Cascajun

Photographs of the 2008 Dan Harris Challenge are online.

Dan Harris 2008 Photos by Michael Lampi

My brother, ‘Marsh Arab’, dropped me a note about a recent guided kayak fishing adventure in Grand Isle, Louisiana. He also sent along a link to an online forum post.

Guided Kayak Trip in Grand Isle, LA w/pics

There are some really good photographs and the write up is done well, too.

I participated in the 2008 Dan Harris Challenge and finished first in my class of rowing shell: 1X-R1 (Rec 1, length less than 21 feet). I was also the only entry in my class, but did better my time over last year by about 15-minutes. The rowing conditions on Bellingham Bay were excellent.

I got out for a run and mountain bike ride on a beautiful spring day in Bellingham.

A run over Sehome Hill; over South Hill via Taylor; and down the South Bay Trail.

A mountain bike loop through town, including some of my favorite trials on Galbraith.

I received this photo of a crawfish diner & beer from a colleague whose husband snapped it while dinning out on a business trip in China.

Half joking I asked, “How were they seasoned?” I also noted that it looks like Thai basil or perhaps a cilantro sprig on top. I questioned, “Did they come with sweet & sour dipping sauce?”

Curiously, I had never really considered that crawfish might be table fare in China, too! I suppose that’s just a symptom of my lack of exposure to authentic Chinese culture and cuisine. I’m quite certain I’ve never seen General Tso Mud Bugs on any menus. But then again, is General Tso Chicken authentic?

I’ve upgraded the web site to the latest version of Wordpress and toyed with themes to see which ones support the new features like tags and sidebar widgets.

Don’t be surprised to find unexpected changes or behavior.

Wretchard points out, once again, what so many seem to miss. The solution to our current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan contains a large military component.

The core problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan are both political: the incapacity of the local state to establish a working civil society; a fact that has allowed all kinds of mischief to be based within their borders. But as events have shown, the solution to the political problem contains a large military component. Unless security is provided for the local good guys, the bad guys can always use terror to coerce the population into line. The dove flies under a parasol of swords. If there is no such thing as a “purely military” solution, neither is there such a thing as a purely political one.

“The dove flies under a parasol of swords.”

Michael Pollan: The omnivore’s next dilemma

What if human consciousness isn’t the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn’s clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination? Author Michael Pollan asks us to see things from a plant’s-eye view — to consider the possibility that nature isn’t opposed to culture, that biochemistry rivals intellect as a survival tool. By merely shifting our perspective, he argues, we can heal the Earth. Who’s the more sophisticated species now?

I wonder how this stacks up in the evidentiary world and where it fits into Google’s policy of “Do no evil.”

“Introducing Gmail Custom Time. Be on time. Every time. Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.”

As someone who must deal with too much information that exists only in email, I can say this feature will not help me.

Richard Fernandez writes about a realistic expectation of an American victory in Iraq:

“Totten describes the psychological terrain of a counterinsurgency. He reminds us that dysfunctional Middle Eastern polities are infected to their core. In Karmah, for example, insurgents often kidnapped, tortured and killed their own close relatives.”

[..]

“It is this dysfunctional culture which is the ultimate redoubt of terrorism. And it is impervious to the passing influences of UN development projects, a few diplomatic conferences, a handful of ceremonial occasions or a few seminars. It is impervious even to a ten year American occupation. The only thing which has any hope of transforming it into a semblance of a functioning civil society is the creation of a long-lived democratic society. Then, after the Saddam generation is replaced by a newer one, can there be a new society.”

“Once this is understood then a realistic expectation of an American victory in Iraq isn’t the establishment of a perfect society. A realistic goal is the establishment of a stable, democratic and relatively sane society which can go on to heal its wounds. The sheer magnitude of the task explains why efforts to create a Palestinian State have been so unsuccessful. Until the dysfunction which lurks in the substratum can be healed, the infection repeatedly breaks through each crust of apparent civility that is overlaid. And since that healing can only be accomplished by the people themselves, real counterinsurgencies are really efforts to plant a survivable crop in the devil’s own vineyard.”

“Ultimately the job is too big for any single nation to accomplish unless the idea ‘catches on’. And we should be thankful to people like Michael Totten for a glimpse into how, hopefully, it is done.”

So what is a realistic expectation of an American victory in Iraq and what is the best approach to achieve it?

To paraphrase some comments made to the Belmont Club post quoted above:

The Iraq War didn’t take place in a vacuum, but in the context of the total uselessness of the traditional UN/Development Aid/Diplomacy methods of dealing with chaos in the Third World. Most of the criticisms leveled against Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) & Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) are that things were better managed by the traditional methods. However, nobody wants to remember that the traditional methods brought us 9/11.

Even if one were to grant that OEF and OIF are the wrong approaches, it does not follow that a return to the traditional UN/Development Aid/Diplomacy methods would be a panacea. On the contrary, many decades of experience suggests that those methods are not effective.