Oh, Those Marines!

Take a good, hard look at these Marine helicopters. See anything that inclines you to hysterical laughter?

Now that’s my idea of great camouflage!

Accident or Crime?

Consider these events:

Joe is a young man, a college student, and by all accounts hard-working, honest, and just plain pleasant to be around. His several girlfriends adore him, and his fellow students tend to think Joe will be one of the class’s success stories.

Joe is a fun-loving guy, and this past July 4th he had a party at his house in a rural area just outside the town of Jamul. Right after he and his guests ate their all-American barbeque dinner, they went out on the patio and sang a rousing and heart-felt (though not very competent) rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Joe punctuated each stanza by firing his rifle into the air. Then Joe and his guests went back inside to watch a soccer game on TV.

A half mile from Joe’s house, Sam and Sophie live in a little bungalow with their two kids. Sophie was outside watering the patio plants, when a rifle bullet fell from the sky, penetrating her skull and killing her (and her unborn baby girl) instantly.

Police traced the bullet to Joe’s rifle.

The story above is fiction, but I wrote it as background for this question: how should Joe’s actions be thought of and treated — as an accident or as a crime? My fictional story deliberately avoided anything to do with cars, because somehow we seem to think about deaths and injuries involving cars differently than just about anything else.

To me, this is a no-brainer: Joe knew darned well that firing a gun is dangerous, and that injury or damage could result. But he made the choice to fire his gun anyway, despite knowing the danger of doing so — the epitome of reckless behavior. My own take would be that Joe should be held fully accountable for his criminal action that resulted in Sophie’s death — this was no accident.

Judging from the comments to my posts about the very similar issues that arise in the case of Jonny Dallo and Jodi Burnett (see here, here, here, and here), some of my readers hold a very different view. They would say that Joe is a good kid, that it makes no sense in such a tragic situation to ruin two lives, that Joe didn’t intend to kill Sophie — therefore Joe’s punishment should be much lighter than what I would advocate, possibly with no jail time at all.

But I wonder if these apologists for Jonny Dallo would actually apply the same logic to Joe’s actions that led to Sophie’s death. In particular, I wonder if their reactions to Jonny’s actions leading to Jodi’s death are colored by the fact that they know Jonny — in other words, that they are reacting emotionally, mainly in sympathy with Jonny, and their statements reflect that, rather than a general belief that reckless behavior shouldn’t be severely punished.

Here’s a thought experiment for the commenters who believe Jonny should not be severely punished: suppose you were Sam (Sophie’s husband), or Sam’s neighbor Sally. How would you feel about the death of Sophie and her baby? Would you think about it as an accident, or as a crime? Would you think it proper to punish Joe severely? Or would you say there’s no point to such punishment, and Joe should be punished lightly, or not at all?

I hope it’s true that even the Jonny Dallo apologists would agree that Joe should be held criminally accountable — this would restore some of my faith in my fellow citizens. It’s totally understandable that Jonny’s friends and family would want to stand up for him, and that they’d find it almost impossible to accept that severe punishment was what he deserved. But nobody knows my fictional Joe, Sam, or Sophie … so anyone thinking about this story should be able to do so without the bias of a pre-existing relationship.

So how about it, readers? Anyone willing to take the thought experiment, and comment on it?

Why We Fight

Tip o’the hat to reader Sid F., who says:

[This] is a way for people to send comments of support to the people of India in their time of need.

Why is this important?

It is important because this is why all the people who served and are serving in Iraq and Afghanstan believe so strongly in what they are doing there.

They fight against terror over there so we don’t have happen here what happened in India today.

It’s why they Fight. It is why we should fight for them and support them in every possible way.

Thank you.

Can’t think of a darned thing to add to that!

