I'll make my “hello good morning” quick, because I'm planning on doing a big image update today, plus a pile of software work as well… I know that there are a number of you that are just desperate for custom layout. I have to be careful though; since I sped up the software, IAM usage has almost doubled! Of course, when the dead-account bot is run for the first time, it'll delete I'm guessing around 3500 dead accounts.
Oh, and is it just me, or is Afghanistan turning into Vietnam? I can certainly tell you from first hand knowledge that the US and Canadian troops that are being sent over there are impressive humans. These guys are certainly top of their game, but I really feel they may be getting asked to do the impossible — they're certainly fighting against the odds, and because these men are so remarkable and could do so many good things in the world, it breaks my heart to see them killed.
It goes on. I found this particular quote quite disturbing, “A bloodied, outnumbered band of US servicemen held off a determined al-Qa'ida force on frigid, rocky terrain at least 8,000 feet above sea level.”
A while back I wrote about how profoundly upset I was about seeing Tibettan Yaks at a zoo. When you take these animals below 10,000 feet, you cut their life in half. Your metabolism has to work very differently at high and low altitudes… Western troops are simply not trained for these environments, and what little training they have is, in my (uneducated but overconfident) opinion, ineffective. I should also remind people that when they see reports on the news about “8 American Soldiers Killed” that this is just the American news. Remember the Olympics? “American Blah Blah Blah won the Bronze medal” — if there was no US victor higher up, they just weren't mentioned. Point is, yesterday two Germans and three Danish were also killed (disarming a missile). Western losses are starting to grow…
If you prefer not to have your heart broken, but still want to talk about the politics behind all this war, I thought this article in the Mirror was good… It's another in the long stream of articles deconstructing the “Evil Axis” comment. The specifics of the words I really don't care about, obviously Bush is a moron and his handlers have used these terms like “evil” because it's the only way he can understand it. The big concern to me is why isn't Saudi Arabia in this evil axis? Why isn't Pakistan? Hell, why isn't CHINA? China certainly sells missile technology as indiscriminately as the North Koreans. And if you're going down that road, why isn't Kissinger up on war crimes (and is it just me, or does he look like Ben Stein)?
Finally, this article on Al-Quaeda “regrouping on the net” is interesting… It's no surprise they're using the net, obviously, but what is interesting is when you start asking — how are they intercepting this traffic? Those of you who are technically minded, think about what it would take… (and I wonder if things like this are related?)
OK, I know I just said “finally”, but there is some interesting science news from the last week two… In ancient history, they've finally showed much stronger and much more convincing dinosaurs with feathers proof, and then of course there's the 3.5 BILLION year old bacteria fossil (maybe). The one that I personally find the most interesting is the sonoluminesence/tabletop nuclear fusion experiments… I find it interesting on a religious level — almost every faith has held that there are “holy sounds” that weild enormous power… Could they just be memories of some sort of early sonoluminescent technology?
Now off to work…
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