Firefly! :)

What Firefly Character Are You?
Hoban 'Wash' Washburn You are a bit of a clown, with a pervasive and sometimes whimsical sense of humor. You are also fiercely protective of those you love, sometimes to the point of saying/doing things you may later regret. You are highly accomplished professionally and loved and respected by all.
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

The problem is that if you watched it enough you can recognize the questions and get who you want!

A Moral Imperative!

This is just too good not to post on.

Sex scandal pastor says after therapy, he's heterosexual

"Praise the Lord!"

Three weeks of therapy?

"It's a miracle!"

"Hallelujah!"

"Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York psychiatrist who is an expert on issues of gender and sexuality, said that while it was people's prerogative to identify their sexual orientation as they wanted, the notion of being able to change that orientation was 'not consistent with clinical presentations, but totally consistent with theological belief.'"

Let me just say for the record hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Miscellanity, Part 5

I saw a few things today in my news scans that registered.

Tossing MickeyDee’s Cup of Ice at Driver Gets Mom Two Years Jail

Other places are calling it the "McMissile Incident" but that name, while snappy, doesn't convey the gravity of a mother being taken away from her three children (all under 10 years of age) for two years. Nor does it touch on how we treat the families of deployed servicemen (her husband is serving his third tour in Iraq).

However, road rage can be a serious problem and in heavy traffic, if it's moving at any velocity, something like this could cause a multicar pile-up which could leave dozens of people in the hospital (or the morgue).

---

I saw this as well

Iraq vet's wife: "If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will"

And I had heard the NPR piece yesterday while on the way home from Wal Mart.

U.S. Army Hospital Reported to Be in Poor Shape

And the Washington Post article

...

Well the post won't let me link to it without registering but google has lots of other sources.

Walter Reed Hospital

One the one hand it didn't surprise me at all, having been in the military and been in the hospital, that the combination of the two could prove to be worse than ... well perhaps worse than the injury itself in the first place (the cure worse than the disease?).

And (of course) on the other hand it's a shameful way to treat war veterans. But not at all unexpected given ... well that path just leads to more bushbashing.

Life Path Number?

Your Life Path Number is 22

Your purpose in life is to use your power for good Of all the life paths, yours has the most innate power. Your power lies in your vision, and you must recruit others to help you in this vision. You are able to be a great idealist, but you still have the practicality to get things done. In love, you tend to be a big romantic - but you also tend to keep your distance. You have a lot of potential, and it's sometimes hard to live up to. Sometimes you just feel like slipping into obscurity and doing nothing. You tend to be prone to dramatic emotions, until you step back and look at things honestly.

What Is Your Life Path Number?

I don't know. Some of this sounds like "hooey" (to quote Calvin).

Miscellanity, Part 4

The other day I read this

How the U.S. Army Works

Mostly just to see if Mister Ed Grabianowski got it right. I stopped reading part way through so I guess he got it right enough to become boring to someone who knows it from the inside. However the very first page divides the army into an "operational branch" and an "institutional branch". This apparently started bugging me without my knowing it. I was subconsciously trying to figure out how those terms fit into what I knew of the Army structure.

So this morning I realized what one of those terms meant. TraDoc (pronouced "tray - doc") was a phrase which dropped into my head in the shower. It stands for "Training and Doctrine Command" and is where all military students, their instructors and any other support personnel are assigned. That was apparently what he meant by the phrase "institutional branch" (although the term "branch" means something totally different to officers, NCOs and enlisted soldiers). But I couldn't recall what the other term was. And that bugged me. I recall years ago when my friend Verb told us that he felt he was losing his roots, that he couldn't remember all the terminology they had used at West Point when he went there. I was losing my Army verbiage. D'oh!

But it came back to me after a bit. The other term is "ForsCom", which stands for "Forces Command" and is where all the military units which get deployed (overseas?) are assigned.

And yes, my mind is an odd place sometimes.

A tough nut

This isn't a position I would want to be in, not even now when my political views are more clear to me.

Officer to fight against retrial

I've been following this one for awhile now. He seemed to be a good officer. One of the lessons one of his colonels taught him was to research his assignments to be fully prepared. He got posted to Fort Lewis from Hawaii and he knew it was likely he'd be posted to Iraq. So he started researching the country, the theater and the situation. He came to the conclusion that we went to war under illegal pretenses. He decided that in good conscious he couldn't participate in that.

He was willing to get posted to Afghanistan or any other war zone to fight. However, as a member of the military, you don't get to pick and choose which wars you fight. You go where you're sent. While the oath he took (which he took voluntarily) specifies that he "protect and defend the constitution of the United States", it also specifies that he "follow the orders of the officers appointed over him." And that particular trail goes up through the chain of command all the way to the President, regardless of ordering our military to start an illegal war.

And how do you suppose the sergeants and captains in his unit feel about this particular lieutenant?

Years ago John Keegan ("The Face of Battle") wrote a book after researching why men fight in war. His conclusion was that it wasn't for home and country (although those factors do influence it), it was for the men and women in their unit.

I don't know what the right decision might have been, if there even was a "right". But I am glad it's not me.

The yo-yo

Between despair and hope.

On the one hand we have

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Wherein scientists are offered cash ($10k) to attack the findings of the Global Ecology conference in Paris recently which determined that Man probably has been negatively affecting our climate. So we hear from the crowd who doesn't care if they trash the planet as long as their profit margins are safe.

"They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

Now granted it's a guy from Greenpeace saying this (about as far left as you can get without blowing up buildings), but he has a point!

To counterbalance that we have

World Changing: A User's Guide to the 21st Century

About a book which gives you reactions and causes for your actions. Things as simple as which t-shirt you buy and how it can affect the environment and our world. I think I'm going to pick this book up.

Now the whole "bomb scare" thing in Boston that had people up in arms has spawned a lot of emotion (as well as a lot of drek). But the widgets were put up in the daylight so it likely would have been impossible during morning traffic to see the blinking light pattern which would reveal they were a gimmick. They had wires and circuit boards sticking out. They were put on t-stops, train stations, overpasses and bridges. Sure, the campaign took place in a number of other cities but Boston was the only one who panicked. But in none of the other cities did the widgets get put in those places. And do you really want to be the one making the decision that these are harmless the one time they're not and bunches of people are killed?

But this

They Are Not Heroes.

Attacks the artists for a whole different reason. With a certain amount of validity I think.

And to end on a truly depressing note, we have

Criminalizing the Victim: Rape and Police Brutality

For an outstanding example of stupidity! (this'll get Yvonne riled up)

Another one

Yesterday Molly Ivins died from breast cancer. I had never heard of her but she was another Texas firebrand woman who I should have known (like Ann Richards). One bit caught my attention when I heard the npr piece on it.

Treasuring the Wit and Wisdom of Molly Ivins

She said "We in Texas are used to discerning that fine hairs breath worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than another."

If that doesn't epitomize modern American politics I don't know what does!