Memnison Journal

Stephen Leigh’s discussion of how a lot of stunning dramatic series would be better off by just saying “two or three seasons and we wrap it all up”.

Steven Silver’s discussion on referential SF TV and movies.

A DKos discussion on “OK, we have a pandemic, but who gets the hospital beds?”

A video showing how a bunker-buster bomb really works. WHOOOM!

“My dog’s bigger ’cause he eats Ken-L-Ration…”

“I have you by the balls.”  “No, I have YOU by the balls.”

“Yes, I’ve decided to convert to Islam.”

Add yours.

Does anyone out there have any good leads on the theories on Kennebec Man and the concept of pre-1000 AD European(ish) people migrating to North America?  Yes, I’m fully aware that it’s a wide matter of controversy.  Mormon theories not included.
Similarly, is there anyone out there who can give me a lead on the stability of Karst formations in, say, the lower midwest US?  (We’ll say Illinois, Indiana or Ohio south of I-70 / US 40.)

In The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman documented repeated instances when leaders persisted in disastrous policies well after they knew that success was no longer an available outcome. They did so because the personal consequences of admitting failure would be very high. So they postponed the disastrous end to their policy adventures, hoping for a deus ex machina or to eventually shift the blame. There is no need to do that now. Everyone already knows who is to blame. It is time to stop the adventure, lower our sights, and focus on America’s core interests. And that means withdrawal of major combat units.

A Flickr set from a Birmingham photographer from the twins’ get-together last August.  Just saw these. 

AP: At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Gen. James Conway also warned that it could take years to adequately train and equip the Iraqi security forces — longer, perhaps, “than the timeline that we probably feel … our country will support.”

Conway said the current pace of Marine rotations to Iraq — seven months there and seven-to-nine months at home — is limiting other types of training that units can receive and could eventually prompt Marines to leave the service.

“There is stress on the individual Marines that is increasing, and there is stress on the institution to do what we are required to do, pretty much by law, for the nation,” said Conway.

The goal, he said, is for units to spend twice the amount of time at home as is spent on deployment — for example seven months deployed and 14 months at home.

At the same time, Conway would not rule out extending the Iraq tours for some Marine units if needed for a short period of time. Several Army units have been extended for several months, but the Marines have done that only rarely and for weeks rather than months.

Conway, who took on the Marines’ top job just eight days ago, said there are two ways to deal with the ongoing stress on the Marines: “One is reducing the requirement, the other is potentially growing the force for what we call the long war.”

Conway said that if a decision is made to increase the number of Marines in Iraq — currently about 23,000 of the 141,000 U.S. troops there — he has enough around the globe to respond. But he warned that there could be long-term repercussions.

“The payback is you can’t maintain that surge. And it’s probably going to have an adverse impact” on the ability to provide ready troops in the future, he said.

Increasing the size of the Marine Corps, he added, could only be by 1,000-2,000 troops per year over an extended time. And if the size is increased to meet the needs of war, Conway said there would have to be a plan for reducing the numbers when the war is over. He said the current 180,000 level is the right size for peacetime.

The Marines are also drawing up plans to send some reserve combat battalions back to Iraq for return tours as a way of relieving the strain on the active duty forces. If that is done, it would be the first time such Marine units would be returned to the war.

This is the new Marine commandant telling us that Bush is destroying the Armed Forces by his way of handling this war.

Hands up for all of you who are surprised by this.

Caption away:

Mine:

• “Moooom!  Bobby parked his squid in my space!”
• “I just washed it, and I can’t do a thing with it.”
• “30 years for allowing the squid to drive drunk!”

• Well, this is interesting; people are positioning themselves for President and VP.
• Compassionate Conservativism: cutting funds for teenage gay suicide hotlines. “They had better do so, and decrease the surplus population.”
• There’s a big thrash over Charlie Rangel’s bill to re-introduce the draft; nobody’s seriously suggesting that such a thing really happen. What Rangel is trying to point out is that Bush has pushed the Iraq war as a no-sacrifice sort of thing. We can cut your taxes, and unless your boy or girl is in the military, it’s no sweat off your back. See more on this here.
• One commenter on the above ruckus says: I think I can do Rangel’s solution one better: introduce a bill to let soldiers get a General Discharge, no strings attached, if they give two week’s notice. Call it “The Take This War And Shove It Act”.
• I think it’s time to arm bears if they’re going to allow concealed carry in National Parks. Hey, does that include the ones in NYC and DC?
• Unbelievers: Episcopalian church torched for heresy.

Charlie Stross on the process of taking a book through publication.  Just fascinating for those of us wanna-bes that are eternally curious.

My original online journal (no, I don’t call it a blog) was started in 1998, and has picked up considerably in frequency and output since then. It was (and still is) stationed over on my Marmotgraphics.com site, and hasn’t been updated since last winter.

The reason for moving over to some sort of bloggish system is that I really wanted the software to handle the maintenance features of the thing; I was sloppy and was messing up the page-to-page handmade links, and other odds and ends. I found it was a good deal of trouble to maintain, and harder to find what I wanted from the past.

I had also spread over into LiveJournal in November 2003, and some of the stuff from Marmotgraphics.com was copied over to there, and that got to be a big hassle, too. I like LJ because lot of my real-life friends are active there, and that’s where I got into the idea that doing the ‘daily’ posts from MG could do as well as ‘often’ posts in LJ.

But I wanted more custom features than LJ could give me, and I wanted it on my own site.

• Chinese cops: ‘Ya know, torture isn’t the cure-all that we thought it would be.’
• GOP House: ‘Ya know, it’s too much trouble to take care of these spending bills to keep the country running.  Let’s dump it off on the Democrats for next year, and go home.’
• Compassionate Conservatives in Massachusetts: ‘Ya know, it’s expensive to run those menal hospitals.  Let’s let the loonies out on the street.’

Well, that deep-sixes doing THE HOBBIT as a movie.

“Teacher says whenever a siren goes off, some yellow hippie protester just got his head clubbed!”

When I first became a computer professional around 20+ years ago, my boss doofused by (he was an engineer, but knew zero about computers) and asked half-laughingly if I had some games on the computer I was using. (It was about the first PC in the whole several-hundred-person division. I sort of lifted an eyebrow at him, and said ‘no, I’m too busy using it to work’ and got back to what I was doing.

Now, of course, everyone has a computer, seemingly, and I really have never spent a lot of time with the things, aside of a slight addiction to Civilization some years ago. I found that aside of Civ-style Big Picture games and the occasional first-person shooter for fun (like Doom or Quake) they don’t do that much for me. We have a PS2 in the house, and have had an Atari, but I hate situations where you have to do all sorts of doofussy knock-three-times on an obscure piece of pavement while standing on your head and fighting off a Balrog with a bazooka to get a magic apple or something. Mere has rediscovered our PS2, and has a Game Boy Advance, and does the bulk of the gaming for the household.

You’d think that since I’m a wargamer from way back that I’d go for the compuer stuff, and ditto for the RPGs, but either they demand a huge investment in time, or they’re far more complex than I have time for, or both.  Susan has pointed out that when she met me, I was hip deep in Civilization and whatnot, but it’s likely that the busier I am at home, the more that suffers.