A month or so ago I got some mail from the ATFE.  I am always apprehensive when I get something from them but that is based on zero real life experience with them.  The worst I can say about the material I receive from them was that it didn't apply to me.  Most of the time it is, “Hmmm... okay.  That makes sense.“  This time I was actually impressed.  I had decided to not say anything about it in public but then I found it on their web site so I decided to go ahead and talk about it.  They sent me some material put out by “The Fertilizer Institute” in cooperation with the ATFE.  It was about how to make our country safer.  How to prevent explosive materials from getting into the hands of the wrong people.  Hundreds of millions of tons of ammonium nitrate (AN) are used annually on our farms.  AN is the primary component of the “reactive targets” I build for the boomershoot as well as being used in the Oklahoma City bombing and numerous other international terrorist bombings.  With all that AN being used each year in 100's of thousands of locations how can you secure it such that a few hundred pounds (500 pounds could make a very serious bomb) doesn't get out?  Well... when I read the material presented it really clicked.  It reminded me of when I worked on a political campaign to oppose a anti-gun initiative (I-676) a few years ago.  The people on the phone lines would tell stories about the anti-gun people that would call and try to get information about our plans.  You only had to ask one or two questions and the anti-gun people would, figuratively, fall in heap on the floor.  If the lines weren't very busy then they would play with them for a few minutes and have more material for the story telling later that evening.  They would just ask something like, “What type of gun do you have?“  “What caliber is it?“  They would get answers like “Glock“ and “.357 Magnum“ (only revolvers shoot .357 Magnum and Glock doesn't make any revolvers).  Or “Shotgun, I'm not sure who makes it, but it's a 9mm.”  With a little bit of suggestive questioning you could get them to agree to the most incredibly outrageous things.  It was great sport making fun of the people that were trying to do us harm and now I realize that it can be more than just sport.  It can be a deadly serious means to save lives.  This is the brochure I received.  Growing up on a farm the questions and idle chatter that happens with other farmers and our suppliers which seem perfectly reasonable would throw my wife or kids for a total loop and would be a HUGE warning flag.  And that is just for someone with a fair amount of contact with a working farm and someone who grew up on a farm.  Here are the items from the brochure:

Stranger
Unfamiliar to area or to you.

Doesn't know much about farming/fertilizer
Doesn't answer questions about acreage, crops, soil composition, etc. in a specific, knowledgeable way.

Insistent about ammonium nitrate
Will not consider other products you recommend. Is only interested in ammonium nitrate.

Doesn't want product delivered
Insists on taking product now. Asks for it in bags, not bulk.

Hesitates/hedges when asked for information
Name, address, signature, photo ID, etc.

Acts nervous
Avoids eye contact. Seems jittery, uneasy, vague.

Pays in cash
Won't write a check or use credit. Has no credit account with your or other ag businesses in the area.

After reading this I also remembered a story about someone that flew from Israel back to the U.S. after delivering a paper at a conference.  The security people did a one-on-one interview with every single passenger.  It took about 10 minutes for each passenger and went something like this for this guy,

I see that you visited here for a week.  Please tell me the purpose of your visit.  Describe the topic of your paper please.  Give me the lecture you gave the conference on this paper. <listens for about two minutes>  Please explain to me what ““ means.

In short, they can ask very innocent questions and unless you actually were there for the purposes you claim you will quickly get into trouble.  In this case it's actually sort of a reverse vocabulary test.  The security agent will most likely not have the vocabulary of the paper presenter and expects to find words and phrases that are unknown to the average person.  The presenter, if they are the expert they claim to be, should be able to define the words and phrases in a manner that is consistent and sensical even to someone not skilled in that particular field.

Every group has their own language and culture.  You couldn't fake being in the military with another military person for more than about 30 seconds before they would find you out if they wanted to test you.  A chess player, a quilter, or football fan--if you don't belong to the group your vocabulary will expose you as a phony.

It turns out the reverse is also true.  If you speak the vocabulary you can gain the almost immediate trust of people that shouldn't trust you.  It's called “social engineering” in the security field and those are some of the most difficult attacks to defend against.

