Ah, a milestone. Congratulation to whoever it was with the service provider "eschelon.com" for being my 20,000th visitor. Warm happy feelings being projected your way. Now, who will be my 100,000th visitor?
Following the "Myopia" post below, a comment thread ensued in which myself and a few commenters (Joshua, D, and Sarge). For those who don't want to read through a sea of commenting text, the gist of it pretty much boiled down to a historical argument about the nation of Israel, whether it has a right to exist, whether the Palestinians were shafted, and with some editorializing as two why the Islamic world hates us today.
It was capped, at least the last time I checked, with a Joshua comment: "Nice concession Ryan. Now. What does it actually MEAN? Change of opinion about U.S. policy? No? Hm. Shocking."
The concession to which he was referring was that the Israelis and Palestinians both share culpability in the current situation in the Middle East. Not exactly a groundbreaking concession.
The problem I have with such a historical dissection of a current situation is that it's basically fruitless beyond being an academic exercise. So many of the critics of current U.S. foreign policy hold up past U.S. foreign policy as a bloody carcass of failure that we should humbly acknowledge and lay prostrate to the condemnation of world opinion.
But, well, see, I don't buy that. It's easy to look back at the numbers and say, well, the Jews had no legal claim to Palestine, and they certainly didn't have a right to 56 percent of the land since they only represented 10 percent of the population. If you look at the numbers alone, you're missing 2/3 of the issue. But, if you look at the political climate at that time, with U.S. and U.K. compassion for the displaced and persecuted European Jews, and with the U.S.S.R. being perceived as backing the Palestinians fresh from their lowering of the Iron Curtain over much of Europe, the picture changes dramatically.
Today, it's almost impossible to understand the political climate of the post war world. But, at the time, the fear of the U.S.S.R. and its ambitions were no doubt palpable. The Cold War, though over now, was responsible for more paranoia on both sides and subsequent hot wars the world over to warp foreign policy for years on end. Are we supposed to feel culpability and shame for actions taken during a tense political arena in which two sides sat poised to annihilate one another with the push of a button? No.
To take it further, should we now look at Israel and say, well, in retrospect, and since the political climate has changed, we've decided you have no real right to occupy the Holy Land, so we're going to relocate you to Idaho? Of course not. Do I understand that such a stance is going to irk the Palestinians? Sure. Does it change my view on U.S. policy? No.
Why? Because it's not about the past. It's not about pointing at past U.S. policy to decipher where we may have gone wrong. The political landscape has shifted too dramatically since then and now. Now, it's about the CURRENT landscape. It's about the CURRENT state of Israeli/Palestinian relations, and it's about the CURRENT state of the Islamic world in general, which has grown stagnant, indignant and suspicious of the West. Are they justified in that? Sure. Are we supposed to apologize? No.
I was born in 1975. In 1993, I graduated from high school. In 1998, following a five year college plan, I graduated with a journalism major and a history minor. On Sept. 11, 2001, I witnessed the result of rabid hatred and resentment towards the United States. It came as kind of a shock to me, and I didn't much care to deconstruct past U.S. policy to understand why zealots were flying planes into buildings. It just, you know, seemed like a pretty useless exercise at the time. "Oh, they're flying planes into buildings! I should really hit the books to try and find out why." Um, no.
You could conduct all the research you want to discover why we're so hated in the Islamic world. You could trace it back, not just to U.S. involvement in their affairs, but also the British, and French, and Germany and on, and on, and on. You could trace much of it to a rapidly evolving modern world where Democratic nations, with their newfangled concepts of human rights, gender equality and embracing thought, ideas and discovery just perpetually goes againsts the dictates of strict Wahabbi interpretation of Islamic scripture. You could understand, right down to the deepest part of your soul, how Western beliefs are perceived as a threat to Islamic fundamentalists.
You could learn and understand all of that, and they'd still want to fly planes into buidings.
On another note, Joshua did say something at a different site that had me nodding in agreement. He pointed out that, in a lot of discussions and comment threads, people have been blurring the lines between Islamic radicals and those who don't subscribe to their fundamentalist beliefs and hatred. It's becoming a bit disconcerting to read comment threads that simply lump all Arabs into THEM. That's not good. Our enemy here are terrorists, and while it is true that most terrorists are Arabs, we have to remember that not all Arabs are terrorists. If we start making that dangerous transition, then we'll find ourselves in a particularly nasty situation.
