers. So...

The thing is, this drug regimen is probably the suckiest, worst regimen I have ever had to undergo. Four pills (large ones!) twice a day, three of which are two separate antiobiotics, one of which is amoxicillin, which has previously had negative consequences on my digestive tract. So I take these four horse-pills before breakfast, then again twelve hours later, and man, something’s leaving this nasty aftertaste (I blame the antibiotics) throughout the day.

That was a couple of days ago. So to ameliorate the destructive effects of antibiotics, she is taking brave steps to restore some kind of balance to her ecologically wounded digestive tract.

In any event, my great experiment with the various bacteriology of my digestive system continues. And in another eleven days, with any luck, H. pylori will be dead, dead, dead. And I won’t get my too-frequent stomach ailments.

You know, if you really think about it, right now, there’s one hell of a war going on in my stomach. Good bacteria. Bad bacteria. Acidopholus. Saccharomyces boulardi. (Oh. My. Gd. I just discovered a website called “Doctor Fungus.” And discovered that I’ve been waxing poetic about — Brewer’s yeast.

This is not a pretty picture. But tons of people fight this battle every day. Fight on, lady!

Think your way to sanity and peace

Raised in ordinary circumstances, she became successful in real estate, married twice, and raised a couple of kids. In her thirties she became severely depressed, a state that lasted ten years. She suffered from bouts of rage that terrified her children. Agoraphobia set in; she stayed in bed for weeks at a time, neglecting to wash or bathe, and eventually checked herself into an eating disorders clinic, the only facility her insurance company would pay for. At the clinic, her anger was so frightening to the other patients that she was placed in a separate attic room, where she slept on the floor because she felt unworthy of a bed. About two weeks later, she woke up one morning in a state of unalloyed clarity and joy. She felt that she was no longer herself and that she wasn't separate from anything in the universe. An "it," or perhaps a larger "I," was looking out through her eyes. And she understood that all suffering comes from thoughts.

Richard Lawrence Cohen writes about Byron Katie of Barstow, Arizona.

Returning home shortly afterward, her state of joyous understanding endured. She reconciled with her astounded family. She spent a good deal of time in the nearby desert, sitting in the wind. Word of her awakening spread locally and people began coming to her with questions about their lives. When they told her of their perceived problems, she would ask, "Honey, is that true?" and lead them to see that their sufferings were built on misconceptions of what ought to be or of what was being done to them.

This is my first hearing about this woman and her work. I pass it along for anyone for whom it may be a way out of hell. I'm thinking particularly of those with BPD, shunned by professionals and non-responsive to pharmaceutical approaches.

Last week's post about Intermittent Explosive Disorder (to which I have since read several snarky, shallow and ignorant references) referred to Borderline Personality Disorder, a more serious and less tractible condition of which I am aware in a very personal way.

I have known several crazy people in my time (aside from myself) and have spent a lot of energy analyzing crazy behavior. Observing many thousands of the public over the years has also given me ample opportunitiy to witness many puzzling human behaviors.

The prison population is neatly divided for management purposes into two groups, violent or non-violent, regardless of the crime. My lay opinion is that crazy people can also be divided simply into two groups: those with problems deriving from "chemical imbalance" and those whose problems seem to be purely "mental."

This approach is, of course, carelessly unscientific. But considering the success rate of science in finding remedies for substance abuse, criminal recidivism, eating disorders or suicide rates among population groups who have little reason for despair...I submit that any "self-help" tools that can be added to the toolbox are worth a try.

Again, I report. You decide.

Here is a selection from the Book of Common Prayer for Those in Mental Darkness:

O HEAVENLY Father, we beseech thee to have mercy upon all thy children who are living in mental darkness. Restore them to strength of mind and cheerfulness of spirit, and give them health and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sydney Morning Herald looks at Gulf bloggers

There are now about 1,000 Gulf Arab bloggers, up five times from 2004, according to Haitham Sabbah, a Bahrain-based blogger and Middle East editor for Global Voices, a programme launched last year by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in the United States that tracks and collects blogs worldwide.

Short article. Pretty good overview.
H/T UAE Community Blog which also has a blogroll to keep a reader busy for a while.

Couple of points...

SMH missed a good chance to provide hyperlinks in the online edition. Had they done so, they might have discovered that the Religious Policeman cited in the article has recently folded his tent. [TTLB Large Mammal already, with over three hundred comments to his last post! I wonder how long TTLB taxonomy keeps inactive blogs in the system. I know of a couple that have gone dormant a long time that continue to be listed...]

Also, as I read I realized that we see references to "the Gulf" presuming the reader knows which gulf is being discussed. I suppose references to a Persian Gulf might be considered inflamatory.

Hmm. This is interesting. I read about Iranian women protesting. Here are links to photos and commentary by bloggers practicing a little micro-journalism. When I come across stuff like this I really have to question to need for preemptive wars. It seems to me there are ways to cultivate meaningful change in other countries by feeding and watering the seeds that are already there instead of bombing the crap out of them.

AA Online

WaiterRant is among my favorite blogs. If this guy's not putting together a book he's missing a great chance. His stories are pearls. I'm biased, of course, because of three decades in the food business. Often I say to myself "Been there; done that." This most recent snapshot is a perfect example.

“I know they’re mashed potatoes,” she huffs, “But what are they doing on my plate?”

I know what’s happening. The woman’s on a diet and she forgot to ask what comes with her entrée. Lacking the self discipline to abstain from eating her potatoes she’s gonna work her food issues out on me. Does she actually think the spuds will congeal into ass fat before the night is over? Probably.

“All entrees are served with potato and vegetable,” I reply politely.

“Does it say that on the menu?” the woman counters. Uh oh - a lawyer type.

“It does Madam.”

“I want to see the menu.”

Fun read, this. But the previous scene, though it starts out amusing, turns quietly serious at the end. The comments thread is a testament to the waiter's true calling. Whether or not he advertises himself as such, this man is a minister.

“I don’t want this drink on my check,” the man says, “I’ll pay for it separate.”

“Yes sir.”

“And don’t let it slip to my friends that I’ve had a cocktail or two waiting for them.”

“I understand sir.”

No further explanation’s necessary. But the guy decides to explain himself anyway.

“My friends are pains in the asses,” he says, “Health nuts you know?”