Hurricane Ivan could put much of New Orleans underwater.  Not just a few inches, but many feet.  In some places the water could be 20 feet deep.  How can this be?  How much rain is Ivan going to dump?  It turns out that the rain isn't the problem.  It's that New Orleans is below sea level.  The entire city was built on silt the Mississippi river has dumped over several thousand years.  That silt that is several miles deep.  That silt gradually compacts and “squishes out” and the surface drops.  If left on it's own the “big muddy” would replenish the silt to above sea level every few years as it overflows it's banks during high water times.  But levees were built to protect the city from the flooding.  Unfortunately it's only the battles of the first couple hundred years that can be won.  Eventually the “war” against the river will be lost.  Not only does the city continue to sink but silt from the river is dumped further and further out to sea (something like a thousand tons per day is dropped).  This decreases the slope for the river from New Orleans (and upstream) to the sea.  This means the velocity of the river decreases.  As the velocity decreases the river drops more silt in it's channel and furthermore it must be either deeper or wider to carry the same amount of water.  Everything is working against New Orleans remaining at it's current elevation.  This is not like Holland which is also below sea level.  The soil is much different and we have a river running through the city that is raising it's bed every day.

It will cost billions to put up a mediocre defense against the threat.  One could argue that we should just let the city deal with it on it's own or move.  The problem is that there is a tremendous amount of shipping that goes on through the Mississippi from the heartlands of the country to the rest of the world and New Orleans is the port that makes it all happen.  If left to it's own devices the river would have rerouted itself a hundred miles or so to the west years ago.  It's only the Corp of Engineers that have kept it within the current channels.  Will Ivan be the last battle?  Will this week start the journey for New Orleans to become a silt covered archeological site for some graduate students 50,000 years from now?  What will be the impact on our economy?  How will this affect the election?  Will Kerry claim Bush could have prevented it (hmmm.... I wonder what a small nuke would do to a hurricane out at sea)?

My belief is that long term the people and businesses of New Orleans should close up and move out.  Barring some extraordinary technological breakthroughs in earth moving (I'm talking raising an entire city from deep down under the water soaked earth) and/or lowering the sea this battle cannot be won.  It's better to surrender gracefully than to let the enemy annihilate you.  Spend the billions on salvage and rebuilding in another location, but surrender the current New Orleans to it's muddy grave.

Technically speaking, I'm part of the “intelligence community” in this country.  My involvement is very minimal and I really don't know how the reorganization recommended by the 9-11 commission would affect “our“ effectiveness from an insider viewpoint.  However, [Deleted on May 18, 2005 in an attempt to please PNNL management] a friend running for U.S. Congress asked me for my thoughts on the issue so I'm going to do my best.  My “position” inside the intelligence community contributes essentially zero to this.  My position would be the same even if I were still working on the “outside”.  [Deleted on May 18, 2005 in an attempt to please PNNL management]

The specific questions I was asked were:

• Would you favor consolidating intelligence-gathering into an agency independent of the Pentagon?
• Do you believe the chief of any such agency should also be independent of the White House?
• What one measure most needs to be enacted to make our nation more secure?

The U.S. intelligence agencies are tasked (and rightly so) with invading the privacy of people and countries who might wish to do us harm.  Information is a very powerful thing and extreme power needs to be carefully controlled.  The U.S. military is the primary consumer of the information because they are tasked with preventing harm to us.  So having them control the intelligence agencies seems to me to be a good idea.  Furthermore the U.S. military is specifically forbidden from acting against U.S. citizens (the National Guard is under the authority of the individual states) .  This is a very good thing.  Many other countries do not have this restriction on their military and this has lead to some very serious problems (genocide). 

But what about gathering information on people that are in our country already and wish to do us harm?  The FBI and other law enforcement people have to “jump through hoops” to gather information -- probable cause for search warrants signed by judges, that sort of thing.  The NSA and the CIA don't bother with such niceties (although I suspect they have their own internal controls).  As severe as I think the threat from terrorists is I still fear our own government more.  A look at history will show that more innocent, non-combatant, people have been killed by their own government that by the governments of others.  And the terrorists that confront us now do not have the capacity to kill millions (as much as they would like to).  I believe the wall between the law enforcement and intelligence agencies is a long term good thing even though short term is it seen as a hindrance to security.  The wall doesn't need to be complete, there should be information shared but it must exist and having the military in control of the intelligence side of the house is a good way (in my mind) to help keep an appropriate wall in place.

