LT Smash wrote about something that also happened in my unit during the first Gulf war. Of course that time it had happened to a man. This time it happened to a female soldier. Its equal opportunity now, but that doesn’t mean it is a good thing. Anyone who can do something like this to a soldier currently risking their life deserves nothing but scorn. I hope the judge takes a fair look at the circumstances when everything gets hashed out in court.

Here is a blog that I feel everyone should read. Just like the blogs that came out during the Iraq war, here is a voice from inside Iran. Who from the sounds of things may be the next liberated country. It will always make me feel good about humanity as a whole to find people out there willing to work towards freedom. Which I believe is to the betterment of everyone.

A had a dream last night…

A blogger competition was set up. Not like is done know, but more like stock car racing. Everyone started out with the same page format, layout, and design. And people started judging your blog immediately. You could take the time to either start working on making the design nicer than the very vanilla starting design, or start coming up with content. And of course people could judge you and award points and comments on both facets.

It was a little bit… disturbing I think. But its rather true also. Even if you’re just starting out, unless you never give out your link people visit your site. If you’re working on changing designs, etc., unless you have a full-fledged QA environment, what you’re doing is essentially live. And you’re being judged constantly. People will never return if they don’t like what they see.

Wow…

Pirate Exhibit Tells Truths and Fictions

SEARSPORT—Pirates have been the stuff of legend, lies and popular cinema for generations now.
Artist Nancy Breed touches up the beach on the south-seas island mural that will form the backdrop for part of the pirate exhibit.
A model of the 17th Century ship Sovereign of the Seas floats in a sea of bubble wrap.
Evolving from the evocative tales of Robert Louis Stevenson to mascots for a variety of sports teams, pirates have come to occupy a unique position in American culture somewhere between a mugger and a mustachioed, eye-patched rogue on a rum bottle.
This summer, the myth and reality of this popular icon will be explored in a new exhibit at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport.

Well worth the trip if you can make it. The article covers a few good tidbits of pirate history, things such as:

Cherry noted that often slaves were freed by pirates and captured captains were punished according to how they had treated their own crews.
That’s the redeeming social factor that separates them from other thieves,” Fuller said.

Nice to see us getting some good coverage from the liberal media! Pirates were the original meritocracy.

I’ve always been an archaeology buff. I figure thats as far away as I can get from my day job. So upon hearing about the Baghdad museum being looted, I was a bit worried. I wanted to visit there someday once they were freed, and it would be great to actually see things there. So hearing that almost everything is still there, well, that made me happy.

Two different articles I have read lately about this. One is in the latest issue of Archaeology magazine that I received last night. And the other one was a article on National Review’s website.

Archaeology devoted several pages to the looting, or not, and the horrors of it all. They go into talking about a dozen or so museums in various third world countries that have been sacked and looted once the anarchy set in around them. Tragic stuff, made me feel bad, etc. They talk about how horrible it is that so many items have been sold into private hands.

National Review’s John Derbyshire talks about an alternative viewpoint that made my eyes open. Relics are better off in private hands. They’re protected better by individual owners than the state in most cases. After a while the owners will loan them off to museums for tours in safe, civilized areas may view the items. They can be studied. And not destroyed by the latest political winds.

As a matter of fact, we may reasonably hope that the West is precisely where the artifacts looted from the Iraqi National Museum will end up sooner or later. The Times quotes Mohsen Hassan, a deputy curator of the museum, as saying that many of the looters were middle-class people who knew exactly what they were looking for. My guess is that there were some museum employees among them. No doubt Baghdad has a few people who would like to have a Sumerian vase on their mantelshelf just to look at. What the city undoubtedly has many more of, though, are well-educated people who are utterly penniless. These people know that even priceless” objects do, in point of fact, have prices — that private collectors in other countries will pay large sums of money for them. Then, 20 or 40 years in the future, when those collectors pass on and their irresponsible heirs sell off their estates, those objects will find their way to institutions here in the West.

Everything from antiquity being in private hands may be a stretch, however. As in everything, the answer is most likely in the middle. Digs can be done by public or private groups. They catalog everything that they find. From there the items can go to public or private galleries, but the catalogs should be made public. If an educational group wants to study something in private hands, the owners should allow the study to be made in almost all cases. Private collectors usually wish to show off their items, so most relics will go on public museum tours. But the items will still be safe. The underground market of antiquities will mostly evaporate. National claims to items can be resolved easily, by paying the asking price for the item. Anything stolen out of a country would be processed under normal laws. In places where anarchy rules currently, hopefully in 10-20 years a stable government will form, and they may then attempt to purchase back items. In cases such as this, it is a good thing that many items won’t be returned. For when they return back to not having a government a few years later, less items will be lost forever.

Liberals are waaaaay too uptight.
Perfect story about how a liberal woman walked out on a guy just because he’s a Republican. No other reason. Didn’t debate, talk about it, try to find common ground, anything. Just said she couldn’t “deal with it” and left. What the hell does that mean? Is her world so fragile?

Although I agree with Sgt. Stryker. Don’t ever let politics cock-block you. Ever…

Many people have been blogging about the virus writing course put on by the University of Calgary.

I’m not sure we have to worry all that much. Think about it, only lamerz will be taking it. Truly talented coders wouldn’t get caught dead in a class like that. And how would it be graded? Do you only get an A+ if your virus escapes into the wild and shuts down the internet? And the logistics. Of course the lab will be disconnected from the world at large. But this also means that those computers should never be used anywhere else. They will have no way to know if a virus is on those machines from a prior class. And how will homework be handled? You know these people taking the course will be working on their normal dorm computers. Something is bound to get free.

But this actually makes it really easy. Should anything get free, and it infects the company I work for, we’ll have several lawyers trying to figure out what to do with the new university we will then own.

Listened to the new Metallica song St. Anger on the radio. This thing has been hyped for months.

My review:

It is complete crap. Its one thing to go “garage-band.” But this… well, it sounds like I wrote and performed it. And I failed marching band in high school.

Its just horrible. I’m one of those that think most of their recent stuff has been pretty damn lame, but there were always a few exceptions. This is not one of those exceptions. So I’ll go back to Master of Puppets and again pretend they died in a plane that crashed into a train soon after it was released…

Aren’t they just the best? Can’t have a righteous Pirate Lair without them. Must be busty of course. To pirates there be two kinds of womenfolk. Busty wenches and those that masquerade as cabin boys.

And now they’re unionized.

I’d hate to be around if they go on strike! But a word of advice to all my pirate friends and foes. Make sure your wench has her ID card.