“I’ve met the type sir,” I reply.

“Can’t ever enjoy a drink when they’re around,” he grouses, “They’re always lecturing me.”

The anecdote is only the beginning. Some of the comments can reduce the reader to tears. There are few people without personal experience with substance abuse. And no, it isn't always you. Too often it is someone you love.

This is one of the most compelling reasons I know for prayer.

Amanda Congdon interviews George Soros

Rocketboom, June 8, five days ago now.
I missed it but BoingBoing picked it up.

Really interesting. Rocketboom's Amanda Congdon scored big this time. And Soros comes across as the gentleman that he is. His view of global markets and how they fail to address global problems is very threatening to many people. He is one of the world's richest individuals, and when he puts his money where his mouth is he aims to get results. When a mouth like that is talking, only the most foolish among us would fail to pay attention.

I have great respect for Soros. His intellect seems to match his financial achievements and he has used his considerable financial power responsibly. As far as I know he hasn't had people killed, which is more than can be said for many powerful people.

When Amanda asked him about his "online habits" he responded by calling himself a dinosaur. He said "I have people helping me" take care of that. I bet. Asking Soros about online habits is like asking what brand of laundry detergent he prefers. Amanda is a sweetheart for that question. But as they say, a cat can look at a king.

When he speaks of world markets he says quite simply that there is an idea that "when markets 'do their thing' they will take care of all our problems...This is a misconception." When he says that he has my undivided attention. I am sick to death of the marketplace displacing -- among other values and institutions -- the church. The only thing that makes me sicker, is when I see churches going along with the notion.

The video time is not listed, but it's about five minutes or so.

There was a time that I believed in accidents, that many events were simply 'random" or "coincidental." Bierce's definition of accident as an inevitable event due to the interaction of immutable natural laws always amused me, but only because for a long time I didn't take into account what seem to be natural spiritual laws. In recent years I have noticed what some people call prophetic voices, words that bring forth understandings unexpected but edifying.

This morning's post by Dr. Bob fits comfortably into the prophetic mold regarding the Soros interview just cited and my reaction to it. Remember, now, that Soros does not speak in religious terms. From a Christian viewpoint he may be pagan. But his message is not contrary to that of the church. Like Ghandi he might be able to say "give me your Christ, but keep your Christianity." I don't know. But reflect on what Soros says in light of these prophetic words from Dr. Bob.

Western culture has bankrupted the very treasure from which its greatness arose, leaving an increasingly fragile shell of process without principles, institutions without inspiration, governance without grace. Steeped in knowledge yet long in shortcomings, our culture increasingly dismisses the spiritual and transcendent as but mere ignorance or malign superstition, and thus strangles its own lifeblood in its frantic rush to solve problems of the soul with the prescriptions of science and sociology. Our sickness is deep, and pervasive, and ultimately deadly–and made even more dangerous by our peculiar denial that there exists any sickness at all. Such malady takes many forms: from evangelistic secularism, seeking to purge all thought or mention of religion from our collective consciousness; to the intellectual miasma of postmodernism, where the only absolute truth is the denial of absolute truth; to the grand charade, where lust for power or corrupt materialism masquerade in the mantle of religious devotion or a gospel of social justice–which is neither just nor good for society; to the spirituality of the self, which seeks to find God within having denied Him without, and ends up worshiping only ego, in all its hideous manifestations.

There are, it is said, many roads to God–a cozy notion for the intellectually lazy and spiritually slothful, a passing nod to a past glory still spoken of but no longer believed. It is a bromide fast dissolving in a world where religious zealots praise Allah while slaughtering women and children; where men sing of Jesus while drinking poison Koolaid; where televised con-men fleece the faithful while preaching love and generosity; where men of the cloth speak of killing the elderly and suctioning the young with soothing words of “mercy” and “freedom” and “choice.” We are tossed like ships in a storm because we have lost both rudder and mast: the principles which have steered us, and the power which gives us purpose and direction, have been swept away in the rolling swells of material prosperity and the saturating rains of empty information and worthless knowledge.

I claim no inside knowledge. All I know is what I read in the papers...er, what I come across on the blogs. Something here strikes me as prophetic.
As usual, I report. You decide.

The 100 Hour Board and other stuff

Clean and wholesome. Fresh, young, full of cheer and on the way to responsible adulthood.

That's what seems to be the case with a clutch of blogging young people associated with the 100 Hour Board, an unofficial but complimentary spinoff of Brigham Young U. I was curious about the blog I came across the other day which struck me as a cut above the average. It goes with the territory, but being young also often means being vacuous, smarmy, and crass to the edge of rudeness. A young person who is genuinely respectful, quick to smile and make others smile, and careful about good manners is hard to find these days.

Here is a delightful snip from Petra from this group.

I am in love with a mechanic. Head over high heels, I fell for a balding middle-aged man this morning, and, in the midst of this burning passion, I wish to shout my good news from the rooftops. (Or, you know, post it on the internet. Same thing.)

[Snips here. These kids aren't into editing yet...]

Clearly, it was time to visit a mechanic. The problem, though, is that I try to avoid practical matters at all costs. ...

Auto mechanics are even worse than doctors, insurance agents, or customer service representatives. I know nothing about cars...and I'm convinced that I'll betray that within the first five seconds of our interaction...If asked to diagnose the problem, I'm sure I'd be even worse, and would end up looking like a total fool: "Maybe it's the muffler...belt?"

Nonetheless, this morning, I girded up my loins, gathered my courage, gritted my teeth...and drove over to the mechanic, my car practicing its high-pitched vowel sounds the whole way. ("AAAAEEEEEIIIIIIOOOOOUUUUU!") Reminding myself that muffler belts do not exist, I pulled into the auto shop's parking lot--screeeeeeeeech!--and idled for a moment, looking for a likely place to deposit my car before humbly approaching the mechanic, as a devotee to an idol.

I was startled out of my reverie by a tap on the window. It was the mechanic, bald, fortyish, overweight, henceforth to be called my One True Love. I rolled down my window, cringing in anticipation--thousands of dollars on repairs, maybe, or a long lecture chastising me for even daring to defile his workshop with my ignorance. Or was I about to park illegally?

