Adrian B.: In his book Infantry Attacks, Erwin Rommel discusses the feeling one experiences upon leaving one’s first unit; the unit that forms most of one’s ideas about leadership. I’d already experienced that gut-wrenching feeling during training in Germany, when our Company Executive Officer was (correctly) fired for gross incompetence, and I, as the Senior…
Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.
0956 …Burmese title ‘Unforgiveable Blood” music for the walk.
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
HAS WAL-MART BECOME A THIEF MAGNET…? I ask the question with only anecdotal evidence to back me up, but I have to ask it anyway. Have hard times and low-to-no security made Wal-Mart a thief magnet. Bank robbers, like Willy Sutton, robbed banks because that”s where the money was. Keep reading…
WHAT”S WRONG WITH THIS INTERSECTION…? At 9920 East 30th Street, near the intersection with North Meitthoefer Road, in Indianapolis, Indiana, a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market store closed yesterday. The store was twice the size of Wal-Mart”s Marketside stores. Keep reading…
EVERY CAR MUST HAVE A BUGGY WHIP…? I confess that I find New York”s Westchester County Department of Consumer Protection law, if I”m understanding it correctly, archaic at best and more than a bit silly. The story doesn”t tell the reader when the law was enacted: the “50s, the “60s, the “70s?
Keep reading…
DO WAL-MART EXECS KNOW SOMETHING…? I don”t think so. Wal-Mart executives have given more money to Senator Hillary Clinton”s campaign for president than any other candidate. My read is that they think Congressional Republicans can shut her down more easily than Senator Barack Obama. Keep reading…
HAS THE WAL-MART TIDE TURNED…? If there is one message that I”ve hammered away at again and again it is this: the Wal-Marting of America is not inevitable. It is not only possible to compete against Wal-Mart, it is possible to best the Bentonvile Behemoth at its own game. Keep reading…
THE GOOD SIDE OF CLINICS IN WAL-MARTS… While I have misgivings concerning how well health clinics run by a company whose mantra is sell it to me cheaper so that I can make more profit will actually serve patients, I”m also willing to share the point of view of a more optimistic real health care worker. Keep reading…
CAN WAL-MART KEEP SLAMMING ITS OWN…? At one level I applaud Wal-Mart”s changes to its Internet presence through Check Out. But I have to wonder if the bloggers are about to discover that management didn”t real mean it when they said they could blog what they saw as the truth. Keep reading…
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. In honor of Ohio’s primary here’s a few right-wing emails From My Dad.
Three Arkansas surgeons were playing Golf together and discussing surgeries they had performed. One of them said, “I’m the best surgeon in Arkansas. In my favorite case, a concert pianist lost seven fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months later he performed a private concert for the Queen of England .
The second surgeon said, “That’s nothing. A young man lost an arm and both legs in an accident, I reattached them, and 2 years later he won a gold Medal in track and field in the Olympics.”
The third surgeon said, “You guys are amateurs.” Several years ago, a woman was high on cocaine and marijuana, and she rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the woman’s blond hair and the horse’s ass. I was able to put them together, and now she’s running for President.
Gary Gygax died yesterday. In January 1974 I entered Colorado State University and on a Saturday afternoon I was introduced to a world where four-, six-, eight- and ten-sided dice were rolled like the knuckle bones of some arcane beast to be divined according to strange words and tables on smudged mimeograph pages.
The sheets belonged to a geeky computer science student who had acquired them under the table at a science fiction convention. The authors names on the top sheet were Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
For the next six years, through a year at CSU and five years in the Navy I would play Dungeons & Dragons, at least once and often two or three times a week. First in CSU’s Newsom Hall where I lived on the third floor and later in my barracks at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Waukegan, Illinois. Then it was onto the USS Bainbridge and at the home of Dave Brewer in San Diego, known as The Brewery, where I was in the Dungeon Master rotation and we played from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon.
The game changed in 1979 with a complete re-write of the rules that sucked the anarchy out of the game and I lost interest, moving on to other entertainments.
But I still have my dice box, my books, my character sheets and my memories and later I’ll make a few rolls and remember.
When criminals enter a home, steal a large sum of money and then execute the residents — including children and servants — people call for the police. When the crime takes place in neighborhood protected by the police, people question the police. When the crime takes place near the home of a famous dissident, people suspect the police.
From AFP:
Five people were killed in execution-style shootings in the wealthy Yangon neighborhood where Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest, police said Tuesday.
A couple, their two daughters and a maid were shot inside their home on Monday afternoon, police told AFP.
“About 1,000 lakhs (93,000 dollars) was taken from their home,” a police official said on condition of anonymity.
Family friends said all five had been shot in the head.
The shooting happened near the State Guesthouse, a military facility that has been the venue for recent talks between Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and a liaison officer for the military government.
The guesthouse is also where the democracy leader has been allowed to meet with UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his previous visits to Myanmar. He is set to return on Thursday.
Aung San Suu Kyi lives just a few blocks away from the house where the shooting took place, making the killing all the more unusual because the area is under constant guard.
Although Myanmar has been at civil war for about six decades, shootings in Yangon are extremely rare.
