So that's that.

Oliver cat passed away this morning, apparently just before I woke up. I notified the family, and then swung a pick to dig a hole in the cold winter soil the back yard. I had actually thought that he was going to pull through (as he had before), but one never knows. Hell, I knew that I was going to outlive him when we got him. (That's one reason why I didn't want to get him.)
That damned fat, grouchy cat.
He brought me some pleasure —and displeasure— at unexpected times.

November, 2017, under the lemon tree in the sunroom. One of those "unexpected pleasures."

Sometimes, it's about something else.

I wrote this last weekend, on December 31st:
_______________________________________-

“Burglar Bob,” the semi-self-healing full-sized plastic shooting dummy which I had used for Shooting Incident Reconstruction back in grad school, was in the way again. My teenaged daughter Allie and her boyfriend had set him up on the porch during Halloween, and his clothed leg was sticking out into the main lane of travel in my cluttered garage while we put up holiday decorations. My wife, aggravated, yelled at Allie to come fix this mess, and stow ol’ Bob away properly. The joints on Bob’s limbs locked at 22.5 degree increments, and his pants had to be removed to adjust the wingnuts on the stupid system, and Allie wasn’t getting it, right away.

Allie had been called away from trying to get Oliver the family cat to drink something, and was realizing that tomorrow she would be taking the 9 year-old cat with kidney problems to the vet, perhaps (probably?) for his last ride. She fumbled with the scarred plastic mannequin fruitlessly for a few seconds before tears became sobs over this task which she felt helpless to effect.

I realized that I hadn’t done any shooting at “Burglar Bob” in years. Years of leaving this... thing... in our way. Years of not doing more of the kind of training that I had planned to conduct. Years of annoying my sweet wife.

I ripped “Bob” from his 2x4 mount, pushing past my crying daughter and startled wife. Though man-sized, the dummy was much lighter than I remembered, dressed in a cheap polo shirt, an old pair of Dockers, a belt, and tennis shoes. I honestly don’t recall if I threw him to the frozen ground next to the driveway, or just fell atop him, but I found in my hand a very large screwdriver which we use as a garage door track lock. I began to use it on the plastic dummy as an implement of rage. The detached part of my mind noted that the plastic had none of its self-healing properties at 20 degrees Fahrenheit, as the half-inch flat-head bit gored hole after hole into the torso of the dummy.

I left the screwdriver in “Bob’s” chest, and beat the ugly patched plastic head with my right fist, knocking it off the torso to roll somewhat comically across the lawn. I ripped the arms off of him, surprised a bit at how easily the brittle cold plastic threaded bolts popped, with a touch of rage. I beat “Bob’s” body with his own limbs, breaking them down segment by segment. I again took up the screwdriver and began stabbing again and again, until I became aware of the scrapes on my knees and bruises and cuts on my knuckles, and my deep breathing.

I stood up, brushed myself off, and began picking up the remnants of my old training dummy, and stuffing them into the garbage can. I assured my wife that “Burglar Bob” wouldn’t be in the way anymore. I thought it would be a little funny, but my daughter was still crying.

That damned cat. I didn’t want him in the first place. Now look at me. What a mess. I’m going to find some ibuprofen.

Sex crimes

People ask me how I like my new job as an investigator. I tell them that the hours are nice, but I had no idea how much of my life would be spent sitting at a desk, going through pictures of phalli.

We live in a very, very different world than we did, 30 years ago.
When I was in my teens, I did not have a device in my possession which could pull up websites capable of meeting people around the globe, chatting with them anonymously in real time, and letting us take pictures and video of our genitals to send to each other. So there were not 13 year old girls getting extorted by foreign creeps who had talked them out of their clothes as well as their identities and social media accounts. There were not men posing as boys, meeting girls online. There were not men posing as fathers of pre-teen girls, soliciting sex from other women with their alleged daughters online. There were not men meeting up online with confused girls who had [literally] infantile fantasies.

We live in a very, very similar world to what we've had forever.
We have teachers having sex with students. We have brothers molesting their sisters, and making them cover it up. We have juvenile rape. We have adult drunken rape. We have buyer's remorse "rapes," in which the victim decides later to call the sex rape. We have enticing of minors. We have family members groping other family members in their sleep. We have teen boys stealing women's underwear.

Honestly? I'm thankful for the residential burglary and the identity theft cases that I've got to break of the monotony.