Real Education Reform

I read a commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning with great interest — it describes an effort (in New Jersey, of all places!) to transfer control of education funding from derelict school districts to the parents. The money quote:

Remedial Education ($WSJ)

The remedy these parents seek is fundamentally different from the one established by more than three decades of litigation across the country. Courts in states like New York, Texas and California have ordered massive increases in school funding to fulfill state constitutional mandates for educational “equity” or “adequacy,” all on the belief that more money will boost school quality and student performance. The funds have produced new programs and bureaucracies, but too often they fail to trickle down to the students by way of improved educational quality.

In any area other than education such a remedy would be considered bizarre. Suppose you purchased a car whose warranty promised “thorough and efficient” transportation, and it turned out to be a lemon. If you sued to enforce the warranty, would a court order a multibillion dollar payment to the auto maker in the hope that someday it would produce a better product? Of course not: It would order the company to give your money back so you could buy a different car.

The author of the piece (Clint Bollick, recipient of a 2006 Bradley Prize, president of the Alliance for School Choice) is supportive of the plaintiffs (the parents). He doesn’t seem to have a read on the proabability of the suit’s success. Knowing the liberality of the New Jersey courts and the influence of public employee unions in general, I’d guess the chances aren’t good. But I sure like the sound of it — and wouldn’t be just gorgeous irony if the kick in the butt that our primary education system so badly needs came from New Jersey?

You might wonder just how badly the school districts named in the suit are actually doing. Here’s the scoop:

One of the defendant school districts in the new suit, Englewood City, spends $19,194 per student, well over twice the national average. But at Dismus Middle School, over two-thirds of the students do not have basic proficiency in math and fewer than half are proficient in language arts literacy. Newark, a recipient of massive Abbott funding, spends $16,351 per student and pays its teachers an average salary of $76,213. Yet in 24 of its schools, fewer than half the students demonstrate basic proficiency in math or language arts. At William H. Brown Academy and at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School, fewer than one of every 10 students demonstrates basic math proficiency. It’s time to try something else for these children.

Amen to that.

But … anticipating the court will find against the plaintiffs, and uphold the status quo (though I’d certainly be pleased if it went the other way) … I wonder what theory the court would use? Perhaps they’ll find a new “right” in the Constitution — the right for public employees to waste our hard-earned dollars and to fail utterly in their duty to educate our kids, forever and without consequence.

Let’s hope that Newark’s Chancery Court can find the wisdom — and the courage — to buck the forces-that-be in New Jersey. What a refreshing change it would be for the citizens of that state (those who haven’t already fled to more hospitable territory, such as California, Siberia or Iran) to find themselves admired for their bold reform, instead of scorned for their corrupt and moronic local government…

Estonian Fires

I associate forest fires primarily with dry, hot conditions — the conditions we have in Southern California every year, and also in much of the rest of the Western U.S. Of course we also have forest fires in damper places, such as Maine and Minnesota. But somehow Estonia has always seemed to me like it should be relatively immune to fires, with its extensive swamps and utter lack of anything even remotely resembling a desert. So it was with some surprise that I read this story:

TALLINN - With temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius and no rain for quite a while, firefighters have been frantically trying to put out 22 forest fires, the largest of which are burning through Kurtna and Kuusalu.

About 180 hectares of woods are ablaze in Kurtna, located in the northeastern Ida-Virumaa region. In Kuusalu, some 30 kilometers east of Tallinn, 20 hectares of forest are burning, the Rescue Board duty officer told the Baltic News Service.

Soon after midday on July 11, rescuers were informed about a fire in the western Laane County where two hectares of fields were in flames.

Fire fighting also continues on Saaremaa Island and in Jarva County, where forests have been burning for several days now.

For the Celsius-challenged out there, 30C is about 86F — not quite as hot as we are, but certainly not cool. And a quick look at the relative humidity shows that it’s 50% right now, so (compare to us) its pretty muggy there. But 22 forest fires! One hectare is about two and a half acres, so these are (by our standards) very small forest fires. No area of Estonia is truly remote, though there are plenty of areas without established roads. I know all of the areas with fires quite well; the fires in Kurtna and Saaremaa particularly surprise me, as they’re relatively close to “civilization”. Fires that small and that close to civilization here would be extinguished with great speed. I can only guess why that’s not true in Estonia: that they don’t have the equipment and organization that we do, because they don’t have forest fires that often. But I’m just guessing…

Warning

Tip o’the hat to JimM:

Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book. It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced.