I love writing, but I HATE typing. I HATE writing with a pen. I HATE writing with a pencil.
If it were up to me, I'd be able to use some sort of mental telepathy to transmit my thoughts directly to paper. No more of losing a minute thought because I couldn't locate the that dastardly "Q" key. No more losing a funny analogy to the ether when I pause to question the spelling of a word. I'd just push my index fingers against my temples and think really hard, really focusing, until my thoughts bake their way into readable text, like hidden lemon juice writing being made visible when held near a toaster.
I know that they make special voice recognition software that transcribes spoken language into text, but the products are often so flawed I wonder if the underlying base code is not, in fact, comprised entirely of a compendium of old viruses and worms. In addition to being rather expensive, the products (such as IBM's ViaVoice) often can't distinguish between "there, their and they're" or any other multitude of English nuances that can trip up even the most polished grammar nazi.
Besides, you're still relying on a middleman to get your thoughts down. Instead of a keyboard, you have a headset and software and, ultimately, your voice. I, for one, have a terrible time speaking my mind. It all comes out in a jumble of nothings because, like typing, my mouth simply can't adequately convey what the hell my brain is trying to tell it. The mouth can only spew forth one thought at a time, while the brain can process several thoughts at once, and five out of every six thoughts have to be set aside due to the mouth's ineffectual design.
Those extra thoughts just kind of sit there for awhile, waiting for the spoken thought to have its say. But, if the one thought takes up the mouth podium for too long, the remaining thoughts eventually start to wander off, miffed that they haven't been given equal time. Don't piss off a thought. They'll leave you.
Just my own take on the Rumsfeld memo that the media jumped on like lions on a gazelle: I honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about.
Every week, our magazine staff meets on Wednesday morning to get updates from everyone and to brainstorm. Our publisher often asks very pointed questions to find out where everyone is on a particular article or to find out where managing editors are in getting their particular issue together. We try to guess where the technology marketplace may go, particularly where IBM is concerned, and come up with article ideas accordingly. By all accounts, we have a pretty successful portfolio of magazines we produce, but we're always wondering where and how we could be doing better.
With that in mind, let's turn to Rumsfeld:
The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?
Or, as my publisher might say: Are we reaching our readership base? Are we doing enough to entice advertisers? Can we find a niche magazine market regarding IT that hasn't been exploited by several other publications? To me, Rumsfeld is asking good questions that should inspire thoughtful and, hopefully, fruitful discussion.
With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:
We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large.
USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.
USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban — Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.
With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.
Again, this seems pretty straightforward. He's assessing US strengths and weaknesses, successes and shortcomings, etc. It would be pretty pointless to hold a meeting in which everyone agrees that we're just doing super great at everything, engage in a round of handshakes and break for an early lunch. Don't you think?
But then, there's the quote most of the media seized upon:
It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.
For me, that's, like, well, duhhhhhhh. Anybody who honestly thought we'd initiate military campaigns to overthrow despicable regimes and new Statues of Liberty would sprout from the sand a couple of weeks later were disillusioned to the point of being institutionalized. But, how does the media spin that quote? For awhile, MSNBC.com had their lead story headlined "Grim Outlook." Today, I can't find that article, which has apparently be switched with "Rumsfeld questions war on terrorism." Or "Rumsfeld: Mixed results in war on terrorism."
All of this reminds me of one of my journalism classes in college. Each student was assigned a specific campus beat, and my beat was campus security. One night, campus security was called to deal with a fight between three students. Not particularly newsworthy, but one student was roughed up enough to require stitches. My professor encouraged me to find an angle to MAKE it more newsworthy.
That angle, it turned out, was that *gasp* alcohol was a factor. What a shock. Still, for a dry campus, the fact that a fight ensued, on campus, with three inebriated students suddenly became the story. When my professor eventually posted the story on our campus news Web site, it was headlined something like "Booze Sparks Brawl." Alcohol became "Booze." A scuffle became a "Brawl." Basically, a non-story became "News."
Likewise, a leaked Rumsfeld memo, which pretty much outlined everything anyone with half a functioning mind already knew, became a news story that indicated we may be LOSING the war on terrorism. Questions transmogrified into "Doubts" simply through the way in which the words were presented. Or to quote the lead paragraph of the MSNBC.com article:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioned whether the United States was doing enough to win the war on terrorism, citing "mixed results" in the fight against al-Qaida in a pointed memo to top Pentagon officials last week.