"Your brake pads are shot," he said. "I could hear it as you drove in. $120. I'm not open today, but if you bring your car back next week I'll fix it. " My OTL walked away. I never even had to get out of the car.

The light broke through the clouds, and angel choirs harmonized with the dolphin sopranos in my brake pads. In my rear view mirror, the mechanic's bald pate shone like a nimbus of celestial glory. He was beautiful. The music was beautiful. Provo was beautiful. Life was beautiful.

Hélas. It won't last, I know. He's probably already married. I mean, how could a man like that not be snatched up like the last Green Power Ranger on the Toys 'R Us shelf? And, as it turns out, I particularly don't care; I'll indulge myself in the joy of the moment instead of pondering our future together. I'm more the mistress type anyway.

Now what's not to love about a kid like this? I never saw her and never expect to, but on the basis of this post alone I could give her a hug. Fortyish...middle-aged. Hehe. Some guy's gonna get a real gem one of these days. And I don't think for a moment that she's "the mistress type." My instinct is that we are reading the fantasy of a sharp, together young woman.

By the way, that's the reason I keep Andrew Cusack on the blogroll. Clean as a pin, and with a silver spoon to boot. I look in on him from time to time to remind myself that the next generation is not going to hell.

Now I have another place to look.

Upside-down stars on the GOP Logo?

Yeah, that and other stuff.
I got a spam billet-doux from the HuffPo folks, state of the art for modern muckraking.
I scan everything, though, to keep in touch. Never know what you might come across. This is a good example.

Speaking of the party blogs, Thom Hartmann brought this up last week on his show... What's the deal with the upside-down stars on the official GOP logo? I'm not making this up. The three stars on the official logo are upside-down. I thought upside-down stars signified, amongst other things, Satanism. At least that's what my Mom told me when I was 13-years-old and wanted to buy Motley Crue's "Shout At The Devil" album. From Carl Teichrib's Pentacles and Pentagrams:

"Going deeper yet, the upside-down star/pentagram has long been recognized as the symbol of Satan. Anton LaVey, author of the Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals, lavishly used this symbol in his ceremonies and rituals -- most often depicted as the 'goat's head.'"

There's a great example of the upside-down star logo on the GOP En Espanol site.Wait -- what? The GOP has a website in Spanish? I thought they wanted English as our national language.

So let's get this straight. Right-side-up stars signify the American flag and the forces of good; the upside-down star signifies Satan, Motley Crue, the GOP, and a goat's head; and the upside-down star with two humps on top signifies the forces of Bam Margera. Got it. Let's move on.

Lots more, opening with this. (Actually, I'm getting things out of order, but after scanning that's how I recalled them...according to what most caught my attention...)

I just can't get enough of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's dead, bloated face which predictably kicked off the Meet the Press opening montage. One question here: why did the government and the right-wing have such an issue with the Abu Ghraib photos, but this one gets the Thomas Kinkade treatment -- enlarged and tastefully mounted in a decorative oak frame and aired around the clock? It's worth noting that the House passed a law this week calling for a $325,000 fine for anyone who says "shit" on television. Bloated corpse face everywhere, good. The word "shit," bad. God bless America.

Pretty good point, if you ask me. Unfortunately, nothing new in Washington.

Love that Kinkade reference. In this case it strikes exactly the right note. I wanna make some reference to lipstick on a pig but I can't quite get all the parts to fit.

Comments run to another page, but I lost interest...

"...an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

This is elegant.

Committing suicide is now an act of war. Not as part of any attempt to injure or kill anyone else, but simply following through on the decision to end one's life.

Amazing.
I'm trying to square that thought with these lines found further down in the story.

The US military said the men's bodies were being treated "with the utmost respect".
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Mr Bush had "expressed serious concern" at the deaths.
"He also stressed that it was important to treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity," he said.

I dunno.
Utmost respect. Cultural sensitivity.

Maybe if we honor the corpses enough it will ameliorate the disrespect shown by branding these suicides as acts of war. Hmm...

Warriors no longer animate these bodies.

Yes. That's it! If they were a garden-variety suicides, then we might in some way be responsible. But acts of war vindicate us of any wrongdoing, while honoring our declared enemies at the same time.

Whew! I feel all better. What a relief!
I was about to imagine that US policies and conditions at Gitmo had something to do with it.

Riverbend comments on Zarqawi's death

For the record, she is not part of a rejoicing multitude, or what is being painted as such.

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."

So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt, military strikes and sieges will die down… That's what we were promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign troops?

Here is the link to her latest post. I have linked to Riverbend before. I don't like a lot of what she writes, but I would rather read disagreable rhetoric than experience a more dangerous expression of anger and frustration. It is significant that she has no more admiration for Zarqawi than any of the other figures associated with the war -- on any or either side. (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.)

Harper Lee, American writer

When Garrison Keillor writes a book review about a Harper Lee biography it is hard to know how to start telling about it. Perhaps it's the emptiness of our time, but I get all sappy when I think about the story about the story about the story...and so forth.

Even non-literary types know the title To Kill a Mockingbird. A few less, but many, also know the name of Harper Lee. Fewer still know anything abut her, least of all that she is still alive and is famously, intensely private. Among my fantasies is that I might one day meet this remarkable literary icon. (We are all free to daydream, you know. After all, I did have the same high school English teacher as Carson McCullars and a closed-circuit TV class with Mike Shaara a couple of years later.)

She is 80 years old and wears a hearing aid and eats out at the diner or the country club and to strangers who seek her out, she can be frosty. A reporter and photographer from Birmingham banged on her door 10 years ago and Miss Lee opened it and said, "What is it?" They asked her to autograph a copy of her book. She wasn't happy about it but she fetched a pen. "I hope you're more polite to other people," she said. She signed it: "Best wishes, Harper Lee." She said, "Next time try to be more thoughtful." They thanked her. She gave them a big warm smile and said, "You're quite welcome."

Charles Shields is a former English teacher who taught Harper Lee's book, and a scrupulous journalist who respects the lady's privacy even as he opens up her life. This biography will not disappoint those who loved the novel and the feisty, independent, fiercely loyal Scout, in whom Harper Lee put so much of herself.

The review is in tomorrow's Times.
The book is MOCKINGBIRD, A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields.
H/T to Azra Raza at 3 Quarks.