Fall for it and your identity could be stolen, reports CBS. In this con, someone calls pretending to be a court official who threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because you didn’t show up for jury duty. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Sometimes they even ask for credit card numbers. Give out any of this information and bingo! Your identity just got stolen.

The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma , Illinois , and Colorado . This (scam) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving in formation by pretending they’re with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Apparently this scam, which first surfaced a couple of years ago, is being used again — and fairly frequently.

More information here and here.

Be careful!

Tool Law

This coming weekend, I am planning to put down new linoleum tile in our laundry room, and to install some much-needed storage. The first step in this project is to get rid of the old tiles, which are the old-fashioned glued-on linoleum tiles, probably 25 years old.

Debbie and I have done this several times, in several houses, and we are quite familiar with the process. There’s a particular tool that makes this job quite easy: a heavy iron bar with a roughly 8” wide blade on the end. The idea is that you swing the heavy bar while scraping the blade along the already-cleared floor; when it hits the edge of a tile the inertia of the heavy bar puts a lot of force on the blade edge, and the tile either shatters or pops up off the glue.

We once owned one of these tools, but somehow we managed to misplace it (or perhaps we lent it to someone). So yesterday I made the epic journey to the nearest Home Depot (about 40 minutes away) to buy another one. They no longer carry the tool I’m familiar with — all they have are similar blades attached to lightweight tubular steel or fiberglass handles. No more heavy iron bar handles. I asked a Home Depot guy, thinking I might be looking in the wrong place, or they’d turned into a special order item. But he told me the sad story: somewhere, someone using the tool I knew managed to hurt themselves with it. They filed suit against the manufacturer and the place where they bought it: Home Depot. The theory of the suit was that the tool’s design was faulty; the heavy weight of the handle made it dangerous (it also makes it work, but that was apparently not relevant). The suit went to a jury trial, and the jury found against the manufacturer and Home Depot. The manufacturer was a tiny company that made just this one tool; they went bankrupt. Home Depot settled instead of appealing, and in the settlement paid a substantial sum of money — and agreed not to carry heavy-handled tile removing tools any more.

Sigh.

I asked the Home Depot guy if the new lightweight tools worked. He said that for the really easy jobs (which mine, thankfully, may well be) they worked ok, though it took a lot more effort than the old tool. He also told me that the steel-handled model (which I bought) could be used like a chisel — you could pound on the end of the handle with a small sledge, and get an effect similar to the old heavy-handled tool. This would be more dangerous than the old tool, but never mind something silly like commonsense or logic…

So… Thanks to some nameless plaintiff (and his enabling attorney), my life this weekend will be made much more difficult. I can no longer purchase the tool that really works well; instead, I have to suffer with an inferior tool. As I’m sweating my way through this project, I plan on inventing new curses to direct to the plaintiff and his attorney. And if I hurt myself while pounding on the end of the handle of this inferior new tool, I’ll be inspired to new heights of cursing.

But I won’t sue them.

Quality

A friend emailed me yesterday to let me know her cell phone had broken, so I wouldn’t be alarmed if I tried to reach her and got the “out of service” message. That got me to pondering how much our expectations have changed within my own lifetime…

It boils down to the quality of things. As I think about it, the quality of darned near everything I use has radically improved during my lifetime. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, when we went to use anything more complex than a salt shaker, we were a little surprised when it worked, and not at all surprised if it failed. Today when we use things with thousands, or even millions, of parts, we’re very surprised when it fails, and completely unsurprised if it works. We take our gadgets for granted.

But it occurred to me that it’s not just gadgets that have improved; it’s much more basic things as well. Tires for our cars are a good example — my first car (a 1965 Dodge Dart, and what a misnomer that is!) got flat tires quite regularly, and the tread on those tires sure didn’t last very long. I had to check the pressures, and put air in, on an almost daily basis. What a difference today, where one of the major contribution to tire failure — what little there is — is that owners never check the pressure.

