At the GSA annual meeting in Portland

I arrived in Portland late Sunday night and headed out to the conference monday morning. Now it's Tuesday evening and I am done for the day. Tomorrow will be the last day of conference activity for me, unless I can get onto a field trip. I am still hoping for an opening, but I haven't heard back from anyone on that yet. Monday was interesting. Started out with a morning session on Geoscience in Community Colleges which could turn out to be very helpful. When I cam in the talk was on Project Teach, which is a interdisciplinary (IDS) multi-"quarter" (that particular school operates with four quarters a year instead of two semesters) program using inquiry teaching with Education Program students. The next talk was on a program that was a two year collaboration with various K-12 institutions. On that campus that had worked out Transfer Agreement Guarantees (TAGs) with other colleges in their state, and their program is actually a STEM initiative. Seems like STEM initiatives are operating in practically every school. Per the lecturer, they want to "Prime the Pump" of a cycle where the University System gets inputs of students from the High School System, and outputs Science Instructors to the High School System. The people there had actually managed to develop an "Earth Systems" course for high school students that, while not specifically required in their state, is one from a list of options that meet graduation requirements. Thats state wide. Thats pretty darned impressive. They also were able to coordinate with their high schools because their state apparently has "county science coordinators', I don't believe NY has anything like that. It would've made the logistics of running out summer grant much easier.

Some more notes on talks, with quick paraphrases of titles that were written as the talk was starting, so they might not even be recognizable in some cases. One thing I noticed that happens here is that the session director announces the title of the talk as an intro, which I don't recall happening too often in other conferences, but maybe my memory is just faulty.

