Far South of I-10

We're homeless again, our apartment that we've bought is still undergoing a makeover, and the owner of the apartment that we were renting finally noticed we were renting a nice apartment with no rental agreement, and at half the price they should be asking just because they are nice. Niceness apparently ended this week, they dumped a 20 page rental agreement with price hike and lease on on us, and we decided to take a hike and stay with friends for a week or two until the floor is done in the new place. One result of that is that I can't watch CNN or fox or bbc, because they only seem to be talking about Saddam, and a video of saddam's tongue sticking out as he's hanged isn't something our host's little boys need to see at their age. They can read about him in 10 years in their history books, as a great leader who sponsored national kite flying contests, and the imperialist americans removed him from power because he wouldn't sign our haliburton contra...

Kottke.org links to a meme about listing the cities you've visited this year. Since I did quite a bit of traveling this year I thought I'd give it a try: New Orleans, LA* Baton Rouge, LA Picayune, MS* Lafayette, LA* Anchorage, Alaska* Liberal, KS Oklahoma City, OK Tulsa, OK Cameron, LA Los angeles,CA Long Beach, CA* Bakersfield,CA Denver,Co* Airdrie, Canada Banff, Canada Calgary, Canada* Villahermosa, MX Coatzacoalcos, MX Agua Dulce, MX Mexico City, MX Edmonton,Ca Austin, TX Miami, Fla Paris Milan Venice Florence Rome Seattle Salt Lake City Lima, Peru* Quito, Ecuador* Bogota,Colombia* Paipa, Colombia Chia, Colombia* That's 11 States and 6 foreign countries. I'm glad to have seen most of those places, but Liberal, Kansas I could have done without. I probably spent the most time in Calgary, Quito & Anchorage apart from Bogota and Houston where we lived this year. My favorite place was Paris, maybe florence too, but those were on vacation. I can't picture hav...

One of my cowworkers had vacation scheduled over christmas so I had to come over to quito to relieve him, which meant canceling our weekend trip to visit the inlaws. (oh the pain). Quito isn't a bad tourist city, it's got the 'mitad del mundo' museum where we saw the effects of the coriolis force with water swirling counterclockwise on one side of the equator, and clockwise on the southern side. Then I balanced an egg on the end of a nail, and shot a blowgun at a cactus. All pretty entertaining stuff for a 12 year olds. These events took place on the actual equator, instead of the pretend where the mitad del mundo monument sits. For Christmas, south americans celebrate on christmas eve, with a late dinner, then opening presents at midnight. Since we couldn't eat until 10pm we needed a way to spend a couple My wife and I took a tour around Quito's churches, and we also went up to see the statue of the Virgin, which for christmas became part of what must be ...

We stayed up watching Titanic last night on Fox. My wife couldn't sleep so she watched it to try and fall asleep, I stayed up watching it initially to see if they'd show breastage on Fox in south america(they did), but since I really can't go to sleep in mid sinking, I stayed up until 3:30 too to watch Leo float away. I'm paying for it now though. I wonder what the locals here think of that movie and the class structure it shows from England and even America at that time. Class still applies in the US, on airplanes, getting into good universities, gated communities, etc, but no upper-class person would ever say that to a lower class person, they'd probably get punched in the face at best, more likely a 9mm gat would be pushed down their throat. Here in colombia it's very different, rich people here seem to assume that the poor will kowtow down, tug a forelock, say "si jefe", to every stupid comment. On sundays I'm typically out and about wearing ...

I stayed up to watch the Saints win last night, and since Colombia is on eastern standard time I was torn between wanting the Saints to score more points against Dallas, or taking a knee like they did so that the game would end and I could go to sleep before midnight. The game was on ESPN here, but the announcers overdub in Spanish and they never sound very excited, much the same way announcers in english call a game of soccer. [The simpson's episode where springfield has a boring soccer game that ends in a riot showed that best, "he kicks the ball...then the other guy kicks the ball...then the third guy kicks the ball, etc"] I tried picking the game up on internet radio, the announcers on WWL don't make any pretence of partiality and it's pretty traditional to turn off the idiots on national tv and turn up Jim Henderson & Archie Manning on WWL. (maybe it's Hokie Gajan now?) Apparently licensing restrictions prevent internet radio outside the US. Suc...

I'm reading Victor Davis Hanson's latest book when I have time to sit and read something, at the rate I'm reading I can make this book last all year. He's got a really great article posted on his blog as he sings the chorus to the end of the west. If we had fought and lost that might have been honorable, but it looks suspiciously like the men of realpolit are coming back to abandon the kurds. But why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by “dialoguing” is saying to both the democracies in Lebanon and Israel, “Sorry, but we have to find a way out of Iraq, and these fascists will promise to turn away from us if they can turn on you.” All this is ...

Our apartment is on one side of a major street and my office is on the other side. Since it's only a few blocks I tend to hoof it over there, which has the downside of jaywalking through heavy traffic with my heavy-assed dell m70 laptop. I try to make it across as fast as I can, but I usually end up stuck on one of 3 medians. The locals make it across effortlessly, they walk without fear and without seeming to look. I bet colombians would rock at the game frogger. I'll probably get squished to the theme song...wawawawawup!

