In Your Face, Western World!

This article on Yahoo describes an art exhibit in Iran with Holocaust cartoons. Yup, Holocaust cartoons. You may remember that the head of Iran has called the Holocaust "a myth".

"This is a test of the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries," said Masoud Shojai-Tabatabai, head of the Cartoon House which helped organize the exhibition, as he stood next to the Statue of Liberty drawing [a picture of the Statue of Liberty with a Holocaust book giving the Nazi salute].

Iran's best-selling newspaper Hamshahri in February launched a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust in retaliation for the September publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish and other European newspapers.

Uh-huh. It's exactly the same. Look at all the riots we're having. Isn't it just amazing?

Born With a Pen in Her Hand

Yup, that's MY MOM right there, featured in a Columbus Dispatch article about her recent total SWEEP of the World Handwriting Contest.

"She was the best we saw," said Kate Gladstone, the director of the New York-based advocacy group Handwriting for Humanity. "She knows it as if she were born with a pen in her hand.

"Given what I know of Ann, if I could pick but one individual to write handwriting books for teaching the world, it would be her."

This makes it two times in a row, which comes as absolutely no surprise to Dad or myself, but we're very proud. Way to go, Mom!

Community Theatre: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

I found the article about this on Yahoo! News, written by AP correspondent Duncan Mansfield. What I should was particularly interesting was this paragraph (emphasis mine):

On Dec. 2, investigators formally interviewed Copas and asked if he understood the military's policy on homosexuals, if he had any close acquaintances who were gay, and if he was involved in community theater. He answered affirmatively.

Ummmm...what? Is the military seriously using involvement in theatre as an "indicator" of homosexuality?

I'm the daughter of the director of the Lawrence & Lee Theatre Research Institute. I like to act and have considered, several times, getting involved in local theatre (on shore duty, of course). I find it ridiculous to think that this might be a threat to my military career.

I wrote AP's feedback about it, asking them to clarify please and follow up! but I doubt I'll get a useful answer. I'll post any response I get here.

Edited 03AUG06: My message bounced: "Router: Failed to connect to SMTP host ROAM.AP.ORG because : Server not responding" I wonder if their server is in LA or some other heat-affected region. I'll try again.

Why does this webpage look weird?

Apologies, all, for the lack of graphics and, well, more-than-basic functionality. My homepage's server, provided by StartLogic, is down due to the recurring power outages in LA, which in turn are due to the heat.

Frankly, I don't really care about my server; they can keep it off 'til it's safe. What's really important is that a lot of people are placed in danger when the air-conditioning goes off and it's that hot. When the graphics come back, please be happy, because it means that a lot of people who would otherwise be in mortal peril probably aren't anymore.

When Real Horror Gets Cute

Brad makes a good point in a comment he made on my post on pirates.

There are many stories and archetypes in our culture- even the culture that we realy to our kids- that are based on real, truly horrifying, events past.

Thinking about it, I've found it weird that there's some sort of cultural "Statute of Limitations" on these events that allows them to turn from horrifying tales of woe into gripping yarns.

I think that's a really interesting point, and I have to agree: after all, this guy was a real horror; I mean, there's still a lot of debate on the scope of his executions, but I would not call this guy someone like whom I'd like to dress at a party. Then you've got this young lass -- another cute costume, but the Vikings were a source of real terror. A major development in shipbuilding technology, the "castle" (as in fore- and sterncastles) was developed in the 11th and 12th Centuries to let archers shoot down into longboats -- in otherwords, to develop a sea-going fort. This wasn't done because the Vikings were handing out sexy party favors.

So how long is the "Statue of Limitations", and what/who does it cover? Fifty years haven't cleared the way for this kind of costume (thank the gods) and I wonder if any amount of time will. Haven't seen a "Pol Pot" costume either (and I hope we don't).

Most of the recent examples of Really Bad People who show up in costumes and such (at least in the US) are 30's Gansters and Gangsters' Girls (and people like Bonny and Clyde), as well as the Cowboys and Indians of whom Brad spoke. In many cases, I think that's an example of America's love for those who "rebel" against authority; but gosh, I wish less murderers were celebrated. Where are the Sojourner Truth costumes? The Martin Luther King Jr. costumes? The Gandhi costumes? Well, of course, those people are boring because they never killed people, right? Does it maybe have to do with some perverse admiration for people who are so powerful, so unbound by the laws that constrain normal folks like you and me, and who violate this (for most civilized folk) terrible taboo of actually taking another person's life? I mean, we're happy that they're brought to justice, but isn't there some awful little thrill when we add up the kill count in hushed and reverent tones, and seem (dare I say) a little disappointed if the number isn't high? It's not really a very pleasant thing to contemplate.