• Promoting Success w/o a Geoscience Program - just had 3 science students last year. "[We're] not preparing future geoscientists". She also noted that ~98% of community colleges do not have a geoscience program. A later speaker in session remarked that that doesn't sound right and that their college doesn't have a geoscience degree, but that they still consider themselves to have a program. I think that the original speaker is quite correct to say that not having a degree, and at a community college we're "only" talking about an associate's degree, means that you don't have a program. We have Earth and Planetary Sciences courses, and we even have an Earth and Planetary Science coordinator, but we can't say that we have a program.
• Comparison of two effective com. coll. science programs - comparing Arizon and Minnesota, with a speaker for each splitting the talk. What define's strength? Function of the Served Community / College Mission / Place in statewide higher education / number and interests of geoscience faculty / student enrollment and interest. I think that that was well worth enumerating, if you think of 'strong' programs, they're going to be hitting the mark on all of those, with the served community condition perhaps being met after meeting the other conditions, or springing up naturally out of having met those other conditions. So how to get students interested? Well they offer a "low stakes" field course. By that they mean that its only worth two credits. Which seems odd at first, why do all that work for only two credits, BUT the advantage is that it then doesn't carry as much weight in GPA calculation, it won't 'ruin' your GPA if you mess it up. Which, if the students realize that, is a pretty clever recruitment tool I think. They directed their program at Title 1 schools (apparently those that receive funds, or some level of funds or some such) for lunch programs, w/ Educational outreach programs using college student teachers as their teachers.
• Field Trips as a tool for recruitment/retainment - Exploration can attract people. Post trip, they students meet and are given strips of paper with observations and interpretations, and told to put them in order, based on what they saw during their exploration. Students also wirte a paper. They tried student (peer) review w/blackboard, but had troubles getting people to take that part seriously. I seem to recall at anoth meeting, at the Ocean Science Diversity Workshop in Seattle infact, that one of the speakers there was doing, something, I forget what right now, to make sure that people participated. I think that their own grade was modified in part by how much a paper that they had reviewed had been improved (so grade once by a prof, send for review, grade again, and modify the reviewers grade by some proportion, and they better hope it doesn't go down!). They've been running one trip a semester, but are now considering/starting to do two, three, etc. This was in northern Virginia.
• Field Experience - This is in California. At this com. coll. they offer lots of field courses, w/ some as a capstone type. Their intro courses have individual optional field courses associated with them, so you can take oceanography and also sign up for Oceanography field Trips, or physical geology, and physical geology field trips, etc. These were all 4 day trips, but that might be a one day trip, and then later a 3 day overnight trip, or 4 sep trips, etc. They're also having 2-3 hour field trips incorporated into the mainline course. They're doing sediment sampling and sorting analyses, mapping structures, using compasses, etc. The capstone courses are in the intersession and are 2-3 week courses. I recall the speaker saying that when she hears from profs. who receive their students after they transfer, that they are super duper prepared for their intro field courses. She was happy about that. But I am thinking, jesus, these kids are doing a heckuva lot of field work, for an associate level degree, and THEN they still have to take introductory field courses?
• Watershed Monitoring Program - Shoreline City, WA. Site has lots of erosion upstream with a wide depositional zone/floodplain downstream. Glacial till and sand with some clay beds. They monitor deposition/flooding events, which is easy for them because its on their campus, or super close or whatever and they can just stroll out to it. Students in 100, 200 level courses (2 courses) do the monitoring, to give the infor to the watershed authorities eventually and also for the college's own need to monitor their own impact on the watershed. They're going to start using GPS tech to measure out the main channel thalweg (had to think for a minute what that was, for some reason I was thinking of geode(c)t(ic)) position to measure change over time.
• Pedagogical Shift in Field Geology Courses - normally I hate it when people make their titles sound crazy impressive when they're not. But here they didn't mean that they've discovered some tremendous, Kuhn like paradigm shift in the way every teaches, but rather that they had shifted their own pedagogy after a while. They started with Cram and Jam type field courses, with students setting camp, then starting with lectures in camp, covering the basics of earth science, even bringing, ironically, rock sample kits to the camp, and then going out to the field. But this made people feel overwhelmed. The speaker related that it was to the point that one student called her husband and told him to book a flight home for her now cause she was gonna loose it. But the speaker said that by the end she ended up loving the course. Actually what he said at first but then corrected himself on was that by the end of the day she loved the course. I was thinking, if that were true, they this person'd be nuts to flip flop between such extremes. So their shift was to just let the students go out directly into the field on the first day, to explore on their own, just telling them to be observant. And they'd do this for like an hour or a few and come back and then they'd start going over what they saw, and gradually build up to c.f. the level you'd want in that introductory talk. They felt that this worked very well. These are students with, often, zero experience, and apparently it works better this way. They repeat the process at subsequent stops, with the students writting up their observations. Observe and Report. Then in the evenings, thats when they break out the kits and the lectures. The crazy thing is, these guys are running field trips outta WA, but to Montana, Arizona, Hawaii and the Galapagos. And again, thats with what, 1st, 2nd year students with no geo background.
• Earthquake Preparation and Preparedeness - Also a Shoreline Com. Coll. This is a Service Learning (SL) program; ties classroom to serving the community. They got an Americorps Vista volunteer Coordinator, this person determines the needs and interests of the community and coordinates with the program instructors. They also have a Fellowship Program for faculty to develop SL courses. They may even makde SL a graduation requirement. Speaker notes 2 models (1) a 15-hour commitment on thet part of students where they go out and find non-profits to work with. (2) project-model; centered around specific project outcome for the community group (ie watershed monitoring, hazards education, etc). The project they did was Earthquake preparedness to educate local community about hazards and increase preparedness, in groups of 3-4. So the students had to work within that framework. This is done in a quarter (so 6 weeks I think). Example activities, powerpoint presentation, posters, it depends on the needs of the non-profit org. At a YMCA afterschool program, they asked that it not be a lecture for the kids, so the students made a trivia game on hazard preparedness. Another did emergency plan revisions for retirement homes, child care centers, including their com. coll. campus' child care center. This fufils the college mission 'to serve' the community. So the project is of course just a part of the class,so the students are being taught, and they're basically being tested on their learning of the material by seeing how they can teach it or communicate it to the community.
• Earth Science or Geo-Science - the last talk was a general discussion on which it best, with earth science covering astro, geo, ocean, meteo. The speaker I think nwas in a position to be able to give such a general talk, imho, I beleive, because he had been brought on by a college to revamp their geoscience program, so he's speaking from a position of 'authority' in a sense.