Rumsfeld is portrayed as having doubts about the war on terrorism, and THAT became the story. THAT'S what became news. And THAT'S part of what's wrong with the big media today. Sensationalism sells, at the expense of integrity.
Sorry, but this makes me shudder. (hat tip: Instapundit)
UPDATE: Wow. Gotta link to this one too. (Hat tip to Sarge on this one)
UPDATE 2: I like this one of a naked chick, too.
This week, Stewartville's resident head case has a LOT to say. Apparently, the project to do whatever it is he thinks he's doing is in full swing. He's a busy man, what with a cranium arguably filled with overcooked spaghetti. Let's begin, shall we?
FOAMOSTYR Macheye thermocore Styrofoam. Now that you have the firing sequence (1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 2) we'll give you the numbers on the digital radar spindle of light. 1 digital sq. equals 4 digital sqs. 4 digital sqs. Equal 8 digital sqs. 8 digital sqs. Equal 16 squares, 16 equals 32 squares and keep going. Now you have double duplication from the left, no cells but spindles. The spindles of the under palm on the left.
Gary XXXXXXXX
555-XXXX
PS Now this can be called a discovery & it will be called LX7-Blue Spindle left outside palm - CMMC-wind. If you don't like that try cover-up, try treason, Diabo Crater, Arizona & Fish Canyon, Colorado, the world's oldest volcano. Now let's play the game.
Hmm. . .well. . .INTERESTING. I like to think that, if the X-Files had continued for 20 more years, this would be the type of stuff we'd hear Mulder spouting off about. Alas, we'll never know.
We can only hope.
Tawnee Stone. Tawnee Stone. Tawnee Stone. Tawnee Stone.
Jordan Capri. Jordan Capri. Jordan Capri. Jordan Capri. Jordan Capri.
Rachel Aziani. Rachel Aziani. Rachel Aziani. Rachel Aziani. Rachel Aziani.
Alison Angel. Alison Angel. Alison Angel. Alison Angel.
Today, James Lileks wrote:
As you may have read - not in newspapers, heaven forfend - a large portion of the blogworld has been crippled by attacks on the company that hosted a pro-Israel website, and the attacks are coming from servers that host Al Qaeda groups. This makes me uneasy; there's something else going on here, I think. It's like hearing reports from Alaska radar stations of peculiar blips on the screen. Someone's testing something.
What do we call these guys? Script Qiddies? Haqers? How about: Jew-Hating Gynophobic Devil Pawns, or JHGDPs for short? (Pronounced: Je-hig-dip.)
I've no reason to say this, but: my antennae are twitching. I have this feeling that 2004 is going to feel a lot like 1968. But it's just a feeling.
Far be it for me to disagree with Sir Lileks, but I have to disagree with Sir Lileks. Although I have no doubt that cyber-terrorists exist, and that they're out there lurking like digital bogeymen, I don't particularly fear their technological expertise.
For the record, yes, some al Queda-linked Web sites got together and apparently went after an Israel-based Web site called Internet Haganah which, as I understand it, is a site that tries to expose and shut down web sites that recruit and encourage terrorists. In the process, the jihadist hackers inadvertently overloaded a Web hosting site called Hosting Matters, which hosts a lot of popular blogs, including A Small Victory, Instapundit and Amish Tech Support.
The hackers utilized a Denial of Server attack which, in the hacker world, is basically among the most unsophisticated methods of hacking you can perform. Compared to the real Internet menaces out there, it's the equivalent of Harry Anderson pulling a rabbit out of a hat while David Blaine levitates nearby. Guys, you brought down one Internet site and some blogs. BLOGS! And those only briefly. So, you disconnected some folks on a conference call. Big deal.
Still, that doesn't keep the jihadist idiots of the world from engaging in some self-congratulatory back patting. Heck, to hear these guys talk, you'd think they brought the entire Internet down and stole the personal identification of every person who ever purchased off e-Bay or Amazon. I particularly loathe the heading of the site: "Jew-boy's Site Goes Dooooooown!!!!!!!" Nothing like a little rampant anti-Semitism mixed with unabashed glee. But, whatever.
