Revenge!

First thing's first: revenge. My distinguished colleague and close friend Father Time recently described my picture as follows:

Why this picture is not posted on some website that specializes in warning people of animal predators, nudist camp rejects, or offspring of famous hit men, is a complete mystery to me.

And my retribution? I have come to decide that although Father Time speaks with a distinct Michigan accent, he was without a doubt separated from his original family at birth. It would be fallacious to suggest that Father Time is anything other than the long-lost, much much older brother of Craig and Charlie Reid, better known as the Proclaimers.

It would appear that Father Time has walked far more than five hundred miles away from his true home in Scotland! It's too bad that his singing voice is so unfortunate, because he could have cashed in on their fame!

Okay, that will do for now. I feel better already. Now, time for some news.

* * *

To all of those who may be reading this who think we're losing the war, I present exhibit alpha: Sunni Muslims (al Qaeda's target audience, pardon the pun) rising up against al Qaeda and calling in American troops for support. This is yet another piece of evidence demonstrating progress in Iraq, as I've reported on previously.

Someday, once I finish my article on ballistic missile defense (possibly next week, but the week after looks a bit more promising), I intend to do an article on the decining pacifism of the German and Japanese governments. One of the featured stories will be an early March defense cooperation pact signed by Japan and Australia; however, the Howard government has also signed a security pact with the Philippines, aimed at fighting terrorism in the southern region of the latter.

* * *

I'm just thinking out loud here, but I don't have a blog nickname for my dad. Nothing "fly" related would really fit... For now, I suppose I'll go with Urban Cowboy. At any rate, my dad and I have a little bit of a feud going on. I make fairly good money, but he makes substantially more than I do (which is appropriate, he's a business owner and he's been working roughly twenty-five years longer than I have). Pretty much the only annoying result of this is that he's much more readily able to purchase computers and gadgets than I am. For various reasons, I'm still using a desktop machine that was purchased in 1998 and a notebook that was purchased in 2000; he's... Not.

Our most recent playful squabble was about DSL. I pay for it (and should really cancel it), but my brand new computer, purchased right before I moved to Zoo Station, hasn't worked since I took it out of the box, and I've been too busy/lazy over the last year to ship it to Hewlett Packard to get fixed. Thus, I'm still on dialup, and he was too at the isolated and remote family holiday cabin. While talking the other day on the phone, he informed me that he was getting DSL there, because dialup was just too slow. I got this E-Mail upon returning to Zoo Station from work today:

Hey,

I was just trying my new DSL and wireless laptop here at the [family holiday cabin] and I thought you might like to know it works....

[Dad]

And my reply?

Ass...

The important thing is that he knows that I'm kidding... And that I'll make good use of it next time I'm there.

* * *

There's evidence that Iran is not only supplying sophisticated weapons to insurgent groups in Iraq, but also to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This development is ironic, given that Iran is so militantly Shi'i and the Taliban is so militantly Sunni. In fact, Iran nearly declared war on the Taliban in 1998 over the killing of Afghan Shi'is and a handful of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif.

I have several thoughts on the subject. The first is the same thought that's expressed in the article itself:

But a U.S. official who requested anonymity told CNN the United States believes Iran's supreme leaders know about these operations and could stop them if they wanted to.

Another U.S. official said Iran still sees the Taliban as an enemy but has a history of dealing with people it considers "nasty" as long as it is "congruent with Iran's overall objectives." In this case, Iran is "working the Taliban angle" to "bleed the U.S." in Afghanistan, the official said.

It's also been suggested, and evidence has been presented (notably, in one of my favorite books on terrorism, Shadow War by Richard Miniter), that Iran has provided support and safe haven to the Taliban's al Qaeda allies, possibly even harboring such individuals as bin Laden and al Zwahiri. It's not out of line to consider that Iran might be allying with the Taliban in the same way that America and Britain allied with Russia in World War II: ally with the lesser of two enemies in order to fight the greatest enemy (the United States in the eyes of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei), then fight the lesser enemy.

My second thought directly contradicts the following passage:

Some analysts question whether the top echelons of the Iranian government are behind any transfer of arms from the Islamic Republic to the Taliban, Iran's long-time foe. Rogue elements -- perhaps the Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard -- may be operating on their own, the analysts suggest.

The Iranian government, Ali Khameini in particular, rules Iran through complete control. The proposition that "rogue elements" - the Quds Force in particular - are operating without outside the auspices of Khameini and Ahmedinejad is technically possible, but quite hard to imagine.

This is yet another reason why we need to secure a decisive and total victory in Afghanistan. Of course, given the situation at the Afghan/Pakistani border, that may be easier said than done.

* * *

I decided today that I am the type of person who paperwork was invented for. I don't mean that I'm the target of excessive red tape, although I'm sure that's happened before. No, it can best be summed up by the following quote from the Pontiff about the Prime Cardinal:

"The scientist in the family... A man who, who takes sexual pleasure in the collection of data... Wearing the number seven shirt this evening, even his mother calls him 'The Edge'!"
- Pontifex Maximus, 06th June 2001, of the Prime Cardinal

I have three examples of this.

my archive CD-ROM

my fuel card

my shortwave log

As a young historian in training, I put together a massive archive of primarily ancient literature from the Roman, Greek, and Ancient Near Eastern worlds. It involved numerous long hours of scouring the Internet for the texts I wanted, copying them, formatting them correctly, compiling them, organizing them, and burning them onto CD-ROMs, complete with HTML-based menu systems. In some ways, this is good. For example, it's likely that when I die, there will be several treasure troves of one thing or another (books, for example, or possibly military paraphernalia). On the other hand, I have a tough time throwing things out, so it's also a possibility that cleaning out my digs when I die will lead my loved ones to curse my very memory.

Oh, and for the record, I was able to make a little bit of money by selling copies of the archive CD to my fellow history majors. I didn't charge much; essentially, it was just enough to cover my expenses with a little bit left over. A couple of TSTF commentators, Peter and the long since departed Jacob Copper, have received copies of it, and Father Time has seen it in action.

I keep a log of the fuel I use in the Flymobile. Every time I fuel up, I note the date, the odometer, the number of miles I've traveled since my last fuel-up, gallons fueled, cost of petrol per gallon, and total cost. I've kept this log for most of the last year, and I figure I could probably put it into a sweet matrix of some sort and track things like the change in fuel prices, mileage per gallon, and any number of personal driving habits and patterns.

I also keep a log of my shortwave listening. I log what the station is (a name if I can get it, a description of what I hear if I can't), the frequency, the time and date, and what my location was when I tuned it in. I don't generally record repeats, though I do from time to time if the frequency or timing has changed. So far I've recorded eighteen stations, only a couple of repeats, and only major stuff that I was actually interested in; however, I try to be pretty thorough when I tune in something interesting.

So we've got my love of archiving important documents, my voluntary recording of minute details, and my systematic pursuit of both practices. No wonder so people resent me... I'm part of the problem!

* * *

As usual, there are more stories to be posted and more things to be said, but I'm running out of time for the evening. Good fight, goodnight.