The View From Iraq

Humvee View

As my father has pointed out many times, UK coverage of Iraq is quite different than it is here in the US.  There is notably less attention paid to Elephant vs. Donkey racing, and many more non-American opinions.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/OCT06/BBC.mp3]

Here are 8 minutes of the BBC call-in show “Have Your Say.”  Brigett Kendall moderates between Georgetown U. professor Robert Lieber, and a caller in Iraq.  This provides clear contrast between an academic expert and an actual resident; who, I should note, doesn’t want American troops withdrawn.

AIEE-IE7

Internet Explorer 7 is now running on one of our home computers.  The most obvious change is that it does tabbed browsing, which is something that Firefox users already do.  Another addition is that IE finally reliably displays “favicons.”

A favicon is a mini-icon that appears in the address field of a browser.  I’ve just added a favicon to DogRat.com.  This is how it appears in IE7.

Nice!  Just as I wanted it.  So yay to that much about IE7.  But I’m sorry to say it screws up something else.  It’s cropping the bottom of the site title.

Boo, IE7!

Boo!  Perhaps I need to edit the style sheet, or maybe Microsoft has done something for which there is no easy workaround.  I’ll look into it, but not today.

A Charlie Brown Anti-Christmas



Click picture to see complete image

As I’ve said before, I’m an admirer of cartoonist Charles Schulz.  I’ll never decide if my favorite Peanuts cartoon is A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  But it’s Halloween, so I’ll say it’s The Great Pumpkin.  Let’s listen to “Great Pumpkin Waltz,” by Vince Guaraldi, transferred from a wonderfully warm-sounding, but slightly-warped, LP.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/OCT06/pumpkinwaltz.mp3]

Here’s a comment by Charles Schulz, as recalled by Lee Mendelson in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic.

 

You know, I’ve always been ambivalent about Santa Claus.  It must be very hard for a lot of [poor] families … a lot of kids.  And, secondly, when a kid finally finds out that there is no Santa Claus, he must wonder how many other things he has been told that are not true.
 

This raises an interesting discussion topic.  A Charlie Brown Christmas plainly states who, other than Santa, there is to believe in.  And it’s Linus who articulates that belief so poignantly in the show.  But it’s also Linus who believes in the obviously non-existent Great Pumpkin.

The Great Pumpkin fabrication was intended by Schulz to be a Halloween counterpart to the Santa Claus character.  The name of the Halloween counterpart to Jesus isn’t given in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Here’s a screen shot from Friday night’s showing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  It’s strange to see the ABC-TV logo in the corner, because in my mind the show is indelibly associated with CBS.  But at least they aired it.  The show is, after all, 40 years old!

Also, take note of the “G” rating and the blurb promoting the Harry Potter movie.  It wasn’t too many years ago that religious groups were in an uproar over Harry Potter.  Perhaps they still are.

For me, and I mean this sincerely, Christmas is about Birth (or, if you prefer, Life) and Halloween is about Death.  The symbolism is undeniable.  I admire Schulz for dealing so deftly with the always-touchy subject of Faith in his Christmas and Halloween cartoons.

Moaning Mona

Boston NPR station WBUR produces a show called On Point.  Fridays it usually has a weekly news roundup and commentary.  Yesterday, one of the guests was GOP-aligned syndicated columnist Mona Charen.  Listen to what she thinks is the top news story.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/OCT06/onpoint.mp3]

She spins her reference to Iraq by calling it “The War on Terror,” but what really gets me is her comment about the upcoming election getting “bogged down in a lot of trivialities like people’s sex lives and perceptions of corruption.”

Stop right there.  Perception of corruption was what led to the Whitewater investigation against the Clintons — a perception that was not substantiated.  Further, Whitewater was a business dealing prior to Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.  Contrast Whitewater with Tom Delay and with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose corrupting influence in the GOP is no mere perception.

And if you want to talk about getting bogged down in somebody’s sex life, that’s exactly what happened when Whitewater mutated into an investigation of Bill and Monica.  There was a vote to impeach, based on this triviality!

Read this 1999 column by Mona Charen, for proof that she’s yet another hypocritical Republican apologist.  Honestly, I believe these people have no agenda other than their own wealth and power.

Seven Samurai 7

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Anime/samurai_7.flv 425 236]

Honorable son Eric’s latest Animé pick is Samurai 7, a series based on the legendary movie, The Seven Samurai.  When I was in high school, the Boston PBS station showed it complete and commercial-free, and it was my friend and mentor Morris Hyman who made sure I didn’t miss it.

Eric and I watched the original movie together not too many months ago, and I was pleased to see that he was suitably impressed.  George Lucas borrowed much from this movie when creating The Jedi Knights.

I’ve spliced together a couple of brief scenes from both presentations for comparison.  Below is, obviously, the original.  No robots!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Anime/7samurai.flv 320 240]

666 = rw-rw-rw


What is the significance of the 755, mentioned in the previous posting?  Click the picture to watch an excellent animated presentation on UNIX file permissions.

It shows you how binary numbering works, compared to the decimal numbering that we taken for granted, because we have two hands with five digits each.  The value of 1112 is 710.  So the decimal numbers for the permissions are 755, 744, etc., and are pronounced “seven, five, five,” and not “seven hundred fifty-five.”