If you stop and think about it, I’ll be you can think of all sorts of things like this in your own experience. I remember when ballpoint pens didn’t necessarily work when you bought a new one, and they weren’t cheap, disposable things, either. I remember leaking cans of food in the grocery store — when’s the last time you ever saw a leaking can? I remember carrying basic tools and spare parts in my car — and using them. I remember buying simple tools at the hardware store, and then discovering they were broken when I got home. Now I pay much less for the same tools (in real dollars), and they’re vastly better tools.

How about you? Do you have the same sense?

2,996 Project

A few days ago I posted about a worth project that I had signed up for: an effort to get 2,996 bloggers — one for each victim of 9/11 — to create a tribute. One blogger, one tribute.

When I signed up for it, I asked the organizer (D. Challener Roe) if there was anything I could do to help. I mentioned that I was a technical sort of guy — which prompted him to ask if I could help automate the process of signing bloggers up. At the time he asked me, he had manually assigned over 700 bloggers, by reading emails, copying the details into a little database, and typing response emails. Even a few minutes work, multiplied by 700 (or 2,996!) times becomes a real challenge.

Well, after talking it over with him I realized that a fairly simple little web application would do the trick — and that’s something I know a little about! Being able to contribute to such a worthwhile project gives me great satisfaction — and the fact that I got to exercise my skills in the process was just icing on the cake. Even better, I got to explore some new things I’d never done before, like working with images in JavaScript.

Earlier today, my little web application went “live”. If you visit that site, you can sign up (and if you’re a blogger, please do!) for the 2,996 project. Or you can just look through the list of the 9/11 victim, see their pictures, read about them, research them on the web, and see which bloggers are doing a tribute.

Drop on over for a visit, won’t you?

Jodi Burnett

Jodi Burnett is the woman who was killed last week in Jamul by a reckless, speeding driver. Today, while driving past the spot where she died, I noticed a large banner announcing a memorial fund that’s been set up in her name, to benefit her husband and children. She was an employee of the San Diego Union-Tribune (an independent delivery person). I’ve often criticized the Union Tribune, so it feels especially good to be able to commend them on this occasion: they have set up the web site about the memorial fund, and they contributed the first $10,000 to it.

Jodi’s family could use your help — please visit that site and make a donation.

If you aren’t familiar with Jodi Burnett and her tragic death, you can catch up with my posts here, here, and here.

The comments on those posts are interesting to read through. There seems to be a clear dichotomy amongst my readers: there’s the Jonny Dallo apologists (which I am not), and then there’s the group who (like me) would like to see Jonny Dallo held accountable for the consequences of his actions. Take a gander at them, if you’re interested in this affair…

Alika, RIP

Alika died today, very suddenly and very unexpectedly — he was just over two years old, and had no health problems that we knew of. He was our “gentle monster” cat; he will be missed by all his two-footed and four-footed companions…

I’ve blogged about him several times before: here, here, and here.

Yesterday afternoon, Debbie spotted the fact that he was walking oddly. After observing him for a bit, both Debbie and I thought he had some muscle or skelatal problem — perhaps he’d fallen and twisted his back, something like that. Other than his odd movement, and reluctance to move, we didn’t see any signs of trouble. Debbie called the vet and went over the situation with her, and the vet told us to give Alika an anti-inflamatory steroid (we had some lying around), and to bring him in for a visit in the morning. I watched him last night, and saw no change. This morning Debbie visited with him several times, and saw no alarming signs. But when she went to load him up into a crate for the trip to the vet, she discovered that he’d died.

