Boots on the ground

His latest photo blog is at right, and below is an excerpt (the conclusion) to his latest post:

While the medic tried to stop the bleeding, SFC Robert Bowman began questioning the man through a translator. "You are going to die," Bowman said, "I want you to answer some questions."

The man brought his hand to his head, and touched his forehead with his index finger, pointing right between his eyes. "Shoot me, shoot me," he said, "I want to die."

LTC Kurilla ordered the medic to try to save him. So they took him to same hospital where Sgt Davis died last week; the same one that little Farah never made it to, and there he is, still alive, his bombing days are over.

The entire blog is excellent (though short!), and worth visiting regularly...

More mass graves

But the American liberal left somehow has managed to keep their blinders on with respect to the ongoing discoveries and investigations of Saddam's seemingly innumerable mass graves. The MSM pays far more attention, of course, to the current events — especially any that make Americans look bad.

The last credible reckoning of Saddam's mass graves that I saw gave the running total of his victims as over 800,000 — while estimating that only one quarter of the grave sites had yet been discovered. Iraqi authorities believe that very large undiscovered mass grave sites remain in (especially) the southern marshlands and in the Kurdish areas. Undisputedly there are many hundreds of thousands of people who simply disappeared during Saddam's reign and whose remains have never been discovered.

Where is the American left's outrage about these deaths? How can they miss the fact that the human cost of Saddam's reign was enormously higher than the human cost of taking Saddam out? What philosophical or moral calculus are they using that enables them to weigh these facts and condemn America?

Meanwhile, Free Iraqi has his own comments on the mass graves. Read the whole thing, but here's his conclusion:

Still, the mass graves are now the most striking evidence of Saddam's regime brutality and they show in a way the size of death and destruction this regime was bringing to Iraq on a daily basis. I say they show, and I mean to the rest of the world, as we don't need any evidence to tell us we were living in Hell.

Niebuhrian?

Chrenkoff cites this familiar poem by theologian Dr. Rheinhold Niebuhr as a way to understand President Bush's foreign policy:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I can't help but agree with Mr. Chrenkoff on this one, though at first blush it seemed ludicrous to me to reduce an apparently complex foreign policy to something so simple. If I were making such an attempt (which never occured to me!), I'd probably have started with the premise of fostering liberty. But this little poem does a much better job of summarizing the strategy (even to a non-believer), as opposed to the objective of spreading freedom.

Georgians for Bush

According to press reports, President Bush's short visit could hardly have been more friendly (if you'll discount the alleged "attack" with a dud grenade). Huge crowds (especially considering Georgia's small size) of 100,000+ people waited hours in the rain to see and hear him (and Laura, of course). A group of traditional Georgian dancers got Mr. Bush so enthused that he jumped onto the stage and did a little gyrating of his own. Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili said, “You stood with us during our revolution and you stand with us today. On behalf of my nation I would like to say, `Thank you,’”. And we're told that he also persuaded President Bush to make an unplanned stop in a local Georgian restaurant — after which President Bush, obviously pleased, highly recommended a stop there by any visitor.

Publius Pundit has a nice writeup, with some photos. An excerpt:

Arms are raised in the air, everyone cheers and chants, and Freedom Square turns into a sea of Georgian and American flags.

At first glance you may think you’re witnessing the Republican National Convention all over again. But if you saw President Bush speak just now, you would know that he was winning the hearts and ears of a crowd of jubilant Georgians. When recalling all of the October pre-election polls reflecting how much the world hates the United States and especially President Bush, it would seem odd to the outside observer that over 100,000 people would wait in the heat, for hours on end, before impatiently breaking through police barriers just to hear Bush speak. In reality, however, it isn’t so far-fetched. Due to American support for freedom and democracy in the region during and after the fall of the Soviet Union, countries from the Baltics to the South Caucasus hold the United States in the highest of regards.

Quote for the day

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

   George Orwell

Quote for the day

The idea of countries helping others become free, I would hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary, but rational foreign policy, as decent foreign policy, as humane foreign policy.

   George W. Bush (May 7, 2005, while visiting with the leaders of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania before visiting Russia and Georgia)

Something to remember

Publius Pundit has a nice piece today, with lots of links, about an ugly incident from World War II: the Yalta conference in which Churchill, Stalin, and Rooosevelt basically agreed to divide up Eastern Europe. There's some legitimate room for debate about whether the Western Allies could have done anything effective about it, but...they didn't even take a principled stand, or object in any way, to Stalin's enormous grab of land for a "buffer zone" around the core of the Soviet Union. And in the process millions of people who had independent before Hitler overran them were "transferred" from one tyrant's dominion to another's.

To some of my Estonian friends, especially those who are both ethnically Estonian and interested in history, this behavior of the Western Allies rankles to this day, and is the direct cause of a reluctance to trust. And who can blame them?

An excerpt:

Amid this, I discovered some ugly history. There was a book out, by Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant descendent of Leo Tolstoy, called ‘Victims of Yalta.’ It disturbed me, because of its description of how the victorious Allies handed their Eastern European allies in the Great War to Jozef Stalin. Prisoners of the Germans were to be forced back to Stalin brutal communist regime, the evilest tyranny on earth. Many of them jumped onto barbed wire rather than endure that fate worse than death. All begged to be spared. None were. Many were shot the minute they reached their now-Stalinist oppressed homelands.

One of my professors had been a Polish freedom fighter who fought with Sikorsky from London during the war. He was decorated for bravery. From him, I learned the term ’sold down the river.’ The allies instead chose to preserve ‘peace’ with Jozef Stalin, at the price of their freedom. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were willing to do it, because they were ‘only’ Eastern Europeans, the third world of Europe, surely ‘used’ to oppression. So in the disgraceful last chapter of the war, they traded Eastern Europe’s freedom for their own.

Check out the whole thing, and don't forget to follow some of those links...

Stars, nebulae, and stuff

From the APOD:

When stars form, pandemonium reigns. A textbook case is the star forming region NGC 6559. Visible above are red glowing emission nebulas of hydrogen, blue reflection nebulas of dust, dark absorption nebulas of dust, and the stars that formed from them. The first massive stars formed from the dense gas will emit energetic light and winds that erode, fragment, and sculpt their birthplace. And then they explode. The resulting morass can be as beautiful as it is complex. After tens of millions of years, the dust boils away, the gas gets swept away, and all that is left is a naked open cluster of stars.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Quote for the day

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

   H. Ross Perot

Sunni days

Strategy Page has an interesting report today:

The Sunni Arab media in the Middle East has gotten tired of blaming the United States for everything that doesn't work in Iraq. More and more stories blame Iraq's Sunni Arabs for the terrorism, corruption and tyranny in Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East. This is part of a trend, the growing popularity of Arabs taking responsibility for their actions. This is a radical concept in Middle Eastern politics. For several generations, all problems could be blamed on other forces. The list of the blameworthy was long; the United States, the West, Colonialism, Infidels (non Moslems, especially Jews), Capitalism, the CIA, Israel, Democracy and many others too absurd to mention. Giving up this crutch is not popular in the Middle East. Oil wealth has made it possible to sustain, for decades, the belief of all these conspiracies to keep the Arab people down and powerless. But the invasion of Iraq, and the overthrow of Saddam, forced Arabs to confront their long support for a tyrannical butcher like Saddam. Here was a dictator who knew how to play the blame game, and position himself as an Arab "hero." Saddam's supporters turned to terrorism to restore themselves to power. Two years of killing Iraqis has shamed an increasing number of Arabs into admitting that this is an Arab problem, not the fault of the United States (who, in the most popular delusion, should have waved a magic wand and made all problems in Iraq disappear.) Even the Sunni Arab media are in awe of the Iraqi Shia and Kurds, for not slaughtering large numbers of Sunni Arabs in response to the terrorism, or simply as revenge for centuries of torment at the hands of Sunni Arabs.

If these observations are accurate, then this is a hopeful portent of positive change. Now all we need is for some of this new attitude to diffuse into the "blame America first" crowd of liberals over here!

Zoom!

