inkbluesky

michelle pfeiffer b&w

For some reason the photo and small write up that I did about M’s Pfeiffer previously has suddenly been getting a lot of hits. Maybe its because a few of her movies have been on cable for the last month or so. Anyway it sounded like a good excuse to post this one. I love black and white, it is unfortunate that it seems to go in and out of vogue.

I don’t have an always on connection and when I am on the net for personal things like updating this blog I have the equivalent of tricycle on the highway so I can’t really participate in things like this, Putting your computer to work to fight against malaria in Africa

While you are sending an email or surfing the web, your computer could be helping to tackle one of Africa’s major humanitarian challenges, malaria. Africa@home. It is recruiting volunteer computers in homes and offices to run a computer-intensive simulation program called MalariaControl.net, developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute (STI).

Malaria is responsible for about a million deaths every year in sub-Saharan Africa, and is the single biggest killer in children under five. The MalariaControl.net program is being used to simulate how malaria spreads through Africa. Running the simulations on thousands of volunteer computers will enable researchers to better understand and improve the impact of introducing new treatments.

The Day the Cow Sneezed, written and illustrated by James Flora, 1957

“I try not to overload my stories with moral lessons or messages but I did in [The Day the Cow Sneezed]. I wanted to show what could happen when you are careless in your work and do not attend to your duties as well as you should.” The story concerns a boy, Fletcher, who leaves his cow, Floss, standing too long in the cold water while stopping for a drink. The cow sneezes in the barn, sparking a chain of events that disrupts the entire town. The moral, Flora says, is that “a teeny-weeny error can grow into a whopping big mistake almost before you can say KA-CHOW!”

Visit this link with the kids. It is filled with crazy wonderful intricate illustrations that they’ll relate to immediately. They are from an old book so some of the colors are not as intense as they were fifty years ago, but are still very effective. Some publisher should try and reissue it.

Bush’s Middle-East Big Bang Theory In Ruins

That is what the American debate should be about, but those in charge of Republican campaigns this year have another idea. They have hit upon the brilliant strategy of pushing any serious discussion of the failure of American foreign policy past Election Day. For the next 3 1/2 months, they want the choice before the voters to be binary: staying the course and being “tough,” or breaking with President Bush’s policy and being “soft.” There are just two options on the ballot, they say: firmness or “cut and run.”

If I were a Republican strategist, I’d probably do the same thing. But Democrats (and, yes, the media) risk playing into Republican hands if they fail to force a discussion of the administration’s larger failures or let the debate focus narrowly on exactly what date we should set for getting out of Iraq.

The case for reducing our commitment to Iraq in the interest of other and larger foreign policy purposes — has anyone noticed the growing mess in Afghanistan? — is built on a compelling proposition: that the administration made a huge bet on Iraq and it lost. American voters can decide to keep the gamble going, to risk more lives and money, and hope that something turns up. Or they can decide that this gamble will never deliver the winnings that those who took it on our behalf promised.

By late November of this year, the United States will have been at war in Iraq for as long as we were involved in World War II. Under those circumstances, the burden of proof should not be on those who argue for changing what we’re doing. It should be on those who set a failed policy in motion and keep promising, despite the evidence, that it will somehow pay off if only we “stay the course.”

As much as I try to stay away from cliches, there is that dimension at work here of the insane guy that keeps banging his head against the wall and each time he hopes for a different result. We were lied into a quagmire that had nothing to do with 9-11 and now that the quagmire is sucking the life out of us. After three years there are those that think if we just hang in for reasons that are defined more by the loudness of their tone then the validity of their argument, that we’ll get some pot of gold that waits at the end of the rainbow. Way past time to throw away the crayons, end the fantasies and let some adults take charge.