not in a mood for Francophobia

I got yet another mass-addressed email from a co-worker spouting the usual anti-French bullshit. I was refelcting just the other day that I was getting so tired of this. So I hit "reply all" and wrote:

You know, Ian, I'm just not one for France-bashing. I figure the country that pretty much taught the rest of the world what culture, civility, and diplomacy were, that sent us arms and troops during our Revolution when our army was ready to give up and throw in the towel, that lost 11% of its population (nearly 1.3 million soldiers and civilians) stopping the German bid for domination of Europe in World War One when the US lost a gallant 0.37% of ours, which suffered division and occupation by the Nazis in World War Two (taking over half a million casualties in that war, more than half of them civilians), that sent troops to support us in the First Gulf War when we were defending an ally instead of making an unprovoked invasion... I figure that country deserves our respect and thanks, not our contempt, when they decide to disagree with an American foreign policy based on lies and deceit, a unilateralism and aggression we would oppose as a threat to world peace if anyone else were proposing it. But I guess I'm in a minority there.

The only reply so far has been from one of the other addressees and was filled with both vulgarities and poor spelling and grammar.

I think I need to acquire portraits of Bonaparte, Ney, Du Guesclin, Pasteur, Renoir, Baudelaire, Hugo, de Tocquville, Lafayette, Rousseau, Dumas, Verne, and Voltaire and fill my office with them. Maybe include one of de Gaulle, just to piss people off...

and, in a more lighthearted vein

Cat pounces on pilot mid-flight

An escaped pet cat created a scare on a Belgian airliner, forcing the crew to turn back to Brussels 20 minutes into its journey.

A "lot of coincidences", as the airline told BBC News Online, ended with the animal running wild in the cockpit and attacking the co-pilot.

shy_kat, did you see this?

Nasa to save Hubble telescope

The US space agency has given the go-ahead for a robotic mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, Nasa officials have announced.

meglomania, anyone?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3554626.stm

crazy-ness

I love it. DC United (our local Major League Soccer team, for those of you who haven't penetrated my mania yet) is looking at a Central American player named Mario Ramirez, whose nickname is apparently "el loco."

So a ?Guatemalan? newspaper runs a story that is apparently entitled something like "A Lunatic in the White House?" and which opens with an observation along the lines of (and this is a paraphrase of a web translation of an article in Spanish...) "Everyone talks about the American president, but soon there may be more than one "crazy man" in Washington, if DC United's technical staff have their way."

:-) I love Guatemalans. Well, OK, except for el Pescadito.

a follow up on historical movies

( More of a footnote than anything else )

flaming arrows

The appalling quotes re: Gladiator I stumbled across trying to affirmjohn_arundel's disgust with the frequent use of fire arrows in movies. Actually, the more I look, the more justification there seems to be for their presence. Not necessarily common as antipersonnel weapons, but as siege weapons thay seem to have been frequently used in the ancient world, in Dark Ages and medieval Europe, Asia, and on the American frontier.
( references )

rolling thunder, dark clouds gatherin'

big honkin' storm coming in. earlier I couldn't see Reston because of the haze; now everything past teh DTR/Rt 7 interchange is hidden behind a curtain of greyish-green opacity. I'm going to have to turn the lights on, and any of you who know how I feel about fluorescent lighting know how dark it must be if I'm contemplating that.

Edit: You know, if it's still doing this in two or three hours, I'm just going home. DCU haven't been worth getting soaking wet for in quite some time.

are you registered to vote?

I mean, are you *sure* you're registered?

Check.

Why? See this roundup of registration-purge news from robbysmom.