In the words of the Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds are less than the speed that all of these objects together move relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). In the above all-sky map, radiation in the Earth's direction of motion appears blueshifted and hence hotter, while radiation on the opposite side of the sky is redshifted and colder. The map indicates that the Local Group moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to this primordial radiation. This high speed was initially unexpected and its magnitude is still unexplained. Why are we moving so fast? What is out there?

Well...it appears that there is an enormous gravitational pull from the direction of the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers have dubbed this the Great Attractor.

You can read more about the cosmic microwave background radiation and the doppler dipole in this Wikipedia article.

Arab proverbs

Courtesy of Subzero Blue:

Wishing does not make a poor man rich.

Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things on marble.

When what you want doesn't happen, learn to want what does.

The wound of words is worse than the wound of swords.

The wound that bleeds inwardly is the most dangerous.

Only the tent pitched by your own hands will stand.

Only three things in life are certain birth, death and change.

Seek counsel of him who makes you weep, and not of him who makes you laugh.

He who has health has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

Quote for the day

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

   Henri Poincaré

Cosmos

Someday very soon, the privately-financed Cosmos mission will be launched by a submerged Russian submarine. The objective is to test an honest-to-goodness solar sail. If you've never heard of this sort of propulsion system, they're quite interesting. The basic idea is to leverage the power in the photons (light) streaming out from the sun, by capturing them or reflecting them from a large "sail" constructed of ultra-lightweight materials.

Here's the Cosmos site, and here's a good Wikipedia article on the whole idea...

More wildflowers!

Debbie and I took a very nice hike on the East Side Trail along Cold Stream in Cuyamaca State Park today. The wildflowers are within a week or so of prime at the altitude of Green Valley Campground.

Go read all about it (and see all the pictures!) at the link above. You can also click on the picture at right for a larger view.

Overlapping galaxies

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) brings us this photo (click on the photo at right for a larger view) of two galaxies that just happen to line up from our perspective on Earth. This has some scientific benefits (see below), but what strikes me as I look at this is simply the sheer beauty of it. And also what seems like a vanishingly small chance that something like this could "just happen", and how fortunate we are to live in an age where such things can be discovered and shared. The explanation from APOD:

NGC 3314 consists of two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line-up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust are also seen to echo the face-on spiral's structure. The dust lanes are surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable pair of overlapping galaxies is one of a small number of systems in which absorption of visible light can be used to directly explore the distribution of dust in distant spirals. NGC 3314 is about 140 million light-years away in the multi-headed constellation Hydra. This color composite was constructed from Hubble Space Telescope images made in 1999 and 2000.

Quote for the day

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

   Richard Bach

Five days in hell

It's a riveting and shocking story. One tiny excerpt:

As soon as the metal door clanged shut behind us, the English – speaking leader said, “You are spies… and now you are prisoners”. All of our cameras, equipment and identification were taken from us and we were told to sit on a mat with our backs to the wall. “The Americans will attack soon and I have to see to my men,” said our captor. “I will deal with you when I return”.

Shortly after nightfall, they brought a platter of food into the compound, and in what would soon become a routine pattern, they served us first before eating dinner themselves. Admittedly I did not have much of an appetite.The plates had just been cleared away when another car pulled up outside and four more gunmen came quickly through the door. Before I could even react, I was pulled to my feet and pressed against the wall with my hands on top of my head. Almost immediately I heard the distinct sound of a Kalashnikov being cocked about a metre behind me. In fear and shock at the realization that they were about to execute me, Zeynep screamed at them in Turkish: “Don’t shoot him… he has a son!”

Phoebe

JPL's caption for this picture (click for a larger view):

Phoebe's true nature is revealed in startling clarity in this mosaic of two images taken during Cassini's flyby on June 11, 2004. The image shows evidence for the emerging view that Phoebe may be an ice-rich body coated with a thin layer of dark material. Small bright craters in the image are probably fairly young features. This phenomenon has been observed on other icy satellites, such as Ganymede at Jupiter. When impactors slammed into the surface of Phoebe, the collisions excavated fresh, bright material — probably ice — underlying the surface layer. Further evidence for this can be seen on some crater walls where the darker material appears to have slid downwards, exposing more light-colored material. Some areas of the image that are particularly bright — especially near lower right — are over-exposed.

An accurate determination of Phoebe's density — a forthcoming result from the flyby — will help Cassini mission scientists understand how much of the little moon is comprised of ices.

This spectacular view was obtained at a phase, or Sun-Phoebe-spacecraft, angle of 84 degrees, and from a distance of approximately 32,500 kilometers (20,200 miles). The image scale is approximately 190 meters (624 feet) per pixel. No enhancement was performed on this image.

Hindenberg

On May 6, 1937 the zeppelin Hindenberg caught fire and crashed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Lakehurst happens to be near where I grew up, so tales of the Hindenberg were very familiar to me even as a child. Thirty six people died in the accident, including one ground crew member.

The exact cause of the accident is an enduring controversy, with some investigators (I use that term very broadly) believing that it wasn't an accident at all. Wikipedia has a good article on the entire affair.

Click on the picture for a larger view. A tip o' the hat to TigerHawk for reminding me of this bit of history.

Ann Coulter kerfuffle

Daniel Bonevac at Right Reason has a nice post on the most recent Ann Coulter kerfuffle, at the University of Texas at Austin.

The crowd greeted Coulter with a standing ovation. Her speech lasted for about 30 minutes. Protesters began shouting almost as soon as she began, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. They numbered a few dozen and were clustered in the back. Coulter’s supporters constituted most of the crowd, and interrupted her frequently (and more effectively) with laughter and applause.

Coulter’s real strengths emerged in the question period, which lasted for roughly an hour. Many questions were friendly; some were even thought-provoking. Others, however, were hostile—including the obscene one that led to a student’s arrest, which I will not dignify by repeating here. (Why, by the way, has sexually explicit profanity become so common among some leftists recently? And why do they delight in directing it toward women? Wouldn’t they term this behavior ‘sexual harassment’ if it were being done by anyone else?) The first “question” was a diatribe followed by flatulent noises. Sadly missing were informed and articulate questions challenging Coulter’s views.

The level of controversy surrounding Coulter’s appearances here and elsewhere surprises me. I recall similar outbursts against speakers during the Nixon and Reagan administrations, but those speakers tended to be administration officials whose actions constituted the supposed grounds of the protest. Coulter doesn’t hold a government position; she has no direct political power. She gives talks. She writes columns and books. The same holds of David Horowitz, William Kristol, and Pat Buchanan, all of whom, like Coulter, have been physically assaulted as well as disrupted while speaking on campus. That, it seems to me, adds new dimensions to the free speech debate. Protesters who try to disrupt speeches by administration officials can argue that they are protesting actions, not speech per se. The new protesters can’t make that claim. They are protesting speech qua speech, which is why they need to allege that the speech they condemn is “hate speech,” so threatening to the social order that it ought to be silenced. Hence the pies and threats of violence; threats, in their view, deserve to be met with threats.

I'm increasingly disturbed by the recent spate of mindless, content-less, sometimes obscene, and sometimes violent confrontations of conservative speakers by liberals in the audience. The first few occurences, toward the end of last year, I was inclined to write off as basically harmless antics by the more unbalanced fringe elements. As these incidents keep piling up I'm starting to wonder if we're witnessing something else entirely: the intellectual disintegration of the left. Lest you jump to a conclusion, I don't think that's good news at all — an alternative perspective, if based on some defensible intellectual foundation (as opposed to making vile and obscene remarks about Ann), and the resulting public debate, is an important part of a representative democracy.

Don't you just love that picture of Ann?

Protest babes

...and he's brought us a nice collection of protest babe photos. Along with some words of "protest babe wisdom":

A few words, though, before we begin. If any of you think only the Christian women of Lebanon walk around without their own portable tents, forget that. It’s isn’t even close to true. My hotel was on the Muslim side of Beirut and I saw almost as many modern-looking women on that side of the city as I saw in the Christian areas. Even Hezbollah doesn’t mandate the veil or the hijab.