I wanted to make a special note about reenactors, whom I think are in a different class. I think that most people who reenact can't be doing it just because they think it's "cool". Anyone who runs around tick-infested fields in whole-body-covering wool costumes for days (and for battles like Gettysburg, in mid-summer) is not doing it just because it's "cool". And although (drat!) I didn't get to see it, I think there's a real value in having people see a reenactment, especially if one could actually get an accurate number of reenactors to show up. Can you imagine the impact of seeing (and hearing) tens of thousands of dead bodies and screaming wounded on a field? All you'd need is to come up with a "reenactment scent" and the horror would be fresh for a new generation. Would the smell cut down the "secret thrill" at the number of dead?

That's what we need to counter TV and movie violence: accurate smells. That'll shut that stuff down quick.

ETA: Okay, so maybe the statue of limitations against Nazi "cuteness" has passed after all...

Pirates

Just went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest" last week; it was great fun. Yesterday, we went to the Mariners' Museum in Newport News and, of course (like practically every museum around here) there was an exhibit about pirates. It was aimed towards kids, mostly, and very cute, but one very cool part of it (and unfortunately rather small) talked about modern day pirates. There was a framed display of current models of radios and an AK-47 as an example of the pirate's modern sword. There was also a computer screen set up to display the International Chamber of Commerce's Weekly Piracy Report. It's a fascinating glimpse (via rather dry reports, I'm afraid) into current examples of piracy, which are anything but the romantic yarns spun by popular culture.

Math

When I was in college (too many years ago to mention), I ran across an excellent book: Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, by Douglas R. Hofstadter. It's a collection of essays Dr. Hofstadter, a (or rather, as I think of him, the) Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science, wrote for the magazine Scientific American. This book should be a part of everyone's library; it is a fascinating collection of explorations into the way humans think, what creativity is, and the magic of music and math (yes, I did just say "the magic of...math"). Of the many articles that grabbed me, one of them is titled "On Number Numbness". In it, Dr. Hofstadter talks about very large (and very small) numbers, and how difficult it is for people to conceptualize them. In his discussion of trying to comprehend large numbers, he refers to a conceptual practice called chunking, in which you create a unit of something easy to comprehend, then describe very large numbers in terms of numbers of that unit. For example, while discussing the fact that at the time of his writing (he wrote the book during the Cold War), there were enough nuclear weapons in the world to equate to 25,000 megatons of TNT. That's another way of saying 25,000,000 tons (or 50,000,000,000 pounds). He pointed out that one ton (just 2,000 pounds!) was estimated to have been the amount that brought down the Marine barracks in Beirut (241 people killed), and so further estimated that ten tons, well-placed, could be expected to kill about 2,400 people.

Last summer when I visited Paris and climbed the butte of Montmartre, from the top of which, at the food of the Sacré Coeur, one has a beautiful view of all of Paris spread out below. I couldn't refrain from ruining my two friends' enjoyment of this splendid panorama by saying "Hmm... I bet one or two nicely placed megatons would take care of all of this."

He then points out: "Now if you just say to yourself 'one megaton equals Paris's doom' (or some suitable equivalent), then I think that the phrase '25,000 megatons' will become as vivid as the long string of zeros--in fact, probably more vivid."

This got me thinking. At the time I read his article, our deficit was 1 trillion dollars. I knew that that was a lot, but how much was it really? I broke it down and it turned out that you could buy a very nice $4,100 laptop for every man, woman and child in the United States (at that time, the population was 243 or so million people). Today, our population is just short of 300 million, but the prices have come down, so that a trillion dollars could roughly pick you up something like one of these $3,500 babies for everyone in the US.