I finally got to finish Mark Steyn's America Alone last night. I put it down in fear and disgust last week, and finally picked it up to finish it last night. It's a great book but not a happy read, seeing how it looks like the world will really go to shit in 30 years just in time for me to be too old to do anything about it. I'll be 70 years old and the jihadists won't have to bother beheading me, they can just yank the feeding tube out or whatever. It looks bleak and the muslims may out procreate us and out convert us but the clearest answer to me is to say screw you to all political correctness. We may not be the best culture in the world, but I choose nascar-watching, barbaque-eating, jambalaya-cooking, rock&roll-listening good ol' redneck USA over most of the rest of the world. We're not all equally good, there are right answers to the test and if someone's only answer is to beat their women and threaten to cut off the pope's head then yes, I...

Dan Simmons is a speculative fiction writer who wrote a scary short story last april and now writes even more indepth explanation and background in another article that I must have missed a few months ago, but it got linked from Cold fury today, where their mellow is definitely harshed today There's too much information in Mr. simmons' article to try and excerpt much, but one quote does seem to point out what is happening in the world today: Forgetfulness overcomes every successful civilization," writes Lee Harris. That forgetfulness is this: in each era, just when trade and peace and reason and moderation seem most likely to prevail, the opportunity for the zealots to succeed through ruthlessness is at its greatest. "The result is an unsettling paradox: the more the spirit of commerce triumphs, the closer mankind comes to dispensing ...

I took today off work since my wife is running around choosing wooden flooring to install I took the chance to sit around reading science fiction and watching TV. My order from Amazon that I ordered last weekend got here, the most expensive books ever, since I paid for expedited int'l shipping. I didn' t think about import duties though...so my $138 dollars in books turned into $200 with shipping, plus $70 in duties and sales taxes here. I won't be doing that again. ouch. I did get the 2nd half of the Barron's spanish course on CD . I highly recommend the 1st half if you're trying to learn spanish. I've tried various books and courses but that was the one that really helped my accent and fluency. To get to where I can use more than 3 verb tenses I'm doing the 2nd part. I bought another copy of the 1st half for one of my non-spanish speaking coworkers, since I managed to let my copy get packed up by the movers with my other spanish training material. (do...

James Webb won and the Republicans lost the senate too. This looks bad to the people that hate us, they don't know how the US electoral system works, so they're probably waiting for the president to declare new elections or something. They think we lost, but it's probably not that bleak. I'm not that worried about James Webb, I like his writing and most of views, and trust him to make a good decision when the time comes. Pelosi and the other leaders are more worrisome, who knows what pain their stupid statements and actions will cause 5 years from now.

Bill Whittle is amazing, just when it seems he's abandoned us to our fate without comment, he pops back up with an essay that expresses a lot of things that I wish I could say but don't have the words for. He mentions the story of the cardboard submarine that you could buy from the back of a comic book, this made me chortle because if I made a list of all the things that I've wanted in my life, from my first PC to a desire for a Jaguar XJS, probably 20% would be things that I dreamed of buying from the back of a comic book. X-ray glasses, or the 400 piece set of army men for only $2.99! But as Mr Whittle so ably points out, just wishing for plastic crap from the back of a comic does not a nuclear sub make. Just visualizing whirled peas does not make for a safer world when there are people with long knives who wish to see the infidel dead and their women in burkas. Go read the essay , he blasts holes in so many stupid ideas that it's too hard to figure out which one...

Dr. Sanity has a great post today using death by chocalate cake as a metaphor for Saddam's wmd's: There has always been somthing wrong with the MSM's train of reasoning. First the press persisted in encouraging the delusion that no WMD's or their antecedents were ever found in Iraq and that "Bush lied". Now they want you to believe that Saddam indeed had a detailed and documented program developing WMD's; but that the real problem is that Bush Administration's reckless publishing of the details of that program has facilitated Iran becoming a nuclear power. I couldn't excerpt the cake recipe part, because when I read it it gave me such an overwhelming desire for hot cake and icecream that I almost burst out of the apartment on my way to the store. If I were to post it, it's too easy here to call for cake "a domicilio" (you can even call for beer to be delivered here), so go read it yourself, it's too much temptation That post di...

I wish I had bought Mark Steyn's book "America Alone" before I moved down here. The number of books in english is pretty limited, and it certainly doesn't contain any books that I agree with politically. Mr Steyn has a great column that describes an interview with George W. Bush I n 2020, no one's going to be worrying about which Congressional page Mark Foley is coming on to. Except Mark Foley, who'll be getting a bit long in the tooth by then. But if it really is, as Democrats say, ''all about the future of our children,'' then our children will want to know why our generation saw what was happening and didn't do anything about it. They will despise us as we despise the political class of the 1930s. And the fact that we passed a great prescription drug plan will be poor consolation when the entire planet is one almighty headache. Go read the column and then vote against your local liberal.

I'm tired of watching various groups demanding Donald Rumsfield quit. Apparently now the Army times is going to add it's voice to the noise, adding to the constant stream of retired generals saying the plan was flawed, there weren't enough troops, or boots on the ground, etc. The time for those dickheads to speak out was when Rumsfield and Bush went around the room asking for their opinions. The responsibility of the generals in charge was, if they didn't agree with the plan, the # of troops, or the mission, was to resign in protest then speak out. But do it before the event, not after. Waiting 3 years until their pension is safe, (what's the pension for an O-8?), retiring, then saying the plan was flawed does not do us any fucking good, and if they couldn't speak out for fear of losing $80k per year against saving thousands of lives, then they should keep their trap shut now.