Two Hezbollah groupies invited me to have coffee with them downtown. We argued rather passionately about politics, as you can imagine, but they were good sports about it. They gave me a Cuban cigar as I went on my way, but first one of them asked me: “So, whaddaya think of our women, eh?” and elbowed me good-naturedly in the ribs. Lebanon ain’t Saudi.

Hat tip to Publius Pundit for the pointer...

P.S. There's a semi-serious side to looking for (if not at the protest babes) when the protest babes show up for the revolution, recent experience suggests that the revolution is going to succeed. And if they don't show up, not.

Quote for the day

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

   Victor Borge

Mars Polar Lander found?

The folks at Malin Systems (a San Diego company that does imaging work for NASA and JPL) believe they may have found the lost Mars Polar Lander that disappeared in December 1999. In their own words:

The loss of Mars Polar Lander in December 1999 was a traumatic experience not only for those of us intimately involved in the mission, but also for the U. S. Mars Exploration Program. Following the failure, exhaustive reviews of what happened and why led to major shifts in the way planetary exploration was implemented. Without telemetry, the cause of the failure could only be surmised. It would be extremely important if, through some observation, it were possible to confirm the failure mode.

Shortly after the loss of Mars Polar Lander (MPL), the Mars Global Surveyor MOC was employed to acquire dozens of 1.5 m/pixel images of the landing uncertainty ellipses, looking for any evidence of the lander and its fate. The criteria we used in searching for MPL required a bright feature of irregular or elongated shape (the parachute) within about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) of a location that included a dark area (rocket-disturbed martian dirt) and a small, bright spot near its center (the lander). In 2000, we found one example (see figure) that met these criteria, but in the absence of any substantive, corroborating evidence, the interpretation that this was MPL and its parachute were considered to be extremely speculative.

Observations by MGS MOC in 2004 of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) landing sites provided guidance for a re-examination of the previously identified MPL candidate. For example, the material from which the MPL and MER parachutes are made is similar, and its brightness in MOC images can be calculated, at least in a relative sense, as a function of sun angle. The brightness of the candidate "parachute" in the MPL candidate location image turns out to be consistent with it being the same material. The brightness difference of the ground disturbed by rocket blast at the MER sites is similar to the brightness difference seen in the MPL candidate image, again adjusted for the difference in illumination and viewing angles. These consistencies lend credibility to this tentative identification.

If these features really are related to the MPL landing, what can we surmise about that landing from the image? First, we can tell that MPL's descent proceeded more-or-less successfully through parachute jettison and terminal rocket firing. The relative location of the candidate parachute and lander is consistent with the slight west-to-east wind seen in dust cloud motion in the area around the date of landing. The blast-disturbed area is consistent with the engines continuing to fire until the vehicle was close to the ground. How close is not known. The larger MER retrorockets fired at about 100 m altitude and continued firing until the engines were about 20-25 m above the surface; the candidate MPL disturbance is roughly the same size, but whether this means the engines were firing as close to the ground as the MER rockets cannot be determined. These interpretations are consistent with the proposed MPL mode of failure: the engines fired at the correct time and altitude and continued firing until the flight software checked to see if an electronic message indicated that the landing leg contact switch had been set. Since the initial leg deployment several kilometers above the surface apparently induced sufficient motion to trigger this message, the software stopped the engines as soon as the check was made, about 28-30 seconds into the 36-40 second burn. MPL was probably at an altitude of about 40 m, from which it freely fell. This is equivalent to a fall on Earth from a height of about 40 feet. The observation of a single, small "dot" at the center of the disturbed location would indicate that the vehicle remained more-or-less intact after its fall.

What is important about having a candidate for the Mars Polar Lander site? It gives the MOC team a place to target for a closer look, using the compensated pitch and roll technique known as "cPROTO." Examples of cPROTO images and a description of this capability, developed by the MGS team in 2003 and 2004, were discussed in a MOC release on 27 September 2004. Without a candidate for targeting a cPROTO image, it would take more than 60 Earth years to cover the entire Mars Polar Lander landing ellipse with cPROTO images, because the region spends the better part of each Mars year covered with carbon dioxide frost, part of each winter is spent in darkness, and, because of several uncertainties involved with the technique, it often takes two, three, or more tries before a cPROTO image hits a specific target. Now that a candidate site for Mars Polar Lander has been identified, we have a cPROTO target, which may permit us to obtain an image of about 0.5 meters per pixel (allowing objects approximately 1.5-2.5 meters in size to be resolved) during southern summer this year. At the present time (May 2005), the landing site is just beginning to lose its cover of seasonal carbon dioxide frost.

Click on the photo at right for a stupendously huge, high-resolution version (it will download quickly from Malin's site, not slowly like it would from mine).

A Marine acts quickly

A fast-thinking Marine takes quick and decisive action upon seeing another McDonald's customer in danger. The short story from 7/39 News:

Staff Sgt. Jamie Nicholson is being hailed a hero for what he did at the McDonald's in Clairemont at Balboa and Genesee avenues. Nicholson was in the drive-thru line placing his order over the McDonald's intercom when Sabio Barretto, 24, who was being waited on at the drive-thru window, dropped some change out his window. Barretto leaned out his window to retrieve the money and either stepped on the gas pedal or the idling vehicle pulled forward, trapping his head between the car and the exterior wall of the restaurant.

Nicholson told police what happened as he pulled into the drive thru.

"I was placing my order over the intercom, and then I heard the lady inside say, 'Oh, my God,' and kind of scream," said Nicholson.

It appeared that Barretto was in serious danger, said Nicholson.

"The door was hitting the building, so he was pinned between the door and the car, and it looked like it cut off his oxygen," said San Diego police officer Tim Peterson.

Nicholson acted quickly to save Barretto.

"I jumped out," said Nicholson. "He was turning blue, [so I] smashed the back window in, reached from the back seat, put the car in reverse car, backed up, just reassured him, told him everything would be all right, help was on the way."

Nicholson, who is a drill instructor at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, said that unlike when he served four months in Iraq, he didn’t expect any trouble at the McDonald's Wednesday morning.

"Life-threatening situation at a McDonald's drive through is not something you'd expect everyday, that's for sure," said Nicholson.

San Diego Sgt. Andra Brown said Nicholson did everything right.

"He definitely is a hero," said Brown. "He took immediate action. He did not hesitate to get involved, saw that somebody's life was at risk, and it's not what you'd expect to find at McDonald's drive-thru, but he's a hero, he saved a guy's life today."

Barretto was taken to Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries.

Desmond T. Doss

Desmond Doss was a very unusual sort of military hero. He refused to kill enemy soldiers, because of his religious beliefs. But he still wanted to serve his country, and serve it he did...with great distinction. Chaotic Synaptic Activity (is that a great name or what?) has a wonderful post describing Doss' heroism. Here's a small taste:

The monument was then, the day of the picture of my sisters and I, located near a sugar cane field on the island of Okinawa. It was there my father told us a story of an Army Medic by the name of Corporal Desmond T. Doss, who distinguished himself (that day) by climbing an escarpment, repeatedly, venturing out onto a machine gun fire swept battle field of open, relatively flat ground, to recover his fellow soldiers, and lower them down the escarpment to safety. A brave man indeed, but he was braver still, in the context of then, and even today than those key points describe.

Desmond T. Doss is (he is still living) a 7th Day Adventist. This Christian denomination does not believe in the taking of life. Desmond Doss could have easily avoided service in WWII. Because of his upbrining and personal faithfulness, a request for CO status would have, most likely, been granted without question. Yet, Desmond T. Doss joined the Army, not to kill, but to save lives.

You'll be really sorry if you don't read the whole post. Plus all your hair will fall out, and a camel with leprosy will move into your car's back seat. Worse things, perhaps, as well. Read it!

Here's the citation from Doss' Medal of Honor:

The President of the United States in the name of The Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to

DOSS, DESMOND T.

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Medical Detachment, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division.
Place and date: Near Urasoe Mura, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, 29 April-21 May 1945.
Entered service at: Lynchburg, Va.
Birth: Lynchburg, Va. G.O.
No.: 97, 1 November 1945.