We had him examined by the vet, because we were concerned that whatever happened to him might also pose a risk to our other five indoor cats. But it turns out that Alika had very bad urinary tract blockage (unfortunately a fairly common problem with male cats). We’re told that a blockage of just two days or less can lead to a cat’s death. The most obvious way to detect this problem is through absence of urine in the litter box — but with five cats in the house, that’s a little hard to discern. The only other symptoms are behavioral, and the vet explained to us that these can be very hard to pick up, particularly if the cat was habitually sedentary — which Alika most definitely was.

So we’re left with the very sad feeling that if only we’d understood the seriousness of the problem — if only we’d gotten him to the vet earlier — then maybe he’d still be with us. I put that question to the vet, and she said it was possible that had we brought him in last night, it might have been early enough to save him — but most likely not, as his condition was very advanced. We really needed to spot the symptoms earlier to have had a good chance of saving him. For the umpteen millionth time, we found ourselves wishing that our animal friends could just tell us when they were hurting.

RIP, Alika. We will fondly remember our gentle monster kitty…

Jonny Rebel Update

First, from news reports yesterday (various sources):

A young man accused of driving a BMW at speeds up to 100 mph before slamming into a pickup truck, killing a newspaper carrier on her pre-dawn rounds, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a vehicular manslaughter charge.

"He’s charged with vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence,” Deputy District Attorney Terrie Roberts said. “He faces up to six years in prison if he is found guilty."

Superior Court Judge Laura Halgren, who allowed Dallo to remain free on $50,000 bail, scheduled a readiness conference for Aug. 11 and a preliminary hearing for Sept. 12.

Prosecutors say alcohol or drugs were not involved in the crash.

This is exactly what I feared would happen. An innocent woman is killed by the willfully reckless actions of Jonny Dallo, and the maximum punishment is six years. From what I could find on the Internet (with conflicting reports), the average sentence for vehicular manslaughter is between 6 and 30 months — with about 25% receiving no jail time at all.

One lawyer’s site defines vehicular manslaughter as “… an unintentional killing that occurred during the commission of an unlawful act while driving a motor vehicle.” I’m certainly no lawyer, but in my reading of that definition I think I see the crux of my issue — it lies with the word “unintentional", which seems to be the key difference between involuntary manslaughter (which includes vehicular manslaugther) and the more stiffly punished “voluntary manslaughter,” or murder. It sounds to me like our laws have codified the liberal notion that we are only fully responsible for the consequences of our actions when we intended the consequences.

An anonymous commenter on one of my prior posts about Jonny Dallo (here and here) touched on another cherished liberal notion:

it is certain tht jonny dallo killed sum1 but it is also certain tht she wasnt wearing a seat belt either so she wasnt being safe

Blame the victim — a favorite liberal shibboleth, a way to shift part of the responsibility elsewhere. Oh, how I hate this kind of illogical thinking, and what it has done to our society!

Just in case anyone is in doubt, here’s where I stand: 100% of the responsibility for Jodi’s death is Jonny Dallo’s, for making the choice to behave in a reckless fashion that endangered everyone on that road — and which killed Jodi Burnett. I believe that Jonny — and others who demonstrate similarly reckless behavior — should be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, and their punishment should be widely published as a deterrent. I believe that unintentionally causing someone’s death as a result of reckless behavior isn’t far removed (in a moral sense) from intentionally causing someone’s death, and the punishments should be correspondingly similar.

Jonny Dallo should be in jail for a long, long time — and if he ever makes it out, he should never be allowed to drive again. His jail time should be unpleasant: punishment, not “rehabilitation”. I would just love to see a documentary produced about what he did, the consequences to Jodi and her family, and the unpleasant punishment that was his reward — and then require all school kids to watch it.

New Dictionary Entries

Tip o’the hat to Marsha.

Note: I’ve been unable to verify the authenticity of these, but who cares?

The Washington Post’s Style invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are some of the winners:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts only until you realize it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Bozone: (n.) The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Cashtration: (n.) The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very, high.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

Inoculatte': To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit).

Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is, like, sending off all these really bad vibes, right? and then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a totally serious bummer.

Decaflon: (n.) The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Arachnoleptic fit: (n.) The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

Beelzebug: (n.) Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at 3 in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Caterpallor: (n.) The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.

Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

You Go, Girl!

Tip o’the hat to Judy:

Here’s a quote from a government employee who witnessed a recent interaction between an elderly woman and an antiwar protester in a Metro station in DC:

"There were protesters on the train platform handing out pamphlets on the evils of America. I politely declined to take one. An elderly woman was behind me getting off the escalator and a young (20ish) female protester offered grandma a pamphlet, which she politely declined. The young protester put her hand on the grandma’s shoulder as a gesture of friendship, and in a very soft voice said, 'Lady, don’t you care about the children of Iraq?' The old woman looked up at her and said, “Honey, my father died in Germany during World War II, I lost my husband in the Korean War, and a son in Vietnam. All three died so you could have the right to stand here, and bad mouth our country. If you touch me again, I’ll stick this umbrella up your ass and OPEN IT."

Toothbrushing Adventure

What could be more ordinary and routine than the ritual of brushing your teeth? Folks like me, who can remember vacuum tubes and cars that didn’t always work, have performed this routine so often than we’ve got every move perfectly choreographed. I know exactly how many twists of the wrist it takes to remove the toothpaste tube cap, precisely how much pressure (and how long) I must apply to get the perfect blob of toothpaste on my toothbrush, and I automatically move my hands to manipulate that brush to traverse every square millimeter of toothly surface. In other words, brushing my teeth is a totally mindless activity that I’ve completely reduced to practice. It’s been a long time since brushing my teeth was an adventure, with new things to learn and surprising experiences.

Until last night.

You see, a few days ago my lovely bride decided that we needed new toothbrushes. And she was right — our old brushes had bristles that were just barely discernable, and the handles were bent at odd angles from all the pressure we’d applied. So she got us some dandy new brushes, and last night was only the third or fourth time I’d used them. And I liked these new brushes, with their funny rubbery “bristles” that seemed to work very well at cleaning the crevices between my teeth.

But I was unprepared for the surprise that awaited me last night. About halfway through my toothbrushing ritual, sleepy, and not paying much attention … suddenly my toothbrush was vibrating! WTF!?!? Can you imagine the shock I felt, immersed in my familiar, comfortable routine, when my toothbrush takes the initiative? What the hell kind of toothbrush takes over the ritual on its own?

The results were much as you might expect. The toothbrush ended up in the shower. The mirror over the vanity was thoroughly sprayed with a suspension of toothpaste, water, and saliva. My ears were ringing from the loud noise I must have made. And Debbie was wondering what prompted such odd goings-on.

After I cleaned up the mess, I tracked down my toothbrush and gave it a thorough inspection. As I was pondering the problem of locating a toothbrush exorcist, I noticed that the toothbrush handle had a couple of little raised dots, one marked with a “+” and the other with a “-”. And sure enough, if you click on these buttons the toothbrush starts and stops vibrating. Ah ha! My toothbrush was not possessed!

Debbie had no idea that she’d purchased such advanced toothbrush technology. She just set out to buy new toothbrushes, and she thought these looked like serviceable examples when she saw them on the shelves at the market. And why not? They look like slightly unusual variants of an ordinary toothbrush, albeit with a slightly fatter-than-usual handle — but that just looked like it would be easy to grip (which it is). Neither of us suspected we’d be ambushed by our toothbrush.

Adventures in toothbrushing. You just never know where an adventure is lurking…

Veterans

Passed along by SimonM, and very appropriate for the day…

What Is A Vet?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel. He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn’t come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other’s backs.

He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean’s sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life’s most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That’s all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot, “THANK YOU."

Warner Anderson MD

Chief, Emergency Medicine

Gallup Indian Medical Center

U.S. Public Health Service

and LTC, MC

Group Surgeon

19 Special Forces Group Airborne

Thank you, indeed.

P.S.: Since writing this piece, Lieutenant Colonel Warner has been promoted to “full bird” Colonel. Our congratulations!

