wither in the light

I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality.

First, we refuse to deal in reality. We are in a guerilla war, but because of politics, we are not allowed to declare it a guerilla war...

Second, our assessment of what motivates the average Iraqi was skewed... we came here with some fantasy idea that the natives were all ignorant, mud-hut dwelling camel riders who would line the streets and pelt us with rose petals...

Third, the guerillas are filling their losses faster than we can create them. This is almost always the case in guerilla warfare, especially when your tactics for battling the guerillas are aimed at killing guerillas instead of eroding their support.

Fourth, their lines of supply and communication are much shorter than ours and much less vulnerable. We must import everything we need into this place; this costs money and is dangerous... conversely, the guerillas live on top of their supplies and are showing every indication of developing a very sophisticated network for obtaining them.

Fifth, we consistently underestimate the enemy and his capabilities. Many military commanders have prepared to fight exactly the wrong war here.

Actually, the parallels between my roaches and the Viet Cong can hardy be ignored. There are seventeen parallels. Both my roaches and the VC are indigenous forces, are ignorant, ill-clad and underfed; they both drag away the bodies of their slain, come back no matter how many are killed, move by night, avoid prolonged engagements with the enemy, are not white, are fighting against people who are, have been fighting for generations, are of uncertain numbers, move via infiltration routes, are wily, are out-armed by the enemy, are contemptuous of death, are independent of outside control, are inscrutable, and are winning.

As any good hypnotist, magician, or comedian knows, the offer or availability of freely choosing between alternatives at a given contextual level brings the particularities of choice into the foreground of conscious awareness. This necessarily relegates to the background (i.e. out of awareness and out of the realm of conscious choice) the higher-level context or premise determining the range and meaning of the offered alternatives. The presence of choice (between particularities) at one level masks - and in some sense precludes - choice (between premises) at a more encompassing level.

It is possible to use the idea of 'symmetry-breaking' to model mental illnesses such as OCD. Our theoretical starting-off point is the state of cognitive symmetry, which is where there is no issue, no problem. Suppose you are married to me and you leave the cap off the toothpaste one morning. Now, if I have an issue with this, then there is clearly a right way and a wrong way to it. If I don't have an issue with it then it is not 'right' to leave the cap off, and neither is it 'wrong'. It isn't right and it isn't wrong because there isn't an issue - no one is asking a question and so how can there be a 'correct' answer? Similarly, if I develop obsessive compulsive disorder, and have an issue with the way the tins of baked beans are put away in the cupboard, then there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, there is a distinct lack of symmetry with regard to the spatial orientation of canned foodstuff in the cupboard. The cure is not for me to ask what is the really 'right' way to think about it, because in order for me not to have an issue with it I simply would not think about it at all. There is no right way to think about it! If you reply to my question with any kind of affirming or denying response, you will only confirm that my question is an appropriate one. Your response will be framed within the cognitive symmetry-break which is the source of my difficulty, it will in fact be a manifestation of that symmetry-break.

In a harbinger of security threats to come, hackers have exploited a newly announced flaw in Microsoft programs and begun circulating malicious code hidden in images that use the popular JPEG format.

Software tools to create the malicious images began appearing last month, and this week security experts saw images employing them posted on adult-oriented Usenet newsgroups.

To get the malicious code, a visitor must download the image and view it using Microsoft's Windows Explorer software, said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager with Symantec Security Response.

The computer then contacts a server to obtain code that would let an attacker take over the machine remotely.

O'REILLY:

You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary.

STEWART:

If that were so, that would be quite frightening.

O'REILLY:

But it is. It's true. I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, OK, and they can vote.

STEWART:

Yeah.

O'REILLY:

You can't stop them.

STEWART:

Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers.

... this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

1. given documents he thought were true
2. failed to thoroughly investigate the facts
3. reported documents to the American people as true to make his case
4. when challenged, launched an investigation, quickly apologized
5. substance of the bogus documents appears to have been true anyway
6. cost to the world in lives and money: zero
7. Bush camp conclusion: should be fired as CBS News Anchor

1. given documents he thought were true
2. failed to thoroughly investigate the facts
3. reported documents to the American people as true to make his case
4. when challenged, stonewalled an investigation, never apologized
5. substance of the bogus documents appears to have been... bogus
6. cost to the world in lives and money: incalculable
7. Bush camp conclusion: four more years!

JENNINGS:

We were struck today by a very pointed attack by President Bush on John Kerry. First of all, this is what Mr. Bush said:

[begin video clip]

BUSH:

We agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell.

And that stands in stark contrast to the statement that my opponent made yesterday, when he said that the world was better off with Saddam in power.

I strongly disagree.

[end video clip]

JENNINGS:

And this is what Mr. Kerry actually said:

[begin video clip]

KERRY:

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in Hell.

But that was not...in and of itself, a reason to go to war.

The satisfaction...that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact:

We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

[end video clip]

JENNINGS:

Trying to keep track of the Iraq debate.

"We now have research indicating there's a memory of chronic pain," said Dr. Doris K. Cope, director of chronic and cancer pain for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"It changes the genic code sometimes, it changes the biochemistry, and it causes new proteins to be formed."