My point is, these folks are about as sophisticated as Mike Tyson in a jail cell throwing a television around like a gorilla with luggage. They hardly constitute a real threat to the wider world of the world wide web. They couldn't hack their way into a cookie jar if it came to finding vulnerabilities in the major corporate sites on the Internet, and even the smaller players are shoring up potential flaws faster than cyber-jihadists can read instruction manuals on how to author Internet viruses. They're so far behind when it comes to understanding Internet and network technology, they may as well be tapping away on an Apple IIc.
Still, I'd still feel safer if the entire world were running on Linux rather than Windows.
UPDATE: Kinda, sorta, somewhat related. A recent post over at Healing Iraq underscores just how unsophisticated(though admittedly unsophisticated in a truly evil way) terrorists can be.
I heard some very distressful news today. Someone has been writing graffiti all over Baghdad threatening to kill children who accept the new schoolbags that are to be gifted to them by UNESCO for the new school season. Also warning that any hand waving to the infidel Americans will be cut.
Are these people sane? I mean what are they thinking? Is this our latest form of 'resistance'? Threatening our own children for getting some shiny new schoolbags. I am trying very hard to understand. This so called resistance is getting hated more and more by Iraqis everywhere. I'm sure this will only add to that scorn exponentially. They are losing any sympathy they may have had earlier. The terrorists have turned out to be MUCH dumber than I thought.
I woke up this morning, got ready for work, said a few brief words to my roomie, Amy, and then walked out to my car. En route, I paused to look at the pumpkins I carved on Friday. They're looking pretty rough; high temps have accelerated the rotting process. Oh well, that's why we bought two pumpkins each, so we can carve another gourd later in the month, closer to Halloween.
I walked across the lawn a couple of times, looking at the pumpkins from different angles, before finally acknowledging that I had to go to work. Crap.
So, I was sitting here at work, sifting through a sea of e-mail, when I noticed a smell. It was a subtle smell, one of those smells you notice briefly, but then it goes away, but then it comes back. Before long, I started to realize that the intermittent smell was probably an indication of something malodorous on my part.
I recognized the smell, which is to say I remember smelling the smelly smell from sometime way back in my memory banks. And, I mean wayyyyy back in my memory banks. I was in 9th grade, I believe, sitting in front of a Macintosh computer during my first class of the morning: keyboarding. Perhaps one of the reasons I recognized the smell so quickly today was because I was, once again, sitting in front of a computer and keyboard when the smell first tickled my nose.
I was sitting next to one of the hottest girls in school at the time. She was a senior, with the most fantastic set of breasts ever to adorn a female chest without requiring artificial augmentation. I spent most mornings sitting next to her with the most raging boner imaginable. It made me a very self-conscious typist.
Well, that one morning, as I tried to make my lascivious yearnings less obvious, I noticed a subtle, sweet yet sour smell permeating the air. The smell would be there, and then it would be gone, and then it would be back again. As I sat there, sniffing the air like a dog catching the scent of game, the hot girl sitting next to me started doing the same. She smelled what I smelled. The only question that remained was what the smell actually was.
Gradually, I narrowed down the source of the smell, and I couldn't escape the conclusion that the smell was coming from me, although I had no idea from where. It was driving me crazy. Finally, I shifted in my seat and crossed my left leg over my right knee, and the once-subtle, on again/off again smell suddenly became an assaulting odor.
And that's when I finally saw the massive squish of light brown dog poop on my shoe.
There's no dignified way to discover dog poop on your shoe. When you first see it, you recoil in horror, and you want to get away from it, but you can't, because it's ON YOUR SHOE. It's practically attached to you. You ARE the poop! So, there I sat in typing class, with the hottest girl I'd ever known in my existence sitting next to me, and I was poop boy. Oh, yeah, THAT'S attractive.
I finally raised my hand and asked to go to the bathroom, and I was excused. I exited the classroom, carefully walking on my left heel to avoid any possible poop tracks. I scanned the classroom floor for any poop tracks I may have made on my way into the room: there were a couple of smears, but nothing that would implicate me directly. I heel-stepped my way to the bathroom, where I removed my shoe and washed it under the sink. Crisis averted.