I bring up all of this business about number numbness because last weekend was the 143rd anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. My husband and I went up there (by way of Manassas, stopping by Antietam on the way back home) and spent the weekend walking around. The big reenactment was, alas, postponed until this upcoming weekend, but we still got to see some reenactors and, of course, nothing beats just being able to explore. This is the second time I've been there (I first went there with friends James and Nathan) and the first time for my husband, Pat. A couple of things got me: one was the fact that many monuments (and, in fact, the Lincoln's Gettysburg Address) say things like "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here", and it's depressing to think that most Americans are aware of the Gettysburg address but a staggeringly large number can't even tell you in which century the Civil War occured, much less what happened. The other was the sheer scale of the war's effect on the population, especially in the number of people who died. The most common rough number I can find from various sources is around 620,000 deaths (from the low end of about 360,000 to the high end of 1 million). The park ranger at Antietam said that 2% of the total population (about 34.3 million people) died in the Civil War. That's a pretty big number. What does it really mean?

The Ohio section of Gettysburg National Cemetary:

Thank You, Sweet Buckeyes

I'm a big believer in walking the ground. Pat and I walked Pickett's Charge (something I'd done with James & Nathan) in order to get a real feeling for the distance. It doesn't seem far until you walk it and imagine being shot up by cannon the whole totally-no-cover-anywhere way. In the same way, I think that if you're going to think about large numbers that have to do with profoundly emotional events, you should relate them to profoundly emotional events you have personally experienced. September 11th was pretty emotional for me, so I decided to figure out the Civil War in units of "September 11" -- about 3,000 people dead, an almost too-large number by itself, but one I can still (horrifyingly) grasp.

First, I think the key number about the Civil War is this: 2% of the population. If we lost 2% of our population (300 million), how many would that be? That'd be 6 million people. How many September 11ths would we have to have to lose 6 million people? Let's see: 6x10⁶ divided by 3x10³ = 2x10³. That's 2,000. There are 365 days in a year (ignoring the occassional leap year, since we're estimating). Two thousand divided by 365 is about 5.5. In other words, 9/11 would have to happen every day for five and a half years in order to lose an equivalent of the population today as was lost during the Civil War. That's mind-boggling by itself. Can you imagine what that would be like? Over the three days of Gettysburg, about 50,000 people were lost, which was about .15% of the total population at that time. Today's equivalent: 450,000 people. That's one-hundred fifty 9/11's. And at Antietam, a one-day battle, about 23,000 people were lost (.07% of the population). Today's equivalent: about 210,000--seventy 9/11's in one day. So far in the Iraq war, about 2,500 soldiers have been killed. When Sedgwick's division barrelled into the West Woods near Antietam Creek to attack the retreating Confederates, he found himself enveloped on three sides and lost almost that whole number in ten minutes.

I don't say all of this to make light of the number of people who died in 9/11, or of the number of soldiers killed in Iraq. Instead, I mean to really understand, on this anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, what the scope of the Civil War was by relating it to something that has affected me personally and deeply. Even when chunking those numbers down, they are still incredible. This was one of the heavier prices of union, without which the US would not be where (or how) it is today, and it is something that should take some deep thought. For all of its faults (and there are always many), I think that the US is unique in the history of the world; I am glad to be here, and very mindful of the freedoms that I both enjoy and defend. Walking that ground had a profound effect on me. But the math did even more.

Girls as Superheroes

James wrote an article a couple of days ago about superheroes -- specifically, which one he'd choose to be. He says:

In this post I explored how power fantasies are different for boys and girls. Girls, I said, dream of being The Princess while boys imagine themselves to be a superhero of some kind.

Not true for me -- I'd always dreamed of being a superhero, and never dreamed of being a Princess.

Neither, apparently, did Aubrey Matthews. The Idaho Statesman has a report about Aubrey's "Wish" as a grantee of the Make-a-Wish Foundation: she wanted to be a superhero for a day.

"We have four categories of wishes, and 'I Wish to Be' is the most rare," Executive Director Marcia Karakas said.

This is the first time in at least 10 years that a "Be" wish has been received in the Idaho office, which serves the state's lower 35 counties

Aubrey designed her own costume ("Star") and the costumes of fellow crimefighters, including "Lion Lady", "House Lifter", "Sky Girl", and others. She received her kick-off call from none other than Adam West and was off on the hunt after nefarious supervillian "Black" (the figure from Neighborhood Watch signs), who'd stolen the "Golden Star" from the Idaho Historical Museum. The crime had been pinned on ferrets at the zoo, but Star knew better. On the way to catching her man, she rescued citizens from a "smoking" building and saved someone from drowning in the ParkCenter Pond. What is absolutely mind-boggling cool about this whole thing -- beyond the fact that she imagined all of this and did all of the designs, was the sheer SCALE of the whole project:

Wish partner Windermere Real Estate had 100 percent participation from its 150 employees at two Boise offices.