Our Anthem

Dr. Isaac Asimov is mostly known for his science fiction (think I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy) and the amazing number of non-fiction books and articles he wrote. But even if you’re very familiar with Dr. Asimov, you may not know that he was also an unabashed patriot who loved American history. And he loved — he really loved — our national anthem.

Dr. Asimov was well known on the “speaker’s tour", much in demand by audiences who wanted to hear about science, technology, or the future. He often spoke of his patriotism to these audiences — and despite his missing-in-action vocal talents, he often sang our anthem as well. Below is a transcript of one such speech he gave:

NO REFUGE COULD SAVE : BY DR. ISAAC ASIMOV

I was once asked to speak at a luncheon. Taking my life in my hands, I announced I was going to sing our national anthem — all four stanzas. This was greeted with loud groans. One man closed the door to the kitchen, where the noise of dishes and cutlery was loud and distracting. “Thanks, Herb,” I said. “That’s all right,” he said. “It was at the request of the kitchen staff”

I explained the background of the anthem and then sang all four stanzas. Let me tell you, those people had never heard it before — or had never really listened. I got a standing ovation. But it was not me; it was the anthem.

More recently, while conducting a seminar, I told my students the story of the anthem and sang all four stanzas. Again there was a wild ovation and prolonged applause. And again, it was the anthem and not me.

So now let me tell you how it came to be written.

In 1812, the United States went to war with Great Britain, primarily over freedom of the seas. We were in the right. For two years, we held off the British, even though we were still a rather weak country. Great Britain was in a life and death struggle with Napoleon. In fact, just as the United States declared war, Napoleon marched off to invade Russia. If he won, as everyone expected, he would control Europe, and Great Britain would be isolated. It was no time for her to be involved in an American war.

At first, our seamen proved better than the British. After we won a battle on Lake Erie in 1813, the American commander, Oliver Hazard Perry, sent the message, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” However, the weight of the British navy beat down our ships eventually. New England, hard-hit by a tightening blockade, threatened secession.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was beaten in Russia and in 1814 was forced to abdicate. Great Britain now turned its attention to the United States, launching a three-pronged attack.

The northern prong was to come down Lake Champlain toward New York and seize parts of New England.

The southern prong was to go up the Mississippi, take New Orleans and paralyze the west.

The central prong was to head for the mid-Atlantic states and then attack Baltimore, the greatest port south of New York. If Baltimore was taken, the nation, which still hugged the Atlantic coast, could be split in two. The fate of the United States, then, rested to a large extent on the success or failure of the central prong.

The British reached the American coast, and on August 24, 1814, took Washington, D.C. Then they moved up the Chesapeake Bay toward Baltimore. On September 12, they arrived and found 1,000 men in Fort McHenry, whose guns controlled the harbor. If the British wished to take Baltimore, they would have to take the fort.

On one of the British ships was an aged physician, William Beanes, who had been arrested in Maryland and brought along as a prisoner. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and friend of the physician, had come to the ship to negotiate his release.

The British captain was willing, but the two Americans would have to wait. It was now the night of September 13, and the bombardment of Fort McHenry was about to start.

As twilight deepened, Key and Beanes saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry. Through the night, they heard bombs bursting and saw the red glare of rockets. They knew the fort was resisting and the American flag was still flying. But toward morning the bombardment ceased, and a dread silence fell. Either Fort McHenry had surrendered and the British flag flew above it, or the bombardment had failed and the American flag still flew.

As dawn began to brighten the eastern sky, Key and Beanes stared out at the fort, trying to see which flag flew over it. He and the physician must have asked each other over and over, “Can you see the flag?”

After it was all finished, Key wrote a four stanza poem telling the events of the night. Called “The Defense of Fort McHenry,” it was published in newspapers and swept the nation. Someone noted that the words fit an old English tune called, “To Anacreon in Heaven” — a difficult melody with an uncomfortably large vocal range. For obvious reasons, Key’s work became known as “The Star Spangled Banner,” and in 1931 Congress declared it the official anthem of the United States.