Gerard Vanderleun is up to something

He's on break.
Don't know what, but if he is resting from blogging it must be worth waiting for.

I've been a busy with a new project of some magnitude, of which more in due course. Nor, as you will soon learn, have I been disconnected from the world of the web or the world at large. Granted, there have been many instances in the last week when I wish that were so.

For now, suffice it to say I am working in a new direction and on several new variations to old themes. For now the most I will say is to let you in on my personal plan, program and platform for the solution to our overwhelmingly disgusting, petty, destructive and vile internal politics; this without regard to race, color, creed, gender now or to be assigned later, or political preference.

Sufficiently vague to pique interest...
We'll wait...

Update:

Well, we didn't have to wait long.

Welcome visitors and thanks again, Gerard, for the link. I am honored to have been the fan who made the tipping point.

This is a big win for PJ Media. I don't think anybody knows yet what that means, but whatever it is should become clear in a few more years. What seems to be happening is that an intellectual and literary nucleus from the political right is crystalizing into a formidable, if somewhat disorderly mass. If it isn't about money yet, it's gonna be.

I linked to PJ Media on the sidebar.
Another great aggregator, now with a gifted editor-in-chief.

dimmi -- brand new blogger

Tripped across this link on Cat's comment thread. Only four posts in all, so far. I hope she keeps blogging. This is a good start.

"You made a what?" she asked.

"A replica."

He's seven and he makes replicas.

Lately, we've been teaching him "big" words. Replica isn't one of them, but it could have been. As things come up in conversation, we call him. "HEY B! Wanna learn a new word?" He comes running. Recently I taught him about being facetious, arachnophobia, and triskaidekaphobia. My sister taught him about misnomers and being garrulous. Dad taught him 'superfluous.' He's known confiscate' for a long time.

He's seven, and he uses this stuff in conversation.

Reactions to the death of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

Michael J. Totten has a collection of reactions to the death of Zarqawi.
To coin that Dorothy Parker line, they run the gamut of emotions from Y to Z.
Totten's terse comment and Vodkapundit's Rest in pieces get points for brevity and wit...one point each, in that order.

This from Arab News stuck in my head. Ordinary Iraqi working in Saudi Arabia.

Kazem Ali, an Iraqi resident working in a local restaurant, said the Zarqawi killing has brought joy to the Iraqi people. “Zarqawi was responsible for the killing of many innocent men, women and children,” said Ali. “I hope peace comes to Iraq with his killing. This should also speed up the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq now that the main excuse for staying is dead.”

H/T John Burgess.
I have nothing to add.

Baheyya's tribute to Ahmed Abdalla

Egyptian blogger Baheyya impresses me every time I read her posts. She still makes me wish I knew more about Egypt and its politics. In this post she remembers Ahmed Abdalla, a leading opposition figure in the ongoing birthing pains of democracy in Egypt. The name is new to me, but that is more a reflection of my ignorance than his importance. This is a ringing tribute to a man of principle taken too soon.

...He had a mirthful, loquacious manner and spoke Arabic, English, and French beautifully. Above all, he was that exceedingly rare specimen of intellectual who neither disdains nor romanticises ordinary people. Instead, he lived among them, understood them, loved them, shared their burdens, and did his utmost to alleviate them.
...
[Having been a student activist in his twenties] Ahmed Abdalla opted to write his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on students and politics in Egypt, and its book form remains the single most valuable English-language contribution to the topic, second to none. It is a scholarly, historical oeuvre written in a staid, analytical style, with significant bits of auto-critique and reflection, scrupulous documentation, and many gems buried in the footnotes. There is no awkward tension between the scholar and the activist, no grand unsubstantiated claims, no self-exoneration, and—-just as important-—no irritating and pointless second-guessing or hand wringing.
[...]
Advocacy mixed with analysis was the driving force behind Abdalla’s energetic bid for parliament in the 2005 elections, and his years long focus on the vexing
condition of child labour. Eschewing both the easy, moralising condemnation of the practice and indifference to it as yet another “social problem,” Ahmed Abdalla made the difficult choice of actually doing something about it. He established the Jeel
Centre for Youth and Social Studies, both a research and information centre and an actual space where working children convened each week to, simply, live their childhood. They drew artwork, made puppets, played music, had a meal, and subjected their bodies to physical activity of a different order than the gruelling labour that marked the rest of their week. It was a place unlike any that I’ve ever been in, where the concrete reality of child exploitation coexisted with an utterly charmed environment full of laughter, love, and an aura of being blessed.

Blogger Maintenance

Thursday, June 08, 2006
For many users, Blogger will have been extremely slow or down for most of the morning. We continue to work on fixes for this problem and hope to have it resolved as quickly as possible.

Update (4:45p): We are planning another infrastructure overhaul to address the significant problems we've been having in the past several days.

Update (6:59p): We've made another change that has improved performance, but we are also planning to make additional changes this evening.

Uh, I think they are trying to tell us that things are gonna go screwy again tonight.

"Meet Your Cousins" -- an idea whose time has come

Karim Elsahy at One Arab World proposes a dialogue between Jews and Muslims starting with an exchange of bloggers.

I believe that one of, not Egypt’s, but Egyptians worst setbacks is a phenomenal increase in intolerance. I am fairly young but I am certainly old enough to see that phenomena grow. Christians, the white man in general, Shia/Sunni, gulf Arabs,…..ect. and of course… The Jew.

He makes the excellent point that the vast majority of Egyptians have never actually met a Jew.

Step One, “Meet your Cousin”: Fly some Jews in from around the world (maybe five or six), hold a two day conference at a university, pack the hall with a bunch of curious Egyptian students, have the guests tell everyone about their lives, what they do, their political inclinations, their families, their beliefs, and so on, Q&A then refreshments.

I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine that was on my Thesis Committee (A 75 Year Urban City Plan for Jerusalem). He is the Rabbi of the third oldest congregation in America. He liked the idea a lot and is not only willing to help but thinking of coming himself. If anyone else would like to come or help shoot me an email.

Step Two, “The Pioneer Program”: Following in the footsteps of a very courageous idea, we are going to begin funding the temporary swap of Arab and Israeli bloggers… Let me explain. Rabbi Belzer is the founder and vp of an organization in Ireland that brings Palestinians and Israelis together to develop understanding… a beautiful objective.