As to “What one measure most needs to be enacted to make our nation more secure?“ Security might be enhanced by deporting anyone professing Islamic faith.  But that would be a violation of the 1st amendment.  Security might be enhanced by eavesdropping on all electronic communication but that would violate the 4th amendment.  But the one thing we can do that will not infringe on anyone's inalienable rights is to enable preventive measures that would have stopped the 9-11 attacks and have stopped the attack on the school children of Russia the other day.  Enforce the restriction imposed by the Second Amendment on the states, cities, and agencies of the U.S. government.  The 2nd amendment says “... the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  The 14th Amendment says the states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States...“  The States and government regulations that prohibit adults from carrying firearms and other defensive tools in schools and on airplanes should be immediately abolished.  We don't want any more commercial airplanes used as guided missiles or our schools used as killing fields.  Allow people to defend themselves and the lives of other innocent people.  Enforce the 2nd amendment through the use of the 16th amendment.  Any government employee who violates the 2nd amendment rights of a citizen under the color of law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

So.... to answer the questions:

• No.  I am not in favor of consolidating the agencies independent of the Pentagon.
• If such a consolidation were to occur I would want it to be independent of direct political control.  I think we learned that lesson with Richard Nixon.  If he had an first class intelligence agency rather than second rate burglars to spy on his political opponents he would have violated the rights of a lot more people and probably gotten away with it.
• Abolish all gun laws against law abiding adult citizens.

The ATF posted this on it's web site:

Semiautomatic Assault Weapon Update

By statute, the prohibitions relating to semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices expired on September 13, 2004. As a result, certain sections of the Gun Control Act, 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44, and its implementing regulations, 27 CFR Part 478, are no longer in effect.

I celebrated by assembling some full capacity magazines for my competition handgun out of parts I had laying around. The anti-freedom crowd are whining to such an extent that it is almost deafening. Here is something the Violence Policy Center put out:

Soon after its passage in 1994, the gun industry made a mockery of the federal assault weapons ban, manufacturing "post-ban" assault weapons with only slight, cosmetic differences from their banned counterparts. The VPC estimates that more than one million assault weapons have been manufactured since the ban's passage in 1994.

It appears the VPC has a problem defining words. By the definitions they helped create for the '94 law the manufactures complied with the law. Congress and the anti-freedom people were told again and again their definition of "assault weapon" was meaningless. It nothing to do with the function of the firearms. Their concern was all about cosmetics. Then when the manufactures changed the cosmetics they complained that they were still making "assault weapons". Well... we on the pro-freedom side of the fence never could figure out what you were calling an "assault weapon" other than by the cosmetics as defined in the law.

The questions a rational person has to ask are, "What definition of 'assault weapon' are you using now?" and "If the definition that Congress used wasn't what you meant why didn't you complain about it then?" You got what you wanted at the time. You made all kinds of claims about how wonderful it was to have the law passed, the studies were done as per the law and they found out EXACTLY what we were saying at the time--the law will not make any difference in violent crime. I made an appearance on a television show in August of '95 saying some of this if anyone wants to check this out I'll let them see the video. And more importantly you can't change the definition of 'assault weapon' to fit whatever is convenient at the time. For example they say about one out of five police officers are killed with an 'assault weapon'. Well.... they don't tell you what their definition of an "assault weapon" is for that number to be true. It's abundantly clear that it's NOT the definition used in Federal law.

Oh well... it's all part of the meltdown of the liberals--Clinton and "what your definition of 'is' is." and all that.  And then Dan Rather and CBS are the laughing stock of the nation today.  As my friend Sean says: “Today is Happy News Day.”

As Ry already reported, the October issue of Outside Magazine with the article on Boomershooting is out.  It is a nice article.  Lisa Anne Auerbach did a good job on it -- considering the premise she had to work with.  The issue was “The Sex & Sin Issue” and Lisa had to spice it up a little with lines like:

It sounds so wrong on so many levels--the guns, the noise, the NRA--but what can I say?  Sometimes a girl just has to get the kinks out, and firing guns is a great way to do it.

It was a positive article and I'm pleased to get the attention.  My disappointment is that Ry was not mentioned.  Tim, Lisa, and their kids were there too and were not mentioned either, but I could see dropping them in an article tight for space.  But Ry was such a major part of the entire experience that it wasn't really right to not mention him.  There wasn't a link to either of the boomershoot web sites either (boomershoot.org and boomershoot.com).  And there were no pictures published.  There were lots of pictures taken, but nothing made it into the magazine.

Oh well.  I'm happy about it.  I was a bit apprehensive that some of Ms. Auerbach's anti-gun feelings would come through but they did not.   Thank you Lisa.