Aubrey's wish blossomed to include the Idaho Historical Museum, Boise State University, Saint Alphonsus Life Flight, Fairly Reliable Bob's, Gowen Field Fire and Rescue, Zoo Boise, the mayor's office, and the city's police, fire and parks departments.

I'm thinking that I really, really like Boise now. EXCELSIOR!

Oh, Canada!

Excellent post by James over at the Chicago Boyz blog, about the recent arrest of 17 suspected terrorists in Canada. These guys had amassed 3 tons of ammonium nitrate; according to a Toronto Star article quoted by James:

"If I can put this in context for you," [said RCMP assistant commissioner Mike McDonell.] "The 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one tonne of ammonium nitrate."

Check it out.

Not just for Cheese Anymore

I remember James telling me about an television ad created by the National Cheese Council (we're very big on food product councils here in the US). It showed a picture of the moon, and said something like: "in 1969, man went to the moon and discovered it was not made of cheese." [pause] "We haven't been back since." I remember seeing it. It depressed James, he said -- he remembered, as a kid, watching the first moon landing and keeping fascinated track of the landings until they ended in 1972, and like many people wishes he could go up there. Like many people, too, I think he was hoping that by this year, there'd be commercial flights to the moon, and it's depressing to think that we haven't even been able to go up there vicariously through someone else, since no one's gone.

Well, check out this news item from Yahoo News:

NASA's outlook for the future calls for humans to dig in their heels on the Moon as early as 2015 and no later than 2020.

Yes! The article talks about a lot of new technology that will have to be developed. One of the things that has always blown my mind is the level of tech we had when we went there in the first place - someone told me that the computers were the equivalent of a TRS-80. My Dad had one of those in the office. He decided not to spend the extra expense for the floppy-disk drive and had a tape (as in, "cassette") drive. To save data, you had to press "play" and "record" at the same time. Yes. Really. I remember the scenes in "Apollo 13", where the scientists on the ground are furiously working their slide rules in order to recalculate information for the astronauts in trouble up in space. Slide rules. And it worked.

Bob Park, a scientist who writes a really good (and very scathing) weekly summary of science-related news, doesn't like the idea of manned missions to Mars and I gather he probably won't like this one either. He does have a point in that it's far more cost-effective, and safer, to send robots. But I still think there should be people going, as much as that adds to the already incredible expense: 1) because I think that we should, as a species, leave the solar system and explore (I'm a hopeless Star Trek fan) and 2) because often there's a great benefit by having a human there. We're capable of an intuitive type of inspiration that I think could make for some amazing discoveries if not limited by the narrow field-of-view and range of a robot. We just need to go there and look around. Perhaps I'm hopeless.

I think we'll make it there in about 2022, adjusting for the usual governmental bloat & delay. If we were in a race with another country, we could do it in 2015. (Hello, China, wanna race?)

Anyway: to you folks, of whatever nationality, who'll spring off of the ISS and go to the moon: excelsior!

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day in the US. I wanted to take the time to write a little about a memorial I attended last Friday.

I'm in a new Navy school now and the schoolhouse is part of the Navy's "Submarine Learning Facility". So we, as students, were required to go to a WWII submarine memorial ceremony. There was much whining and moaning about it. But not from me.

There were a lot of veterans there. I sat next to a very nice retired gentleman who was posted in the USS Skate, being honored that day by being inducted into the Norfolk Submarine Hall of Fame. The Skate was the first US nuclear submarine powered by what was going to be the "submarine fleet reactor" and, like all SSNs during the Cold War era, did some really scary things. She was the first US submarine to actually come up through the ice in the Arctic, both in the summer and the winter. The guest speaker was an engineering officer aboard her and told us some good stories about those days.

