Fly Like an Eagle...

I'm not a birdwatcher. You're never going to find me camped out in the woods with a pair of high-powered binoculars, waiting for a glimpse of the Ruby-throated Whackamole or anything like that. But I am fascinated by Eagles. I suspect it's because I'm originally from the large expanse of the United States were the birds are nearly mythical - everyone's heard of them, but noone has ever actually seen one. So being out here near Seattle, where you can see one downtown, is fairly amazing. And the last time I saw one, a juvenile, I had my camera, and managed to get some pictures. And today, rather than pontificate about some random topic, I decided to share them with you. Enjoy.



(Okay... so they aren't the best pictures you've ever seen. I'm a project manager, not a nature photographer!)

Lovin' Life

On my way home from an afternoon with freinds, I stopped by a grocery store. Hanging out there on the walk in front of the store were two young adults, one boy, one girl, somewhere in the 16 to 19 age range (I guess). They were just hanging out in the evening dark, with the store's awning to keep the rain off. Both wore layers of mostly black clothing, and nice gym shoes, and were lounging on the patio furniture display near one of the doors. The boy was resting his feet on a pair of skateboards. And they were talking and laughing, and having the time of their lives, and clearly enjoying each other's company, despite the cold and wet of a Puget Sound winter rain. And I recalled a stidy that said that children laughed a hundred times more often than adults, or something like that, and for a moment, I mourned being so carefree.

And then I realized that I had no reason to. I live in the United States of America in the twenty-first century. And, by the standards of most of the world, I have nothing to worry about. I can get in my car tomorrow, and drive three thousand miles to the Atlantic Ocean, and no one's going to care. There won't be random goverment checkpoints asking to see my "papers" or demanding that I give them a detailed rationale for my travels. I can pay for food, lodging and gasoline along the way with a little plastic card, secure in the knowledge that the people running my bank aren't going to suddenly steal all of my money and flee the country. I can buy all sorts of random bric-a-brac along the way with cash - and know from one day to the next that about what its worth. If I get a ticket, it will be because I was blowing off traffic laws, not because some underpaid police officers have decided to supplement their income by holding me up for a bribe. I can take my digital camera, and take pictures of almost anything that I see along the way without worrying that I'll be arrested as a spy. If I chose to wear a bracelet, with my name and emergency contact information on it, it will be because I'm concerned that I might get into a traffic accident, not that I'm worried that I'll be killed by political violence.

When I get home, I know that I'll have a roof over my head, access to healthful food, clean drinking water, and if I get careless and fall down the stairs, competent medical care. I have a safe place to keep my things, and a comfortable place to sleep. I can get around my local area to access any number of goods and services that make my life easier.

"So what?" you ask.

"Precisely." I answer. None of this is a big deal. I'm not describing a life that only a "priveledged few" can aspire to. For most us us, it's par for the course. Sure, the United States has it's poor people, but consider the following - even many poor people in the United States have access to personal transportation, own their own homes, and/or possess minor luxury items. Contrast that with the fact that in many parts of the world, if you can get enough calories on a regular basis to be fat, no-one would consider you poor.

So why shouldn't I laugh more often? Sure there are uncertainties ahead of me, circumstances that might completely throw my life off course, and deprive me of everything I have. But I'll burn that bridge when I come to it, and if I'm smart, I'll realize that I'm still likely to be in a position that people the world over would evny. It might not be prudent to completely ignore the future, but there's no reason to not enjoy the present.

So if you see me out in front of the grocery store, kickin' it on the cheesy patio furniture, staying out the rain, and loving life out loud - I haven't lost my mind. I'm realizing when I'm well off. And don't be surprised if I ask you to join me.

No matter how you look at it...

The War in Iraq has become a sort of everpresent specter in American political life and conversation. Given the perception of a nearly ironclad correllation (bordering on causality) between one's party affiliation and political philosophy and whether or not one supports the continuation of the War, this is only to be expected. But when a bunch of random citizens talk politics, everything has an easy solution. I've never been convinced that the reality is ever so easily dealt with.

In 2002, the United States Congress granted to President George W. Bush the power to go to war. And to wage that war in pretty much any way he chose, for as long as he deemed it necessary, and without anything in the way of real Congressional oversight. A number of both Representatives and Senators, primarily (but not exclusively) in the opposition, who are now the war's staunchest critics voted in favor of that measure. (Not that they needed to. Their opposition wouldn't have withstood a party-line vote.) And despite the fact that a number of them claim that they were duped into voting for an open-ended war by an Administration that lied about intelligence (or, if they're feeling somewhat more charitable, was simply acting on honestly mistaken information), they were really only doing their jobs when they voted in favor. No, the job of Congress is NOT to rubber-stamp everything that the President, as the Chief Executive, wishes to do. While parlimentary bodies the world over may do just that from time to time, it's not actually in the job description. The Congress did its job back in 2002, because that's what the majority of the public wanted them to do at the time. You could say that the Administration lied to the public, or simply passed on flawed information, but that's pretty much beside the point at this stage of the game. The point is, in 2002, with the destruction of the World Trade Center towers by Al-Queda suicide operatives still fresh in everyone's mind, the public wasn't in the mood to quibble in the face of a potential threat. The Aministration held out Iraq as just such a threat, with data (accurate or not) to back that up, and that's pretty much all anyone needed to know.