We're finally out of the hotel and in an apartment. We lucked out and the same people that are selling us an apartment were willing to rent us their newest apartment for a month until we close on the piece of junk we're buying and fix it up enough to live in. (they call condominiums apartments too) We've got cable tv and internet too now, so I had the joy of hooking up a new router to a new cable modem. I screwed something up when I set the mac address to the cable modem and all I kept getting was the cable companies web page to test the speed of the modem. With dread yet a small ray of hope I called tech support, opcion 1 - clientes de red (network), opcion 2 clientes de TVcable, opcion 3 - clientes de negocio. Fuck. no "oprima dos para ingles" like we hear back home in the multi- culty USA. Luckily I've done enough network troubleshooting that I could follow the steps even though I couldn't quite catch every word. They reset something and suddenly:...

If anyone is curious, we're all ok. There was a car bomb this morning about a mile from our hotel. http://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/2006-10-19/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR-3290947.html It was our friends los farc attacking a military school. No one was killed thankfully, just six people injured. not for lack of trying though. Updated later: This the key part of the el tiempo story: La Escuela Superior de Guerra está ubicada en el complejo militar del Cantón Norte, donde también se encuentran la Escuela de Infantería y la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada. En la institución se celebraba un acto académico sobre Derechos Humanos al que estaban invitadas varias personalidades del Estado y la cúpula militar. En el momento de la explosión se encontraba el comandante del Ejército, general Mario Montoya. "in the moment of the explosion, the commander of the army was there"...so they werent trying to blow up students, but the commander of the army.

I'm back in Bogota after a week of traveling to Quito and Lima to meet clients and coworkers and people that now work for me. All I can say is that I'm glad we're going to live here and not Lima, much of which looks like a run-down version of the model of Tokyo from Kill Bill 1. Anyway since I changed from cold to cool to humid and warm yet cool whenever the wind blows, in 72 hours, I got pretty sick on friday with fever chills, torrential running nose and a cough suited for "les miserables". Once I got back here to my ziplock bag full of american medicines, I took a double dose of Nyquil and went to sleep. (er, passed out, being a Nyquil veteran, I know enough to take my dose in bed, if you take Nyquil in the kitchen you may wake up on the kitchen floor.) I had the most freaked out dreams, I'm not sure if they were all nyquil related, or just stress. The first set seemed normal...no aliens...but I apparently got a job as a regional manager for Walmart. In ...

We're down here in Colombia, living in a hotel until we can find an apartment. Living in a hotel always sounds so cool, like being a rich writer living in a hotel in New York, where the doorman tips his hat before going up to your four room suite. But living in an actual hotel room sucks pretty bad, especially when the bed here is nothing like my memory-foam mattress. (E.T. Voice on/ home, oooouuuch, E.T. Voice off/) Work progresses, I've tried not to screw up too many things my first week, but since the whole job has been 100% in spanish, I think most people here think I'm a babbling idiot. At the farewell dinner for the guy I'm replacing I had to stand up and say a few words...unfortunately, with the altitude my alchohol tolerance is zero here, after two beers and two glasses of wine over two hours I was halfway to Dean-Martinized. I stood up, said something in bad spanish and sat down again. I sat down and immediately panicked and asked my wife, "what did...

I'm just closing out the last issues in my current job before I fly down to colombia to start a new assignment. It kind of sucks for things to change, sometimes it would be nice if things could stay the same, the same boss, same employees, over and over...or maybe it's better that change happens, I can escape from one job where everyone says great job but I can see all the things I screwed up glaring at me every day, and start with a clean slate tomorrow. Strangely enough, my current job is the one I wanted for years and years, and now I'm at the point where I'd pay money to be able to stop doing it. hot damn. So which is it? Do I want things to stay the same or is this continuously changing process that is life better? It's really hard to say. I'm like the monkey that won't let go of a handful of termites to be able to pull it's hand out of the tree trunk. If I hold on, I can hold dinner in my hand, but if I let go I can get my hand free. Oh well...

The Saint's are getting ready to play, U2 and Greenday are just starting walking onstage and I really hope the saints win tonight. After all the years of suffering watching the saints, if ever there was a year that New Orleans could use a superbowl championship, this is it. (last year was expecting too much, but this year the story works, rookie heisman trophy winner...new non-smirking quarterback [boy I hated to watch Aaron Brooks throw interceptions, then smile.]) here comes bono, let's go Saints!

It's pretty cool that Bigelow Aerospace will launch a space station before the end of the decade . Someone is actually leading, instead of waiting for moribund nasa to announce another program that in 15 years will put us back to where we were 30 years ago. (above is an image from BA's website of the genesis I) When I was young I wanted to be an pilot and then become an astronaut. I never got closer than sitting in an F-15's cockpit for maintenance purposes and lately it has seemed like the only people likely to go out into space will be the chinese. We didn't make space 1999 a reality, but space 2099 might actually happen with companies like BA leading the way. After working offshore in steel vessels for the past 15 years, I wouldn't want to live in space. I'd like to go for a weekend, just to see the curve of the earth from space and maybe have stars in my pockets like grains of sand. Here's the next pass of genesis I over Katy,TX will be Friday nigh...

