Of all the various human behaviors that one can observe in the great spectrum of activity that our species has to offer, one of the most awe-inspiring is the ability of some to, when they see one group of people acting like idiots, respond with a hearty “Hey, I can be an even bigger idiot than them folks!”.

So if we’re going to use government funds for this, hell, let’s just track down Doc Brown and his Delorean so we can go back in time and keep those soldiers from dying over there in the first place. Or, failing that (since Doc’s a fictional character and all), maybe we can take some government money and use it to melt this minor token of France’s onetime affection down and use the metal to make bullets for use in Iraq.

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(On Screen): One of SDB‘s favorite past-times is to examine a left-wing, generally anti-war, argument and identify what he perceives to be a commission of one of the “informal logical fallacies” within the argument’s construction — Tu quoque, perhaps, or more usually a “strawman”, wherein one argues against a formulation of an opponent’s view that isn’t entirely accurate, in hopes that the terms can be shifted. So it’s interesting to look down to his “Updates” that follow the article, where he links to various people who have commented on this particular post. Grouping several left-wing comments together, SDB says this:

Update: Ted Barlow and Kieran Healy and Tom Bogg comment. (Bottom line: I’m a raving paranoid. The French are really our best friends; they’re actually better friends than the Brits.) Atrios, too. And Kevin Drum.

That snarky comment of his in the middle is intriguing. Following each of these links, I find that each of these bloggers does, in fact, think that SDB is, to put it mildly, a bit off his rocker in this post. (I tend to agree. I mean, he actually wonders here about the possibility of France launching a nuclear strike against the United States, for God’s sake.) But, not one of the linked bloggers says anything at all defending France’s status as an ally, or comes within a San Diego mile of suggesting, in even the most veiled terms, that France is a better ally than the British. Talk about a Strawman.

(By the way, I find it interesting that warbloggers of every stripe will engage in just about any kind of conspiracy-theory they can concoct in their attempts to explain France’s opposition to the upcoming war — France is secretly allied with Saddam! France has given Saddam the raw materials for his weapons! Chirac and Saddam are genetic twins! France may nuke us to keep their complicity in Iraq secret! — but if anyone on the left suggests that maybe, just maybe, the Bush Administration’s motivation for war in Iraq isn’t solely based on Goodness and Virtue and Striking A Blow For All That Is Good In The World, well, that’s just crazy talk!!!

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An almost-certain war, deficits spiraling to scary levels, millions of citizens without health insurance, homeland security concerns, rising unemployment (including yours truly), an economy that is teetering on the edge of plopping right back into recession….

….and yet, it seems that some of our Congressmen need something better with which to occupy their stress-addled brains.

Instead of “Freedom Fries” and “Liberty Toast”, I propose more accurate names: “Stupid-and-useless-measure-by-a-mental-midget Fries” and “Twits-with-entirely-too-much-responsibility-and-time-on-their-hands Toast”.

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Fort Drum, New York, is about seventy miles north of Syracuse. Nearly everything that happens there makes the local news, including each time a large number of men stationed there has shipped out for the Middle East. I even had to stop at a railroad crossing twice while living here while long trains carrying military equipment rolled by, no doubt heading northward for Fort Drum. Somehow, having a fairly large military base nearby makes the reality of impending war all the more real.

Yesterday, a Blackhawk helicopter — like the one picture above — carrying thirteen men out of Fort Drum crashed.

As I write this, the number of dead has not been released.

The military is a dangerous business, no matter how far away you are from the front lines. These were men who chose to serve their country, and that they died in a patch of Upstate New York woods as opposed to the sands of Iraq in no way changes this.

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I started planning my freelance copywriting business late last summer, and I finally decided to take the plunge in late August, writing my initial draft of a sales letter and ordering business cards, imprinted with my name and contact information. Within days of getting the cards in the mail, my wife was offered a promotion and transfer to Syracuse, which rendered a box of 250 business cards useless.

So, after living here for a little while, I finally decided to get going on my freelance copywriting business again. I rewrote my sales letter, crafted a brochure and reply cards for my informational packet, and began combing the Central New York Business Journal and the Central New York Book of Lists for contacts. I even sent out my first mailing — sixty letters, ten days ago. All well and good…

…except a few weeks ago I went ahead and replaced the now-useless business cards I had printed in Buffalo, this time with my Syracuse contact information.

Yesterday, my wife’s Area Director calls her at home.

(Do I need to finish this story?)

Anyway, it’s looking very probable that we’re moving back to the Buffalo area sometime in the next two weeks. So, at some point — I’ll announce it when it happens — Byzantium’s Shores will go on hiatus for a short while. (Last time it was about ten days or so.)