Ordinary citizens are not allowed to own weapons, and firearms are strictly controlled by the regime.
Police declined to comment on a possible motive for Monday’s attack.
“The incident is still under investigation,” the official said.
Am I being paranoid?
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Midrash and Literature edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick.
Arrogate: 1 a : to claim or seize without justification b : to make undue claims to having : ASSUME 2 : to claim on behalf of another : ASCRIBE- arrogation \9ar-0-8gÀ-sh0n\ noun [188]
Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: A goal with an associated value is a priority. The process of prioritizing is a process of valuing.
On Saturday Athein, a veteran of the 1988 protests and a founding member of the All Burma Students Democratic Front step off from his home in Portland, Oregon, and started walking toward New York where he intends to present a petition to the United Nations on 8 August. Why is he walking?
From Walk For Freedom:
I am not tired for what I am doing because I don”t want to just stay home and thinking about people suffering from military government , every single day I am hearing from BBC or DVB news service about my country situation , I can”t stand this so I wanted to do something good and this is my choice. Every single day my sweats are for my people, my body getting tired but my mind never rested.
one day I”ll reach the place that I want to be , this is not dream and till I”ll reach freedom Burma .
This walk for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi , this walk for Burmese people , this walk for Democracy , I expect nothing for my life famous or rich , till my last breath I”ll keep disturbing this military government, 1988 Students generation, and history must be stand on Burma history page.
I have no back ground support , Your support is my one step to move on so I would like you to help and support me. I am looking for my background support especially for the food and drink , till arrive to New York.
He has a place to drink, eat and rest for a time in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, if he passes near hear.
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack
In many ways, Ohio is behind the times, and is not quite 21st Century.
Ohio still wants to have those high paying, manufacturing jobs of the 50’s and 60’s, and agriculture. I was struck by the interviews on 60 Minutes, Sunday night, from Chillcothe, Ohio. They all seemed to be bemoaning not being able to go to Florida once a year and buying a new car every two years. But only one had tried to get more education for the new challenges of the Global Market.
The state legislature has dragged its feet on fulfilling the Ohio Constitution”s mandate for state funding of education. The Supreme Court of Ohio has told them many times of the requirement, but is ignored. The legislature”s laughable solution was school vouchers, in effect, subsidizing the haves” private education while giving the have-nots a limited choice. So Ohioans still are in a 50″s movie, play football in high school and Dad”s job will be waiting for you.
NAFTA did not kill the manufacturing jobs in Ohio; they were going, going, gone, before the agreement. But Ohioans have been waiting for some miracle to bring them back, and if their children do get an education, the children leave the state for better opportunities.
So we are in a state very much fighting the culture wars of the last century, educated in the last century, looking for the last century”s solutions. A Daily Dish reader
Eddie: There was a Muslim religious holiday recently, honoring a fallen Imam named Hussein. On one of the big celebration days the people come to the streets by the thousands, and parade around and punish themselves by whipping themselves in the back with chain whips. During these kinds of cele-brations we try to keep our distance and not interfere with…
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. In honor of Ohio’s primary here’s a few right-wing emails From My Dad.
To tear or not tear? That could be the 4 March 2008 question in Ohio. At the bottom of your ballot today there are two thin strips that read: do not remove this strip or your vote will not count. Here’s the problem: some poll workers have different instructions and are ignoring what the strip says.
I voted this morning in precinct 4M in Cleveland Heights and no strips were removed.
Molly voted this morning in precinct 6R in Cleveland and one stub was left in the ballot book and Molly was instructed to remove the second.
She called the board of elections and was told that her vote would still count.
It is going to be a loonnngggg primary day.
Since no one on the planet bought their constitutional referendum and elections in 2010 ploy, the military dictators of that country have decided to try a fall back position: inviting the United Nations envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari back for a third visit. The carrot is that he will be able to meet with previously unavailable groups.
Don’t hold your breath.
From Asia-Pacific News:
The UN envoy for Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, will make his third visit to the southeast Asian nation this week for talks with groups he had not met with previously, a spokesperson said Monday.
Gambari will leave New York and plans to arrive in Yangon Thursday after the military government there gave the authorization for his return visit.
Michelle Montas said Gambari will remain in Myanmar ‘as long as necessary. He intends to meet all groups he had not met during his last visits.’
Gambari began last fall his diplomatic efforts at convincing the military junta to implement democratic reform, hold national reconciliation talks and release political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy. She has been placed under house arrest for more than 10 years by the government for challenging their authority.
There are times I wonder if the generals are a fan of Lucy Van Pelt.
Gambari recently visited Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore and Jakarta as part of a campaign to gain support from Asian capitals for democratic reform in Myanmar.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Midrash and Literature edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick.
Archaizing: 1 : the use of archaic diction or style 2 : an instance of archaic usage 3 : something archaic; especially : something (as a practice or custom) that is outmoded or old-fashioned- archaist \-ist\ noun- archaistic \9r-kÎ-8is-tik, -(9)kÀ-\ adjective- archaize \8r-kÎ-9Úz, -(9)kÀ-\ verb [87]
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