Since today is talk like pirate day, I thought I'd run the pope's apology through a pirate translator. The pirate speaks,"Ahoy! Brothers and Sisters, .... At this time, I wish also t' add that I be deeply sorry for t' reactions in some countries t' a few passages o' me address at t' University o' Regensburg, which were considered offensive t' t' sensibility o' Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express me personal thought. "

Well I'm back in Houston again, mostly to close out my current job and put the house on the market. My ever efficient and lovely wife patricia has already done most of the work of getting the house organized and ready to be sold, so really all I did was sign the disclosure agreement and put some superglue on the broken microwave oven handle. (This is our second house with a broken handle, am I too strong or what? ...what) I'm sort of jet-lagged, hungover and tired, since I ran into my old roommate from the last time I lived in colombia in Quito yesterday, and we stayed out drinking until about an hour before I had to leave for the airport. In my new job I won't have to travel so much, but since we'll be living in a foreign country, it'll be more like continuous travel. I may not be jet-lagged as often either, but I'll probably be in a hung-over state more often, since the point where I'm almost drunk is the point where most latinos are just getting warme...

Sharon has a witty pos t as usual today, she begins with a mention of how her Father prounounced hors d' eauvres. [which reminded me of a friend from high school, when we were getting the menu prepared for the key club's senior banquet, he looked at the menu options and said "What's this whores de erves shit?"] And then her post continues with art, creation, agony&ecstacy, &etc. Sharon is fast becoming a professional artist before our eyes, which is one of the coolest things I've seen on the blogosphere. From blogging about her kids running around like hellions, to now blogging about upcoming gallery shows, soon she'll be blogging about shows in Paris and London, with her kids running around the louvre like hellions. (plus ca change, plus ca meme chose) Anyway, if you arrived here from google because I wrote titty-bar in a previous post, go visit sharon's store and buy something there.

Here's a picture of Quito from a webcam in our office. The resolution unfortunately isn't there to show the clouds flowing like room temperature whip cream over the top of the mountain on the right, and through a valley. Another feature that didn't come out is an airplane is landing in the center-left background. The runway is pointed almost straight away from the camera, maybe obliquely to the right. Right at that mountain. So planes taking off have to do a maneuver that takes them up at about a 45 degree angle, or when they land from the south it looks like a carrier trap. Pretty cool and distracting if you're trying to work at a desk with this window. Below is a view from google earth. The red ellipse is where the runway is a red circle marks the webcams location. Since the runway almost lines up with the long axis of the city, almost anywhere in the city has a plane flying over every several minutes. I'm learning the flight schedule, since there is a pac...

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming Can't you see their spear points gleaming See their warrior's pennants streaming To this battle field Men of Harlech stand ye steady It cannot be ever said ye For the battle were not ready Stand and never yield Form the hills rebounding Let this war cry sounding Summon all at Cambria's call The mighty force surrounding Men of Harlech onto glory This shall ever be your story Keep these fighting words before ye Cambria (Welshmen never) will not yield

It turns out that my hotel has a casino, it has around 50 slot machines and 8 craps tables. The minimum bet is one dollar (ecuador uses dollars, not sucres based on dollars, but our physical dollars. What the hell?), so this isn't James Bond casino elegance. I did have a nice time though. Free drinks, free appetizers and I played blackjack for money for the first time. I didn't know there were so many rules, I normally stick to video poker or craps but due to a lack of craps tables it was either blackjack or a one armed bandit. I had some drinks, went up and down in chips and left with the same number of chips I walked in with. The cashier took my $50 in chips and handed me 5 20's. I started to walk out, thinking had I won $50 and not noticed? I started to turn around and walk back, angels and demons tugging my legs so hard that I walked woodenly back into the casino with a strange straight leg step that made the guard stare at me. With the cross winds of guilt/ ho...

I put on my ugly but easy to take off shoes that I normally wear when traveling and jetted off down here to ecuador this evening My plane arrived at 11:10 pm, just as the buzz from my free in first class drinks wore off. It's hard to have first impressions in a darkened city, the surrounding neighborhood is built right up to the airport, but it looks quiet and everyone seems nice. I've never been here before, but it seems similar to Bogota, really high altitude and kind of cool for august (2800 m, 59 deg F). My first trip to Bogota was a white knuckled adventure, the only thing I knew about the country was what i had seen in a Harrison ford movie. A driver picked me up at the airport and dropped me off in a fairly dirty company apartment, I didn't know if I could drink the water, there was no food and I had no pesos. I pictured armed bandits outside the windows, armed with RPG's waiting to attack my convoy. I boiled some water and stuck in the freezer to cool...

Mark Steyn has a quote that exactly explains how I feel about 9/11 conspiracy theorists in a review of the Popular Mechanics 9/11 conspiracy debunking book: But the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle made a much sharper point: "I wonder if the nuts even believe what they are saying. Because if something like 9/11 happened in Canada, and I believed with all my heart that, say, Stephen Harper was involved, I don't think I could still live here. I'm not sure I could stop myself from running screaming to another country. How can you believe that your President killed 2,000 people, and in between bitching about this, just carry on buying your vente latte and so forth?"

