Dog Humor

How Many Dogs Does It Take to Change A Light Bulb?"

Golden Retriever: The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid burned out bulb?

Border Collie: Just one. And then I'll replace any wiring that's not up to code.

Dachshund: You know I can't reach that stupid lamp!

Rottweiler: Make me.

Boxer: Who cares? I can still play with my squeaky toys in the dark.

Lab: Oh, me, me!!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeeze, please, please, please!

German Shepherd: I'll change it as soon as I've led these people from the dark, checked to make sure I haven't missed any, and make just one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.

Jack Russell Terrier: I'll just pop it in while I'm bouncing off the walls and furniture.

Old English Sheep Dog: Light bulb? I'm sorry, but I don't see a light bulb!

Cocker Spaniel: Why change it? I can still pee on the carpet in the dark.

Pointer: I see it, there it is, there it is, right there.....

Greyhound: It isn't moving. Who cares?

Australian Shepherd: First, I'll put all the light bulbs in a little circle...

Poodle: I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear, and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.

The Cat: "Dogs do not change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. So, the real question is: How long will it be before I can expect some light, some dinner and a massage?"

Operation Iraqi Children

It's hard to imagine a more useful charity (from several perspectives) than this one. From their web site:

Many American troops have taken it upon themselves to reconstruct schools and gather learning tools for the children of Iraq.

Their efforts have been met with immense gratitude from the local Iraqis and their children.

Operation Iraqi Children is a grassroots program that aims to provide concerned Americans with the means to reach out to the Iraqi people and help support our troops' attempts to assist them.

Michael Yon's latest

Michael Yon reports from Iraq on the death of an American Marine: First Sergeant Michael J. Bordelon. The picture at right is of Sgt. Bordelon at a peaceful moment. The conclusion of Michael Yon's post:

And finally the word came that Michael J. Bordelon had run the course. The men here at 1-24 Infantry began to prepare a memorial service from scratch. Though they had known the odds two weeks earlier, nobody seemed to want to bet against their friend by preparing a memorial, so in the nights leading to the ceremony, men worked late to prepare a farewell while conducting ongoing operations.

The auditorium was nearly packed, but the empty seats in the back were the most prominent, empty seats that would have been filled by men who were gone, men who were wounded or killed in action on the same streets where Michael Bordelon ran his last mission, and finished the race.

NGC 3370

APOD brings us...

Similar in size and grand design to our own Milky Way, spiral galaxy NGC 3370 lies about 100 million light-years away toward the constellation Leo. Recorded here in exquisite detail by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, the big, beautiful face-on spiral does steal the show, but the sharp image also reveals an impressive array of background galaxies in the field, strewn across the more distant Universe. Looking within NGC 3370, the image data has proved sharp enough to study individual pulsating stars known as Cepheids which can be used to accurately determine this galaxy's distance. NGC 3370 was chosen for this study because in 1994 the spiral galaxy was also home to a well studied stellar explosion -- a type Ia supernova. Combining the known distance to this standard candle supernova, based on the Cepheid measurements, with observations of supernovae at even greater distances, can reveal the size and expansion rate of the Universe itself.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Quote for the day

The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

   Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

Boots on the ground

Michael Yon's latest post, from the troops with their boots on the ground in Mosul. An excerpt:

Deuce Four headed downtown this morning with several items on their to-do list. One task was to recon a gasoline station that was attacked and destroyed a couple of weeks ago. While we walked around the rubble of the abandoned station, the commander noticed two artillery rounds on the ground. A minute or so later, someone spotted a radio command switch for a very large booby trap.

We were surrounded by nine bombs (large artillery shells) all rigged to explode by radio control.

While I ran away as fast as I could, the soldiers "pulled back quickly" and called EOD, who arrived and removed the bombs without incident.

New moon

APOD brings us the moon, with a jet and contrail in the light of a sunset...

Remember when the Moon was young? It was just last Monday. On May 9th, this slender crescent Moon was recorded at a tender age of 34 hours and 18 minutes. Well, OK ... when calculating the lunar age during a lunation or complete cycle of phases - from New Moon to Full Moon and back to New Moon again - the Moon never gets more than 29.5 days old. Still, a young Moon can be a rewarding sight, even for casual skygazers, though the slim crescent is relatively faint and only easy to see low in the west as the sky grows dark after sunset. Sighting this young Moon last Monday, lucky astronomer Stefan Seip was also treated to a very dramatic telescopic view of an airliner flying in front of the distant sunlit crescent. At a high altitude, the jet's stunning contrails reflect the strongly reddened light of the Sun setting below the western horizon.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Quote for the day

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny....'

   Isaac Asimov

Hugs in Iraq

From Lance In Iraq (with more pictures), the pictures say it all. But here's what Lance said:

Some of the soldiers here have adopted a nearby family that needs some help with things and these images were captured at the moment they arrived for a brief visit. The soldier getting the hugs is the guy doing most of the heavy lifting (no pun intended) to help out.

In the decades to come, Iraq will be a major power in the Middle East and they will be our ally. The foundation of that critical relationship is being solidified here everyday by soldiers and Iraqis.

American soldiers are one of the world's wonders...

Quote for the day

The man who does not read good books is at no advantage over the man that can't read them.

   Mark Twain

Oil for news

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Eric Stakelbeck at the Weekly Standard have an interesting article that tells about Uday Hussein (Saddam's son) using the oil-for-food program to manipulate the press. If you want to dignify Al Jazeera with that label (or vice versa, I suppose). The piece begins:

On January 6, 2005, the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite network Al Hurra broadcast an explosive exposé detailing the financial links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Arab press. Al Hurra's documentary--so far overlooked in the West--aired previously unseen video footage, recorded by Saddam Hussein's regime during its murderous heyday, of Saddam's son Uday meeting with several Arab media figures and referring to the bribes they had received.

Recipients of this Baathist largesse appeared to include a former managing director of the influential Qatar-based government-subsidized satellite network Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali. The videotaped meeting between Uday and al-Ali occurred on March 13, 2000, when al-Ali still worked as Al Jazeera's managing director. Their conversation makes clear that this was not their first meeting, but that they had met on prior occasions--and that Al Jazeera had put into effect the directives that Uday had proffered in those previous meetings.

Referring to how his advice had affected changes in Al Jazeera's personnel, Uday states, "During your last visit here along with your colleagues we talked about a number of issues, and it does appear that you indeed were listening to what I was saying since changes took place and new faces came on board such as that lad, Mansour."

This "lad" is Ahmed Mansour, an Al Jazeera journalist who has been criticized for his pro-insurgency reporting. In particular, Mansour came under fire in early 2004 for his coverage of the U.S. attack on Falluja, which pointedly emphasized civilian casualties.

Read the whole thing.

Fun with words

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot his whole life, which created an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him frail, and with his odd diet, he suffered from very bad breath. This made him a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Tip o' the hat to Jim M.

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.