But the part of the ceremony that I'll always remember was the roll call. It's a tradition of the US Submarine Veterans of WWII to have a roll call of all of the submarines lost in WWII (and the Thresher and Scorpion) read out. Two active duty submariners read the roll: one said the name, and the other read out its disposition. "All hands lost." "All hands lost." "All hands lost." Over and over and over. With each disposition, another sailor rang a bell, and two of the wives of the veterans took a model submarine out of an array of them displayed on a table, until there were no more.

Click on any of the links below to see a picture of the ship and to read more info.

USS SEA LION (SS-195)	USS S-36 (SS141)
USS S-26 (SS131)	USS SHARK I (SS-174)
USS PERCH (SS-176)	USS S-27 (SS132)
USS GRUNION (SS-216)	USS S-39 (SS-144)
USS ARGONAUT(SS-166)	USS AMBERJACK (SS-219)
USS GRAMPUS (SS-207)	USS TRITON (SS-201)
USS PICKEREL (SS-177)	USS GRENADIER (SS-210)
USS RUNNER (SS-275)	USS R-12 (SS-89)
USS POMPANO (SS-181)	USS GRAYLING (SS-209)
USS CISCO (SS-290)	USS S-44 (SS-155)
USS WAHOO (SS-238)	USS DORADO (SS-248)
USS CORVINA (SS-226)	USS SCULPIN (SS-191)
USS CAPELIN (SS-289)	USS SCORPION (SS-278)
USS GRAYBACK (SS-208)	USS TROUT (SS-202)
USS TULLIBEE (SS-284)	USS GUDGEON (SS-211)
USS HERRING (SS-233)	USS GOLET (SS-361)
USS S-28 (SS-133)	USS ROBALO (SS-273)
USS FLIER (SS-250)	USS HARDER (SS-257)
USS SEAWOLF (SS-197)	USS ESCOLAR (SS-294)
USS DARTER (SS-227)	USS SHARK II (SS-314)
USS TANG (SS-306)	USS ALBACORE (SS-218)
USS GROWLER (SS-215)	USS SCAMP (SS-277)
USS SWORDFISH (SS-193)	USS BARBEL (SS-316)
USS KETE (SS-369)	USS TRIGGER (SS-237)
USS SNOOK (SS-279)	USS LAGARTO (SS-371)
USS BONEFISH (SS-223)	USS BULLHEAD (SS332)

You can also read about the USS Thresher or the USS Scorpion; I highly recommend John P. Craven's "The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea ", which has a riveting account of the attempt to find the Scorpion and determine what had happened to her.

But I digress. The most profound moment came after this roll, when the speakers started talking about rememberance. It was very important to them, urgent even.

It suddenly struck me: what if there's no afterlife? I mean, it's all a matter of faith, isn't it? There's no proof, just (at best) anecdotes. What if, when you die, you just die, and there's nothing more? And the memorial became all that more deep and critical: all those men, "on eternal patrol", and all the other ones who made it back and passed away after -- this memorial was their eternity.

So if you get roped into going to one of these things, don't grumble or moan. Listen. Pay attention. Understand the stories being told. If any name is said, whisper it back. Like it says on the veterans' website: "a man is not dead until he is forgotten."

Brad Has Some Good Points

I was going to post this in the comments section, but then it, well, got too long. If you haven't seen the comments that my friend Brad Hoehne left, you should check them out. My response:

[ Brad writes: ] I've just finished scanning the BBC website's coverage of this tragedy, and can't find anything that would merit a sarcastic jab. It seems pretty neutral to me.

Oh, the BBC story wasn't what I was jabbing at at all (by being sarcastic). I thought it was a pretty level delivery of news. I suppose I was just foreseeing a knee-jerk anti-gun reaction to the news that this kid had gotten the firearm from his (cop) grandfather when I said "I guess that means that cops shouldn't have handguns."

It is a debatable point whether or not guns lead to increased or more deadly violence in our culture- and perhaps there's a taint of that that in the overall coverage (I'm uncertain, but the fact that Candada has more guns per capita and less gun deaths would imply that it is not guns, but something else, that is at the heart of the problem.)

I agree with you. I think that it is too simplistic to say that having a large number of guns automatically means having more violence, and that having fewer guns automatically means less violence. I believe that cultural values have a LOT to do with it: look at Switzerland, which high levels of gun ownership and low levels of crime, and look at Japan, with low levels of gun ownership and low levels of crime. Or Britain, with low levels of gun ownership and high levels of crime. There is much, much, much more going on here than a simple guns = violence equation.