I had never really followed the EU much.  It was sort of, okay, whatever.  Others complain about them being a bunch of wimps and various other derogatory things.  I didn't really have an opinion -- then I read the following:

The European Union, already at odds with the Bush administration over pre-emptive military strikes, reacted warily to a warning from Moscow that it too reserved the right to neutralize terror threats anywhere in the world.

Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the general staff of Russia's armed forces, said Wednesday that "we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world."
.
.
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The European Union argues that a policy of pre-emptive strikes is too risky. A security strategy paper approved by EU governments last year said emphasis should be placed on diplomatic and political solutions.

“Diplomatic and political solutions” often work if you are dealing with a nation state.  I think it was 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11/2001 were from Saudi Arabia.  Should we have started negotiations with Saudi Arabia to find out why they attacked us?  No?  Why is that?  Oh, because it was Osma bin Laden that was the top leader of that attack not the Saudi government.  So perhaps we should negotiate with him.  He sent us an open letter after the attack, clearly spelling out the conditions required before the attacks would stop.  I commented on this letter before so I don't need to do that in depth here, but the bottom line is that we need to convert to Islam and stop the immorality and debauchery including fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest.  We need to rule ourselves under the laws of Shariah of Allah rather than invent our own laws.  If we fail to respond to all (emphasis added) these conditions then we will need to fight the Islamic Nation. 

Okay, so tell me how we can find a diplomatic solution to this position of our adversary?  Who wants to give up the U.S. Constitution and turn our justice system over to Islamic Clerics?  Maybe we could just reinstate prohibition and execute homosexuals.  Does anyone think that perhaps this would be sufficient to satisfy them? Does anyone think that is an acceptable compromise?  I don't, and I'm not a homosexual and only very rarely drink any alcohol.  If those laws were passed it would only have the most minor of immediate effects on me and my lifestyle.  But it still is totally and completely unacceptable to me.  I would rather imprison and/or kill a hundred thousand Islamic extremists and loose another thousand U.S. lives than agree to that one point.  And what cost do you think we should be willing to pay to avoid the rule of “Shariah of Allah”?  I'd rather start up special pig (and web) farms for the Islamic terrorists we need to “process”.  As sad and as distasteful as it may be it would be better to run a million Islamic extremists through the pig farms than for the world to live under an Islamic theocratic rule.

So, IMHO, the EU is a bunch of totally clueless wimps.  If they want to “place emphasis on diplomatic and political solutions” then I would like to suggest they pursue that path with the Russians.  I think perhaps the Russians would agree to let the EU leaders shovel their pig manual.

I got the results last night.  I came in second.  A close second.  I'll post the results on the web site soon.

The whole Russian schoolchildren thing really upset me.  I still cry every once in a while when I'm tired.  I end up thinking about solutions to the problem every time something reminds me of them drinking their own urine to avoid dehyridation or being shot in the back as they tried to escape.  On the reality front I'm giving a couple presentations to the Air Force tomorrow on ideas for defending against some of the attacks used by the people we are fighting.  In my fantasies I think along the lines of what to do with those that kill children and behead civilians workers and reporters and sometimes post the video tape on their web sites.  This is my latest thought which should, of course, be video taped for our web sites and the news.

1. Strip them naked.
2. Stake them to ground in a pen full of hungry pigs.
3. Let them be eaten alive (or dead if they had previously absorbed excess lead).
4. There should be close ups of their genitals being ripped off and chewed by the pigs.
5. Close ups as the manure with bits of hair and bone come out the other end.
6. Package up the manure and put it in “bombs“.  We were using laser guided concrete “blocks” during parts of the war so this should be easy enough.
7. Drop the bombs on their mosques.

This should apply to the following groups of people:

1. Anyone who deliberately injures or threatens to injure innocent life.
2. Any enemy combantant (with some possible exceptions for those that have been extremely helpful and appear to have given up their religious beliefs) whose release is demanded by those that make the threats or injures innocent life.

So much for fantasies.  I need to get some rest so I can wake up early enough to do a good job with reality tomorrow.

Towards the end of last week I was getting better and better.  Saturday was the last day I felt any dizziness.  I appear to be all better now.