One of the common themes that I've seen has been repression of sex by the victim's family. In the last year, I've caught one and a half (just helped on one) cases involving a young woman from a sexually repressive family, declaring that she was raped when her family found out that she was having sex. I had a case in which the child's parents had chided the victim as a toddler for being immodest because she took her shirt off around the house, which seems to have contributed to the child not making an outcry for years of her brother molesting her. I've had a retraction of a victim's outcry, when her grandmother told her that she was going to ruin the family.

I'd frankly like to get back to putting other kinds of bad guys and gals in jail.
Please.

Gotcha.

It was 01:30, and I was doing some serious neighborhood patrol. We had recently been hit with a series of overnight car burglaries in our neighborhoods, and I was damned if I was going to let it happen again, even though I had case reports stacking up on my desk. I was slowly driving up and down the neighborhood streets, shining lights into parked cars. Either I was going to find some car burglars, or I was going to scare them into stopping their activities. Or I was going to waste my time. It was so far looking like the last possibility was the most likely.

As I slowly approached a car parked on a corner of a residential street, I saw that it was occupied, and that the person in the driver's seat was in his late teens or early 20s, and was facing lighted screen in his lap. He cut his eyes at me as I passed. He looked scared. I turned around and parked behind him. I got out and approached, making sure that my body camera and car camera and body mic were all turned on. At the driver's door, I opened with, "Whatcha doin'?" This isn't actually part of the 7 Step Violator Contact, but this wasn't actually a traffic stop, and I had no evidence that the young man sitting there texting was actually a violator of any kind. He was actually free to leave, without answering my question. This was what we call a Consensual Contact. That he chose to roll the window down and speak to me without a stop command was his own decision.

"I'm, uh, waiting for a friend," he answered quickly.

"Oh, okay. A friend. Who is your friend?"

"Nadine."

"Nadine who?"

"Nadine, uh, um, Perez."

"Oh, a new friend! How old is Nadine, sir?" I inquired.

"A-about 16," he answered. You notice that hesitation? That means that she's 15.

"And where did you meet her?" I asked him.

"On the PlayStation Chat Board," he answered, and I believed him.

"And you were just now texting her," I said. He nodded. "May I see your cell phone?" I asked. He handed it over to me. I looked at his text conversation:

Her: "So, are you coming over, or not? I'm not staying up all night."
Him: "I'm leaving the house now, headed down Hwy 830 from [location 35 miles away]."
Her: "Where are you...??"
Him: "I'm coming around the loop toward you."
Him: "I'm now on Farm Road 1234, headed toward Smalltown."
Her: "OK."
Him: "I'm outside your house, parked on the street next door."
Her: "OK. I'm coming out in a sec."
Him: "Wait. Someone is coming down the street, really slowly."
Him: "I think that it may be a cop. If it's a cop, I am soooo busted."
Him: "OMG, it IS a cop. He's about to pass me. Oh God, he passed me and looked right at me!"
Him: "He's turning around!"

I asked him, "So? Let's go meet Nadine's parents!"

He got out, and we walked up to the door of the house. I knocked loudly on the front door, and found that it was standing ajar. A minute later the lady of the house answered. I introduced myself, and asked her if her daughter Nadine was permitted to have visitors at 1:30AM. She answered no. I asked that she go fetch her daughter as well. She returned with her husband, but no Nadine. Nadine was missing from her bed.

We found Nadine hiding between two cars in the driveway. She was in fact 15 years old. My young Lothario was almost 18. I demanded of him, "So you chose to take it upon yourself, to tempt this girl whom you have never met, into leaving the house and protection of her parents, after they were asleep? Just WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, MISTER?!!?" I glanced at Nadine's father, standing  shirtless, wearing just a pair of pajama bottoms. For a middle-aged man, this guy was in great shape. His chest rose and fell a little bit too rapidly for the boy's safety. Big puffs of steam entered the cold night air from the man's lips. Nadine's papa was pissed off.

"I'm nobody," answered the boy. "Nobody. I don't know why I'm even here. If you will permit me, sir, I will go, and never come back..." He was beginning to babble. I filled out a Criminal Trespass Warning on my clipboard, and witnessed Nadine's parents' signatures on it. I had the boy sign receipt of it, and gave him and the parents each their copies of the document which ordered my young Lothario to leave the property and to never return, under penalty of being arrested should he return again.

My junior officer had by this time arrived, and asked if I wanted to do anything else with him. "Write him for violation of Restriction G on his driver license," I answered. The boy wasn't yet 18, and was driving after midnight for a social visit. The boy signed it gladly, declaring that he would pay the citation the first thing in the morning.