That means even if the pain in the original problem area is cured -- or eliminated by amputation -- other nerves will have pain, she said. Therefore, it's crucial to treat acute pain to keep it from growing into a chronic problem.

"We believe that the pain no longer originates with the tissue that was originally damaged, but that it actually begins in the central nervous system, in the spinal cord and the brain," says Yang, a professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology and Physiology.

"The experience changes the nervous system, just like learning. It's like a memory of pain that recurs again and again in the nervous system."

Yang says that because of past experience, the nervous system has been primed to transmit pain signals more efficiently: Small pain signals may be amplified, resulting in a sensation of pain way out of proportion to the amount of hurt one would normally experience. And more nerve cells become involved in the process.

In people with red hair, the cells that produce skin and hair pigment have a dysfunctional melanocortin-1 receptor. Liem says this dysfunction triggers the release of more of the hormone that stimulates these cells, but this hormone also stimulates a brain receptor related to pain sensitivity.

17 September 2004

A Republican family attended the rally to show support for the Bush-Cheney ticket. Phil Parlock, a Barboursville resident and strong Republican, said his family was accosted by some Kerry supporters. "We do it peacefully and quietly to show respect. And, we don't want to get kicked out of anything," Parlock said.

After standing on the tarmac with the Kerry supporters, Parlock and three of his children moved down to the airport road near a parking lot exit. With Parlock were sons Phil II, 21, and Alex, 11, and daughter Sophia, 3.

Parlock said a Kerry supporter yanked a Bush-Cheney sign out of Sophia's hands, making her cry. As they stood along the road later, someone threw the ripped-up remains of the sign at them as they passed.

28 October 2000, Charleston Daily Mail

Phil Parlock didn't expect to need all 12 of the Bush-Cheney signs he and his son Louis smuggled in their socks and pockets into the rally for Vice President Al Gore.
But each time they raised a sign, someone would grab it out of their hands, the two Huntington residents said. And sometimes it got physical.

"I expected some people to take our signs," said Louis, 12. "But I did not expect people to practically attack us."

The two said they didn't go to the Friday morning rally to start trouble.

"I came to support Bush and try to change some people's minds," Louis said.

27 August 1996, Charleston Daily Mail

Phil Parlock's experience was less calm. The Huntington man said he was knocked to the ground by a Clinton supporter when he tried to display a sign that read "Remember Vince Foster," the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in a Washington, D.C., park. His death has become the subject of much debate among Clinton opponents.

"It must have been a strict Democrat who did this," Parlock said, feeling the red abrasions on his face. "Everyone with the exception of him was real peaceful about our protest."

Parlock said some of the crowd tried to make other anti-Clinton demonstrators feel unwelcome. He estimated that about 150 Dole supporters attended the rally, but their signs couldn't be seen for most of the rally.

Thanks for letting us know about this validation issue. However, unless it is actually breaking functionality somewhere in Blogger or causing true accessibility issues, it will likely be treated with a low-priority.

You are unknown to me.
Your camera's memory card was in a taxi; I have it now.
I am going to post one of your pictures each day.
I will also narrate as if I were you.

Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that, in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow, that's big" time. Infinity is so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

    —Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

     100
    2    * 0.1mm =  126765060022822940149670320537.6 mm
                 =    ~126765060022822940149670320   m
                 =             ~422842725492523698   light-seconds
                 =               ~7047378758208728   light-minutes
                 =                ~117456312636812   light-hours
                 =                  ~4894013026533   light-days
                 =                    ~13408254867   light-years

Authorities from the Orange and Durham counties and the Federal Bureau of Investigation reviewed the tape while the family stood outside by the minivan.

Durham County Sheriff's Maj. Lucy Zastrow said the tape in the video camera was harmless and contained nothing of a suspicious nature.

"The guy was videotaping his family... he taped the sunrise, which was really quite pretty this morning, and he taped his speedometer, which was up around 90."

The family turned out to be Mexican, and authorities had to wait until a Spanish-speaking interpreter arrived on the scene.

...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Aaron killed himself.

I didn't know him as well as some, but even so, I know enough to answer one question: I can tell you why.

Suicide is what happens when the pain someone feels outweighs his or her ability to deal with pain.

... all I can do is to admit the paralyzing fear that comes over a depressive when another of his rank takes his own life, the ominous message that seeps in about fighting depression, about fighting the urge to take your own life:

You might lose.

To the outside observer, suicide can often look like a spontaneous act, like a spur of the moment thing. But I believe it's actually one of the more premeditated things a person can do. It isn't just something that pops into your head one day without any warning. It's something you think about over and over, day after day, week after week, month after month, maybe even year after year. You turn it over in your mind, look at it from every angle, until the day arrives when you know just exactly what it is you have to do.

There has to be a way to rise above it all, or go deeper into it somehow, or in some way come to some kind of peace with all the suffering. What always comes to mind when I'm trying to get to a peaceful place is: my own death. Not that I'm in any hurry to go, and I don't think I'm the kind of person who would ever actually kill myself for any reason. But when I'm at the end of my rope, it really is the only thing I can think of that seems to hold some hope—the knowledge that someday I won't have to keep on being here anymore. Knowing that helps me hold on.

...George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy - the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.
...
There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the "end of innocence," or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.