Global merriment

With all the turmoil going on for the past week or so—Muslims rioting about a whackjob video with nonexistent production values, Chinese rioting about the Japanese buying some islands, the Twitterati going ballistic about #MuslimRage and #RomneyEncore…

Am I the only person humming this oldie?

Really alarming how so many of the problem spots sung about 50 years ago are still trouble spots today.

Arrgh!

At this point in the year, and in the election cycle, we could all use some time out. And, given that both business and politics drown us in obfuscation and verbal obliteration, perhaps it’s a really good thing that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The folks who thought it up ten years ago have helpful hints on pirate-speak pick-up lines, since apparently a whole lot of TLAPD revolves around places of booze.

If you otherwise need help translating, there are one or two sites that will oblige. The UX is what you’d expect from people too busy with downing grog and shivering timbers to bother with features and functionality.

BTW—you need to distinguish the type of pirates we’re talking about here from the ones on Wall Street and in Congress. Just be sayin’, matey.

Clarifying the campaign

As a personal note to the battle at Sharpsburg, I’ll tell you about the class at William and Mary where Professor Ludwell H. Johnson III was describing Lee’s 1862 invasion of Maryland. He mentioned that one of Lee’s strategic intents was to supply his army, since the farms of Northern Virginia had been pretty well destroyed by the various maneuverings between Union and Confederate armies earlier in the year.

Yet he characterized the Army of Northern Virginia’s campaign as being without any looting or stealing. All the undergrads were madly taking notes, not finding discrepancies in this account. Finally one of the two grad students taking the class raised her hand and asked, “Uh, Dr. Johnson, you say that there was no thievery on this campaign, and yet one of Lee’s purposes was to provide food and supplies for his army?”

Professor Johnson fixed his gimlet eye upon the inquirer and replied, “Well, occasionally a high-spirited soldier might steal a watermelon…but Lee’s agents issued (Confederate) scrip for all the supplies they procured.”

Oh, yeah. Right.

The undergrads didn’t really grasp the subtleties of my question and its answer. And fortunately, Professor Johnson is an honorable man and he didn’t hold it against me when time came to grade my thesis.

I just wanted to make sure I understood the situation.

Sharpsburg in September

When last we left the Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee was leading it away from the victory at Manassas and taking the war into Union territory for the first time. (He did this for both strategic military and logistical reasons: he was literally looking for food supplies for his men.) It was a bold move and one of the few times the north actually felt the direct burden of fighting.

Try to imagine the feelings in Washington: enemy forces showing all signs of encircling the city, cutting off its lines of communications with the rest of the Union. The fear was palpable, and the Radical Republicans…well, the phrase “wound up tighter than a cheap watch” comes to mind.

Following Manassas, President Lincoln felt the only general able to counter Lee was McClellan (which speaks more about the lousy quality of the available commander pool than it does about McClellan’s capabilities), so the expert at procrastination was hauled up from the Peninsula and installed at the head of the Army of the Potomac again.

McClellan was handed an extraordinary gift in the form of the discovery on 13 September of Lee’s strategic plan (found wrapped around three cigars). By speedily deploying his troops (which outnumbered the Confederates 75,000 to 55,000) while Lee’s army was widely dispersed, he might have turned the tables. But, being McClellan, he waited 18 hours to take action.

The two forces finally met 150 years today on farmers’ fields near the Maryland town of Sharpsburg. Through rows of man-high ripened corn, across Antietam Creek and along a sunken road that became known as Bloody Lane, they slogged it out through most of the day.

It was the bloodiest battle in US history; 23,000 casualties from both sides. More than 2100 Federals and 1500 rebels died.

Lee went all-in, McClellan never committed more than 75% of his force, and they fought to a standstill. The next day, Lee at first waited for McClellan to attack, but “the young Napoleon”…just sat there. The Army of Northern Virginia withdrew without being pursued.

After a month of McClellan’s inactivity, Lincoln finally removed him from command permanently. He also took advantage of the tactical win to issue the Emancipation Proclamation the following week.

Sharpsburg was a geopolitical turning point; European powers (in particular, Britain & France) decided there was no advantage in backing the Confederacy by diplomatic recognition, so it was essentially on its own. And; it never had either the agricultural or industrial resources to stand alone against the United States.

But the war would slog on for another two and a half years.

Death in Benghazi

I’ve been thinking about the four Americans murdered in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi this week. There’s something about the violation of diplomatic privilege (one of the foundations of international law and therefore of civilization) that really bothers me.

Yeah, I know—embassies and consulates can be hotbeds of propaganda, espionage and all kinds of other chicanery. But civilized nations basically turn a blind eye to that sort of thing and agree that we’ll all focus on positive activities, like exchanging cultural icons instead of artillery shells.

And the people who work in those compounds—well, some of them may well be carpetbaggers or political appointees (in fact—most ambassadors are both; the posher the posting, the bigger the presidential campaign contributor and the greater the likelihood that the incumbent is a buffoon); but the rest are in it because they believe they can do some good, or they want to experience different cultures, or both.

Especially in backwater or dangerous postings like the ex-Soviet Bloc or much of Africa, they aren’t there to make a quick buck, score a trophy spouse or smuggle diamonds. They work long hours processing travel visas, bailing Americans out of local jails and facilitating commerce. In a lot of these places they struggle with a lower standard of living, trying not to transgress local customs and convincing their kids that their lives haven’t been ruined forever just because they’re spending their high school years in Kinshasa instead of Kansas City.