And that was Monday morning. Got a quick breakfast at the starbucks in the convention center (of course there's one in the convention center). Pumpkin latte was better than I thought'd've been.

Getting Ready For GEOPORT

Getting ready today for the Geological Society of America (GSA) annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. My flight leaves tonight; I'll show up late tonight and start hitting up the presentations Monday morning. I had hoped to attend a post meeting field trip, exploring the Terroir of the Columbia gorge, however that trip is full. I emailed the trip leader, a professor at Portland University, in the hopes that there is a wait list for openings, so I will have to see how that goes. Pretty busty weekend actually, since I just got back from a trip to the Poconos. It was a friend's birthday, so we went up Friday to stay the weekend. My attendance at this meeting is being sponsored through I small grant I obtained through our Union Professional Development fund.

Moon landing and 9/11?

I was thinking earlier, this being around the time of the 40th anniversary of landing on the moon and all; the previous generation did some pretty impressive things. And they're all the more impressive when you consider how little we're able to do. They defeated the nazis, won the pacific, invented nukes, and strutted around the moon. We can't even re-build the Twin Towers after 9/11.
Not only did they defeat the nazis, but they utterly smashed them. To the point that today, there's no more nazis. There are only neo-nazis, and none of their organizations, as far as I know, can claim to be founded, run, or even financially supported by an actual nazis. The previous generation built up out of relatively little an army that was able to invade, not just a part of some neighboring country, which is usually the case with armies, but actually invade an entire continent. Former militiaries cracked fortresses, these folks cracked Fortress Europe. They created air commands that converted citadels to crumbling cinder. Before they finished they rescued not just one 'people', but many peoples from genocide. So thoroughly they threw themselves against the todfeind that their leader commited suicide! After all that they rounded up all their sub-leaders, put them on trial, and strung them up, practically creating an international basis for law and order in the process. And we can't even rebuild the buildings destroyed on 9/11.
This previous generation took back Asia and the Pacific, a continent and an ocean, the largest continent and tallest continent and widest and deepest ocean, from the imperial Japanese. They didn't even take it for themselves. Almost all of the land they took from the empire didn't come under American control. China isn't today a US territory, not even a single city in all of China is, whereas the British only recently gave up Hong Kong, from a long contract. Even when they took over Japan itself, a country that pushed back the Mongols, who'd themselves ruled Asia, and who's cousins the Huns practically disassembled Europe; they didn't make it their own. And us, we haven't even re-built the towers after 9/11.
The fact that they, at the same time, built nuclear weapons and nuclear power is practically poetic or mythic.The gnostics talk about the demi-urge the created the world and the devil that wants to destroy it. The Iranians talked about the good god and his equal and opposite the malevolent god. It wasn't that long ago that we were made something that could power the world, or a power that could destroy it. And now, we won't even re-build anything on old World Trade Center.
Around forty years ago Americans were walking on the Moon, collecting rock samples, setting up experiments, communicating results back to people on Earth. And not just once, but several times. We haven't gone as far or gone further since. We can't even re-build the towers from 9/11 and our best plans are skeletal looking half buildings with a glassy cheat to get to the same height. I mean, what says it more, it wasn't that long ago that we built two towers on that location of terrible height, and today we can't even build one that legitimately has the same height. When they went up, they were the tallest buildings in the world. And they're both planned, mind you, only planned, only talked about, being someday, 'hopefully someone will eventually do it', to be replaced by a smaller building.
I don't know if it shows that the acheivements in the past were really just tremendous, more impressive than we tend to realize, or that its just really difficult to actually build something, and that's why we're having trouble with the replacement.