I was listening to a “book on CD” on the way to work this morning -- Every Man a Tiger.  It's about the Air Force general who directed the air war in the first US/Iraq war.  Very interesting stuff.  I really like it.  James and Barb tried listening to it when they went to Sacramento a few weeks ago and didn't care for it.  Barb gave it to me saying that they thought I would like it.  I didn't even know what it was about other than it was Tom Clancy book.  I expected fiction instead of something more like a biography.  Then not long after I got to work some strange guy shows up in my office and starts talking to me.  It turns out he is a Air Force Reserve Major.  I don't recall the last time I talked to someone in the Air Force but it has been years.  <shrug>

Anyway we talked about the meeting with the Air Force he is arranging/hosting which I'm presenting at tomorrow.  We also talked about Boomershoot stuff for a while.  He plans to attend the next one if he is back from Iraq in time.  He shoots thousands and thousands of rounds a year - certainly a lot more than I have recently.

If any Islamic extremists are considering doing a repeat of the little number they did in Russia last week with us in the U.S. they should do it in major city many, many  miles from the nearest farms.  If you do it near a farming community your bodies (living or dead) will likely be fed to the pigs.  If your family wants to bury your remains they will have to pick the bone fragments out of the pig manure.

Saturday we went for a hike near Helmer.  Xenia put on her elf ears and her corset and other clothes to make her look like an elf.  Just to bug her I keep telling her she the pointy ears made her look like a Vulcan.  It was a nice walk and I took lots of pictures of my little Vulcan.

Sunday I shot in a Lewiston Pistol Club IPSC match.  The results aren't out yet but I suspect I won.  I did very well in two stages and “pretty good” in the other two.  Some of my biggest competitors had problems in one or more stages and probably put themselves out of the running.  I took lots of pictures and put them on the web.  In the rifle match I came in last though.  I really need to practice IPSC rifle stuff a LOT more.  I can start by doing dry firing a bunch.  There were a lot of people at the match and it wasn't organized as well as it could have been and it ran very late.

When I got home from the IPSC match Barb and I went for a walk.  When we came back I started working on cleaning out the garage which I was supposed to do much earlier.  I just barely started when Kim called and said she was coming over to say hi and her friend Spunky wanted to play a game of chess with me.  They came over and I stomped on the poor kid.  He said he couldn't get very many people to play him and none of them were very good players.  I thought maybe he knew how to play but I knew it was going to be a push over after he made his very first move (he moved his knight to king's rook three).  As I told Xenia I could only think of about two other moves that would have been worse for a first move.  He was very polite and seemed to be a nice enough kid.  He said it was the first time he had a good game since he played his science teacher.  I told him I was home on weekends and I would be glad to play him again.  If he comes back I'll give him some pointers after the game.

Xenia and I put finished off getting all recycling stuff to the center then went to a move, Alien vs. Predator.  The best thing about the movie was the line in the preview, “Whoever wins, we loose.”  It wasn't a bad movie.  It just wasn't that good.  It wasn't entirely consistent with the other Alien movies which bugged me some.  But I did like what they did with one female character.  She is putting a pistol in her holster and the lead character in the movie asks, in a disapproving voice, if she thinks she is going to need that (they think they are just going to visit a pyramid site under the Antarctic ice cap).  The woman with the pistol says something like, “I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  Just like condoms.”  Very cool. Handguns portrayed as a protective tool.  Of course she does need it - but against the alien beasts and the predators it doesn't do much good.

Today Barb and I are going for a hike on Kamiak Butte.  Maybe look for a geocache.

A few days ago I got on the case of the California lawmakers who were afraid of toy guns.  In the U.K. the repression is so extreme they used the force of law to stop a paid advertisement that displayed the use of a starting pistol.  Apparently they are afraid that people might actually think it is 'normal' that some people would own a starting pistol.  They banned the advertisment:

In this advertisement, the starter pistol was used in both an apparent casual manner and just for fun, to signal the start of the man's journey. The domestic setting, together with the gun simply lying in a drawer, normalised the ownership of guns.

So not only is it against the law to own a firearm but it is against the law to express a viewpoint that it might be normal for people to own a firearm.  Why are those politicians still allowed to breath?  How are they any different than some theocratic country where women aren't allowed to show their skin and everyone is required to adhere to the same religious tenets?  They are a bunch of repressive tyrants and should be dealt with as such.  I'm increasingly lead to believe we should start pushing the human rights issue with some of our “allies”.

The Islamic extremists are expanding on the activities of earlier this week and last:

Heavily armed insurgents, some with explosives strapped to their bodies, seized a school in southern Russia today and herded scores of schoolchildren and others into its gymnasium.

More than a dozen guerrillas, including men and women, stormed Middle School No. 1 in the town of Beslan in the republic of North Ossetia, not far from Chechnya on Russia's southern border with Georgia, just moments after the opening of the new school year, according to officials there and news reports.