I think it's even more difficult, in the US, to talk about culture and cultural values, because we aren't just one culture. This isn't going to come out very well, I warn you in advance -- the best I can do is refer you to Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age", in which he talks about culture as "shared set of values", which doesn't necessarily have to do with racial or ethnic or historical backgrounds. It's a much broader interpretation of the term "culture" than we usually use. In "Diamond Age", world governments have fractured into franchised "countries", and there are several very powerful political entities known as "phyles" which are based on shared values (and sometimes, but not necessarily) there's an ethnic component. For example, "New Atlantis" is a tech-savvy group which takes its values (and fashion sense, and decor, etc) from Victorian-era England.

The reason why I bring this up is because I -- woefully uneducated in social sciences, mind you, so I am no kind of expert -- could easily point to several different "cultures" in the US who have different definitions of "success", both personal and cultural, and acceptance of the means to same, and opinions regarding the use of violence and the need for laws. There is an inner-city culture, not limited to race or gender, that values the acclimation of stuff ("bling") above all else. You are not successful unless you have snow-white shoes, a fabulously expensive car, and enough gold to ruin an economy hanging around your neck, as well as a large group of hangers-on. And it's perfectly okay to steal, sell drugs, or otherwise break the law to be successful, as long as you're not caught (and even if you're caught, that too is a status symbol). Violence is acceptable, because it shows you're a tough badass, and everyone NEEDS to know what an absolute badass you are. There is the culture of my parents, which is middle-class college-professor-type culture, which holds that personal success is very important, but that it isn't necessarily tied to having a large amount of stuff and/or money (although that certainly would be nice); breaking the law is not acceptable here (the rule is: be successful within the framework), and it would RUIN one's career to be caught breaking the law. Adherence to violence or value of material goods isn't related to the amount of money you have, either; there are several "cultures" (to use the word loosely) which values earning your own way, within the law, no matter what (the first thing that springs to mind are certain hardscrabble Appalacian cultures who are poor, but self-reliant and proud).

Anyway, my ultimate point is this: violence against persons, and the willingness to commit same, is a factor of cultural, personal, and family values towards these questions

1. how much does that culture, person, and/or family value the life of another human being?
2. What is the relative worth of that value as compared to the value of success?

Guns make the application of these values much, much easier in every way: if you do not value human life and view violence as an acceptable way to gain and show success, then guns make it much easier to be successful. Alternately and even more importantly, I think, that if you value life and believe that a measure of success is the ability to defend life and deter violence, guns make it much easier too. Which is why I think that cops should NEVER be without guns, nor law-abiding citizens, either.

For what it's worth (not that you suggested this, 'cause you didn't), but I'm not sure it's useful to use a case such as the Red Lake case to determine widespread firearms policy (it just seems that a clarion call goes up every time something like this happens, and I agree with you: it seems odd, though I am thankful for that, that it doesn't happen more). Anyway, as the news stories come out, it becomes much more evident how very troubled this young man was, and the rather extraordinary circumstances he was in. Not completely uncommon, but unusual: it would not be beneficial, I think, to create policy regarding guns around him. I recall reading a news article (sadly, I don't remember where) about other cases where similar rampages were planned, but stopped, because students knew about it and spoke up. The point of the article was that in every single incident like Columbine and Red Lake, someone -- usually multiple someones -- knew that it was going to happen, and didn't speak up for various reasons: fear of being "a snitch", or fear of getting too involved in a student's home life, for example. The article supports what many teachers in the articles suggested: that it is more important to change the school's cultural values that discourage people from speaking up and getting involved than it is to come up with more bandaid measures such as banning guns. Treat the cause, they say, not the symptom, and I think that's a good idea.

My take is that well known movies describing similar events (like "if..." or "The Basketball Diaries") didn't evince a similar response because they weren't real. A real event, taken seriously by the media, and drilled into kids heads by our culture, has far more import.

I think that this is a very interesting, and very good point. These events are real, are taken very seriously, and get an incredible amount of attention. Just the panacea for a kid who can't get the attention he feels he deserves otherwise.

Whoa!