This is like that on steroids. We are going to send Arab bloggers to Israel and Israeli bloggers to Arab countries to blog. When you do that you don’t just send the blogger ; you send his or her entire readership. Same amount of money, much bigger impact. I think we can fund a trip a month once we get started.

This is fairly dull stuff for most Americans, but for most of the world the idea of actually meeting and interacting with someone of another culture is not only threatening but downright offensive. Well, come to think of it, I have met a good many Americans with the same mindset, but at least the notion of friendship exchanges between cultures is not without precedent.

I don’t know what is the best way to support him in this project, but perhaps my small handful of readers can help by passing the word. This is one of those simple, easy to grasp, totally positive ideas that makes one wonder why it hasn’t been done before.

Google Video and other stuff

I'm loving this ride on the technology roller-coaster. It may be easier to get addicted to video clips than candy or alcohol, so the reader is to be advised accordingly.

The You Tube phenomenon seems to be expanding a market that has Google salivating. Google video seems to have as many toys to play with as YouTube. I'm not much of a television person because I don't like the advertisements. But that's where the money comes from, they say, so it's the price you have to pay to keep current. They even have the Russian Climbing video.

Follow the links to see if there is anything of interest. Lots of stuff for sale, now. Video players are spreading like cell phones. I'm ready to read about an automobile accident with a video player listed as a contributing factor, along with a cell phone.

As an aside, I see that Abbas Raza from 3 Quarks is going to a conference in Finland to get his batteries recharged. These guys, along with Arts and Letters Daily, are at the forward edge of all that's happening on the internets. If I were younger I'd be jealous. Instead, I'm just proud and happy to see smart young people doing so much great stuff.

Speaking of which (boy, this post is getting out of hand) I am deeply impressed with Lindsay Beyerstein's reading assignments the other day, particularly the piece by James Wolcott looking at Margaret Talbot's profile of Oriana Fallaci in the New Yorker. To get the full impact of what is going on the reader has to wade through a takedown of both Talbot and the magazine by Horsefeathers as endorsed by Roger Simon. This is high drama of the literary type, not fit fixings for ordinary people who would rather watch judge shows on morning teevee, but I am impressed.

That's about enough for one morning.
I'll be glad when Scott Ferguson gets PunditDrome back up and running. I didn't realize how much that place had become part of my online community of interest until it went down. His blog homepage is down, too. I hope he's okay.

Mentos & Diet Coke Video at YouTube

Several weeks back the world discovered a wonder of science: if a few ordinary Mentos candy mints are plopped into a carbonated beverage the result is an instantaneous chemical reaction. Five or six dropped into a two-liter bottle can produce an eighteen-foot geyser that blows out most of the contents of the bottle!

There are several videos of this phenomenon, but this latest is the best so far. Just under three minutes and worth every second.
Enjoy!

Update

The YouTube link was disabled because it was being used withour copyright permission.
EepyBird.com has the video.
Go there for the link.

(That explains the odd comment below, I suppose. When the Mentos/Doke video was removed something else took its place. I missed it. Oh, well.)

Intermittent Explosive Disorder

TeeVee blogging here.
NBC Evening News just ended with a note of trivia.

There is now a clinical category for behavior that we used to call "having a hot temper." It might include Dad's over-reaction when he came home from work because somebody didn't take out the garbage. Or road rage. Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

I remember when I first came across the term IED and had to look it up. That was the term used for 'Improvised Explosive Device," weapon of choice in Iraq. We don't hear as much about that now with the new term "roadside bomb."

Did a Google search and sure enough, Intermittent Explosive Disorder is easy to find.

Many psychiatric disorders are associated with impulsive aggression, but some individuals demonstrate violent outbursts of rage, which are variously referred to as rage attacks, anger attacks, episodic dyscontrol, or intermittent explosive disorder. Intermittent explosive disorder was first formally conceptualized as a psychiatric disorder.

»On several occasions the patient has lost control of aggressive impulses, leading to serious assault or property destruction.

»The aggression is markedly out of proportion to the seriousness of any social or psychological stressors.

»No other mental disorder or personality disorder better explains the symptoms.

»These symptoms are not directly caused by a general medical condition or substance use, including medications and drugs of abuse.

Although the prevalence of intermittent explosive disorder is unknown and considered to be rare, the disorder is probably more common than realized and may be an important cause of violent behavior. As presently defined, intermittent explosive disorder is more common in men. However, women also have problematic impulsive aggression, and some women have reported an increase in intermittent explosive symptoms when they are premenstrual.

As soon as I heard it I immediately thought about someone I know who seemed to be a textbook case. I was wrong, however. This individual was instead ruled out by a more serious constellation of behaviors known as Borderline Personality Disorder.

A professional counselor we know says these people are the most durably resistent cases known to professionals who earn their living working with behavior disorders. Borderline people are the ones most likely to be referred elsewhere for attention because the professionals know right away they are apt to be wasting time trying to lead them to a better place.

»A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

»Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

»A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation

»Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

»Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).

»Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior.

»Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).

»Chronic feelings of emptiness.

»Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).

»Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

[...]
Like all personality disorders, borderline personality disorder is intrinsically difficult to treat. Personality disorders, by definition, are long-standing ways of coping with the world, social and personal relationships, handling stress and emotions, etc. that often do not work, especially when a person is under increased stress or performance demands in their lives. Treatment, therefore, is also likely to be somewhat lengthy in duration, typically lasting at least a year for most.

Got that?

Five or more from the list is all it takes to make the team. They try to put treatment into the best possible light, but reading between the lines it looks as though the prognosis is not very good.

That's it for tonight, folks.
Reflect now on whether any of these behaviors that occur in the civilian population with identifiable regularity are somehow eliminated by military training and conditioning. Seems to me that wearing a uniform and having access to weapons might not be a good idea for these individuals.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just an old guy blogging.
Maybe we have our own IED's after all.

More from The Octogenarian

Mort Reichek is The Octogenarian, the blogger I came across last week.

Here is a great story he tells about his father, how he achieved local fame in the Bronx among his Jewish neighbors by cursing the Nazi airship Hindenberg just hours before it burned in one of history's most famous disasters.