Citation: He was a company aid man when the 1st Battalion assaulted a jagged escarpment 400 feet high As our troops gained the summit, a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar and machinegun fire crashed into them, inflicting approximately 75 casualties and driving the others back. Pfc. Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them 1 by 1 to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands. On 2 May, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire in rescuing a wounded man 200 yards forward of the lines on the same escarpment; and 2 days later he treated 4 men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within 8 yards of enemy forces in a cave's mouth, where he dressed his comrades' wounds before making 4 separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety. On 5 May, he unhesitatingly braved enemy shelling and small arms fire to assist an artillery officer. He applied bandages, moved his patient to a spot that offered protection from small arms fire and, while artillery and mortar shells fell close by, painstakingly administered plasma. Later that day, when an American was severely wounded by fire from a cave, Pfc. Doss crawled to him where he had fallen 25 feet from the enemy position, rendered aid, and carried him 100 yards to safety while continually exposed to enemy fire. On 21 May, in a night attack on high ground near Shuri, he remained in exposed territory while the rest of his company took cover, fearlessly risking the chance that he would be mistaken for an infiltrating Japanese and giving aid to the injured until he was himself seriously wounded in the legs by the explosion of a grenade. Rather than call another aid man from cover, he cared for his own injuries and waited 5 hours before litter bearers reached him and started carrying him to cover. The trio was caught in an enemy tank attack and Pfc. Doss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter; and directed the bearers to give their first attention to the other man. Awaiting the litter bearers' return, he was again struck, this time suffering a compound fracture of 1 arm. With magnificent fortitude he bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint and then crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station. Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions Pfc. Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty.

If you'd like to read more about this hero who was nearly thrown out of the service, look here and here.

Donald Herbert

J. James Estrada at American Thinker posted this interesting piece earlier today; it starts:

1,037 words. That was the length of the May 3rd New York Times story that ran with the headline, “Buffalo Fireman Regains Long-Lost Memories.” The two words that a learned reader would expect to appear in the article, but did not? Terri Schaivo. Talk about “long-lost memories.”

Donald Herbert, the firefighter who spent the last ten years in a state reminiscent of Schaivo, all of a sudden began asking for his wife and family. The Times story quotes a nursing home worker as saying the miracle occurred “out of the blue.” (By the way, they didn’t call it a miracle, I did).

Oh, my, this really gets the ponder going...

A little further reading here and here has me thinking that Mr. Estrada has a valid point, though he's stretching the facts a tad (or to be more charitable, at the time he posted there may not have been as many facts available). It appears that Mr. Herbert's condition was highly variable, and at times there was observable brain activity, which was very different than with Terry Schiavo's situation.

Still, it gives one pause when you think about ever deciding when to give up hope. Here's a fellow who was "drooling in a wheelchair" for almost ten years, and then a doc comes along with a new idea for treatment (a drug "cocktail") and next thing you know he's talking and wondering what happened to ten years of his life.

I hope some of those who were so eager to pull the plug on Terry will reflect on the miraculous recovery of Mr. Herbert...

Asparagus pee

I searched the web and found this article on the subject:

Why Asparagus Pee Smells Funny...

by Hannah Holmes

"This is of no practical importance," the urologist tells me. "It wasn't part of my training. It's something we contemplated over pizza and beer." When I admit that I have actually timed the arrival of the distinctive odor in my pee after eating asparagus (about 15 minutes), the good doctor suggests, facetiously, that my groundbreaking research might lead to a tenure-track position at a fine university.

It is a sadly neglected field. But I'm not the first to ask.

In 1891 a scientist named "Nencki" had so very little to do that he convinced four guys to eat seven kilograms of asparagus (that's about three and a half pounds each). He collected the pertinent pee, worked some medieval magic on it, and concluded that the smell was due to a metabolite called methanethiol.

So there you go. Nencki claimed that as your body metabolizes asparagus, it produces this smelly chemical, which your discriminating kidneys see fit to dump into the bladder.

This probably doesn't qualify as red-hot science, but it's warm enough to spark differing opinions.

In 1975 a chemist from California claimed in Science that gas chromatography had fingered a different culprit: S-Methyl Thioesters, to be precise. No methanethiol.

Then there's the 1980 reference in the British Medical Journal that simply refers to "metabolites." Another asparagus scholar favors "six sulfur-containing compounds."

I'm voting for methanethiol, partly because the guy who did the gas chromatography left no forwarding address, and partly because the methanethiol entry in my aging Merck Index of chemicals is so interesting.

Methanethiol is composed mostly of sulfur with a splash of hydrogen, plus some carbon, a brew famous for its effect in rotten eggs, cabbages and paper mills. Convincing, no? Merck also notes the asparagus connection and, most intriguing, warns that methanethiol may be a narcotic in high concentrations.

Now if you're scowling at your screen and muttering, "My pee doesn't smell like asparagus," first ask yourself if you eat asparagus.

Even if you do but lack the smell, you're still OK. In fact the fabulously funny book, The ReSearch Guide to Body Fluids (by Paul Spinrad, Juno Books, N.Y., 1994), says just 22 percent of survey respondents experience asparagus pee.

Early investigators thought genetics had divided the world into stinkers and nonstinkers. That was until 1980, when three researchers had the presence of mind to wave pee from the nonstinkers under the noses of the stinkers.

Lo and behold, the problem proved to be one not of producing the stinky pee but of being able to sniff it out.

If you've been deprived of this gift, don't give up hope. To increase the concentration of methanethiol molecules available to your snoot, you could either intentionally dehydrate yourself before you dine (this is unhealthful); or pee into a cup and sniff that. Or eat three and a half pounds of asparagus for lunch.

And if you experience a narcotic effect, you could be looking at a tenure-track position at a fine university.

Vocabulary: Asparagus fleet, n. Roman emperors were so fond of asparagus, which probably originated near the Mediterranean, that they kept special boats for the purpose of fetching it.

Grabbing the chainsaw

To understand this story, you need one little piece of background... We recently adopted a little kitten, from a batch of feral kittens that Debi raised a few weeks ago. She is part of a cat rescue organization that (among other things) takes the kittens of feral mom-cats and acclimates them to human contact, thus making them very adoptable. One of these kittens both of us fell in love with -- a little guy who looks a lot like a miniature "Maine coon" cat, with beautiful gray and brown tabby markings, a pronounced bobcat-like face, and great big paws. Right now he's about 10 weeks old, weighs a couple of pounds, and is playful and active just like any other kitten. We've named this guy Halala Pala (at right; click for a larger view)...

Debi and I were sleeping a little later than usual this morning. I was the first one up, at 4 am, peering out the window to see if the anticipated storm had started dumping some rain on us (it hadn't). Since I was up anyway, I walked, half asleep, into the bathroom to donate the previous evening's iced tea to our septic tank. I did this in the usual fashion, standing in front of the toilet. All was well with the world, or so I thought...when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Halala, in full scamper, headed straight for the toilet.

You see, we have one of those shaggy covers for our toilet lid, and the cats all love to perch on those lids. Halala had discovered the delights of the shaggy toilet lid some time ago, but apparently he had not yet discovered that the shaggy cover wasn't always there.

Even in my half-asleep state, it was clear to me that Halala headed for the toilet was possible trouble. I didn't realize quite how much trouble, though...

There's something else you need to understand. If you're female, you may not realize that a man "in full stream", as it were, cannot just immediately turn off the spigot. It takes a few seconds to shut down the system. And a little kitten in full scamper can go a long way in a few seconds. And I was half asleep...

So Halala did just what you've guessed by now. I can play it over in my mind's eye: a little kitten, launching himself, with claws extended on all four paws, toward his intended shaggy perch so he could say hello to his human in the morning. A little kitten, simultaneously noting the absence of his shaggy footing, and a stream of vile liquid hitting him in the head. A little kitten, twisting his head to look up at his human with a look of absolute astonishment on his face. A little kitten, falling into an evil trap, full of foul-smelling water. A little kitten, spitting, hissing, scrabbling on the smooth sides of the toilet, trying to get a grip so he could get out -- and failing.

A few seconds later, the spigot finally off, I faced something not particularly pleasant (especially considering it was 4 am). I had to reach down and grab my poor little Halala, to rescue him. This was like grabbing for a running chainsaw blade in a bucket of urine. What fun!