I think that it's important for parents to know who there children are dating.

When it hits you.

Usually, I can distance.

"Hey, it sucks to be them. These things happen."

And they do. Happen, I mean. Tornados are pretty low on the list of things that kill us, nationwide.

But I watched this video, and found myself putting myself into the place of the parents looking for their missing child at the school, or of the teachers having to round up kids for a count.

And suddenly I'm in tears. And when I try to discuss the impact with my wife, she refuses to discuss the issue with me. So here you are, Internet: my raw and exposed nerve.

I ask you to watch the very short bit of raw video above, so that you will not do as I was doing last night and this morning, and distance with a flippant dismissal.

Those people are you and me. Their loved ones are yours.

They found her.
From The Oklahoman. Retrieved 21 May 2013.  

So, I'm texting some money. It's all I know to do. They are up there. I am down here.
Maybe you could text some, too. *


_____________________________
*"This has been a major disaster, and the Red Cross will be there for the people in this state and this community. People who wish to make a donation can support American Red Cross Disaster Relief, which helps provide food, shelter and emotional support to those affected by disasters like the recent tornadoes in Oklahoma and Texas as well as disasters big and small throughout the United States by visiting redcross.org, dialing 1-800-REDCROSS or texting REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation."

Sorry, guys.

Today I had 127 spambot posts that I had to delete. Strangely, 67 of them focused on a haiku post #7 that I had made. I just now took that post down, but still, there's 60 other spambot posts that I didn't want to wade through in my email. That's a step up fromt he thousand or so that I've gotten since taking down the "I am not a spambot" word verification test.

This feels too much like work. I'm putting the Turing test / Captcha back up. Sorry.

NEVER read the comments.

Matt Inman at The Oatmeal writes about the troublesome nature of comments for a content-provider.

While I can't really comment much on how all these comments would affect my production, I can tell you that they really affect my pleasure in consuming online content. Inman nailed it here:

Screen capture used without permission. Taken from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things  on 11/14/2012.

You know why newspapers and YouTube and other content hosting sites enable contents? Because it increases hits. MaryBeth471 writes about an Enya video: "It's so peaceful." Then Sk8terH8R comes on after her and responds to her comment: "Enya sux like a Dyson with a collapsed star inside! Slayer 4evR!!1!"  Then when ol' MaryBeth checks in again, she gets a little note that she has a response to her comment. She checks back in, and discovers to her dismay that her favorite soporific Irish Ambian Popstar has been maligned, and by someone who loves devil music, no less! This issue MUST be rectified! And she defends Enya. And comes back later to see if Sk8terH8R responded. And, because she did, our troll will come back. This is a big source of hits on YouTube and your favorite online news sites. Remember-- they don't care if it's a chimpanzee checking in daily; all they care about is making that hit meter roll over again and again.

This does nothing for your pure enjoyment of the thing. It will NOT show up your online opponent. He's a troll, delighted to get a rise out of anyone.

The most likely outcome for you is distress. Say NO to irritainment.

Responsibility: A Hard Week At The G Household For Critters.

I got home this morning, and checked on the chickens. Hm. Their water pan was bone dry. NOT good, when the temps get up to over 100. I had told my younger daughter yesterday to feed and water the chickens. There was some feed scattered on the floor of the chicken yard, that I certainly hadn't put there. I pour their lay pellets into the heavy flexible bowl made of recycled tire, so that I can move them, when I move the portable pen. Two chickens were in the small yard. The other two were in the hen house. I pulled the water pan and the feed bowl out, and moved the portable pen. Immediately, I saw the corpses of two dead hens left behind. Lulu, the big red, and Yolky, the Araucana, had succumbed to the heat and lack of water. They were our two biggest and oldest chickens. The other two hens ran out of the pen, but jumped right back in again when I put water in the pan. I should have checked on them before I went to work, but I had told the 10 year-old to check on them.

I went to the recently re-filled unused cat grave, and scooped it back out again. I put the chickens into it, and I covered them with the dirt, and tamped it down. The shallow grave gave with the compression of the bodies. I was wistful about the wasted protein, but without knowing when the chickens died, it would be a questionable practice to harvest the meat, even without the issue of them being named critters.

I went back to the chicken coop, giving up a muttered prayer that the pan would be empty. It had some rust all over the bottom of it, and it was faintly possible that there was a rusted-out leak that had emptied the pan last night. That would excuse the lack of water. Maybe the pan had been filled. I found it quite full, with two younger chickens still greedily filling their beaks and tipping their heads back. No. The pan still held.

