I was on vacation.
On the way back, sitting in the pax terminal at BIAP, I saw a sergeant with a big gray teddy bear strapped to her backpack. A Christmas present I guess. With that and her M4 she was armed for every contingency. Attended by the spirits of Teddy Roosevelt and Samuel Colt.
Happy New Year.
Michael Yon, quoted at Instapundit:
The war is over and we won… There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and [none] of the guys I’m with [have] fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas): Iraq is Open For Business:
Maybe Baghdad is never going to be Paris in the spring, but it is evident that we are winning the peace to such a degree that I can honestly say no matter how you define victory, we have won the war. We have routed al-Qaeda and the terrorists.
Life in Iraq is returning to normal, and free enterprise is growing. Street markets bustle with shoppers, cars crowd the roads, and construction on several projects is moving full-steam ahead. [Fellow Representative] Mr. [Kenny] Marchant and I toured a power plant that used to be a target for terrorists. Now it reliably produces electricity for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
To us in America, the reflections of armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…
I’m back after a long, long hiatus. A couple of months ago I got a new job under a different chain of command. Now I have both (1) my feet under me and (2) a new blogging policy. I have a backlog of post ideas, but for now, let me give two links that may be of interest to our readers.
First, Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and blogger, stayed overnight on the USS John C. Stennis. He has an enormous post up with “over 130 photos” and lots of video for all you naval aviation fans. “Here is a teenager who is controlling the lives of pilots and $30 million airplanes. The only thing that’s more impressive than the hardware on the ship is the software–that is, the crew of young, talented, and dedicated people.”
Second, back in August, the technologist Jan Chipchase was in Afghanistan taking a ton of pictures. Jan works for Nokia. His job is to roam the world studying the crazy ways that people use cell phones. If you have been to Afghanistan or are going there for some reason, you might want to take a look through these posts. They give an interesting and intimate look at how ordinary Afghanis work and live. For example, check out the cell phone buffing service and this wildly decorated truck. If I remember right, he was in Kabul back in August, but you can just click his Afghanistan tag.
These are not in the typical milblog rotation, so I hope they are new and interesting to some of our readers. Thanks!
Today (April 17) I left my trailer expecting the usual roasting sun and temps – we had a steady climb into the 90s last week. Instead, I found this:
The temperature must have fallen 20 or 25 degrees overnight. It is quite pleasant.
The dust has an odor that’s not completely an odor: it’s like walking into a woodworking shop where someone is using a very fine grit power sander. In the late afternoon, the air takes on a golden color that deepens until the sun sets. You have to see it to believe it. At night, the dust in the lights oddly reminds me of a hard snowstorm on a very cold night, with fine flakes.
This is almost a Market in Everything: Dreamcrowd, a startup for sharing and interpreting your dreams (via TechCrunch). A dream recently featured on its homepage begins:
I drove my car to the 7-11 hopped on a bike and started to ride but somehow I got trapped under a trash truck and felt pressure and screamed. I was able to get up and start riding the bike home. I then started to go up a hill and got really tired so I hopped off the bike and walked it up…
The original is all in CAPS.
Reminds me of the dreams in Roald Dahl’s The BFG. The girls’ dreams are lovely but the boys’ dreams are about things like flying, growing a long mustache, or taking a call from the President – that is, being the center of attention or humiliating your father.
P.S. With apologies to Sigmund Freud.
I’m sorry for light posting recently – work has taken precedence over blogging. In the meantime, here are a couple of entertaining links:
At Whedonesque:
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Via Instapundit, of course.