Corporal Pollution

As I was walking past a classroom today, I overheard someone saying 'you know you have to have cholesterol....'. I suspect that they were trying to emphasize that things like cholesterol serve a purpose in the body, but that they can also cause problems. So you can't simply eliminate them from your diet and body and function. There are a lot of chemicals that are naturally found in the body that serve vital functions, but that can also cause disease. This made me think that people perhaps tend to think of these sorts of materials, not as a part of our biological systems, but more like [i]pollution[/i]. Pollution, like say in a toxic compound emited from a factory into the environment. Which would be the wrong way to think of these biological materials, they need to be there in the first place. You can perhaps fix most environmental problems by reducing or eliminating a pollutant, but you can't necessarily cure disease, fix your own internal biological environment, by doing the same.
And I think that the idea of pollution here certainly has precedent in the context of the body. Here pollution could be thought of in the hindu and jewish sense of caste and ritual pollution of the body. Maybe when most people think of modern issues, like high cholesterol, we aren't [i]really[/i] thinking of it in the rational/scientific/medical sense, but rather in that old ritual pollution sense.

Spring 09 Oceanography Classe ended

The student average was around a C, but of course that isn't too informative since the grades were curved (infact its really just a redundant statement). We had less lab work than previous times running the class, but that was to spend more time in class going over the course topics. Most students felt that they would've liked more labs. But, I tend to find that whatever work they are given they don't like and would rather do something else. I do think that next time I will include more about organisms in the ocean throughout the course, and maybe start on the final chapter or two (which focus on life in the ocean) rather than end with them. I definitely need to do more things throughout the course to capture and recapture their attention. This might mean doing pencil and paper lab /during/ the lecture. I also included a short talk on the recent blue whale sighting off of Long Island in this class, and they seemed really interested in that. Earlier we had viewed a video of an undersea volcanic eruption that was happening that week, and that also seemed to capture their interest. I will have to make sure to include more 'current events' type of things throughout the course next time (assuming I am selected to teach it in the fall)

Missing Link??

http://tinyurl.com/pknw22

"Missing link found? Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate

Feast your eyes on what a group of scientists call the Holy Grail of human evolution.
[...] it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws.
Scientists say the cat-sized animal's hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright - a breakthrough that could finally confirm Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
"This specimen is like finding the Lost Ark for archeologists," lead scientist Jorn Hurum said at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.
"It is the scientific equivalent of the Holy Grail. This fossil will probably be the one that will be pictured in all textbooks for the next 100 years."

The find seems quite interesting. I am shocked at all the hyperbole. This is something that was found outside of Frankfurt, a Laurasian species. Gorilla, Chimps, and Humans are Gondwanan species. This right away should be ringing alarm bells. At first I thought it was just the reporter who was exaggerating about what this fossil means. It certainly doesn't 'finally confirm' Darwin's Theory of Evolution; no theories are ever confirmed, they can be refuted, or as-yet-un-refuted', not confirmed or proven. And this fossil in particular isn't adding anything especially special. I don't want to say that the fossil is unimportant or un-special, especially since, obviously, I don't have the expertise to examine it, but I'd think c.f. archaeopteryx is a better 'transitional' form, I mean, if a feathered reptile doesn't convince someone that evolution is on to something, then this lemur certainly won't.

The good kind of computer freeze

Previously, after having issues with my computer being buggy, slow, or even outright hijacked and infected, I've had to run numerous programs to try to de-infect it, like anti-virus, anti-spybots, anti-hijack, anti-fishing, etc programs. And when you're running AVG, Search and Destroy, Windows Defender, Trojan Hunter and a bunch of other junk, that in itself must be responsible for some of the system slow down. Plus, I could never tell if they were really working. For the most part, they found nothing. And I'd also run HijackThis, which creates logs of system information that you have to interpret, sort through, prepare, and then if you're still stuck upload to a forum, where other people would tell you what to do to clean up the computer before they'd even look at your log, and then after that you'd get advice on what to 'fix' (which is at least a simple final thing to do) from the log.
So after getting sick of that, after spending a decent chunk of my time on the computer 'protecting' it, I switched to the Firefox browser, figuring that most of the problems where from web codes and the like. And then when Google Chrome came out, I figure, well, this is so new and represents such a small percentage of the browser population, its probably not much of a target and might be safer too. But still, after a long while, I think that bugs and malware and the like have just accumulated, and thats why I reinstalled my Operating System recently.
Our college campus loans out laptops to faculty for the semester. In order to protect the laptops, they flash out their memory each time they are shut down, so that when you turn it on, anything you did to it is gone, any files you saved, and preferences you changed, are all gone, its in its original state. This is done by 'freezing' the computer. I thought at first that that was just ridiculous, having to save everything to a thumb drive and not being able to set any preferences. But recently I realized, maybe that is what I need. If my computer just snaps back to its original state each time I shut it off, then I don't have to worry so much about viruses, malware, etc. So thats what I've done, I've frozen my computer, set it so that anything I need to keep is saved somewhere else, and thats it. I still have antivirus, firewall, etc. I am just trying to see if this is a workable solution, I think that it will be.