Whoa! It's been more than a month! Ach, I can hear the crickets...cricketing. But I just had to post a comment, a thought, regarding a BBC article about the Red Lake school shooting:

Weise first used a .22-calibre weapon to kill his grandfather, veteran police sergeant Daryl Lussier and his companion Michelle Sigana, at their home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, FBI special agent Michael Tadman told reporters.

He then stole his grandfather's police gunbelt and bullet-proof vest, and at least another two weapons - a handgun and a shotgun - before driving to the school in his grandfather's police car.

I guess that means that cops shouldn't have handguns. <-- this is sarcastic! I really am (and this is not sarcastic) sad that those children were killed, and I am sad that neither I nor James were there. I've been going through Anti-terrorism/Force-protection ("AT/FP") training on the ship, and it makes me wonder if we need to start some kind of program for the school. Or maybe someone needs to stand watch. I would.

More Excuses For Not Blogging

Looks like I won't be regularly blogging for a while -- I'm moving, see, and I have to pack up all my stuff.

Ever notice how you figure, "I should be okay with x boxes", and then it turns out you need at least 2x boxes?

I bought a shredder. That might help. So far, the clothes boxes outnumber the book boxes, but I figure that's only because clothes tend to be more bulky than books.

Anyway, James linked to a neat website yesterday, The Oops List, and I noticed that they had some pictures of the USS San Francisco. That's the sub that ran into an underwater mountain going at about 40 knots recently.

Pic 1
Pic 2

That is some impressive damage. KUAM 8 News had a nice article about MM2(SW) Joseph Allen Ashley, who died due to head injuries.

In unrelated news, we got our new cammies and will start wearing them tomorrow. Gotta go shine my new boots now.

A pity I couldn't wear 'em last week -- we went into the sonar dome on the McFaul to x-ray it, and it would have been a GREAT stress-test of the new uniforms to wear them. It's very wet and dirty down there. I'll have pictures as soon as I can find the computer cabling for my camera.

Why Not Be Creative When You Go?

From the BBC, a picture-album article about a craftsman in Accra, Ghana, who makes some very interesting custom coffins for people. This guy should get in with Novica, he'd make some decent money selling to an international market. If you wanted to find someone doing custom coffins stateside, you could go with Outhouse Charlie -- alas, his website isn't up yet, so there are no examples of his work. Bet you he could make you some mad crazy wooden or fiberglass coffins, though...

@#$@^% AWESOME!

Okay, okay. So I'm drunk on two-water--well, one-water--grog. I admit it. But Firefly is AWESOME. I remember, while reading critical reviews of science-fiction, about the relationship between westerns and science-fictions. In particular, Star Trek was supposed to be some great Space Western. Well, the folks who did Firefly really took the whole western theme to heart. Firefly IS a space western, with the guns and the accents and the music and EVERYTHING, mixed in with great humor. And oh, how I weep that it was on Fox, the people who never advertise anything decent (Millenium and Space Above and Beyond springing to mind) and then cancelling it after a small number of episodes if the bloody advertiser response is not great enough, damn their soullless hearts. 'Cause I went and bought Firefly and have just watched the first episode and MY GOD, it's WONDERFUL. Go thou forth and buy it, it's incredible!

"Hathcock". "Hancock". Coincidence?

Blackfive, from whose blog I got the information about the teddy bear drive, also has a link to an article about a Marine Corps sniper who took out an insurgent from 1,050 yards away. Magic most grim & deadly.

Cookies

The Bonhomme Richard is hard at work.

In support of Operation Unified Assistance, multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (BHR) (LHD 6) delivered more than 7,000 pounds of humanitarian assistance Jan. 7 to disaster stricken areas of Sumatra, including Banda Aceh and Blagpidie.

There's a nice picture at the site of U.S. Marines helping to pack huge crates of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for the victims of the tsunamis. My favorite part of the article is this:

To uplift the spirits of the local population in the hard hit Banda Aceh area, BHR’s culinary specialists worked around the clock Jan. 6, with all ovens full speed ahead, to bake more than 22,400 cookies for the people around northern Sumatra.