I finally got poor little Halala out of the toilet. He was one pissed-off (and pissed on) kitten! Next up was a bath, which of course cheered him up even more. It took a while before he would condescend to be near us again...

Alligator shoes

A young blonde was on vacation and driving through the Everglades. She wanted to take home a pair of genuine alligator shoes in the worst way, but was very reluctant to pay the high prices the local vendors were asking. After becoming very frustrated with the "no haggle on prices" attitude of one of the shopkeepers, the blonde shouted, "Well then, maybe I'll just go out and catch my own alligator, so I can get a pair of shoes for free!" The shopkeeper said with a sly, knowing smile, "Littlelady, just go and give it a try!"

The blonde headed out toward the swamps, determined to catch an alligator.

Later in the day, as the shopkeeper is driving home, he pulls over to the side of the levee where he spots that same young woman standing waist deep in the murky bayou water, shotgun in hand. Just then, he spots a huge 9-foot gator swimming rapidly toward her. With lightning speed, she takes aim, kills the creature hauls it onto the slimy bank of the swamp. Lying nearby were 7 more of the dead creatures, all lying on their backs. The shopkeeper stood on the bank, watching in silent amazement. The blonde struggled and flipped the gator onto its back. Rolling her eyes heaven-ward and screaming in great frustration, she shouts out, "DANG! THIS ONE'S BAREFOOT TOO!"

Space sombrero

In NASA's words (click for a larger view):

NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes joined forces to create this striking composite image of one of the most popular sights in the universe. Messier 104 is commonly known as the Sombrero galaxy because in visible light, it resembles the broad-brimmed Mexican hat. However, in Spitzer's striking infrared view, the galaxy looks more like a "bull's eye."

In Hubble's visible light image (lower left panel), only the near rim of dust can be clearly seen in silhouette. Recent observations using Spitzer's infrared array camera (lower right panel) uncovered the bright, smooth ring of dust circling the galaxy, seen in red. Spitzer's infrared view of the starlight, piercing through the obscuring dust, is easily seen, along with the bulge of stars and an otherwise hidden disk of stars within the dust ring.

Spitzer's full view shows the disk is warped, which is often the result of a gravitational encounter with another galaxy, and clumpy areas spotted in the far edges of the ring indicate young star-forming regions.

The Sombrero galaxy is located some 28 million light-years away. Viewed from Earth, it is just six degrees south of its equatorial plane. Spitzer detected infrared emission not only from the ring, but from the center of the galaxy too, where there is a huge black hole, believed to be a billion times more massive than our Sun.

The Spitzer picture is composed of four images taken at 3.6 (blue), 4.5 (green), 5.8 (orange), and 8.0 (red) microns. The contribution from starlight (measured at 3.6 microns) has been subtracted from the 5.8 and 8-micron images to enhance the visibility of the dust features.

The Hubble Heritage Team took these observations in May-June 2003 with the space telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images were taken in three filters (red, green, and blue) to yield a natural-color image. The team took six pictures of the galaxy and then stitched them together to create the final composite image. This magnificent galaxy has a diameter that is nearly one-fifth the diameter of the full Moon.

Quote for the day

I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.

   Bernard Mannes Baruch

A little girl lost

The picture at right has been all over the news and the blogs today, but I haven't seen the whole story anywhere on the MSM. Click on the picture for a larger view.

The story is very sad, as told by Michael Yon reporting from on the ground in Mosul (I've copied his entire short post; I trust he won't mind):

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

The soldiers went back to that neighborhood the next day to ask what they could do. The people were very warming and welcomed us into their homes, and many kids were actually running up to say hello and ask soldiers to shake hands.

Eventually, some insurgents most have realized we were back and started shooting at us. The American soldiers and Iraqi police started engaging the enemy and there was a running gun battle. I saw at least one IP who was shot, but he looked okay and actually smiled at me despite the big bullet hole in his leg. I smiled back.

One thing seems certain; the people in that neighborhood share our feelings about the terrorists. We are going to go back there, and if any terrorists come out, the soldiers hope to find them. Everybody is still very angry that the insurgents attacked us when the kids were around. Their day will come.

Isn't it telling that the Iraqi citizens welcomed our soldiers back, even after some of their children were injured and killed? Clearly they don't see the American soldiers as the bad guys. I sure wish more of that reality was portrayed in the MSM...

William at Pardon My English has a moving tribute to our soldiers posted, using the event captured in this photo as an example, with liberal reference to some of MacArthur's finest words. An excerpt:

The American soldier does indeed, drink deep from the chalice of courage.

The terrorist, on the other hand, drinks deep from the tin cup of cowardice. His very existence a scurrilous blight on humankind. A pox to be eradicated.

The American soldier, as manifestly evidenced by the above, does America proud. We as a grateful nation are not only proud of our military prowess in achieving swift and certain victory on distant battlefields but also notably in how often our brave soldiers have placed themselves in harm's way in the service and defense of the oppressed.In fact the motto of the United States Special Forces is; 'De oppresso libere' - 'To liberate the oppressed.'

DO take the time to read the whole thing...

A tip o' the hat to Michelle Malkin for getting me started reading about this incident.

What a blog!

Tip o' the hat to the Mudville Gazette -- thanks so much for pointing this wonderful blog out.

Just when you think that our schools are completely hopeless, churning out brainwashed liberal zombies, along comes something wonderful like this. Mind you, this didn't come from an ordinary public school -- this came from KDES, a primary school associated with the famous Gallaudet University for the deaf. Nonetheless, it raises ones hopes...some students are being directly (and gently) exposed to the real world, very directly, by making very creative use of blogs and email. A wonderful thing. And I'll bet it was a wonderful thing from the perspective of this Marine and his family, as well...

Here's the blurb on the blog's home page:

The war in Iraq can seem like a world away unless you know someone there. For the deaf and hard of hearing students at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) in Washington, D.C., the war is made more immediate through their on-line dialogue with U.S. Marine Sgt. Earl (Jay) Beatty. Through a new kind of correspondence commonly known as a blog, the students, as part of a Visual Literacy project, exchange letters and photographs, and share their extraordinary drawings of the war as they see it with Beatty in Iraq, and with his wife, Donna, in the U.S.

How did all of this happen? Beatty, a Maryland state trooper and Marine, was deployed to the Iraqi town of Fallujah in late August. Prior to leaving for his new post, he was asked if he would be willing to communicate with KDES students while stationed in Iraq as part of a visual literacy project. He eagerly accepted the offer. He and his wife have corresponded with the students ever since.

The students set up their message center in the TecEds lab where staff members help them to send and receive e-mail from Beatty. The spontaneity of the Internet and the flexibility of digital pictures have enabled the students to have a front-line experience of the war through the eyes of a soldier serving his country.Please...go read this wonderful blog, and see the photos and paintings from the students. But grab a box of Kleenex before you start reading...

Fireman's revenge

Betting pool

The Strategy Page is full of good stuff every day, including a daily news report on the war in Iraq. I've excerpted today's report below. I was especially interested to read the end of the report:

May 4, 2005; The capture of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi’s laptop computer last month has led to a series of additional raids, which resulted in many al Qaeda members killed or captured, and the seizure of still more documents. Among those documents was a letter from one of Zarqawi’s subordinates to his boss. There are complaints of poor leadership and lack of direction. The letter writer says that all Zarqawi calls for are more and more suicide bomb attacks, without any apparent strategy. The subordinate complains that he does not even see Zarqawi anymore. This is understandable, because the growing number of Sunni Arabs disenchanted with terrorism, have been giving more and better tips to the Iraqi police. This has led to more raids that are getting closer to nailing Zarqawi himself, who is spending most of his time evading capture. Tellingly, some American intelligence officers in Iraq have set up a betting pool on when Zarqawi will be caught.

I wonder what date has the lowest return? I hope it's something like tomorrow or the day after!

Junk science

I've long been unhappy with the way science and technology (amongst other things) are taught in our primary and secondary schools. It's been very visible to me because I've worked closely with two groups of engineers: American teams (mostly based in Southern California and Florida), and Eastern European teams (based in Tallinn, Estonia and St. Petersburg, Russia). These folks were educated under very different systems, and the quality of the results is distinctly different. And America is on the losing side of that particular comparison.

