Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Dinner last night was really nice; it was a good group of people who were there.

Mark Jury, the filmmaker responsible for Dances Sacred and Profane is gearing up to do a DVD re-release of this classic. He was kind enough to send me a preview copy (and a couple cool shirts, which he really should put online for sale) which I've used to finally revamp the encyclopedia entry. Click the photo of Fakir to jump to the encylopedia entry, and the photo of the shirt to jump to the film's page (if you want to bookmark it to stay updated; it's not available quite yet).

I've managed to reduce the intern list now from almost sixty applicants down to ten — already I'm cutting people from the list who I know could do a good job. Seriously, this is so much harder than I could ever have imagined! I can't imagine how they do it in jobs where there are thousands of applicants — it must almost be luck-of-the-draw in those cases.

I almost forgot! On the right is a picture of a test print from the highly self-indulgent anniversary shirt. Ryan isn't sure that he'll make it to dinner tomorrow, but if he doesn't anyone who's there can put in a reserve and the remainder go up on BMEshop.

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When the Iraq War was first getting started, it was pointed out that one of the things that differentiated this war from previous wars was body armor (more). The “problem” with body armor is that it works — it saves lives. However, it doesn't save you from a headshot, having your arms and legs blown off, or serious burns — it just keeps you alive. So the end result of body armor is a dramatic increase in wounded troops requiring often lifelong care.

In previous wars, you'd usually have about three wounded soldiers for every dead one. However, in modern US wars the ratio is very different — as many as twenty wounded soldiers for every dead one. As much as it's good to be saving lives, one of the rules of guerrilla warfare is that you want to cause casualties as much or more as you want to create corpses, since dealing with casualties keeps your enemy vulnerable longer and “costs” him more to maintain both in the short term and the long term (more).

Now maybe you understand (in horrific clarity) why the US military isn't particularly willing to give its troops as much body armor as it needs?

Perhaps you are wondering what is going to happen to all those wounded children with Veterens Affairs struggling under excessive budget shortages (more, more)? Assuming you can even get anything at all, the “reward” for being disabled while serving the US military is an annual pention of about $8,000 (more), with some states like Illnois, Michigan, and Ohio offering well over $1,000 less. Please explain how someone with permanent disabilities is supposed to live a decent life in America for $7,000 a year, let alone pay for expenses like making wheelchair modifications to their home (more)?