Christopher Stevens, our Ambassador, was a career diplomat who had already served twice in Libya. That place would never be considered a garden spot, and Stevens had experienced it as Deputy Chief of Mission under Gadhafi and as Special Representative to the National Transitional Council last year. Other assignments included stints in Jerusalem, Damascus and Cairo.

Stevens was Bay Area born and bred—well known, well-liked and well-respected (from what I’ve seen in local media). Between earning his BA in history from UC Berkeley and his law degree from Hastings, he volunteered with the Peace Corps to teach English in Morocco. He gave up what must have been a very comfortable practice as an international trade lawyer to join the Foreign Service and take not-at-all cushy postings.

If anyone could have been said to be a friend of Arabs and Libyans, Chris Stevens clearly was that person. He was a stand-up guy.

Sean Smith was an Information Management Officer for the State Department. You know he could have been making shedloads more money doing IT in the private sector; see above about the higher standard of living. His assignments included Baghdad, Pretoria and The Hague.

In addition to his Foreign Service work, though, Smith was well-known in the universe of online gaming. Under the name Vile Rat, his persona was of a senior diplomat in the sci fi world of EVE Online. Being a consummate geek, Vile Rat kept in touch with his EVE swarm, even while under fire in Baghdad.

On Tuesday, he was likewise on Jabber, IM’d “GUNFIRE”, and then was gone.

One of Smith’s EVE colleagues posted this obit. I have to say that I don’t understand a whole lot of the MMORPG lingo. But I do pick up on the shock and sorrow and sense of utter loss. And; I get the feeling that Smith was a mensch.

We don’t really know about the two security guys—the Washington Post reported the name of one of them, but evidently (at the time of writing) the State Department hasn’t confirmed him. It looks like they were both employees of a private security firm, and you could argue that they were thus compensated very well for their work. Probably. They had to know that an assignment at Benghazi carried its risks. And if it was a gamble for them, they paid full freight.

On Wednesday, there was a gathering of Libyans in Benghazi. It was a peaceful protest against the attack on the consulate, and the people carried signs instead of RPGs:

I imagine that coming out in daylight, with hand-made signs, in that country was not without risks and I am moved by this.

But I’m still really disturbed by the attack, and genuinely saddened by the waste of men who were bent on nothing but trying to make the world better.

Dragons' teeth

The seasons following the Arab Spring aren’t looking so prosperous or fertile for anything except violence, bigotry and extremism. The attacks Tuesday night on US diplomatic posts in Cairo and Benghazi are probably not the culmination of the savagery; sadly, I expect we’ll see more.

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of a culture that seems to prefer international outlawry to working within rules, and that favors a return to the Good Old Days of the 8^th Century—only with 21^st Century weapons.

But I really hope world leaders figure out what to do about it. Because it’s evident that an Arab Summer is going to be long and hot; and an Arab Winter may well be nuclear.

Oh, the shame! (& the skunks)

Okay, I'm going to interrupt my series on the mailboxes of Sunnyvale to bring you a website that you really must check out.

It's really rubbish in terms of UX and presentation, but if you need a laugh, this is it.

(Well, my sister, who has dogs, thought that the dogs aren't bad so much as the owners irresponsible in not addressing the problem behavior. But I think it's pretty funny.)

By way of teaser, I give you:

(I can't look at the above without laughing.)

We had a chihuahua mix that used to take on skunks up from the Arroyo Seco, so I'm familiar with the tomato sauce bath routine.

And a repeat offender.

One of the interesting things to me is that there appears to be a high representation by Boston terriers in the photos on the site. Not casting any aspersions; I'm just sayin'.

Please, Mr. Postman Pt. 1

I live in an area of Sunnyvale that comprises mostly single-family dwellings dating from the 50s through 70s, from the looks of the architecture. Those on this side of El Camino Real appear somewhat more upmarket than the ones across the way, but back in the day they’d all have been for working class and middle class families.

(That was of course in the day when the working and middle classes made enough money to buy houses anywhere, much less in this area.)

There’s one sub-neighborhood of a couple of blocks of two streets where everyone appears to have decided to express individuality not in the paint on their track houses, or the landscaping, but in their…mailboxes.

I’ll show you what I mean:

Fire engine sideways.

 Fire engine front.

Car sideways.

Car front.

They mostly seem to have been homemade and bolted on to your common or garden mailbox.

 Ark with pair of elephants.

I’ll share some more tomorrow.

Praying man

The Mountain View Art and Wine Festival was held this past weekend. (This is California; you can't have any arts-related activity without wine.)

And, this being California, where the sun always shines, there was a Sunscreen Booth, where you could slather on or top up your sun block.

There was also this stand, right at the corner of Castro Street and El Camino:

This fella was here last year, and the year before that. I've not seen him at any of the other Arts and Wine Festivals. I don't know whether that means folks in Los Altos and Palo Alto don't need prayer, or what.

State of confusion

I suppose that taking potshots at the Discovery/History cable franchise’s borderline illiteracy is like running down elderly pedestrians in the crosswalk: it’s such a sure thing that there’s no real sport it in.

But still—it’s so much fun.

Here’s what I found a while ago:

Evidently we’ve added a new state to the union.