Pamela Winnick has a column in the Weekly Standard that touches on this, paying particular attention to the way "political correctness" has affected our science texts. I'd like to see more reporting on this in the MSM...but even more, I'd like to see a lot of Americans angry about it. So far the only public anger I've seen that was focused on these issues came from captains of industry, and for some silly reason their anger doesn't seem to resonate. It should.

Ms. Winnick's column starts:

SEVERAL CENTURIES AGO, some "very light-skinned" people were shipwrecked on a tropical island. After "many years under the tropical sun," this light-skinned population became "dark-skinned," says Biology: The Study of Life, a high-school textbook published in 1998 by Prentice Hall, an imprint of Pearson Education.

"Downright bizarre," says Nina Jablonski, who holds the Irvine chair of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences. Jablonski, an expert in the evolution of skin color, says it takes at least 15,000 years for skin color to evolve from black to white or vice versa. That sure is "many years." The suggestion that skin color can change in a few generations has no basis in science.

Pearson Education spokesperson Wendy Spiegel admits the error in describing the evolution of skin color, but says the teacher's manual explains the phenomenon correctly. Just why teachers are given accurate information while students are misled remains unclear.

Read the whole thing!

Lady Grunts

Stars and Strips has an interesting article about female Marines in a combat unit. An excerpt:

“This is history. This is huge for us,” St. John said. “I’ve been in the Marine Corps for 18 years, and this is my first opportunity to be out with an infantry company. Even five years ago, the Marine Corps wouldn’t be doing this. This is a major change in how we think women can be used in the military.”

On the ground

Michael Yon has a terrific post from the field, complete with pictures. The excerpt below is just a short taste of this post, which has a lot more great on-the-scene reporting. You don't want to miss this one!

LTC Kurilla ran to the burning Stryker, threw off his protective gear and helmet, leading a swarm of soldiers atop and over the burning hulk, in a determined push to get their buddies out. Kurilla dropped himself down a top hatch, to get into the burning Stryker, while men passed up fire extinguishers and even bottles of water. Major Mark Bieger and others were also atop the vehicle, alongside one gutsy Private First Class that everyone calls "Q."

The taste of toxic smoke combined with heat of the fires were overwhelming sensations. Rescuers and the men trapped inside were choking to death on that smoke. Attention was split between the urgent rescue at hand and the threat of follow-on attacks. Within minutes of our arrival, the men had wrestled out their severely injured friends and were climbing off the burning Stryker, separating into teams that shored up defensive positions while others scoured the area searching for other IEDs.

Iraqi perspective

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some Iraqi perspective that included an open letter from President Talabani to Tony Blair. Today, Ali of Free Iraqi posted his reaction to President Talabani's letter: Thank you, Mr. President, for speaking on my behalf. Read the whole thing, especially Ali's description of pre-war impressions of Tony Blair. Here's how it begins:

Thank you, Mr. President for speaking on my behalf.

A friend of mine, Dr. Jawad Hashim e-mailed me the full script of president Talibani's letter to PM Tony Blair. And although it was published on many sites and newspapers about a week ago, I'd like to post it here on my blog in full so that more people would have the chance to read it. I'm no fan of politicians in general but the truth is that I admire MR. Blair a lot and I also feel honored that Mr. Talibani is my president. I think it's something that honors all Iraqis, Arabs even more than Kurds that Iraq has finally started to cross the line of fanaticism to see each others as brothers and sisters and that soon we will join the whole human family although it's been a tough road and it's going to be so for a long time.

I chose to post Mr. Talibani's letter because I don't see it as a political letter and I don't think that he had to write it, but more it's a letter from an Iraqi who was oppressed and treated like a second degree citizen (in a country where 1st degree citizens were killed tortured and raped on a regular base!) and who now, thanks to the sacrifices of the coalition and to the bravery and determination of men like Mr. Blair has finally found his much deserved position in his country. I feel that Mr. Talibani did not really have to write this letter but instead he wanted to and I feel the same way and have always hoped of doing something like that. In fact I've written a "thank you" letter to Mr. Blair on the Internet but I don't think it reached him.

I like Mr. Talibani's letter more because it speaks exactly the way I feel and the way I wanted to write such a letter. For the first time an Iraqi president says and thinks the way I do! I must say I'm not the only one who feels this way and that so many Iraqis feel the same (even anti-American ones who I found that they still like two coalition leaders; Blair and Colin Powel).

Happy days are here again

Claudia Rosett is one of our favorite columnists. Usually she's to be found reporting on the progress of liberty, such as the recent events in Lebanon. Today she weighs in with a cheerful column reflecting on how far we've come in the past few years. The beginning is excerpted below; you can (and should!) read the whole thing here.

It's always risky to celebrate security and good times, especially in an age when there is no way to rule out that along with the usual perils of life, we will suffer another terrorist attack. But this spring, more than 3 1/2 years after Sept. 11, it does seem that since that day America has weathered a rough passage awfully well. That, and with the cherry trees just done blooming in Washington and New York's Central Park full of flowers (and, in the grand old tradition, amateur baseball teams), it feels worth a moment to stand back and observe that for all the usual ructions of politics and the more prominent idiocies of such institutions as Hollywood, academia and the imploding United Nations in our midst, rarely in recent decades has there been more sanity and self-respect abroad in this land.

That is clear not only in such minor but telling details as the humor with which Laura Bush, onstage at a press dinner in Washington this weekend, poked affectionate fun at the president's early bedtime habits--and was received with clamorous applause by an audience not overly loving of George W. Bush. It is also clear in such major matters as the resolve of most Americans, despite the loud groans of our most precious elite, to stay united behind the president in the need to win both the wars and the peace, in Afghanistan, Iraq and by extension a world in which we spend less effort appeasing our enemies and do more to address real threats. Better times can be seen in an economic recovery that has left room for the country to debate such matters as the fixing of the decrepit and wasteful Social Security system. And broadly better days are manifest in the general grace with which Americans in recent times have put up with high gas prices, disastrous weather, the threat of more terrorist attacks and the costs of trying to prevent them.

Quote for the day

The difference between a moral man and a man of honour is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

   H. L. Mencken

Blackmail bombing

I shudder in horror every time I read one of these stories, and it's way too often. It's nearly beyond my capacity to imagine what it must be like to be in this poor man's situation. I've excerpted the complete article from DefenseLink:

Soldiers Rescue Man Blackmailed into Suicide-Bombing Mission
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2005 – Task Force Baghdad soldiers this morning rescued a man apparently blackmailed into a suicide-bombing mission by terrorist master Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The man exploded his red Kia sedan roughly 15 feet from a barrier to a coalition base in east Baghdad, Iraq. The car bomb failed to detonate properly and the vehicle caught on fire. Soldiers manning the gate reacted quickly and saved the driver, coalition officials said in a release.

An initial investigation revealed that terrorists had kidnapped the driver's family and that he was forced to carry out this suicide-bombing mission to protect his wife and children, coalition officials said.

No soldiers were injured in the attack. The driver is being treated at a military hospital and is cooperating with authorities.

"This is another case where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has to extort men to carry out his indiscriminate slaughtering," said Army Col. Joe DiSalvo, commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. "He can't recruit volunteers. (So) he is resorting to forcing Iraqi civilians to carry out these mission by threatening harm to kidnapped family members."

Officials released no more information on the fate of the man's family.

Metaphorical left

In a new column at the Weekly Standard, Mirengoff launches right into it. I've excerpted the first few paragraphs below, but don't miss reading the whole thing:

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY professor Alex Hinton has warned that our government's prosecution of the war on terror may be causing us to resemble the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal gang that once ran Cambodia. In a piece titled "Lessons from killing fields of Cambodia--30 years on," published in the Christian Science Monitor last month, Hinton concluded that "the Khmer Rouge teach us difficult lessons about ourselves and the world in which we live." The chief lesson, according to Hinton, is that we risk heading down "their path to evil" through our conduct "right now in the war on terror." Hinton's piece, of little consequence in its own right, represents a specimen of the left's use of the war on terror to deconstruct American values.