"If there is a God in this world," my father suddenly shouted in Yiddish, pointing to the sky, "may He destroy [the German dirigible]. May no trace or memory remain of it." He punctuated his curse by spitting on the ground. My father was normally a mild-mannered man, and his friends were shocked at his violent outburst. But they nodded grimly, putting their stamp of approval on his vehement declaration.

That evening as our family was having dinner, my mother turned on the radio. Through the crackling static, we heard a reporter broadcasting from Lakehurst. He was describing the intricate maneuvers required to bring Hindenburg down. Suddenly he began to scream that the airship had exploded.

While the landing lines were being tied to the mooring mast, the explosion ripped open the dirigible's tail and the Hindenburg burst into flames. In less than a minute, it was reduced to a mass of twisted, burning metal. Twenty-two crewmen, 13 passengers, and a U.S. Navy ground crewman were dead.

My father was horrified by the radio account. He sat as if paralyzed, the memory of the curse fresh in his mind. Many of the victims were Americans, and he had wished them no harm. He did not say a word all evening and went to bed early.

Take a moment to read the whole story. Quick read. Great snapshot.
If time allows, check out yesterday's link to a NY Times feature with Mort's picture and an audio link in which he talks about blogging.

"...like a snake you cannot tell from looking at him whether he is simply shiny or covered in slime."

Salam Adil quotes Michael Portillo, former MP who has changed his mind about supporting the war in Iraq.

I backed the invasion because I thought the West needed to reassert its power after 10 years during which America had looked irresolute. It had made no effective response to a series of Al-Qaeda attacks that began with a truck bomb in the World Trade Center in 1993. After the decision by George Bush père not to march on Baghdad at the end of the Gulf war in 1991, Saddam provided another example of anti-American defiance that had gone dangerously unpunished.

His comment:

And there you have the reason he, and probably the majority of politicians who gave Bush and Blair the freedom to do what they liked, supported such a disastrous war. The West (or specifically Britain and America) were looking a little weak and the best way that they could come up with to reassert their god-given right to global hegemony was to bomb a defenseless country into the stone-age.

Ouch!

Insurance by the Mile -- an idea whose time has come

Simple. Sensible. Pro-active.
The idea would solve more problems than it would create but It would involve (Gasp!) changing how insurance is done.

The insurance industry will likely oppose any shift, not because they can’t make profits on pay-by-the-mile policies, but rather because they don’t feel like changing what they are doing. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible—in fact, Progressive Auto Insurance has been experimenting with pay-by-the-mile policies, and in southern California, AAA offers a graduated pay-by-the-mile policy that is somewhat like the one I’m proposing.

Dean Baker doesn't look like someone from the lunatic fringe to me. Since the article appears in Harpers I can sense conservative backsides scrooching up already, but the proposal is emminently sensible. Snowballs? Where, you say?

Pay-by-the-mile insurance would have the greatest impact if it were implemented nationally, but since insurance is regulated at the state level, individual states could take action on their own. For example, states could offer a small incentive (a $200 per year tax credit, say) for each pay-by-the-mile insurance policy. Oregon began doing this last year. They are other ways to promote pay-by-the-mile policies, but in some cases states just have to remove obstacles to pay-by-the-mile insurance. State regulators must explicitly approve the type of insurance policies that insurers offer, and in many states current regulations would not even allow pay by the mile policies.

Aside from the environmental benefits, I like this one...

Pay-by-the-mile insurance can also be adjusted to preserve the existing risk-based system. A wreck-prone teenager may have to pay 20 cents per mile for insurance, while a middle-aged parent with a spotless record may pay 5 cents per mile.

H/T 3Quarks

Spitting from a very high horse

This is an example of why I don't follow a lot of highly-regarded opinion shapers.
Amusing.
Very amusing.
Snarky bashing of Jimmy Carter is a lot of fun, isn't it?
I just read a NY Times piece describing how the Secretary of State had to walk on eggs around the boss just to advance a bit of what would be garden-variety diplomacy under any other administration.
Carter had faults, but a hair-trigger impulse was not on the list.

The Gore movie post -- updated again

Found another take on the Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth.
Updated the May 20 post if anyone is interested...

An Inconvenient Truth -- Roger Ebert movie review

My scrappy little post about Al Gore's movie (May 20) is collecting a few updates, including one from Roger Ebert.

Forget he ever ran for office. Consider him a concerned man speaking out on the approaching crisis. "There is no controversy about these facts," he says in the film. "Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero."
...
In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended.

I guess he liked the film.

Killing children in war and other ordinary evils

The recent concern about the Haditha...what are we calling it?...massacre?... alleged killings? murder(s)?...affair?...over-reaction? Whatever...it grates on our sensibilities even to think about it. Some are depicting what happened as another case of a few bad apples. Like Abu Ghraib, you know, but different. Not typical, of course.

Others admit -- and this includes me -- that whether or not such events rare or commonplace, it represents a level of retrograde behavior that can happen to any group of people under the "right" circumstances.

I came across a description of children used by Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq war. I link to this source not to minimize the impact of what happened at Haditha but to illustrate that in the context of hostilities in that part of the world the death and sacrifice of children, though tragic, is not without precedent. In this case children were used by Iran to clear mine fields.

“In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”

This is from an article in New Republic by Matthias Küntzel, whose site I have been tracking for about a year. Posts in English are not frequent, but the site offers an angle to international relations somewhat different from what is found in the English-only media.

This piece is fairly sensationalistic, but so is that misbegotten character the Iranians have put in charge. Less extreme leaders are definitely at work behind the scenes, but given the savage nature of Ahmedinejad anything they do will have to be done in complete secrecy. There is a saying that if you draw a knife on a king you had better kill him. Anything less kills the one drawing the knife. Let us hope that his own people get to him before our own hotheads do. I am sure there are ways to advance that possibility, but I am not sure the notion has any traction in Washington.

One of the peacenik banners of the Sixties proclaimed "War is not healthy for children and other living things." It was usually displayed with the image of a flower or two which appeared to be the work of a child, cut-out pieces of construction paper pasted into a collage. It may have provoked a thought or two, but like the famous peace symbol it was more an irritant than an inspiration. When the juggernaut is rolling, trying to stop it is not what most people want.

The Council on Foreign Relations has a roundup of links about Haditha, Hamandiya (yes, another one) and reactions here and there. It concludes with a reference to My Lai, noting that the effect will not be the same today as My Lai had as the Vietnam war came to an end.