I thought about fibbing to the girls. It's a hard thing, discovering that your negligence caused a death. I remember crying as a boy when I'd killed a goldfish that way.

Oh yeah-- goldfish. Alice, our 7 year-old goldfish, passed away this week. But she was pretty old.
The cat is still on the mend. Not where he needs to be. I probably could have done more to keep him healthy. I need to be more often checking his litter box to see that he isn't going to up and die from kidney problems. Stupid cat.

I went in the house, woke up the girls, and told them. It turns out that my wife had told the near-14-year-old to feed and water the chickens, too. Both girls said that they had fed the chickens, but forget to check the water. The hose doesn't quite stretch, so it's a chore to fill the pan, where the chicken coop is now. They both gathered the truth: they had each neglected the poultry, causing us to lose our two best layers.

This time, the younger daughter took it better. The elder daughter cried a bit. I almost regret telling them. But responsibility isn't just a word. It's a reality that means that if you don't do the job, it doesn't get done. There are consequences for failing in your responsibilities. In this case, neither are being punished, except with the knowledge of their failure to complete their duties. I'm disappointed, but not distraught. This is the opportunity for an incredibly valuable lesson in both their lives. I had just last night congratulated the elder daughter on her commendation from the school district for her scores on the state math exam. But I should be more proud of her if she uses this experience to better herself.

Abolish the TSA.

At the very least, please try to see to the abolition of the current form of the Travel Safety Administration.

I just got an "A" in Homeland Security in my graduate studies this past semester. It is impossible to do this and still believe that the Travel Safety Administration are worthwhile and competant. They are an invasive, ineffective drain on our national resources that take away liberties, destroy an industry, and create new classes of criminals. They are worse than useless.

Best to take things a day at a time.

One of the most important things about dealing with a loved one who is hurt is that you cannot take a short period of "look how good he's doing!" and project that out to "He'll be just fine by  X time." When you do that, your heart gets set on X as the deadline by which good things will happen. If it hasn't occured by X, your  hopes get dashed.

It's just an arbitrary time, people.

There are undoubtedly other applications for this outlook, but right now, we're reassessing how long it will take my partner to get better. And it's going to take a little longer than we let ourselves dare to possibly dream.

More evidence that I'm a grown-up, now.

Someone shared with me the link to a commercial put together by the folks at "Vooray," a youth clothing line. They made a pretty neat video by taking a Utah swimming hole, a pickup with a pulley attached to the receiver hitch, a bunch of rope and a four-wheeler, and accelerating some hard-scrubbed-but-clearly-fun-loving Utah youths down a greased hill-side Slip-'N'-Slide until they hit a ramp.

As much fun as the video looks, the whole time that I'm watching it, I'm thinking "those kids need sunblock! Were there any medically-trained responders on scene? That girl looks a little young to be out in that bikini with boys about."

I should just buy myself a walker and some Geritol, next time I'm at that pharmacy, I tell you.




_____________________
EDIT: The video is by the tremendously talented rising star video producer/photographer/videographer Devin Graham, who has his own blog.

What we get paid the big bucks for.

An Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer named David Bisard killed Eric Wells on August 6th, and critically wounded two others, when he drove his police car into the motorcycles that they were riding. Bisard was running lights and siren to a call for service. (To serve a felony warrant? Strange.)

Bisard's blood alcohol level was later found to be 0.19%.

The chief is making lots of appropriate noises. The Mayor is, too, with a possible rush to judgement about Bisard's co-workers, saying that "Someone knew of the human weakness that was present and failed to act or to inform others." Probably. But not necessarily.

The IMPD says that they just drew Bisard's blood as a normal procedure, and didn't get the criminal investigation on Bisard started until after they got his BAC results back on August 10th, because they saw no evidence of his being intoxicated. If that's the case, then Bisard really is a long-time drunk. At that level of intoxication (more than double the legal limit), I would be doing well to simply stand up and walk. Everyone within 50 feet of me would know that something was seriously wrong with me, were I at that level of intoxication.

But I've missed the occasional drunk before. Masking agents, showers, distractions, inability to smell, and presupposition of innocence have all caused me to believe that a person was sober when later evidence indicated that the person was not. (In at least one case, the evidence was the statement by the drunk.)