OS reinstall on my PC

I had to reinstall my OS (Windows XP) over the past few days. I have a new wired external hard drive, but I couldn't get it to connect through my router (Linksys WRT150N), it couldn't even be found. So I tried resetting my router with its reset button. Unfortunately I couldn't then get Windows to find it. Linksys makes a program called "LELA", but it couldn't find it (and thus couldn't set it up) either. I tried setting it up through its webpage, but couldn't really remember how I did it the first time. So I wasn't sure if there was just a lot of garbage on my computer screwing it up or what. I tried doing a Windows system restore. Now I know that the last time I had a similar problem, after fixing everything I made a Restore "Save Point". That was probably in 2006. But when I go to do the restore, all I can choose from is the past week or so. I couldn't go back to earlier points. So thats useless. I did the restore anyway, in case the problem was younger than that. But now Google Chrome wasn't working. I'd clicks its icon, it'd flash on for a split second and then disappear. Plus, when I tried running the command, 'ipconfig' from the windows "run" program, it'd do the same thing, whereas before I had been able to get that information (to configure the router). Plus my computer had been taking forever to start up for a while, yada yada yada, so I decided to reinstall windows. I did that with a CD I got when I first purchased the computer. When I bought the computer, the standard, default option was to not receive an OS cd. Which is nuts. I'm really glad that I noticed this and specifically requested the OS on cd; it wasn't even extra, but it has ended up being worth quite a bit of money. After doing this and still having problems getting the router to work, with both LELA and Windows network setup wizard failing to find the router, I finally got it to work. I remembered something pretty basic, I had to 'clone' my MAC address. Apparently my ISP, Cablevision, is one of many that does something with their system where your computer MAC address is their reference point, or their modem MAC address is the reference in their system, or some such setup where you've got to clone your networking card's MAC address, or "Physical Address" in order to get the router working. I had to get that information through the ipconfig/all command. Which, it turns out, isn't run directly from the 'run' window. First you have to open up a Command line, by typing 'cmd' into the 'run' program, which I had completely forgotten.
Eventually I was able to get things working, but only after being lucky enough to unplug and then replug the router once right in the middle of everything, which appparently did the magic trick.
Actually, after all that, I changed the router password, but must've screwed up typing it it because then I couldn't log into the router anymore, and I had to reset it again! Fortunately everything worked out quickly that time.
So now I have my computer hooked up to the wireless router. An external hard drive wired separately to the router, and an older external hard drive that is connected to my computer. It turns out too that I could actually (and I did this and it worked from my end at least) plug in my older external hard drive to the new external hard drive's usb port, and thus have two shared hard drives that I can access online from any computer. Whether I actually need any or will use any of this crap remains to be seen.

