Rants and Revelations

When I see in articles like this one
Stations to Boycott ‘Nightline’s’ List of the Fallen (washingtonpost.com)
that people think that honouring the soldiers who have died in Iraq is “motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq”, I have to wonder if the American public, or at least some part of it didn’t learn the wrong lesson from Vietnam.

It seems to me that these people think the US didn’t lose in Vietnam because they went in with no clear plan, were backing one oppressive regime against another, were so afraid of provoking the Soviets and the Chinese that they saddled the fighting forces with ridiculous rules of engagement (especially when bombing Hanoi), and that both Johnson and Nixon micromanaged the war like they were playing with toy soliders. Oh no, the whole reason for the defeat was that we didn’t totally stifle any discouraging words at home. So as long as we censor any attempts to bring home the full cost of this Iraqi venture in lives and money, we’ll be fine.

Another boring one, I’m afraid.
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I love the Kodak Perigrine Falcon Cam. This picture today really caught my eye. Not sure how it happened.

Note: Originally I had did this picture using something cut and pasted from Shaky’s Unofficial Perigrine Falcon Cam Archive. But the thumbnail didn’t work right. The wierd thing was it did work if I cut and pasted the URL into my browser, or if I saved the whole page as HTML and opened that in my browser. Have a look:

Democrat & Chronicle: Kodak signs screen deal

Looks like I’ll stay employed for a few more weeks, at least.

I haven’t continued this series in a while, partly because I’m coming to another period in my life that isn’t so rant-a-licious.
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On the drive home from Ottawa, there is a field that you suddenly come across that has these gigantic crow sculptures in them. The first time you see them there is sort of a “oh crows…OH MY GOD HUGE FUCKING CROWS…oh they’re fake” moment. Yesterday, in spite of the pouring rain and fading light, I got out to take some pictures of them.

I need to sort though these pictures a bit more and maybe do some cleanup in Photoshop, but I was hoping the overcast and rain would make a more eeeerie effect, and it did. I need to come back with a manual focus camera, though, because a couple of times I wanted one crow framed by another, and the camera I was using tended to focus on the near one (or the grass growing under it) instead.

Trying to get back into my hotel room, I found several streets blocked off by police cars. I asked for and was given permission to go through to the parking lot of my hotel, no problem. But when Alyssa and I went out for lunch, we had to walk right past the road block, so I asked the policemen what was going on. “Oh”, he said, “police funeral”. I was so shocked I actually took a step backwards. “Don’t worry, we should be done soon.” He seemed remarkably … if not cheerful, at least unconcerned, about it.

I can’t find anything in the on-line Ottawa Citizen about it, so hopefully it was a death from natural causes. Cops dying in the line of duty has always been a pretty damn rare thing in Canada, and I hope like hell it’s not getting more common.

This site looks like a legit Bush/Cheney web site, until you read the actual articles. Very clever.

When you’re listening to something on your iPod that you Audio Hijacked from CBC radio last weekend, and they come to the One O’Clock Time Signal - don’t bother checking your watch.

I’ve been trying to dress a bit better at work these days. Today I took it to the next level - a tie!
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Apple’s sent me a replacement iPod. This will be the fourth iPod to bear the inscription “To Paul Tomblin with thanks from his Best Mates, 2002″.

Would I seem too pessimistic if I tell people that I’m now temporarily iPodded?

Vicki and I had dinner with Les last night. Les is a fellow pilot who I first got in contact with on the Piper mailng list. It was really great to spend the evening talking politics with somebody who has quite different political views without the rancour, personal attacks and childishness that drove me away from the Piper mailing list. But that’s not what this rant is about.
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Which Nigerian spammer are You?

It’s been a lot of years since I’ve done this, so I finally got to fly on one of my weekend trips. And it turned into a bit of an adventure.
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Recently I’ve noticed that in Vicki’s blog, my entries on her friend’s page have this weirdo pseudo-link on them. I’ve noticed this as well on a few other people’s, as well. I’m not sure why, but the people who have “friended” “rantsnrevels” are getting my index.xml syndication, which has this problem, but people who have “friended” “ptomblin” are getting the index.rdf, which is a newer interface and probably doesn’t suffer from this problem.
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