Paul's Down-Home Page

I just posted a review of Owen West’s Sharkman Six. The summary: well worth a read.

No, I’m not talking about Iraq. However, September 19th is “Talk Like a Pirate Day“. Since pirate talking has long been a Robichaux family staple, it’ll be hard to tell that the 19th is any different from a regular day. Now, where’d I put that eyepatch?

Over at Salon’s blogging department, Scott Rosenberg is acting surprised that the Pentagon is telling US soliders in Afghanistan to start shaving and dressing in proper uniform. The fact that Rosenberg finds this surprising surprises me. I would have thought that an American journalist would understand the process very well, and it will certainly be familiar to anyone who’s ever served in the US military.
It goes like this. First, military forces do or allow something unusual (like let their special ops troops “go native” with beards and local clothing). This departure from SOP is usually for a sound tactical reason; sometimes it’s a goof, but usually not. Second, the media reports on the unusual behavior. Third, the media reports come to the attention of some chair-dwelling commander, who is Outraged and Horrified and orders The Despicable Behavior to Stop at Once! This has happened so many times before (uniforms in Somalia, women’s attire and the display of Christian symbols in Desert Shield, to name two off the top of my head) that it’s not a surprise; this cycle is part of the reason why so many military personnel dislike the media so intensely (of course, the endemic suspicion and anti-military bias betrayed by so many journalists doesn’t help, either).
There’s a telling comment from the CO of the Kandahar airfield, who is quoted as saying

“An Irish guy with a beard is still an Irish guy,” Col. James L. Huggins, commander of the base, said in an interview. “I don’t know what they are trying to achieve.” . That tends to make me think that a) he’s unsympathetic and b) he doesn’t understand why the policy was relaxed in the first place because c) he’s a garrison CO. I hate it when that happens.

Here’s a guy who’s set up a site to let visitors drive him insane over the Internet. Apparently he doesn’t have any small children, so he needs someone else to randomly turn things off and on, rearrange things, and generally increase the entropy level in his immediate area. Hmmm. Who else do I know who a) loves X-10 home automation, b) has no small children, and c) would do something like this? I wonder…

I just got off the phone with Ameritech. If they’re not the slowest phone company in North America, they’re #2 and trying hard. This time I had to call to ask where our phone books were. The answer: “oh, we’ll send some out; it will take 10-15 business days.” That’s right: three weeks to mail me two lousy phone books. Why does it take so long? Aren’t businesses all over the world supposedly re-engineering their processes to improve them?
No. Actually, they’re re-engineering process to make money, either by reducing costs or improving revenue. I can’t come up with a single example of a process retooling that was done solely to improve customer service or response time. I suppose that’s to be expected from a business culture that values profitability over everything else, but as a consumer it’s mighty frustrating.

So, now we’re in Ohio, temporarily staying with the folks while we wait to close on the house. It’s been thoroughly cleaned, and the trailers should arrive sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ve been dealing with the 1,001 minor-but-important details: transferring utilities, buying David’s school supplies, double-checking the roofer’s references, looking for a new microwave, and so on. This to me is the most aggravating part of moving, since it never seems to stop. On the other hand, all the parts of moving have been aggravating so far. We’ll all be happy when we’re in the new house, even though it will take a while to get settled in.

Sometime today (hopefully around noon), we expect to see 2 28′ trailers magically appear, and the Great Move of 2002 will officially begin. Several friends from church are coming over to help us load this afternoon, then we’ll have a second shift of after-work folks this evening, and more tomorrow. I’ll try to post some pictures of the moving process (nothing like seeing a bunch of sweaty Mormons carrying boxes!) but I doubt I’ll be near the computers for the next couple of days.

Found a more-worthwhile-than-usual political self-tester at www.politicalcompass.org. It’s a short multiple-choice test that asks you a bunch of questions to determine where you fall on two axes: authoritarian vs. libertarian and economic left vs. right. Here’s the site’s self-description:

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It’s not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can’t explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as ‘right-wingers’, yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

So, take the test and post a comment to let the rest of us know where you stand.