Here was one key mistake last year, nagin ordered the evac sunday morning, instead of saturday afternoon like Jefferson Parish: Mayor Nagin just ordered a mandatory evacuation, by reading the legaleze version of the order instead of saying more plainly it is time to leave, and if you don't leave no one will come rescue you. Hopefully it wasn't poorly executed and too late. Governor blanco just mentioned that President Bush called to make sure there was a mandatory evactuation. She keeps mentioning being blessed, and she keeps repeating herself and mentioning flying in and looking at the traffic. Instead of a governor she is really just a traffic reporter and a bad one at that. I voted for Bobby Jindal, and I wish that fast talking guy had won. posted by Joe at 7:16 AM | 0 comments I wish I hadn't been right last year. It was apparent to me watching from 2000 miles away what to do and when to do it. People that have never lived in ...

Last year on this day I was working on a drilling project in Barbados and spending my non-working time glued to CNN. It had been apparent to me from the day before that there was a big risk of 'the big one' hitting new orleans and I was glad to see that the local and state officials were starting the evacuation, even if it was a day late. Saturday, August 27, 2005 Katrina is coming I'm watching CNN here in Barbados, and I'm amazed that Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard is giving detailed driving instructions to an international audience. He was mayor of Kenner when I was growing up, now he's a bejowled power broker telling an international audience not to take the Huey P. Long bridge; but he didn't say which way to go. Whew, I'm glad I'm not a resident of the west bank of Jefferson Parish...they've got to take a drive on Highway 90 to lafayette, which is a 2 1/...

Well, I managed to rembember my blogger username and password finally. I couldn't post for week, I was so used to firefox knowing my username/password or when I used another computer I used the dummy "forgot my password" link and blogger emailed the link. Something has changed though. Blogger is becoming more googlefied and apparently I signed into my google account and screwed up the works, because they kept emailing me access to my google account, with no blog anywhere to be seen. I thought: "Shit, I've lost my blog". And I walked around with about 100 ideas for great posts swimming in my head, when normally I have to scrape for 3 or 4 posts per week. Since I made a conscious decision not to post about family or directly about work, anything I'm going to write tends to be about travel or politics and that's not too much to go on when I have to grit my teeth to watch the news. But I found the answer on a blogger user group, someone suggested ...

I posted this as a comment at hugh hewitt's site, I've had a few bloody mary's so maybe my comment doesn't match what his post is about. hmm. damn tomato juice: I think that it's obvious that we'll win, we're now at the low point of the story, things look dark in Iraq, Israeli's are reeling back from lebannon with a peace of paper and a large percent of the people in the us think that the government had a part in 9/11. But all of that and we're way ahead of where europe was in 1939. This lowpoint is just an artificial low setting the stage for the sweep of history, the brave will still step up and fight, the stout-hearted will loyally support what is right and just, and what will seem like miracles of courage will lead us forward to victory. Even in the darkest days of 1940, Winston Churchill never doubted ultimate victory, and I don't either. Even in my black dog days of depression I know that we'll win, because we have more at stake....

Scrappleface has a funny story explaining terrorism and tries to answer the question, why do terrorists hate airplanes? Excerpt: " The expert panel will examine various theories about why airplanes engender such hatred among devoted followers of a peaceful religion. “Is it the horrendous noise? The speed? The condensation trails?” said one unnamed source close to the panel, listing some of the areas of inquiry the experts plan to pursue. “Because if it’s any of those things, we can get to work on engineering changes to make airplanes more tolerable to our Muslim brothers.”

The LA weekly on LGF's discovery of al-reuters publishing retouched photos: In exposing Hajj’s manipulations, Johnson has raised the lid on a potential Pandora’s box. Namely, how our leading news agencies and newspapers increasingly rely on stringers from hostile nations to tell us how we, or our allies, behave in wartime. Since you’d be hard-pressed to find Muslims in the U.S., let alone Europe, who aren’t strongly anti-Israel and opposed to any American presence in the Middle East whatsoever, why on earth would you expect to find neutral Arab reporters in Baghdad or Beirut? This is the kind of question newspaper editors should be asking themselves (and their stringers). If the implications of this are followed through, or if more photographers like Adnan “Photoshop” Hajj are discovered, the ramifications are likely to be significant. In helping bring Hajj’s smoke-and-mirrors game to light, Johnson has performed a great service.

Almost every news item that isn't discussing the war seems to be discussing the price of oil and how we're all going to be sweating in the dark soon. The real solution will require major changes in how energy is generated and used and how we live. But don't go installing the $30k solar electric system this week. Before we can develop real solutions we need to ensure the high price of energy for the forseable future. Most people are hoping for the price of oil to fall back to $12/barrel again where it was just a few years ago, but that is part of the problem. One of the reasons that the world isn't producing enough oil is most projects take several years to develop from prospect to drilling to producing oil, and every 3 years or so the price of oil goes from $50/bbl to $12/bbl. This tends to make oil companies risk averse, if you drill a prospect that has lifting costs of $22/bbl, and then the price of oil goes to $12, you are as they say in spanish, jodido. Even a...