Fast-forward to today. As I typed, that faintly familiar odor came back, once again, to tickle my nostrils. This time, however, I recognized it almost immediately. Instinctively, I lifted my left foot, and there, just like old times, was a massive squish of light brown dog poop. I swear, it came from the same dog as all those years ago and, if not, it was certainly related.
At first, I tried to dislodge the poop using a paper clip, but that was a messy and, quite frankly, a disgusting way to go about it. Eventually, I opted to heel step my way to the bathroom, where I removed my shoe and washed it under the sink. Thankfully, no one came in while I cleansed my Sketcher.
No morning that starts with dog poop on a shoe can mean a good overall day.
I haven't ranted about Iraq and the media's police blotter approach to reporting on the events in that country because, well, far more important and far smarter bloggers have commented quite eloquently on the matter. That being said, I'll just direct you to some Iraqi blogs you may find interesting. Two of them are old news, but there's a new blogger in their ranks, and he's quite good.
Salam Pax: About the most famous Iraqi in the world, with the exception of Saddam Hussein. A compelling read, with insights you don't always expect.
Riverbend: A perpetual whiner but, given the fact that a war was recently visited upon her country, I guess that's understandable. Still, she whines about everything.
Healing Iraq: This guy is new to the blogging scene, but from the sounds of it, he has beginner's luck (well, that, and it helps to have Instapundit link you a couple of times). He's a great read, and he offers up a lot of content and *gasp* good news the mainstream media wouldn't be caught dead reporting.
Carving pumpkins is fun, but only after you get the disgusting innards fished out of the shell.
Melissa and I, in our second annual act of pumpkin carving, trotted out the pumpkin carving utensils, wine, and most importantly, pumpkins, Friday evening. We were characteristically late in going about it, 9:30 p.m., so we were cognizant that we weren't going to be going to bed any time soon.
Ah, technology. Back when I was a young' un, I had to fall back on my own pumpkin carving imagination, which usually resulted in a typical pumpkin with triangular eyes, a triangular nose, and a lopsided mouth with as many square teeth as I could cram in there, all based on my own imagination.
Now, there are stencils. Now, you can tape a picture on a pumpkin, poke a design onto the orange flesh, and then cut out fantastically detailed designs with stress-free precision. And, there's the Internet, which gives you access to more pumpkin stencil then you can shake a stick at. Okay, you could shake a stick at them, but why bother?
I chose a Calvin stencil (as in Calvin and Hobbes), while Melissa selected a stencil of a koala bear. The only hitch was that the stencils were just too small. So, I saved the images to the computer, fired up a photo editor, enlarged the stencils and, voila: pumpkin stencils while -U- wait. The Internet: it's not just for porn any more.
Unfortunately, the selected designs were pretty, well, DETAILED. Carving our gourds took many an hour, and we didn't wrap things up until 2:30 a.m. But, damn it, those pumpkins looked awesome. I captured Calvin's true essence, while Melissa's koala just invited me to go down under. Did I just type that? Anywayyyyyy.
On Saturday, Melissa and I went to my buddy's house, where we prepared to go on an uncharacteristic Mississippi River boating excursion in October. My buddy, Troy, owns a boat, which is one of the main reasons he's my buddy. He also recently bought a fuseball table, thus strengthening his position as my buddy.
The boating was phenomenal. It was 72 degrees, which is extremely unusual for this time of year, and the fall colors were still just vibrant enough to just sit and drift and marvel at Mother Nature in Minnesota: a nice prelude to the shit season that is winter. If spring, summer and fall are Mother Nature at her best, then winter is Mother Nature with severe PMS. Man I hate winter.
Once I get my own Web page up and running, to be unveiled when I'm damned good and ready, I'll try to remember to post pictures of the pumpkin carving and the boating. Maybe I'll also post nude pictures of me lying seductively in front of my computer too. The possibilities are ENDLESS.
Sunday (yesterday), the mercury reportedly hit 77 degrees. In OCTOBER! Unbelievable. I went for a five mile run and was beset upon by more Japanese beetles than there are Japanese in Japan. Seriously, these bugs are truly getting out of hand. When I'm 84 years old, I'm just going to sit on the porch and talk about the great beetle infestation of 'Ought 3. Of course, by then, we'll be under control by the alien invaders from Sirius 7, who keep the population under control by random anal probes, but at least the beetle problem will be under control.
Now I'm at work and I must write about boring stuff. Even more boring than this post, if you can believe THAT.