...unlike past military embarrassments, such as My Lai in Vietnam, which were instrumental in tipping the public against the war, Haditha will have "more of a solidifying impact than a shifting effect," predicts CFR Military Fellow Colonel Peter R. Mansoor.

However, Colonel Mansoor adds that the events at Haditha may further damage the U.S. image abroad, particularly in the Muslim world. Incidents like these, which are used by Muslim extremists for propaganda purposes and replayed endlessly on Arabic television, make refurbishing the American image in the Middle East a tough task, as Karen Hughes, Washington's top public diplomacy official, told CFR in May.

Fred Wilson endorses Al Gore

Fred Wilson is a smart venture capitalist. His business is keeping up with trends. He went to a conference where Gore was a guest speaker and came away with his battery charged. Gore's clearly running, and Fred Wilson supports the idea.

I've been thinking a lot about Al Gore in the past month.I believe that he ran in2000 because he was supposed to. He was groomed his entire life to be President. But when it came time for him to run, he didn't really have a "reason to be President" other than the empty wall on his father's home where the pictures of his presidency were supposed to go. That wall is still empty, at least metaphorically.

But the Al Gore I saw last night knows why he must run in 2008. He wants to provide the political leadership that will allow us to deal with the looming ecological crisis. He wants to lead our country, and hopefully the rest of the world, toward a sustainable energy policy. He wants to embrace the power of technology to inform, educate, and provide a platform for political discourse and reason all over the world. He wants to face down the financial corruption of our politcal system. He wants to face down the scourges of terror, genocide, AIDS and other pandemics running rampant in our world. These are the things he cares about. These are the battles he wants to fight.

Al Gore talked last night about where all the Senators were when Robert Byrd spoke to an empty Senate chamber on the eve of the vote to back Bush's war in Iraq. He said they were at cocktail parties all over the country raising money so they can run 30 second spots defending the votes they made.

Al Gore isn't good at that part of the political process. I know. I've raised money for him and he doesn't know who I am. When I shook his hand last night, that was crystal clear. He's not the face to face politician that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are.

And maybe that wil get in the way of him running again. The biggest thing that Al Gore has added to his public persona since 2000 is a self awareness and a self deprecating style. He said last night that, "I am not particularly good at politics". And "I don't like much about politics".

But as Al Gore ended his interview last night with a passioned fiery challenge to everyone in the room, my friend Howard turned to me and said "he's running". I sure hope so. Because I am looking for a leader with a vision and Al Gore has it in spades now.

Comments are not all that supportive. I am undecided myself. For me the debate is more important than the candidates because it reflects the political will and how it is being orchestrated by leadership, both incumbents and challengers. And yes, the challengers are very much a part of leadership. Politicians have learned that using the right language is more important to getting elected than believing what you say. It is for that reason that I have such a jaundiced view of electoral politics.

In the case of Al Gore the issue is global warming. Just as George Bush has tied his wagon to the war in Iraq, Gore is hitching his to a vision of environmental salvation which by proxy can be just about anything you want it to be.

Critics try to make him look like a fool because global warming has been going on a lot longer than modern oil refining. The history of archaeology is filled with past cycles of warming and cooling that have been going on for thousands of years -- ice ages, frozen mastadons and all that.

Nevertheless there is still no compelling argument to ignore environmental concerns. Just because we are all gonna die anyway is no reason to ignore the benefits of diet, exercise and not smoking. Those who would criticise Gore because he is in favor of preserving the environment should think very hard about what they are really saying.

Here's a little exercise for the reader. Lindsay Beyerstein points out that the vulture population in India has been decimated by pharmaceutical additives in the food chain. this is in India, remember, not North America.
Question: Which candidate or candidates running for office would be most responsive to such a problem?
Is this important? If not, then why not?
Am I the only one who thinks that what happens in India could have implications for North America?
Just saying.

Krista Tippett -- Speaking of Faith

We take a citizen off the street of Minneapolis, and we turn them into a warrior, a person who, upon demand, without a split-second hesitation will point a weapon at another human being and shoot them until they don't get up again. You don't just easily train people to do that. That is an amazing transformation. It takes six months to get a person ready to do that, and then we put them in combat for 12 months. Then, in 300 hours, we can have them from their last mission back on the street in Minneapolis in their civilian clothes. There's a problem there. The active duty doesn't do that. They bring their soldiers back to bases, they have a transition period, they have programs, they watch their soldiers. We just release them. And how do you reverse from warrior back to citizen in 300 hours? It can't be done, and it's not being done well around the country.

Major John Morris is being interviewed by Krista Tippett on her program Speaking of Faith. The Gulf War veteran and Marine chaplain is her guest in a program titled The Soul of War.
It is about an hour long. I listened on the radio last night and was impressed.

Couple of points...

I had not thought about how regular troops are trained and deployed differently from guardsmen. In the case of guardsmen the mission is longer with little in the way of "decompression." Also, the "volunteer" army is being marketed as being "more professional." I think there are arguments to be made against that point, particularly with the ongoing recruitment of people less thant twenty-five years old, but that is just my view.

And there ARE athiests in foxholes, along with a lot of others.

Maj. Morris: It's not true. There are atheists in foxholes. Stephen Mansfield's written a great book called The Faith of the American Soldier, and he chronicles what he saw in Iraq same time I was there. I think he got it very, very well.

What I saw in Iraq, and I ended up my tour of duty in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But what I saw in my combat experience, and I've seen through my 22 years, is on the battlefield, using crude numbers, a third of the soldiers were men and women of faith, growing in their faith or coming to a new understanding of faith. A third of the soldiers were indifferent or fatalistic. And that's — that religion on the battlefield bears a lot of looking at. The other third were either indifferent or jettisoning their faith. And many would say to me, very bluntly, "I've lost my faith. I saw my buddy get blown away," or "I was involved in a firefight that killed innocent people, and if there's a good God, He wouldn't let that to happen. So I do not want to believe anymore."