Today in 1945 was the day that the Enola Gay dropped the first fission bomb used in war. People look back at this and say "what monsters we americans were" Euroweenies might say that we should have invaded japan rather than nuking them. [photo link] But President Truman was told that we could suffer 1 million casualties in an invasion of Japan. This was believable after the invasion of Okinawa, where more people died than due to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman's priorities looked something like this: US Civilians US Soldiers Japanese Civilians Japanese Soldiers He weighed the lives of his troops heavier than Japanese civilians, and chose to end the war by nuking the japanese rather than trying the invasion. This ranking is no longer true, enemy civilians deaths are a bigger tragedy than the deaths of our soldiers. Through rules of engagement we expect marines to clear rooms by sticking their head in and looking rather than the older technique of throwing...

The recent bombing at Qana followed by the splashing of the dead children's photos across the front page of newspapers further highlights bias in the press. This event was well documented at EU referendom, and I think it is obvious that the photos were staged by hezbollah and photographed by the press. If one photo shows one guy holding a dead child, then a second photo shows another guy holding the same dead child in the same place in the same pose, then I'd say it's reasonable to say the photos were staged or posed. This issue was discussed on the daily telegraph's blog: But he's not asking any of those things. His contention is that this is a staged photo. Like Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone's JFK, North gives us, in laborious detail, the fruits of his 'research'. I'll let you read the argument in its full glory. Now I have to admit that I have a problem with conspiracy theorists whatever their stripe. Their method is to promote the facts tha...

I see that Allah is drunkblogging to see if he can repeat mel gibson's expirement and start spouting anti-semitic BS just due to alchohol. I'm also drunkblogging, drinking double gin beefeater bloody-marys, switching the tv between CNN, Fox and Entourage on HBO. I'm at the "let's go back to the ship and nuke 'em from orbit" point, as these fuckers in Iraq all chant together. After about 10 oz of beefeaters in 2 hours, not only is the tower guard on the label looking at me funny, but he's got the voice of anderson cooper on CNN, and it sounds pretty bad. I'm sure reality isn't this bleak, but if we were to deorbit 10 or 20 nukes that are probably hanging up there (after withdrawing all of our troops to kurdistan and kuwait) and just roll those bad boys out, roll the bones, zap the neutrons, flash, bang, thank you maam. Wipe the slate clean, Sand to glass. Hot times in the city. Would that be such a bad thing? In a little while my wife...

I'm a little too busy right now to google a good event from history today, so here's likeks: From Lilek's Screedblog today: (8/3) Of course, he’s right. Without the steady, respected hand of Iran on the Middle Eastern helm, the Syrian regime might be replaced by pragmatic elements of the military unwilling to enjoy the boon of Persian dominance. One can excuse the occasional, inexplicable acts of Iranian mischief; the mullahs no doubt are busy destabilizing Iraq today, for example, but only to achieve a more stable future (Would that our leaders had such foresight!) Granted, their rhetoric is hardly helpful – a New York Times photo of a billboard in Tehran shows the well-fed adamant face of Sheik Nasrallah, a man about whose movement the gentle Democrat from Michigan has no opinion, and the billboard’s English text reads “Israel must be wiped out the world.” (sic) Extreme? Sure. That’s how those loveable nuts talk over there. You’d have to be nuts – or a Jew! - to take it s...

1945 - During the night (August 1-2), 820 US B-29 Superfortress bombers drop a record total of 6632 tons of bombs on five Japanese cities including Hachioji, Nagaoka, Mito, Toyama and the petroleum center of Kawasaki. here's a link in german , the photo on the left is the city of toyama: Am 2.8.1945 bombardieren 850 B-29-Bomber die Stadt Toyama mit 6.600.000 kg Brandbomben. 98,6% der Stadt werden vernichtet; es gibt so gut wie keine Überlebenden. Tokio am Morgen nach dem Luftangriff in der Nacht des 10. März 1945. Dem dreistündigem Brandbombardement fielen schätzungsweise 130.000 Menschen zum Opfer. the translated caption: o 2.8.1945 bombards 850 B-29-Bomber the city Toyama with 6.600.000 kg of incendiary bombs. 98.6% of the city are destroyed; it gives as well as no survivors. This is what total war looks like.

Today in 1943 was one of the bigger attacks on the Romanian refineries that helped feed Hitler's war machine. (in elementary school I must have checked out a book, Air War over Europe, I think, at least 10 times, it had this picture as its cover) From the great website http://www.ww2guide.com/oil.shtml Across the Mediterranean Despite careful preparation the operation was marred by bad luck from the start, one B-24 crashed on take-off. Since the mission was flown in radio silence the bomber groups became somewhat separated on the long flight across the Mediterranean. Then just off Corfu, Greece the lead aircraft carrying the route navigator inexplicably plunged into the water. A second plane of the 376th with the deputy route navigator followed down to see if there were any survivors. Unable to regain formation the bomber turned back to base. This left the lead bomber group without the expert navigators to guide them through the difficult low-level approach to the target. Thick cl...