Good on the IMPD for proceeding with a criminal case against their officer. Want to see the seven charges they put together against their own officer? See them here. In that PDF is also the Probable Cause Affidavit at the end. I note that the affiant is Sgt. Douglas Heustis of the IMPD. They're throwing the book at their own.

But I'm irritated by the Fraternal Order of Police President Bill Owensby's comments. See, back in April, Bisard got in a shootout with a bank robber, and won the fight. Bisard was commended for the good shoot, and received a medal. But here's what Owensby claims that

"The officer's a victim in this to some extent and it's, there's just no, there's nothing good that you can say about this. The whole thing is just a tragedy."

[Emphasis mine.]
He says,

"Not only is he faced with having to have taken a human life, but he heard the bullets whizzing by his head at the same time," Owensby said. He said, "If all this pans out to be true, I don't know if that played a role in this. I don't know how it couldn't have."

Now, to give the F.O.P. their due, they are distancing from Bisard, saying that the accident is inexcusable (after having just made an excuse), and only ask for a DNA test of the blood to show that it came from Bisard.

But friends, that's what we get paid the big bucks for. If we can't handle a shootout with the bad guys, in which we come out of it uninjured but for the weight of the medal on our chest, then we shouldn't get into this profession. When you win a fight, you should not dwell on being the star of your own victimology movie. Move on, bolstered by the knowledge that when the balloon goes up, you can do what needs doing. (Unless you're drunk. Then go do nothing, beyond learning how to deal with life unaided by ethanol.)

Let's have no more talk about David Bisard being a "victim." He killed one, injured two, and endangered countless others. He could have pulled his car over at any time and stopped. He's not the victim. He's a criminal. May his trial be just, and productive.

A strange phenomenon

Look, I understand about depression. I go there, sometimes. I've been there for longer periods than I'd care to admit. Sometimes it's a state of humanity.

What I don't fully understand is cutting.

I run across cutters a fair bit in my job. I don't want to categorize or anything (middleclasswhitekids), but I do see some consistencies.

Cutters usually don't go very deep. Most break the skin to bleed, but don't really do any nerve and/or ligament damage. Often it's not even triple-thickness cuts. I've seen quite a few where there was a long series of parallel cuts down the arm or leg, which cuts barely bled. Occasionally you'll see deeper, but usually not.

Question: Does this really count as harming yourself? As a desire to do further, more significant harm to yourself?*

People give themselves homemade tats, and most people don't blink an eye. I know of a frat that engages in branding, and people don't much notice. Piercings, gaugings, sub-dermal inserts-- all of these are a form of self-mutilation. But say that a person is a cutter, and people freak, and sometimes even declare that the person is an active danger to himself, who must be taken into immediate medical and psychiatric care, whether or not the patient wants it.

As a libertarian, I say, let 'em go, unless someone else's life is threatened.

As a cop, I have a duty to protect them, if they're an active danger, even if only to themselves. So I try to evaluate if this person seems to be such a danger. Unfortunately, my evaluation is only given a grain of salt, so I have to call in the Ambulance Drivers, who sometimes take a different vies of things than I do.

There are more sanitary ways of self-destruction, people.

________________________
*2nd half of the question was edited later after original post.

To those of you have had just plain had it:

I've always said that I support your right to check out by yourself. That's fine. But please realize that, if you're planning to make an event with your final act, you might very well be sending support to the very cause that you're railing against.

Probably, Mr. Stack has made a fair run at casting every person who loudly rants against our federal tax system as a crazy person.

There are other ways to lodge your protests, people. If your plan involves causing an explosion that may kill someone you don't know, can't see, and never met, then you, sir, are the Bad Guy.

Giving a little something.

Look, I'm a poor man. And, I'm a pragmatist. I've got mine, you know?

But I'm sitting here in my climate-controlled sun room, drinking decent coffee out of a clean glass, typing away on my magic elf box. My stomach is full, and I'm about to register for Spring 2010 grad school.

I may be a "poor man," but I ain't really hurtin'.

And, if you're reading this, neither are you. You're reading this on your computer or your super phone or your netbook or your cybertronic feed or whatever. You're probably seated comfortably. You probably aren't too worked up about where you're going to get your next sip of clean water.

I just sent $10 to the Haiti earthquake relief effort, and it was about as easy as I could imagine. Open your cell phone. Text ""HAITI", and send this message to phone number 90999. Press "Send." This goes to the Red Cross.

The text is free (as in, you'll not be billed for making a text). Your phone bill will be charged $10. You'll get a (free) text message asking you to text "Yes" to confirm that you really want to. You reply "yes." Then you get a text confirming that they got it, and offering you the chance to cancel.

