Thankyou for your patience.

The Management

My point and shoot digital camera makes 16:9 photos. I suppose they think I will only show photos on wide-screen TVs. I kinda like the scale to be honest but I cannot find anyone who can cheaply print these things. This is my nephew who was climbing in the tree in my front yard.

Sorry its so long but its what happened and it really was an amazing trip for me. I hope everyone gets an opportunity to do some service work as it is quite good for the soul.

If you don't like to read, hate me talking about the soul, and would rather get straight to the photos then you can look at my gallery instead.

With my brain, it might be too late. Still, maybe I should start a rigid diet of meditation.

I was talking to a friend who mentioned that insurance should take care of all of that anyway... but I had to remind him that these people never had insurance, they were already below the poverty line before this happened.

I'll be gone for about 10 days and hopefully I'll be able to take some photos while I am down there but it does sound like nothing but hard work all day, every day. I've gotten a fresh tetanus shot so nobody worry!

Update: Since I don't have comments turned on, I thought I'd post an email response to this from my good friend John:

I think you need to be careful to worry about the right things here. The story suggests that the nuclear power plant maintains a "secure area" around the reactor, and the person didn't get in it. My experience with nuclear facilities here is that they guard the stuff that's important, and don't guard the stuff that isn't, which is an efficient use of limited resources. As near as I can tell from the story, that's what happened in this case.

If you don't know John he writes the science beat for the Albuquerque Journal - being that close to Los Alamos means he is the goto guy on Nukes.

You are absolutely right John, but I also agree with the idea that this is just the right prank to make sure the right questions get asked. Most of us who live within breathing space of Shearon Harris wouldn't be surprised at all to hear the guy had walked into the control room with an "Al Qaeda Rulez" flag. It may be the wrong opinion about what goes on there, but I sure would like us to be overly cautious about it.

Besides, who the hell can trust a place that misspelled "Sharon"?

Let's look at one small detail of this plan, shall we? If you look closely you will see that Bush wants to purchase tons of Tamiflu (which is supposed to lesson the effects of flu although there is debate about it working on this particular type). Now this might seem like a good idea except for two things: 1) there is no way in hell that they can come close to buying enough of the stuff to help us (not that it would really do anything anyway) 2) Guess who developed Tamiflu? Well, you might say the Swiss pharm. company Roche right? Well they distribute the stuff but the company who made it and receives licensing for it is a company called Gilead Sciences, Inc. Now guess who used to be the Chairman of Gilead and still has large investments in the company... come on, guess!
...
One more try...

That's right! Donald Rumsfeld! Hey, look at that Gilead's stock has gone so much higher lately! Rummy you are set brother! Invite me to the party!

Well, that's my opinion but here in N.C. there may be more people drawing conclusions after reading this headline: PETA Employees Accused Of Dumping Animals Face New Charges. This is a different sort of bad press than to the type I was referring to, this is just two completely nutso employees doing something really bad.... euthanizing animals when they had promised to rescue them. Um... wow... I don't think they are going to keep their PETA jobs.

This is the shit we (the left) has been screaming since he first said "Axis of Evil". These two dorks site our troubles in the U.N. and then turn to Scooter... um... Bolton perhaps?

Has the Wall Street Journal entered into that space Fox News worked out for itself - that space in journalism where you pretend to be trustworthy but no-one *really* takes you seriously?

Its not entirely out of the question that the right is now going to try to pin as many problems as possible to Scooter in order to protect Bush and whoever the Republican presidential nominee might be in 2008.

I'm sure you don't need my blog to tell you that the indictments have begun, so I'll just add this. While Scooter wasn't a "main character" I always found him charming and funny. I also think I have found some incriminating evidence of Scooter hanging out with John Bolton. That's John Bolton isn't it? pre-mustache? I don't know.

You can't have it both ways. You can't send a tool like Bolton (whose name keeps popping up in the Plame affair) to thumb your nose at the U.N. and then turn around and ask for their help. What happened to the Neo-con death cult unilateralism approach? Didn't work so well? Do you really think the world would go along with you on yet another Middle East war drum pattern?

If there are indictments in the Plame affair, I wouldn't be surprised if bombs didn't start falling... if they haven't already.

I include below the Charter of the United Nations. Yes, there is corruption, bureaucracy, and other faults in the U.N. — it is a human endeavor. Still, at its heart is this charter and it is a beautiful statement. Read this and think about the U.S. approach lately:

We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, and for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples, Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims. Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

Let's be serious... even if he is proven of treason he probably wouldn't even see jail time. This is really serious too - when Valerie Plame's name was leaked the front company she claimed employment from was immediately entered into the databases of foreign intelligence agencies. At that point, anyone else who claimed to be employed by the company was immediately outed as well. I have only heard a little about the front-company so I have no idea how many employees it claimed but it is many people. Dick Cheney released the names of many agents to foreign intelligence services. This from the guy who played up the national security line so much he was insinuating that if we voted for John Kerry we would be attacked. I suppose we now see that National Security and "Keeping my ass in shitloads of money" seem like the same thing to him.