To negate Hinton's bizarre analogy, one need only recall the history of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. Hinton, without irony, does this himself. The Cambodian government, he notes, collectivized production and consumption, forced essentially its "entire population" into backbreaking and unceasing labor, abolished freedom of worship, cut off contact between its citizens and the outside world, attempted to control what the public "ate and did every day," and — oh yes — caused the death of more than 1.7 million of the country's 8 million inhabitants.

Inasmuch as the U.S. government has done none of the above, in what respect does Hinton think we are coming to resemble the Cambodian mass murderers? Well, for one thing we are not always politically correct. Hinton notes that most of us have "used euphemisms and stereotypes, followed instructions better questioned, succumbed to peer pressure, disparaged others, and become desensitized to the suffering of others." Not only that, but we have "turned a blind eye to what our government should not be doing." Specifically (and this is the only specific Hinton supplies) our government has engaged in torture, as did the Khmer Rouge. But we have we hardly turned a "blind eye" to this. The disgraceful conduct at Abu Ghraib was widely condemned; indeed, our government began investigating the matter even before it came to light. Where's the Cambodian analog? More fundamentally, it would be obscene to compare the actions at Abu Ghraib with genocide. In fact, Hinton presents no evidence that our government has intentionally killed even one foreign terrorist in our custody, much less 1.7 million of its citizens.

Good news from Afghanistan

Chrenkoff is back with another wonderful roundup of the good news from Afghanistan — and once again, almost none of it has been presented to us by the MSM...

There's little better at 5 am in the morning than a nice cup of coffee and one of Chrenkoff's roundups. Ahhhh...that's the way to get ready for a day at work!

Strange rocks

From Astronomy Picture of the Day (click on the picture for a larger view):

Explanation: What the history of the outcropping of rock called Methuselah? The unusual rock group is visible on the left of the above image taken by the robot Spirit rover current exploring Mars. Methuselah was discovered while maneuvering over hilly terrain and shows unusual multiple layering that caught the attention of the rover science team. Since the above representative color image was taken about three weeks ago, Spirit has moved in to get a closer look. Also visible in the above image are another rock outcrop dubbed Larry's Lookout on the upper right and a larger Clark Hill in the left background. On the far right is a more distant peak of the Columbia Hills.

Nepalese doings

Robert Mayer (blogging at Publius Pundit) has a theory about predicting when a revolution will succeed: when the "protest babes" show up, the revolution is about to be won. Hence his conclusion about the democratic revolution in Nepal, as the protest babes (like the one at right) are there.

Three months ago, King Gyanendra seized power and declared a state of emergency. The state of emergency was lifted on Saturday, but the king still holds all power. Yesterday there was a large protest for democracy, where the babes showed up. Even if you don't completely subscribe to Mr. Mayer's theory, it's all still good news. Read his post (linked above) for all the details...

Quote for the day

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

   Aristotle

Ant Nebula

Astronomy Picture of the Day does it again...

Explanation: Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round? Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.

Quote for the day

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

   Blaise Pascal

Thirty years ago

Thirty years ago I was an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy, serving on board the USS Long Beach (a nuclear guided missile cruiser). Along with many other U.S. Navy ships, the Long Beach was engaged in the effort to evacuate the remaining U.S. personnel. We also aided a large number of Vietnamese who were (or believed they were) in imminent danger of losing their lives to the North Vietnamese forces that were conquering the south.

The Navy has a decent brief official history of the event. It mentions my ship, but only in passing, as there were many dramatic events in those few days.

Those of us on the Long Beach at the time witnessed many things we never expected to. We had several ARVN helicopters crash land on our fantail (which could only hold one helicopter at a time). Working parties were quickly organized to push these helicopters over the side. We had small boats approaching us seeking to be picked up at all hours of the day and night, most of them extremely and dangerously overloaded. We witnessed hundreds of helicopters and small aircraft landing on the several carriers in the area, and many of them were also pushed over the side to make room for more.

There were heroes in those days; there was much tragedy in those days (completely outside the larger political/military context). Many people, mostly Vietnamese, died in accidents or because they missed any of the dozens of ships in the area. Some helicopters ran out of fuel as they waited to land on a ship; some of them crashed, some ditched and then passengers drowned, some crash-landed (including one on the Long Beach) and made it.

When the flow of people out to the ships stopped, the ships (including the Long Beach) were crowded with huge numbers of refugees. We were told at the time that there were more than 25,000, though I have no way to verify that. The refugees on the ships were brought to the Phillipines, to an island in Subic Bay that had theretofore been a recreation area for Navy personnel at (or visiting) the huge base there. I have heard many stories about the people on that island, including some directly from the people there; most are sad, some are tragic.

The experience is one that is still easy to recall, even after thirty years. I suppose this is because it was so shocking to me at the time. We had no expectation of this flood of refugees that came out to the ships. It's also one of the few times, sadly, that I was very impressed with our Navy's commanders. The local commanders, so far as I know completely on their own, quickly decided (as the first refugee aircraft started to be spotted on radar) to take on the humanitarian role of rescuing these people. It could have been much worse — if instead of this quick and sensible reaction they had behaved in the bureaucratic, cover-your-butt mode I was used to seeing, many more people would have needlessly perished...

Cuyamaca wildflowers

Debbie and I took a short hike in Cuyamaca State Park today, with the objective of spotting some wildflowers. We succeeded beyond our wildest expectations!

Click on the picture for a bigger view. Better yet, go see all the photos from the day's hiking!

Quote for the day

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

   Henry Ford

Spirit Panorama

The Spirit rover is high in the Columbia Hills, where it took this panorama. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Galaxy Evolution Explorer

Few people know about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a earth-orbit satellite launched on April 28th, 2003 by an air-dropped Pegasus rocket. It takes images in ultraviolet light, and its mission is to explore how galaxies evolve. The picture at right is of NGC 300, and it was made by combining an optical wavelength photo taken from Earth with the UV image taken by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer.

Click on the image at right for a full-sized view...

Colonoscopies

We're told that these are actual comments heard by physicians while performing colonoscopies:

1. "Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!"

2. "Find Amelia Earhart yet?"

3. "Can you hear me NOW?"

4. "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

5. "You know, in Arkansas, we're now legally married."

6. "Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?"

7. "You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out..."

8. "Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!"

9. "If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!

10. "Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity."

11. "You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?"

12. "God, Now I know why I am not gay."

And the best one of all..

13. "Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?".

—

Excuses, excuses

CareerBuilder.com recently conducted an "Out of the Office" survey that (amongst other things) surveyed the excuses people give when they played hooky from work. As their site says:

The 2004 CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey, conducted for CCH by Harris Interactive confirmed this trend. CCH found most employees who fail to show up for work, however, aren't physically ill, according to the survey. In fact, only 38 percent of unscheduled absences are due to personal illness, while 62 percent are for other reasons, including family issues (23 percent), personal needs (18 percent), stress (11 percent) and entitlement mentality (10 percent).

Here are some of the more unusual excuses given:

# I was sprayed by a skunk.

# I tripped over my dog and was knocked unconscious.

# My bus broke down and was held up by robbers.

# I was arrested as a result of mistaken identity.

# I forgot to come back to work after lunch.

# I couldn't find my shoes.

# I hurt myself bowling.

# I was spit on by a venomous snake.

# I totaled my wife's jeep in a collision with a cow.

# A hitman was looking for me.

# My curlers burned my hair and I had to go to the hairdresser.

# I eloped.

# My brain went to sleep and I couldn't wake it up.

# My cat unplugged my alarm clock.

# I had to be there for my husband's grand jury trial.

# I had to ship my grandmother's bones to India (note: she passed away 20 years before).

# I forgot what day of the week it was.

# Someone slipped drugs in my drink last night.

# A tree fell on my car.

# My monkey died.

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

The folks who found the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker have a site: www.ivorybill.org.

There are some photographs, a story, the press release below, and some video up there right now. The promise is that more will be forthcoming.