Fast forward to 2007. The war has dragged on for years. Despite the fact that President Bush stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and proudly proclaimed "Mission Accomplished," it's hard, if not impossible, for the average Joe on the street to see how ANY progress has been made since the depostion of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In anything, a before-and-after comparison seems to indicate that the place has gone to Hell in a handbasket, and no-one can find the brakes on the handbasket. Despite the fact that we're constantly hearing about how Iraq is now stuffed to the rafters with bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists, bent on killing Americans, the 6 o'clock news shows a nation full of people who appear to be mainly Hell-bent on killing each other by the double-handsfull. They say that no official records are kept of the death toll in Iraq, so the numbers vary widely, but even the low estimates are insane, by American standards. Pre-war Baghdad was about the size of Chicago. Do you really think that Chicago would still be a functioning municipality with car and/or truck bombings being a weekly occurance, and the discovery of multiple bodies a daily one? As much as people bemoan the murder rate in large American cities today, I think the people of Baghdad would swap places with us in a heartbeat.

And so, unsurprisingly, as the public has started to decide that maybe this WASN'T such a good idea, after all, we're starting to hear calls to cut our losses and let the Iraqis sort it out for themselves. Some people say that the violence in Iraq isn't really our problem, others say that WE are the problem, and there are likely a number of people who say both.

And this is where the politics begins. Despite the fact that I'm not really a fan of this administration, and this particular demonstration of their ability to wage a long-term conflict doesn't spark any sort of confidence in me, I actually feel sorry for a number of senior administration officials, and Republican politicians. They've wandered in between a rock and very hard place, and it's obvious to anyone with half the sense that's been given to cabbage that there isn't a graceful way out. Leaving Iraq, and letting the Iraqis fend for themselves is, actually, a no-win situation. Either the Iraqis botch the job, and the whole place collapses, perhaps dragging down half the region with it, or the Iraqis, by themselves or with help from neighbors, get their act together. One scenario puts the United States in the position of having demolished a nation-state and then, after mis-managing the reconstruction, abandoning it to complete meltdown; and the other demonstrates that it was our very presence that either destabilized things or allowed the local authorities to avoid dealing with issues that, when they had no other choice, they were perfectly capable of handling.

So that leaves them with staying put, and throwing one strategy after another at the situation, hoping that sooner or later, one of them actually works out. In the meantime, the political opposition is holding them up as the very definition of (depending on who you ask) either incompetent or malicious, the public is rapidly both losing patience and turning on itself, and the many members of the international community are becoming cynical, hostile or paranoid about out long-term intentions. And at this stage of the game, there's so little faith that the Administration could actually come to manage the situation well, that a workable solution is going to be seen mostly as the Universe taking pity on the luckless.

Not a position that I want to find myself in.

Anna Nicole Smith, R.I.P.

Sooner or later, anyway...

Okay, I'm going to get back up on my soapbox and rant about the news media again. This time the subject is yesterday's CNN headline over the court battle over Anna Nicole Smith's body (I didn't bother to read the story, so I don't have a link to it). The judge placed the body in the custody of the guardian ad litem for Smith's infant daughter. But, according to CNN:

Smith's infant daughter gets custody of body

I mean, really. The idea that, no matter how you slice it, that there's no real difference between a person having custody of something, and their attorney having custody of that thing is absurd. While I must admit that I haven't read CNN often enough to be certain, I doubt that they would presented the story in such a way if it didn't make for such a sensational headline. Granted, from what I've heard of the judge in this case, ruling out the idea that he actually would have granted custody to a five-month old may have been premature, but as you can see right there in the blurb, the headline and the facts were in opposition.

Would it really have been that difficult to write a headline that was both brief AND accurate?

I don't get it

One of the downsides of growing up in middle America is that you never learn much about foreign cultures, and this leads to a certain amount of cultural confusion when you're attempting to understand international news stories. I was reading an Associated Press story on the CBS News website about the firing of Ahmed Abdul-Ghafour al-Samaraie by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after al-Samaraie called for an international investigation into sexual assault allegations leveled by a Sunni Arab woman against the Shiite-dominated police. The following paragraph caught my eye:

Rape is considered especially heinous in conservative Muslim countries, and victims rarely come forward since they risk not only public scorn but possible "honor killing" at the hands of male relations seeking to restore the family's honor.

This passage, as writen makes little sense to me, and I must admit that I don't have the cultural background to make heads or tails of it. But at first glance, if a woman who has been raped is in danger of being murdered by her own family members, to cleanse the stain on their honor, it seems that BEING raped is considered pretty heinous itself. Here, if a posse of relations got together form a family lynch mob, we'd expect them to go after the rapist. The practice of honor killings recalls the United States of some fifty-plus years ago (and in some instances/places, much more recently than that), when men were effectively assumed to have zero control over their sexual impulses, and rape was routinely blamed on women, unless clear issues of status were involved. (Raping a woman of a higher status stripped a man of being able to claim that she was a wanton who incited him to assualt her. Of course, in many cases he also couldn't claim that the sex was consentual - even if it was.) While many Americans may not like to talk about such things in relation to our ancestors, we routinely consider men who claim that a woman as "being provacative" or "asking for it" as backwards - barely fit to be considered any sort of higher life form, let alone human, and "civilized" is right out. A woman who makes such a claim is considered to be in dire need of therapy or deprogramming.

I'm sure that I'm not the only Westerner who finds this infathomable. I don't know if a clearer understanding of Middle-eastern culture would let this make more sense to me or not, but I suspect that it would be worthwhile knowledge in any event.