Hairy Vetch

A while ago I bought 10lbs of Hairy Vetch seed, which is a type of legume, a bean plant. 10 lbs would be a little more than needed for my yard. The vetch, being a bean, can take nitrogen out of the soil, and turn it into a usable chemical form, thus over time adding nitrogen as a nutrient into the soil. That is why I purchased the vetch, I am hoping that it will grow over the yard, both on the lawn and in the gardening plots, and the bare batches, and supply nitrogen to the yard for the other plants to feed off of. This way I won't have to buy fertilizer every season. I don't want to buy fertilizer each season for three reasons. First, it is a cost (of course, if I end up re-seeding the vetch then thats a cost also). Second, a lot of the fertilizer added to lawns and gardens just gets washed away into the groundwater, and can screw with the nutrient balance of the island. Thirdly, I think that by adding fertilizer all the time, what you end up doing is promoting top grown of the lawn and plants, but not root growth; perhaps to the detriment of root growth. The yard around my house isn't as well drained as it should be, and I think that by doing this I will have deeper roots and better drainage. Finally fourthly, there's something attractive about managing the yard this way.
All of that sounds well enough, but, there is some chance, I think, that the vetch will grow out of control. Vetch is an annual, meaning it grows, flowers, and dies each year. So if it gets to be out of control, I will have to mow the lawn pretty close to the ground as the first flowers are appearing, to prevent seeds from forming and fertilizing.
Mowing will be important anyway. If I don't want to destroy the vetch, I'll have to mow before the flowers appear, and hold off when they are present, and then mow once the seeds have dropped, I believe. I'm planning to mow the vetch and grass into mulch and leave it in place. If there is a lot of it, too much to leave in place, then I will bag it and probably compost it. There is a large section of the yard that doesn't have good soil at all, its really just old exposed tree roots, gravel, and dandelions. So even if the vetch does start getting out of control, I think that I can make some good dirt for that area. It would be too much to buy dirt for it, and we might just extend out our deck to cover it all anyway.


Useful online Hairy Vetch Referances:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/AFCM/vetch.html
http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cgi-bin/CCrop.exe/show_crop_21
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20090206/nf1

I've also been finding the Cornell Cooperative Extension very informative for yard duties.
http://www.cce.cornell.edu/
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/hort/faculty/bjorkman/covercrops/pdfs/hairyvetch.pdf

Iceland

Iceland Meltdown
I've been hearing in the news a bit about this breakdown of the Icelandic economy but haven't had any real kind of grip on it. This article seems like it is a good summary.
Apparently, the big story here is basically a small story. The Icelanders had for generations made good livings with fishing and farming. With globalization and free trade credit became widely available to the trustworthy and sturdy Icelanders. They dove headlong into a buying spree, obtained companies throughout the world and made excessive use of their credit. Now its come time to pay the piper, and their banks have been annihilated save one. Fire and gravel all around, the cycle can start anew eh?
The closing line sums it up in a nice way, though I have to wonder about the 'icelandics' term.

“The Icelandics had better get their fishing rods out. They’ve got a lot of cod to catch to make up for what we’ve lost”

Environmental Commitment?

I just found out how committed to the environment I am. Its around 10 feet.
I got out of my car, and I had two styrofoam coffee cups, one was from the day before and it had today's sitting inside of it. It slid off and hit the ground. Today is pretty windy. It sat there for a second as I was thinking, 'crap, this is going to be a hassle'. It starts bouncing away, I chase after it a bit and then just let it go after about ten feet.
So that's how 'committed' to the environment I am. Actually, I suppose if I really cared, I wouldn't be using a styrofoam cup in the first place.

In fact, if I consider this a little more, it wasn't that 10 feet was too far. If the thing had been blown further and just sat there, I like to at least think I'd've gotten it. But it was in part that I don't think I was going to catch the thing, and also because I looked pretty ridiculous, hunched over trying to grab it, trying to step on it, just waiting to slip on the ice. So I guess I will 'help' the environment a little bit, as long as its not pointless and I don't look stupid.
Guess that mean's I won't get a SmartCar anytime soon too.

To Shit or Defecate?

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/l.html

"Words of Germanic origin tend to be shorter, more direct, more blunt, while Latinate words tend to be polysyllabic, and are often associated with higher and scientific diction. If you want a memorable example, compare the connotations of shit (from the Germanic scitan) with those of defecate (from the Latin defaecare)."

and

"you'll sound more blunt, more straightforward, even more forthright, if you draw your words from Germanic roots. An extensively Latinate vocabulary, on the contrary, suggests a more elevated level of diction. Choose your words carefully, then, with constant attention to your audience and the effects you want to have on"

Very much reminds me of shakespeare using simple couplets when he was trying to appeal to a general audience, and then a fancier rhyme scheme when not.