*PETRARCA, FRANK J. Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Medical Detachment, 145th Infantry, 37th Infantry Division. Place and date: At Horseshoe Hill, New Georgia, Solomon Islands, 27 July 1943. Entered service at: Cleveland, Ohio. Birth: Cleveland, Ohio. G.O. No.: 86, 23 December 1943. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty. Pfc. Petrarca advanced with the leading troop element to within 100 yards of the enemy fortifications where mortar and small-arms fire caused a number of casualties. Singling out the most seriously wounded, he worked his way to the aid of Pfc. Scott, Iying within 75 yards of the enemy, whose wounds were so serious that he could not even be moved out of the direct line of fire Pfc Petrarca fearlessly administered ...

I was looking at google smashups linked from the High-tech Texan website , and one of the most interesting is the google map showing locations of all the SR-71 blackbirds with links to all the current photos, including summaries of all the SR-71 crashes. The crash that happened on July 30th 1966: M-21 tail number 06941 was destroyed 30 Jul 1966 when the D-21 drone it was launching bounced off the inside of the mothership's shockwave and struck 941 near the wing root. Lockheed test pilot Bill Park and Launch Control Officer Ray Torick ejected safely over the Pacific, but Torick drowned when his flight suit took on water. Sad to see such dry text to describe the death of someone who died doing their duty for their country.

I had to zoom up to canada for the last couple of days, yet another fools errand and a lot of travel for about 16 hours worth of work. I should have said "that's really not my job to go to the rig" and stayed home, but the manager there asked me, and I could hear in his voice that he was on the verge of mentioning that the last time I went there he paid for my wife to go too. So I went. 8 hours flying to edmonton, 3 hours lost in a hotshot, the driver couldn't find the rig, 3 hours working then 4 hours sleep on a bed with no sheets blankets or pillows (when did I become such a pussy?). 12 hours more work to finish drilling, wait one hour for a car, 2 hours to edmonton... no room at the inn by the airport, so we rode into edmonton. 3 hours sleep, then taxi to the airport in time to be two hours early. Whenever I'm two hours early I'm sure to check in, breeze through customs, immigration and security in about 4 minutes. (US immigration is in Canada, stra...

July 24 North Vietnam Increases Air Defense Capabilities 1965 In the air war, four F-4C Phantom jets escorting a formation of U.S. bombers on a raid over munitions manufacturing facilities at Kang Chi, 55 miles northwest of Hanoi, are fired at from an unknown launching site. It was the first time the enemy had launched antiaircraft missiles at U.S. aircraft. It's interesting to see that the first time we were fired at it probably wasn't a big deal. But after dozens of planes shot down over 8 years it became pretty important. What small seed of the future is happening now i wonder. Missiles shot at Israel or arms shipments from Iran to Syria? Or precision weapons to Isreal? Unfortunately we live in interesting times.

This from today's date during Korean war: Corporal Tibor Rubin distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism during the period from July 23, 1950, to April 20, 1953, while serving as a rifleman with Company I, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division in the Republic of Korea. While his unit was retreating to the Pusan Perimeter, Corporal Rubin was assigned to stay behind to keep open the vital Taegu-Pusan Road link used by his withdrawing unit. During the ensuing battle, overwhelming numbers of North Korean troops assaulted a hill defended solely by Corporal Rubin. He inflicted a staggering number of casualties on the attacking force during his personal 24-hour battle, single-handedly slowing the enemy advance and allowing the 8th Cavalry Regiment to complete its withdrawal successfully. Read the rest, the rest is more interesting.

On this date in 2003 Saddam's Sons got their turn in front of the mortician's camera. We can weigh the pluses and minus' of the Iraq war, and this is definitely a plus. I don't have to live in a world where these dickhead are copresidents. As I continue to google this event all I seem to find is the outrage over showing their bullet ridden corpses.

One of my favorite blogs is Free market fairy tales from the UK. He does a "this day in history" type post almost every day to show the brilliance of English arms since the middle ages. Usually the post is something like: "During the Indian Mutiny Sgt Micklewaitstaff continued leading his 6 soldiers after being wounded 19 times while single- handidly winning the battle of Dungstinkalotpreshnam, and was awarded the posthumous victoria cross". I'm usually pretty amazed by these stories, until I think of the equivalent story in a flashman book and what really happened. I thought of trying my hand at this, and post tales of marshal valor from the west side of the atlantic. Today in history, (July 21st) was the first battle of bull run , or Mansassas to my fellow southerners. On July 21, McDowell, turning Beauregard's left, attacked the Confederates near the stone bridge over Bull Run and drove them back to the Henry House Hill. There Confederate resistance...

HBO is showing "The Hunt for Red October" this afternoon, which was a fantastic book and not a bad movie at the time. It just came out about 2 years too late when the Soviet Union was already in mid-collapse. This movie brought to mind something I thought of earlier in the week. As soon as the planes hit the wtc and the pentagon on september 11th, I immediately thought of the Tom Clancy novel "Debt of Honor", in which a war with japan ended with a 747 crashing into the Capitol building on purpose. I thought it was interesting that Al Queda likes Tom Clancy novels. Now that the war in the middle east is heating up, it reminds me of the book "Executive Orders", where a war happened after a cabal including china and iran hatched a plan to take over Saudi Arabia. Really nothing like what's happening now, except that one side effect of Korea firing it's missiles last week was an aircraft carrier group moving from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, so th...