The guys I worried about that were fatalistic were people who had really hardened in their soul. And they had what I would call the thousand-yard stare, the classic combat look of a fatigued soldier. And they were droning through each day not thinking too far ahead and not being retrospectful. To look ahead meant you had to have hope for future. To look within meant you had to deal with the pain and the challenge. Too much energy to expend that — you know, to do that, so they wouldn't do that. And they had seen so much chaos — and war is chaos. You could do everything right and still die, and you see that on a regular basis. So that's so counter to American philosophy where the good guys win in the end, and if you do everything right, you're rewarded.

Ms. Tippett: I think it's the movie philosophy.

Maj. Morris: Sure, and here, you know, a guy that's barefoot with an AK-47 can kill the best and the bravest soldier. Or a mortar round can fire inexplicably into your PX and kill innocent people. It's chaotic, and that chaos seems to so harden people into saying, "I can't think about transcendent things. Nobody's in control. The only thing I can control is the space around me right now. And whatever is, is; and whatever will be, will be. And I'm not going to worry about it, so don't bother me with anything transcendent or eternal."

Now, the thing that really throws a wrench into all of this is being shot at by people who were praying a few minutes earlier in a sacred place and who may be shooting you out of that sacred place. That really hardens some people to say, "I don't know what kind of god you all are talking about, but I don't want to have anything to do with any kind of god that uses the sacred to condone this. And so I don't want to deal with any of you people that have anything to do with religion, because you guys are causing the wars of the world today."

So you meet a real mix, just like you do on any street in America, the American military's no different. Everything from the atheist to the devout Orthodox Jew to the Wiccan to the Pagan to everything in between, it's all there.

"...at the age of 86 clearly hasn't lost grip of his moral compass."

THE DRAMATIC news early yesterday that Australian mountain climber LincolnHall has survived after being pronounced dead at 8700 metres while climbing down from the summit of Mount Everest is wonderful. But it also brings into stark relief the horror of British climber David Sharp's lonely death a few days earlier.

The 34-year-old engineer was passed by as many as 40 climbers, determined to reach the summit, as he lay dying under a rock shelf from a lack of oxygen.
...
Rather than being hailed a hero for climbing the world's highest mountainon prosthetic legs, Inglis [one of the climbers who passed the dying man] has borne the brunt of public criticism for Sharp's neglect, not least from Everest pioneer and fellow Kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary, who at the age of 86 clearly hasn't lost grip of his moral compass.

"I haven't seen any evidence so far that this chap hiding under a rock was in a hopeless condition," Hillary told Television New Zealand last week.

"If he'd been given a little bit of oxygen and helped down, he might still be alive.

"I don't think it matters a damn if he was from another party, if he was Swiss or from Timbuktu or whatever. He was a human being, and we would regard it as our duty to get him back to safety."

No comment needed.
LINK to SMH article. H/T Tom McMahon

Addendum, June 3

Tom Smith comments at The Right Coast, this and a lot more. Go read.

No doubt we will hear the usual, oh mountaineering is just so complex and difficult that if you were not there you cannot possibly judge anybody who climbed by. Baloney. Experienced mountaineers are condemning this callous, inhuman behavior, as well they should. But it will go on until somebody with clout takes action. It is long overdue for prestigious climbing organizations to take a stand and call for some sort of minimal code of behavior among climbers on Everest in terms of rendering aid on big mountains. Except that it has its hands full with a civil war, I don't think it would be going too far for the government of Nepal to simply suspend all climbing of Everest until this is sorted out. I don't think doing so would be any more problematic than a municipality banning diving from a railroad bridge from which teenagers habitually managed to kill themselves. That is one of the things governments are for -- to ban affronts to decency.

Are Iraqi Christians Canaries in a Coal Mine?

(Just in time for Memorial Day Dr. Leon Hadar put together an excellent post that has stuck in my mind for a week, now. I wanted to link to it at the time, but didn't want to launch yet another negative piece about war so close to the national holiday. My holiday post was an attempt to show respect for warriors and prompt reflective thoughts about the idea of war -- not just one war, but wars generally. I didn't note much in the way of national reflections, but I did my part anyway.)

Syria: The Promised Land? is the post title, noting how Syria seems to have morphed from one of the dark players on the battlefield for "hearts and minds" into a more benign entity, easing into a less odious role as a repository for Iraqi refugees. Dr. Hadar accurately uses the word refugees. That's what we call those fleeing a place so threatening to their life and safety they feel compelled to relocate. Syria observer Josh Landis makes the point in two different papers, and Lawrence Kaplan, writing in New Republic, mentioned that Christians have become part of the exodus.

I can't fault him for this acid observation:

So...Let's see... We "liberated" Iraq in order to transform it into a model of political and economic freedom that could bring about similar changes in neighboring Syria which was (at one point) targeted for "regime change" by the Bush Administration. And now... members of Iraq's middle class and Christian communities, the most westernized, educated and professional segments of Iraq's population are fleeing to... Syria? All of which gives a new meaning to "Mission Accomplished."

Ouch!

All of this is to point to Hadar's article Measuring the Arab World: Check the Christian Barometer. After noting that Christian communities have been living in the country for centuries, thanks to the blooming of what passes for "democracy" they are now the object of persecution that they are leaving their homes for other, safer destinations. This exodus is more than a footnote to a larger theme. It is, in fact, an indicator that the larger theme may be aking a very different direction from what was expected.

No matter how one approaches the issue, assessing movement towards reform in the Middle East by considering just free elections, market reforms or even the adoption of constitutions and bills of rights does not provide a full picture. After all, these steps amount mostly to political and legal arrangements — and could be swiftly reversed by a new government.

So here is my idea: Why don't we measure progress towards freedom in the Middle East focusing on the status of an integral element of the region's political and social-demographic environment — its large Christian minorities?

Most of these people are highly educated and multilingual, have studied and worked in the Europe and North America — where they also have a large diaspora. The Christians of the Middle East also tend to be more secular and liberal than the surrounding Muslim majority.

To put it differently, common sense — backed by statistical and anecdotal evidence — provides you with this surprising but dependable rule of thumb.

As the Middle East becomes more free and prosperous, linked to the west and hospitable to minorities and women, the higher is the probability that the Christians will continue to live in and even return from abroad to countries like Lebanon, Egypt or Syria.

And vice versa, if the Christians sense that things are getting worse, that the Arab country they live in is losing its commitment to political, economic and religious freedom, they would tend emigrate from the Middle East.

This is a provocative and inciteful article. Dr. Hadar is onto something.