This is awesome -- not only are the Navy recipes for cookies really good (I have gained 10 pounds since being onboard, alas), but there's just something special about cookies. When we're at sea, the ship often has to refuel and take on supplies. On deployment, that's every three days or so, usually, depending on what's going on. It's traditional for the ships to swap stuff, usually by tying it in a plastic bag to one of the fuel hoses: some ship's hats or coins (coins are very popular), photos, that sort of thing. We usually made up a huge box of cookies, which we'd triple-wrap in plastic and send back to the ship as a thank-you. Reading about the Bonhomme Richard's cookies made me remember this. "Let them eat cake, huh?" Detractors might scoff, but I think instead that it's more like hugging someone you can't reach. The military can seem cold and distant, but it's these sorts of things -- the cookies, or the teddy bears that Gunny Sergeant Mike got together to send to the children of Iraq -- that remind you that the military is a group of human beings who, minus the occassional person who doesn't care about anything, really do care about the people they're helping or defending.

If Only It Could Really Do This

I'm sure you've already seen this, all you hip people who regularly browse the sites devoted to cool commercials or who are on the cc: lists of all of the well-connected people at work. I don't look around as much as I should, and not too many of the people I work with forward me much of anything (except uncool things like watchbills), so I ran into this for the first time quite recently. If you haven't seen it, check it out -- it is really neat. Richard Eriksson talks about it and has links to an article about how the video was made, as well as a link to the effects studio that made it, The Embassy. It doesn't look like they've made much, but this one is a real standout. I love the little details, such as the sidepanels shifting as the arms move and the fact that the animation is carried through a shaky man-on-the-scene cut in between the steadycam and static camera cuts. It makes me happy. Enjoy!

Who Benefits?

Ah, modern America. I'm waiting for an oil change at Hall Honda and they've installed Web access in the waiting lobby. I love these guys.

Anyway, I wanted to comment about the new (and inevitable) reporting about the possibilities of the US either causing, or failing to forewarn countries about, the tsunami. James links to some good articles about the whole brouhaha.

First off, I checked out the link on Natalie Solent's article on the "biased BBC" website. It's a BBC article, and say what you will about the BBC, but I think it's cool they allow for the readership to post comments (whether they actually read, think about, or heed those comments is another question). I was disgusted by the article, but heartened by the comments, most of which were along the lines of "this is bull*$#$", pointing out such matters as the fact that the US might, just possibly, do environmental and oceanographic surveys before placing an extremely expensive Naval base somewhere so as to mitigate the effects of wind & weather. It's nice to see that the majority of commentors believe that this is all nonsense. But why does the story come up? Natalie talks about scientific ignorance, and I think that's exactly it: the people who are talking up these conspiracy theories are ignorant of what modern technology is capable of -- to them, the US has this magical ability to communicate; therefore, a failure to communicate must have been intentional.

Let's work this all out: the National Oceanographic people see evidence of this massive earthquake. "Hey," they say. "Big earthquake. We should start telling people." Here's your question: how? Natalie stated it best in her article: "I'm a scientist! Get me the President of Indonesia!" So you're going to use the phone? Okay. How does the information get from NOAA to the people who need it, such as all those fishing villagers and tourists on the beach?

It's easy to get a warning to a Naval Base. Any Naval Base in the world is furry with antennae and fat from all the communications equipment. Communications is absolutely central to military activity -- hell, if something goes down, we have to know about it right away. How do you think we got aid on the way so damn fast?

But to tourists & villagers? How long does it take to get emergency information to the average citizen in the US who has everyday access to what -- for the majority of the world -- is high communications technology? How long did it take the people in the Twin Towers to find out that something was going on, and then to start evacuation? And the majority of them still weren't out by the time the towers came down, which (as I recall) was hours later.

The tsunami travelled at 500 miles per hour. How could we possibly have gotten word to all affected governments in its path in time, and even if we had, how could we (and they) have possibly gotten people out of the way in time?

Yes, the US has access to a dizzying array of technological and communication marvels. This is true. But the fact that we can't employ them doesn't mean that we have some agenda that leads us to let a quarter of a million people die. The technology has to be there on the other side for this to work.

Al, in Brazil, left this comment in the BBC article:

It IS ODD. And I don't think its anti-US sentiment but something a lot more worrying about all these conspiracy theories. What if it isn't just paranoia after all? Should we be scared? Who profits? (With anti sentiment, fear, or else?) Please do approach these questions. Thank you.

Well, I think what's clear is that it's the news outlets' advertisers who profit from this sort of uncritical thinking, because sensation draws readership like an ant trap draws ants.