According to one report:

...the hostage-takers threatened to kill 50 children for each of their number killed and 20 for each wounded.

This reminds me some of the Modoc Indian War.  Barb and have visited Lava Beds National Monument where the war took place several times and each time is just as interesting as the last.  The bit of history that is relevant here is that at one point the Modoc Indians entered into peace negotiations.  They didn't really understanding how the U.S. Army worked believed that if they killed the “big chief”, the general, the army would just go away.  And so it must be with the Chechnya Islamic extremists.  They apparently just don't understand what their actions mean to us. 

Probably just as important is that we might really understand them.  As one person in the CIA who worked with psychologists there told me, “Most people don't realize just how different these people think than we do.”  It wasn't an appropriate time to follow up on his statement but I would love to do that some time.  Just what can we do to “motivate them” in a manner consistent with our goals?  High velocity lead poisoning works but what other things could we be doing?  One thing is certain, they don't know how to motivate us in a manner consistent with their goals.  My response would be somewhat along the lines of  “we are going to read up on the methods used on Dresden and it will be one city block containing a mosque for each child injured, one small town and all mosques for each child killed”.

Reading news.google.com today I find mention of Twin Suicide Bombings on Israeli Buses, Moscow Suicide Bomer Kills 10, Injures 51, Video Claims to Show Hostages Being Killed, France Pushes to Save Hostages in Iraq, and Darfur Conditions Said Worse, Talks Resume.  And that's just a single snapshot of the current situation.  That doesn't include the two planes that were taken down in Russia or the Italian journalist killed last week.  From a quick glance it would appear we have a world wide war on our hands.  The Islamic extremists versus the non-Muslims. 

This is consistent with this post I made and with Bin Laden's open letter to America.  Ry and I were talking about this a few weeks ago and didn't come up with anything much better than what Bush is already trying to do in Iraq.  Provide a “shining beacon” of non-religious prosperity and tolerance to the Islamic world in their own backyard.  Then capture or kill anyone that tries to destroy our example or us.  Short term we will draw them to the people best able to deal with them -- our soldiers in armored vehicles and airborne gunships.  As long as they are drawn to the fighting in Iraq they aren't bringing down our civilian airplanes, commercial buildings, or blowing up our buses.  Long term we need to destroy the culture that breeds these type of intolerant people.  We have been doing that, but unintentionally, which is part of the reason they hate us so.  Their young people see the sex, recreational drugs (including alcohol), and general decadent lifestyle (gambling, women with exposed skin, etc) and fail to have an interest in the Spartan religious life.  We have been destroying their culture through subversion of their youth with our culture for decades.  As our communication and culture propagates around the globe they see the “end of the line” for their way of life and their religion.

So... it appears to Ry and I they have a sensitive spot they are responding to with violent action.  That must mean they want us to stop.  I do not believe they will ever willingly stop their war on our culture.  We have been in a culture war with them for 1500 years or so.  It's not going to stop in the next five or ten years.  Our only course of action that will guarantee this war will stop is to finish the job.  Their culture must be destroyed.  Don't we have sufficient evidence that they want nothing less than our total destruction?  If you don't think that is true then take a look at Bin Laden's letter again.  So... given that we must destroy their culture then we should expend more effort in accomplishing this task.  The question is how do we do this?  One of Ry's suggestions was dropping porn magazine out of airplanes over Muslim population centers.  How about air dropping samples of wine, beer, cards (gambling), and dice?  Or even just putting free internet access in their cities?  They apparently have a “soft spot” in the minds of their youth.  We should take advantage of it.  Long term it is our only acceptable solution.  The visible alternatives are not acceptable.

Last week I missed a couple days of work because I was really dizzy.  No fever or anything, the world just seemed to be rotating in weird directions and angles.  I went to the doctor on Saturday who did a few tests and said it probably was an inner ear problem rather than some of the more serious things that were possible like a brain injury.  It comes and goes, sometimes I feel fine and other times I feel it's nearly time to sit or lay down before I fall down.  Aerobics went fairly well last night.  My endurance seemed okay.  Balance wasn't great but good enough to not be particularily embarrassing.

Probably the most interesting aspect to this is that Gina (at work) stopped me in the hallway a this morning and asked some questions about where I drank my water here at work.  It turns out several other people here have been having problems with dizziness in the last month or so.  They are trying to figure out a common cause.  Nothing yet.