Pinch's Mess

NY times reporter goes to Afghanistan "with a question: Why, with all our technology, were we killing so many civilians in air strikes?"

That speaks to so much that is wrong in the media class. The stresses and risks and sacrifices of our soldiers are evident in the article along with the Times attitude and it is must reading.

via IntelDump

Dragon's Blood

Imperiled by goats. Yesterday, and earlier, I linked to an article on Damascus swords and this NY times article from 1981 asserted that an answer had been found then.

"It was in the quenching many believed it acquired magical properties. According to Dr. Helmut Nickel, curator of the Arms and Armor Division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, legend had it that the best blades were quenched in ''dragon blood.'' In a recent letter to the museum a Pakistani told of a sword held in his family for many generations, quenched by its Afghan makers in donkey urine. Some medieval smiths recommended the urine of redheaded boys or that from a ''three-year-old goat fed only ferns for three days.'"

Well they go on to suggest quenching the material in the blood of a human as well...and on into the science.

But the goats seem to have become a theme...

Cockroaches

are always mentioned when it comes to surviving radiation. I have read that there is a type of wasp that beats the roach. It seems rotifers take the cake.

These bacteria are pretty tough. NYtimes.

Water Bears are pretty hardy.

Of course it turns out that radiation is actually good for you.

Adam

Has always been an intensely rich resource in obscure musical matters as well as more popular ones and between upstate NY boy and downstate NY boy (the intensely, richly musical Jay) I have been quite fortunate and count my blessings.

Adam showed me this Roy Harper song quite some time ago and I will link to Adam but also reprint it in Adam's entirety because I believe it is very important

"I'm sick to the teeth of the news on the screen of hisbullah scum and jihad the obscene whose men plant the bombs and then live feeling free to watch women and children be killed on T.V. which satan delivers a child a death curse in the name of a worn out collection of verse I've not read the book so I cannot recite but I'd bet Salman Rushdie is just about right underneath The Black Cloud Of Islam What kind of publicity needs so much blood that's not for some sad diabolical god selling himself as a two-bit Macbeth as the expert in sentencing cousins to death and what kind of god can this be anyway that you gotta prostrate to him five times a day with hate in your heart and a gun in your hand is force the only thing to understand underneath the black cloud of islam? and the butchers who've got all this blood on their hands are the ones who need god to be stood where he stands blessing this kidnapping, murder and war with books written hundreds of ages before and women in veils walking paces behind doesn't sit easy in my kind of mind it speaks of oppression and no other choice that rigid compliance with the loudest voice underneath the black cloud of islam You can put a lead bullet clean through this guitar 'cos I'm not overjoyed with the story so far sharing a world with the nutters of god is as good as being six feet under the sod words that are written are all here to stay and these are the latest there are anyway and I am the prophet so don't believe me I'm the same as the old ones except that I'm free to give you a piece of my mind which is this you're the worst of jehovas blind witlessnesses with your feet in the door of the deepest abyss which is underneath, which is underneath, which is underneath the black cloud of Islam"

FWIW: What I could find from the sites...I never cleaned up the "Messes"