Also somewhat related is this issue of "U and non-U English"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Looking at the word lists, it almost looks to me like the non-Upper class words are attempting to seem fancy.

Bombay attacks fallout

Fallout may end up being a poor choice of words here. Nevertheless, I found some interesting bits in this article:
Bombay attack Dossier
The response from the Pakistani Information Minister really just says it all;
"it is our fond resolve to insure that non-state actors to do not use Pakistan's soil to launch terrorist attack any where in the world"
This is the sort of statement that really reminds us that the position of information minister in most countries used to be the Ministry of Propaganda.
Another curious, though sensible side note is that the information when presented to diplomats was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. If nothing else that is something I should include in future discussion with students about the wide range of places that MS PP can be used in.
Apparently the attackers were being directed as the operation proceeded, even by simple means of phone calls to the hotels being attacked. And the fact that a handler told the people holding the jews hostage to 'conclude' the operation, which resulted in the jews being executed, strongly says to me anyway that that aspect was part of the original plan, and not a target of opportunity. I don't know how much debate there is over that point anyway, especially when a handler seemed to hope that the execution of the hostages would "spoil" relations between India and Israel. Why they think Israel will be angry with India over this, who knows.
Something that is often brought up with regards to these attacks is that, its the plan of the attackers to provoke a strong response, and that be counter-attacking you are 'playing into their hands' or giving them what they want. But if they actually thought that the attack would sour relations between india and isreal, when its plainly obvious to the rest of the non-insane world that pakistan has a hand in this, then maybe that whole line of thought is just bogus anyway. I suspect that these guys don't think 'our deaths will lead to an unpopular counter-attack, and through that we will get global sympathy and win'. Rather, they probably think 'this attack will show those bastards'. Its bad to underestimate an enemy, but perhaps that line of thinking is a case of over-estimation gone awry. The article ends with the ominous note that there were actually 13 people selected as attackers, this 13 met up with another 3, and then 6 went into Kashmir. Are we supposed to believe that those 6 have done nothing, are doing nothing, and will do nothing? Everyone was shocked over the Bombay attacks, even though Bombay was bombed recently also, and even though there is constant fighting in Kashmir. I guess that the Kashmir fighting is an 'acceptable' level of international terrorism. My father-in-law also noted that in Kerala a muslim terror camp had been uncovered, and, perhaps not surprisingly, the terrorists were NOT native to Kerala. Looks like the world has found kasmiri-based terrorism fine and dandy, and so now terror groups are simply expanding well into India. AND this is at a time when Hindu chauvanism is rampant and Bangladeshi terror groups are on the move.

More news Bits

Hitchen's Article on the Timing of the Gazan War
Bad Timing
Another interesting article from Mr. Hitchens. This one considers the need of Kadima to be hawkish in order to defeat Likud and Nettanyahu in upcomming elections. Hitchen's also considers palestinian elections, and that Hamas needed to do something to prevent any weakening of their own position to Fatah. Hitchen's also laments the fact that this may all have also been timed with the US elections, with Israel recognizing that now is the best time to do anything, when there is a lame duck president. Many people had speculated that Israel would do 'something' in this time, though I'd've thought that if anything it'd be a strike on Iran.

That blog posting pointed me over to this NYT op-ed piece:
Why Israel Feels Threatened
I think that the most interesting thing from this article is the idea that Israel in the past was successful, it could defeat arab armies that were trying to invade it. And for all the fighting, it did seem to result in treaties with Egypt and Jordan. But today, it hasn't find a way to successfully deal with guerilla and irregular groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. I do also notice that the author states that the war started with Hamas 'ending' the ceasefire, and then Israel attacking. This leaves out the fact that Hamas ended the ceasefire by attacking Israel with rockets and killing schoolchildren. I don't know if it was an omission with a good purpose, but I doubt it was 'sloppy reporting' like on the news, where the talking heads are just reading a prompter anyway.

