Friday, October 15, 2004

The pen I bought on Tuesday arrived today. It writes well, and my hand doesn't cramp when I use it for a long period of time. 11:01:35 PM    comment () From the smith2004-discuss mailing list: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/#stroke Now comes an astonishing measure of plummeting U.S. troop morale. "Platoon defies orders in Iraq,"from the Clarion Ledger today: "A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a 'suicide mission' to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday. The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq -- north of Baghdad -- because their vehicles were considered 'deadlined' or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook. "Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday. The platoon could be charged with the willful disobeying of orders, punishable by dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and up to five years confinement, said military law expert Mark Stevens, an associate professor of justice studies at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C." While President Bush has taken to calling Iraq "hard work," some U.S. lawmakers are wondering out loud if it's become unnecessarily dangerous work -- because of the administration's failure to properly equip U.S. forces. "I have had similar complaints from military families about vehicles that weren't armor-plated, or bullet-proof vests that are outdated," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told the Clarion Ledger. "It concerns me because we made over $150 billion in funds available to equip our forces in Iraq. President Bush takes the position that the troops are well-armed, but if this situation is true, it calls into question how honest he has been with the country." The extreme behavior of the soldiers in the 343rd, a supply unit whose general mission is to deliver fuel and water, reflects a serious disconnect between the administration's mantra of progress in Iraq, and the perspective of at least some of the U.S. soldiers fighting for it. "'I got a call from an officer in another unit early [Thursday] morning who told me that my husband and his platoon had been arrested on a bogus charge because they refused to go on a suicide mission,' said Jackie Butler of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Michael Butler, a 24-year reservist. 'When my husband refuses to follow an order, it has to be something major.'" Check back with Salon later today -- our Washington correspondent Mary Jacoby will have more on the 343rd's mutiny. 10:27:05 PM    comment () A coincidence?. Heads up, with a grain of salt. Yesterday, as you know, I installed Google Desktop Search. It spent the whole day indexing my system, and when I retired for the day, it wasn't done, so I let it run all night. Arriving at work this morning, it was still running. Now, perhaps independently, my computer was almost totally unusable yesterday. It would disappear for a few moments, even the mouse wouldn't work. Listen to the audio blog post I did for an idea of what it was like. When it was just as bad this morning, I decided to exit Google Desktop Search. Now I'm sure it's a total coincidence, but all of a sudden my machine is quite zippy. All of a sudden it's as if it never lost its mind. Anyway, being the superstitious sort that I am, I'm going to leave it uninstalled as long as I'm in crunch mode on various projects. [Scripting News] When Sherlock first came out Apple made a big deal about its searching technology, which needed to index the hard drives. Unfortunately that indexing took an incredibly long time, rendered the computer basically useless while it happened, and invariably failed before the end anyway. I gave up on it pretty quickly, and I've noticed that it quietly disappeared eventually. This experience leads me to look with considerable suspicion on any new "wonder search" technology. When I read about Google Desktop Search it sounded quite a bit like Sherlock with an inferior UI, and I'm not at all surprised that it performs like it too. 1:37:45 PM    comment () The previous post was made using a combination of NetNewsWire and MarsEdit, as suggested by Brent Simmons in his comment on my earlier post. It worked well and was easy to set up. 1:12:28 PM    comment () "A crass, below-the-belt...: ""A crass, below-the-belt political strategy to attack the vice president's daughter." Is that what John Kerry did in Wednesday night's debate? That's what President Bush's campaign spokesperson calls it. People can interpret things differently. So perhaps you could say it..." (Via Talking Points Memo.) I would take this complaint more seriously if the vice president had not supported a Constitutional amendment which would make it illegal for his daughter to ever get married. 1:06:59 PM    comment ()

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