A link on Jerry Pournelle's mail page leads to a report delivered to the House committee on Energy and commerce on the study by Mann et al that purported to show that the 1990's were the hottest decade in the last 1000 years, and created that 'hockey stick' graph that is generally used as a prop when they are shouting "haliburton, oil, global warming, bushhitler" This report by emminent statisticians (who will now be accused of being in the pay of oil companies) seems to say that the original paper is a load of bunk, and was only peer-reviewed in the sense that a small group of scientists with similar beliefs used the same datasets over and over to confirm what each of them were saying. Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium. Report: “O...

It's always been funny to me how Bjorn Lomberg sounds like one of the most reasonable and intelligent people, yet he's often excoriated by enviroweenies as in the pay of big oil. His book the skeptical environmentalist approaches the global warming problem as an economic problem, how much does the kyoto approach spend for achieving what amount of mitigation? It finds kyoto lacking and suggests our money would be better spent fixing worse problems. There's a great article in the WSJ opinion journal that includes an interview with Mr Lomberg and discusses his latest project that attempts to bring together world leaders to prioritize problems. Turns out, without the hypsters, global warming tends to be at the bottom of the list. Prioritization, cost-effectiveness, efficiency--these are the ultimate in rational thinking. (It strikes me they are the ultimate in "free markets," though Mr. Lomborg studiously avoids that term.) They are also nearly unheard-of concepts ...

One of the side effects of the Calgary stampede is the city is full of drunken horny cowboys. My moderately priced downtown hotel's parking lot is apparently street- hooker central. I'm high enough up that I can't see if they are pretty or ugly, but it looks like there is a rotating crew of 4 to 6 blondes. I have no problem with hookering (hookerfication, hookerstitution?) on any moral grounds, but do their johns have to make so much noise? Horns and the roar of engines, followed by burning rubber declares to the world that some young guy got his first bj. I have to fight the urge to switch to granpa simpson voice "keep it down, you whippersnappers!" Being high above them in the hotel, I can watch the activities like it's a giant sim game, "SimCity, the dark side". Miniature car rolls up, honks their horn (/shake fist "quiet!" /shake fist off) negotiations happen, roll around the block, dirty deed, and back again and goodbye with a hug...

Jeff over at protein wisdom is dueling with a troll who has insulted and threatened his child who claims to be a professor at a western university. I'd say Jeff needs our support, but he doesn't need much help. With his razor sharp wit he's already cutting down this troll like she brought a knife to a gun fight. Best jibe so far: "When I’m done with you, Deb, you’re going to be an internet verb.". His site is down now due to a ddos attack, which is ironic; trolls are using zombie computers to attack. Updated well, the verb is Frisch , apparently it really was Deborah Frisch at the university of Arizona. To be Frisched will be to be hounded from polite society, at least on the web. I have no problem with profanity and insults in comments, but her comments against Jeff Goldstein's son were disgusting and specific. I think blogging should be like the mafia, leave the family out of it. Since Frisch broke that code, she should be shunned by all.

I tend to click on acidman's site just as a habit. Two or three times a day is what I used to read there music, girls with red toe nail polish, the crazy psycho cunt were all topics for my daily read. Godspeed acidman! It's going to be a very meloncholy blogosphere, if all the dozens of links that we read on a daily basis ever start to die off. i'm bummed and it was just acidmand's turn. I've got a few dozen links, and another 100 or so IE bookmarks for blogs that I read at least weekly...what'll we do when everyone is connected and people die or have problems. I think in a normal agricultural life people only knew 20 or 30 people. I wonder if we're meeting more now, or less. How will this look in 2o years? different I suppose.

The last post was rudely interupted by a fire alarm...I had to dash down 20 stories thinking, shit, I've got my hotel sorted for next week and it'll probably burn down, and my laptop too. False alarm though, but it made me think of all the fire alarms offshore, where if it's at sunday and 1pm it's obviously a drill, but if it's 2 am you are highly motivated to go instantly from a deep sleep to putting on a life vest and carrying your ass to an escape capsule or the muster area tout suite. All the time not knowing if the well is blowing out and on fire, or the toolpusher is having fun jerking our chains. This can lead to some interesting reflexes, so that a 2 am fire alarm in a hotel can make me groggily shoot half naked out of a room, standing around looking for a lifeboat. I did that once at the holiday inn in New orleans, some poor japanese lady saw me standing in my underwear and gave me a "gah! my eyes!" kind of expression, or maybe she said the japa...

It's stampede week here in calgary, which means two things, that my hotel has been trying to kick me out and it's parade day. My reservation was only through wednesday since I was only supposed to be here a couple of days. A new trick I learned for extending a hotel stay when the entire city is full, keep asking at the desk and ask a different person every time. Someone finally said yes and let me stay. Yee hah, the joys of overbooking. Oh yeah, and I just watched most of the parade through downtown calgary. It's hard for me to go to a parade, I'm from new orleans and I've probably seen around 200 parades, but here everyone is shouting ya-hoo, and I have to resist the urge to shout "show your tits!". Apparently calgary is very family oriented and would not appreciate the humor. (the horrors of a canadian jail are to be avoided at all costs) Anyway, my favorite parts of the parade this morning were the flyovers by the canadian aerobatic team (the snowb...