This is about as easy as it gets.

I'm about to do it again.

Here's an interesting video of before and after satellite pics of Port-au-Prince. It appears that, if we get some dozers and earth moving equipment in quick, and clear the roads, real relief could happen quite suddenly.

____________________
EDIT:
Here are some other organizations you can donate through.

EDIT:
There are some hoaxes out there, I understand. This is NOT A HOAX. I researched it thoroughly before I did it, and before I posted this. I wouldn't steer you wrong, friends.

Ultimate freedom.

A friend of mine took his life this week.

He was in his mid-thirties. No one really realized that he was in that place.

Very few people that I've talked to about this seem to share my belief that it was his life to take, if he so chose.

Look, I think suicide is selfish, sure. But we all do selfish things every day, don't we? We order pizza instead of opening a can of generic beans and a can of corn. We pay extra for a car with air conditioning. We get higher thread count sheets because, dammit, it feels good. My obsession with better beverages (coffee, beer, and scotch) is almost legendary. We are selfish beings. That's not inhuman. In fact, it's the very essence of living a human life. And part of one's life is one's death.

We all have a debt to pay. No one escapes. How and when you pay it is ultimately your decision.

If I can't die peaceably in my bed at a very advanced age with a recently-finished book at my bedside, then I hope to die falling toward my vanquished foe. But I will ultimately make decisions about the manner and the timing of my death.

Don't be too quick to judge those who gave it all up. It was theirs first. As long as they don't endanger others with their actions, and don't shirk real responsibilities, then I'm okay with it, I guess, on a personal level.

Professionally, of course, I will do my duty to attempt to stop suicide when I can. That's the job.

My friend was single and had no kids. We remember his life this week. I'm sorry I didn't know that he was in such need. I would certainly have tried to help him.

But I'll respect his decision. I won't grieve that. I'll grieve that he got in the well that he felt he couldn't climb out of.

Double-edged sword.

I'm a believer in teens having cell phones. My daughters, when they get into their teens, will have 'em zip-tied to their wrists. New ones can dial only approved numbers. You can look up who they're calling, for how long, and when. You can look up their chats. Some, you can even get GPS-enabled.

But beware-- don't get your kiddo a new sexy cell phone, and think that you can cut off his or her Internet access by pulling the laptop from their room. I'm finding more and more underage kids hooking up with older kids/pervert adults, using their web browsers on their phones. These are NOT iPhones, people. This is 1999 technology.

You want to trust your kid? Awesome. Me too. But understand-- that useful tool that is the Internet browser on her useful tool that is her cell phone is a very, very sharp double-edged sword, that can leave quite a mark, if misused.

Just like the gun in my pocket right now-- it's nothing but a tool. But we have to respect tools, and we don't let kids play with them.

I just fired off a late Christmas card

...to Hannah Garman. Read about her here. (Scroll down a little.)

You certainly don't have to do this, but it's a small thing to do for a sick kid.

Ruh Roh, Hraggy!

INDIA:
Overpopulated? Check.
Mass poverty? Check.
Heterogeneous cultures that polarize? Check.
Enormous political upheaval? Check.
Nukes? Check.
Cold-to-occasional-shooting-war with neighbor? Check.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again about the Subcontinent: "Tick. Tick. Tick. . . "


They've got the Taj Mahal Hotel and hostages, and have performed a widespread attack.

Expect heavy reprisals and crackdowns by the Indian government, which should cause a backlash by the people, which is exactly what their domestic terrorists want.

Interesting point on mental health.

I was listening to a psychologist who studies the history of his field talk the other day. He raised an interesting point: Until recently, the measure of mental health hasn't been whether or not a subject is happy. (Indeed, he who is happy all the time is generally thought of as an idiot.) It was whether a person could do work. That is to say, whether that person could contribute meaningfully to the world. This standard was especially set in stone during World War II, he said, when they had to vet soldiers for the draft.

I remember reading an old Cooper's Commentaries column in which he mentioned how taken aback his wife was, upon seeing a television talk show in which a panel of guests spoke on their problem: they were not happy. Both Jeff and Janelle had been amused at this generation that believed that the absence of constant happiness constituted a crisis.

Friends, I understand about clinical depression; that's a whole 'nother ball game, which is to be taken seriously and treated like the potentially fatal illness that it is. But some folks seem to be confusing diaper rash for ebola.