Now that you know the story, here are the words. Presumably, the old doctor is speaking. This is what he asks Key:

Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.

Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

"Ramparts,” in case you don’t know, are the protective walls or other elevations that surround a fort. The first stanza asks a question. The second gives an answer:

On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist of the deep

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep.

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream

'Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

"The towering steep” is again, the ramparts. The bombardment has failed, and the British can do nothing more but sail away, their mission a failure. In the third stanza I feel Key allows himself to gloat over the American triumph. In the aftermath of the bombardment, Key probably was in no mood to act otherwise? During World War I when the British were our Staunchest allies, this third stanza was not sung. However, I know it, so here it is:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footstep’s pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The fourth stanza, a pious hope for the future, should be sung more slowly than the other three and with even deeper feeling:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,

Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven - rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for our cause is just,

And this be our motto — “In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I hope you will look at the national anthem with new eyes. Listen to it, the next time you have a chance, with new ears. Pay attention to the words. And don’t let them ever take it away … not even one word of it.

It’s a beautiful anthem, Dr. Asimov. And that star-spangled banner? It still waves over the land of the free and the home of the brave. Over my home, too.

Independence Day

Ben Stein, in his last column for Eonline (in December 2003) said talks who the real heroes are:

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World? by Ben Stein

As I begin to write this, I “slug” it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is “eonlineFINAL,” and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started.

I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

Lew Harris, who founded this great site, asked me to do it maybe seven or eight years ago, and I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

But again, all things must pass, and my column for E! Online must pass. In a way, it is actually the perfect time for it to pass. Lew, whom I have known forever, was impressed that I knew so many stars at Morton’s on Monday nights.

He could not get over it, in fact. So, he said I should write a column about the stars I saw at Morton’s and what they had to say.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton’s, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars.

I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.

But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a “star” we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

I no longer want to perpetuate poor values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery. The teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children. The kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero.

Last column, I told you a few of the rules I had learned to keep my sanity. Well, here is a final one to help you keep your sanity and keep you in the running for stardom: We are puny, insignificant creatures.

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin — or Martin Mull or Fred Willard — or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life.

I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

As so many of you know, I am an avid Bush fan and a Republican. But I think the best guidance I ever got was from the inauguration speech of Democrat John F. Kennedy in January of 1961.

On a very cold and bright day in D.C., he said, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth … asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on Earth, God’s work must surely be our own."

And then to paraphrase my favorite president, my boss and friend Richard Nixon, when he left the White House in August 1974, with me standing a few feet away, “This is not goodbye. The French have a word for it — au revoir. We’ll see you again."

Au revoir, and thank you for reading me for so long. God bless every one of you. We’ll see you again.

I’ll be remembering my heroes today — those brave men and women who lost their lives or their limbs to keep my country free and independent.

To all my fellow Americans: Happy Independence Day! If you see a soldier today, say “thanks” and shake his (or her) hand…

Three Dogs

Last weekend, two friends (Vera and Konstantin) visited us, and while they were here Konstantin took a few pictures. We tried to get our three field spaniels to pose, but as you can see we only had moderate success.

Vera says:

I like the one where Debbie is telling the dogs very seriously to sit still, but they don’t, at least not Mikki!

Look at the middle photo, and you’ll see what she’s talking about!

As usual, click on the small photos to get a larger view…

Mo'i

At a recent agility meet where Debbie competed with Mo’i, a photographer (Terry Curtiss) captured these images of Mo’i running the course. He double-Q’d (double-qualified) on this day. From left-to-right:

Mo’i paused on the table, waiting for the command to speed off to the next obstacle.

Mo’i in mid-air, leaping over a jump with a lot of air between him and that bar.

Mo’i in the middle of the weave poles, totally focused on getting that big lunky body of his to wriggle in just the right way.

At the moment, Mo’i and Debbie (my lovely bride) are the number two field spaniel agility team in the country. And they’re gaining on number one <smile>!

As usual, click on any of the thumbnails for a larger view.