Another interesting article, from Abu Aardvark
Alhurra
The thing that caught my interest about this article, besides being written by the well informed and intelligent Abu Aardvark, is that its about Alhurra, which, after its inception, I really hadn't heard much about at all. Apparently the station has become expensive and irrelevant.

News Bits

Intersting article I found through Abu Muqawama (and then through a blogger that posted it there)Fisk's Article
This presents a more interesting report on the Gazan War than other news stories, thats for certain. A particular stand-out is that 80% of the families in Gaza are refugees from the creation of Israel, though I have no idea what data substantiates that. I somehow suspect that neither Hamas nor the old PLO kept good records of movements. Heck, neither org ever bothered to build bomb shelters in Gaza apparently either. The tone of the article is partisan, but sometimes that it what makes for the best reporting, rather than trying to cover it up one way or the other. The bit about how the media tells the story of two grandparents killed in the bombing, but failing to mention that they had been refugees from the very land that now killed them, is interesting.
Though I have to say that a more telling aspect of that story is that IF those grandparents had just stayed in their homes when Israel was created, then no only would they be alive today, but they'd've lived a far better and freer life. Unless of course they died in a Hamas attack.


Looks like the Sri Lankan army has captured Killinochchi over the weekend. I missed that with this Gazan War going on:
Rebel Capital Captured
Fascinating article. Looks like they've split the rebels in two, with some retreating to the northern most parts of the island, and others cut off to the south east. Apparently they emptied Killinochchi of its residents. Seems to be some dispute as to whether they were taken by the rebels or sided with the rebels. It seems just as likely that people fled the town during the bombing and assault, irrespective of who's side they were on. BBC also reports there that one 14 year old girl was forced into fighting by the Tigers too. May be more when if this is all mopped up. Apparently the rebels are holding out around a large lagoon in the north and one city along the eastern coast.


Also another article on the situation in Gaza:
Gazan War
Reports continue to state that around 500 palestinians have been killed, with around a quarter of that being civilians. The death toll from this war rose very rapidly during the aerial bombardment phase, and seems to have dropped off just as dramatically once the ground invasion went into operation, which I suppose is what should be expected. This seems to mean that around 125 civilians have been killed. Which is surprisingly lower than the ~172 civilians killed in the Bombay attack, (which did not inspire a series of worldwide street protests and which followed another attack on Bombday in 2006 that resulted in ~184 deaths).
Clearly, it would be best if no civilians died during this Gazan War, but just as clearly, thats not possible. Its strange too because the newscasters often focus on the numbers of dead, as if the numbers really mean anything. Whats also rather frustrating is that the newscasters on CNN and the like set up the timeline for this event as starting with the Isreali air bombardments. While its perhaps not surprising that Hamas would be firing rockets at Israel and we can maybe take that for granted, surely its noteworthy that this all started right after a ceasefire reached its expiration date and then Hamas started firing rockets again. I'm not sayings bias, just sloppy. Levinson, the author of the above article, I should say, doesn't seem to be biased or sloppy. Levison also notes that after the bombardment, Hamas was ready to negotiate unconditionally with Fatah. One has to wonder if the Yehudis had considered that as part of this also.


Another story of interest from Asia.
Indian Nun Rape
I recall hearing about this event while the anti-christian riots were going on. Maybe there is a translation issue, but the article's opening sentences seem rather biased, at least in saying that she is 'finally' identifying her rapists. Seems like the bigger story is that she was able to identify them out of a suspect 'parade' of 90 people. Those riots were a real shame on India, you'd think that the report would be a little more demure. I get the impression from it that a lot of people don't think or don't care if she was raped.
And meanwhile, this is also being reported.
Two arrested for possession of beef
This just highlights the paradox, a country where a nun is raped and churches openly attacked is also so high minded and specific that cow meat is illegal? Not to say that the US is perfect.