Dienstagabendfliegezeitung

Okay, a few things.

Due to a number of factors, not the least of which has been increasing temperatures at Zoo Station over the last few weeks, I have been both colossally busy and exceptionally sluggish. Last year I only turned on my air conditioning for guests; this year, as I'm in remarkably stronger financial shape than I was at the same time last year, I may elect to engage it for brief periods this year in order to increase productivity. One of the unfortunate results of this recent drop in personal productivity is that I have a half-written dossier on the ballistic missile shield (that keeps having more articles tacked onto it) and haven't even started dossiers on the declining pacifism in Japan and Germany, and Afghanistan. I'm also adding another dossier to the list, this one about the Iraq-based Iranian dissident militant group known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, otherwise known as the People's Mujahedin of Iran.

I'd also like to get back into the habit of posting tactical decision games; I started work this week on a "campaign mode" for a few of them back-to-back, and hopefully I'll be able to drum up some participation. One item that's helping me immensely is Wikimapia. I've been a geography enthusiast since as far back as I can remember; when I was in fourth grade (which is to say, a fourth/fifth split class), I scored the highest score in the class on our end-of-year geography final with a score of two hundred fifteen... Out of one hundred. At any rate, I'm having an absolute blast finding various sites on Wikimapia, which makes putting together compelling satellite imagery for TDG's even easier.

There are a couple of news stories that are worth noting. One borders on being hilarious: a "Palestinian" news agency claimed that Moammar Qaddhafi was in a coma in a Benghazi hospital; Qaddhafi promptly appeared at a press conference, alive and well, and vowed to sue the news agency for their irresponsible reporting.

On a more serious note, Jordan's Queen Noor wrote an editorial for CNN encouraging mothers worldwide to focus on promoting peace for Mother's Day. I take no issue with the column itself; the issue I take is with the comments at the end of the editorial from a selection of readers, nearly all of whom offer trite, condescending, ignorant claims with respect to the alleged power that female leaders would have to transform the world into some sort of pacifistic utopia. Ignoring for the moment that two of the most hawkish world leaders in the last thirty years have been Golda Meir of Israel and Baroness Thatcher of the United Kingdom, history is rife with examples of powerful women encouraging war for various reasons, some good and some bad. My point is that, for all of the encouraging rhetoric from intelligent and accomplished individuals like Queen Noor, continued displays of ignorance and biased rhetoric from Jane Six-Pack doesn't help anyone.

Aside from that, my other outstanding piece of news is that I got a fairly sizable tax return, and the lion's share of it arrived from the Feds yesterday. Aside from giving me sufficient capital to relocate should I land another job, perhaps it will allow me the luxury of a Grundig S350DL Radio; at this point, I'd really just love to have a place out in the country and be able to build an actual shortwave radio set, but given my near-total ignorance of how to manufacture radios, that's highly doubtful.

I have some time off coming soon, and among other things, I intend to finish up a couple of my dossiers and get them online. Stay tuned... And until all of that happens, keep enjoying the Fly Reports. I know several of you check them daily, if for no other reason to confirm that I'm still alive, so I'll try to keep them funny and informative. One of these days I may even throw in another "spot the pattern" contest for a week's worth of Fly Reports.

Thus saith the Fly.