What a good-news science story! And it's fascinating how they managed to get such a large team to operate in secret, and got the Nature Conservancy to buy up land in secret at the same time. Great stuff! The official press release:

Long Thought Extinct, Ivory-billed WoodpeckerRediscovered in Big Woods of Arkansas
Multiple sightings, video footage show bird survives in vast forested areas

BRINKLEY, Arkansas — April 28, 2005 —

Long believed to be extinct, a magnificent bird – the ivory-billed woodpecker – has been rediscovered in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. More than 60 years after the last confirmed sighting of the species in the United States, a research team today announced that at least one male ivory-bill still survives in vast areas of bottomland swamp forest.

Published in the journal Science on its Science Express Web site (April 28, 2005), the findings include multiple sightings of the elusive woodpecker and frame-by-frame analyses of brief video footage. The evidence was gathered during an intensive year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working together as part of the Big Woods Conservation Partnership, led by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University and The Nature Conservancy.

“The bird captured on video is clearly an ivory-billed woodpecker,” said John Fitzpatrick, the Science article’s lead author, and director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. “Amazingly, America may have another chance to protect the future of this spectacular bird and the awesome forests in which it lives.”

“It is a landmark rediscovery,” said Scott Simon, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Arkansas chapter. “Finding the ivory-bill in Arkansas validates decades of great conservation work and represents an incredible story of hope for the future.”

Joining the search team at a press conference in Washington DC, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton announced a Department of the Interior initiative to identify funds for recovery efforts. Through its cooperative conservation initiative, the Fish and Wildlife Service has a variety of grant and technical aid programs to support wildlife recovery.

“These programs are the heart and soul of the federal government’s commitment to cooperative conservation. They are perfectly tailored to recover this magnificent bird,” Secretary Norton said. “Across the Nation, these programs preserve millions of acres of habitat, improve riparian habitat along thousands of miles of streams and develop conservation plans for endangered species and their habitat.”

The largest woodpecker in North America, the ivory-billed woodpecker is known through lore as a bird of beauty and indomitable spirit. The species vanished after extensive clearing destroyed millions of acres of virgin forest throughout the South between the 1880s and mid-1940s.

Although the majestic bird has been sought for decades, until now there was no firm evidence that it still existed.

The rediscovery has galvanized efforts to save the Big Woods of Arkansas, 550,000 acres of bayous, bottomland forests and oxbow lakes. According to Simon, The Nature Conservancy has conserved 18,000 acres of critical habitat in the Big Woods, at the request of the partnership, since the search began. “It’s a very wild and beautiful place,” Simon said.The Search and the Evidence

While kayaking in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge on Feb. 11, 2004, Gene Sparling of Hot Springs, Ark., saw an unusually large, red-crested woodpecker fly toward him and land on a nearby tree. He noticed several field marks suggesting the bird was an ivory-billed woodpecker.

A week later, after learning of the sighting, Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Living Bird magazine, and Bobby Harrison, associate professor at Oakwood College, Huntsville, Ala., interviewed Sparling. They were so convinced by his report that they traveled to Arkansas and then with Sparling to the bayou where he had seen the bird.

On Feb. 27, as Sparling paddled ahead, a large black-and-white woodpecker flew across the bayou less than 70 feet in front of Gallagher and Harrison, who simultaneously cried out: “Ivory-bill!” Minutes later, after the bird had disappeared into the forest, Gallagher and Harrison sat down to sketch independently what each had seen. Their field sketches, included in the Science article, show the characteristic patterns of white and black on the wings of the woodpecker.

“When we finished our notes,” Gallagher said, “Bobby sat down on a log, put his face in his hands and began to sob, saying, ‘I saw an ivory-bill. I saw an ivory-bill.’” Gallagher said he was too choked with emotion to speak. “Just to think this bird made it into the 21st century gives me chills. It’s like a funeral shroud has been pulled back, giving us a glimpse of a living bird, rising Lazarus-like from the grave,” he said.

The sightings by Sparling, Gallagher and Harrison led to the formation of a search team, which later became the Big Woods Conservation Partnership. On April 5, 10 and 11, three different searchers sighted an ivory-bill in nearby areas. The views were fleeting, leaving little opportunity to take photographs.

David Luneau, associate professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said he thought the best chance to film the elusive bird would be to have a camcorder on at all times. On April 25, Luneau captured four seconds of video footage showing an ivory-billed woodpecker taking off from the trunk of a tree.

Frame-by-frame analyses show a bird perched on a tupelo trunk, with a distinctive white pattern on its back. During 1.2 seconds of flight, the video reveals 11 wing beats showing extensive white on the trailing edges of the wings and white on the back. Both of these features distinguish the ivory-billed woodpecker from the superficially similar, and much more common, pileated woodpecker.

On three occasions, members of the search team heard series of loud double-raps, possibly the ivory-billed woodpecker’s display drumming. On Feb. 14, 2005, Casey Taylor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology heard the drumming for 30 minutes, then watched as an ivory-billed woodpecker, being mobbed by crows, flew into view.

In addition, autonomous recording units detected sounds, among thousands of hours of recordings, which resembled double-raps and possible calls of the ivory-bill – reminiscent of the sound of a tin horn. Researchers say ongoing analyses of the recordings have not yet enabled them to rule out other potential sound sources, such as the calls of blue jays, which are notorious mimics.

In all, during more than 7,000 hours of search time, experienced observers reported at least 15 sightings of the ivory-bill, seven of which were described in the Science article. Because only a single bird was observed at a time, researchers say they don’t yet know whether more than one inhabits the area.

So far, the search team has focused its efforts in approximately 16 of the 850 square miles in the bottomland forests of Arkansas. Fitzpatrick of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said that the next step will be to broaden the search to assess whether breeding pairs exist and how many ivory-bills the region may support. To expand the area being monitored and minimize disturbance to the endangered woodpecker, the team will continue to use acoustic monitoring technologies as well as on-the-ground searching. Fitzpatrick said the team will also encourage others to search for the ivory-bill elsewhere in suitable habitats throughout the South.

Simon of The Nature Conservancy said that over the years, state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, hunters and landowners have aggressively worked to conserve and restore the bottomland hardwood and swamp ecosystem. “Now we know we must work even harder to conserve this critical habitat – not just for the ivory-billed woodpecker, but for the black bears, waterfowl and many other species of these unique woods,” he added.

The partnership’s 10-year goal is to restore 200,000 more acres of forest in the Big Woods. The effort will include conserving forest habitat, improving river water quality, and restoring the physical structure of the river channels, focusing in locations with maximum benefit in reconnecting forest patches and protecting river health.

“The ivory-bill tells us that we could actually bring this system back to that primeval forest here in the heartland of North America,” said Fitzpatrick, who is also a member of The Nature Conservancy’s board of governors. “That’s the kind of forest that I hope some generation of Americans and citizens of the world will get to come and visit.”

For more information about the search and the efforts to save the ivory-billed woodpecker and the Big Woods, visit www.ivorybill.org.

***

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology is a nonprofit membership institution with the mission to interpret and conserve the Earth’s biological diversity though research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. From its headquarters at the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity in Ithaca, N.Y., the Lab leads international efforts in bird monitoring and conservation, and fosters the ability of enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels to make a difference.

The Nature Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy has been responsible for protecting more than 15 million acres in the United States and more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Since The Conservancy’s Arkansas office opened in 1982, it has worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission as well as private citizens, corporations, and foundations, to bring into conservation management more than 120,000 acres in the Arkansas delta.

The Big Woods Conservation Partnership includes the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Nature Conservancy, Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., Louisiana State University, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Birdman Productions, LLC, and Civic Enterprises, LLC.

Iraq Photos

Lance in Iraq is one of the blogs I read every day, mostly for the first-hand views of events in Iraq, and the perspective of a "boots on the ground" soldier. For the past few days, Lance has been posting a wonderful series of photos, like the one at right (which shows an Iraqi kid about to see the doctor, accompanied by his obviously amused sister). The preceding link just goes to the most recent post; click around his site to see the others...

Community of Democracies, cont'd

Robert Mayer at Publius Pundit chimes in with an excellent Community of Democracies roundup, doing his usual excellent job...

Quote for the day

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

   Sir Winston Churchill