I don’t think I’ll miss Syracuse very much — it’s simply not as big a town as we want to inhabit, and my love of winter has been really tested here. I will miss the big shopping mall here, which is bigger than the biggest of Buffalo’s malls; and I grew to really love our suburb’s public library.The weird thing is that the apartment complex to which we are most likely moving is about five minutes from the one we left back in September…so six months and two moves later, we will have functionally moved the total distance of about five miles.

Life’s just weird.

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Remember that mind-blowing educational film Powers of Ten? Well, there’s a Flash version of it online. And it’s still mindblowing. Watching it always makes me want to say in my best Keanu voice, “Whoa….”

(Courtesy of Aaron, who’s entirely too smart to not have a blog of his own.)

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Each year, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday does a three-part series in which they profile the year’s Oscar-nominated film scores. Part One was yesterday. I haven’t heard all of the scores this year — in fact, I’ve heard only two (Road to Perdition and Catch Me If You Can) — but I’m rooting for Elmer Bernstein and his score for Far From Heaven. Bernstein is the current dean of film music composers. (I do think that James Newton Howard’s score to Signs should have been nominated, probably in place of Catch Me If You Can, which I don’t even think was John Williams’s best score of last year.)

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Shamelessly filched from MeFi is this very impressive gallery of big ships encountering bigger waves. It’s always worthwhile to remind ourselves of Mother Nature’s ability to give us puny humans a bit of a bitch-slap.

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ATTACK OF THE PRESIDENTS, part III. (in which I ratchet up the “weirdness”)

INTERIOR: The Great Throne Room, Rigel IX.

Enter the Emperor HSUB EROG and his Councilor, WEHTTAM SENOJ. EROG is holding a long, thin object in his hand and studying it.

EROG: I’m not sure I understand what this is.

SENOJ: It is a cigar, sir. I don’t think you should have accepted it.

EROG: Oh, rubbish. She’s just an intern. How much harm can she be?

SENOJ: Well, none, I suppose. You’re right.

EROG: So, tell me about the next United States President.

SENOJ: Ah, yes. President Andrew Shepherd was elected after President Marshall was forced to withdraw from the race. Shepherd was elected on a very slim majority, but after three years in office he had built up enough good will that a poll of his people gave him approval ratings of 63 percent.

EROG: By the Seven Gods, they still take polls on Earth?

SENOJ: Yes, sire. They have never succumbed to the need to expel all pollsters from the planet surface and into undersea caves.

EROG: Reckless Earthers!

SENOJ: Tell me about it.

EROG: Back to Shepherd.

SENOJ: Yes. He decided to focus his administration’s energies on a massive crime bill for which there was lukewarm support in the legislature. At the same time, a sweeping environmental bill also came up for consideration, which was lobbied by a very beautiful woman named Sydney.

EROG: Isn’t that one of their cities?

SENOJ: Yes, sire. Australian enclave. It was also a common person’s name.

EROG: Sydney. Hmmmm….so the President squared off against this lobbyist? I hope he killed her and left her head on the gates as a warning to future lobbyists.

SENOJ: Ummm…they don’t do that on Earth, sire.

EROG: Who do they behead?

SENOJ: No one. Well, not since the people in the French enclave did so on a regular basis. But the Earthers have come to view the people of the French enclave with some suspicion.

EROG: Oh, yes! They’re the ones who built that extensive line of fortresses but pointed them all the same direction, yes? So the invading force from…Germany, I think…could simply go around?

SENOJ: Yes, precisely. That, and their abnormally high level of cheese consumption, which some conspiracy-minded Earthers think is behind their refusal to go along with certain political actions.

EROG: No, no – let’s not talk about that. It gives me a headache.

SENOJ: So that’s why you’ve been ignoring all of the reports that the commander of our Earth-based monitors has been filing on a daily basis?

EROG: Who can read all that? What we need are reliable summaries.

SENOJ: We tried that, Sire, but I’m afraid his head exploded.

EROG: Strange…but back to President Shepherd. How did he deal with this impudent lobbyist?

SENOJ: He invited her to be his companion at a grand celebration – for the President of the French enclave, I might mention – and then, in a series of encounters, fell in love with her.

EROG: (slapping forehead) Oh, no….

SENOJ: Yes. His polling numbers began falling almost immediately, and his likely rival for the upcoming election began scoring blows in a series of personal attacks.

EROG: I suppose Shepherd didn’t have this man executed, either?

SENOJ: Earthers tend to be selective in their executions. Well, except for the Texas enclave.

EROG: You said that last time.

SENOJ: Oh. In any event, Shepherd appeared to flounder. His legislative agenda nearly collapsed, and he offered no response to the character attacks. Finally he was convinced to salvage his crime bill by scuttling his lover’s environmental legislation.

EROG: (clapping his tentacles) Yes! Now there’s a President!

SENOJ: Not so fast. After a brief but nasty argument with the woman – in which she trounced him, basically – he spent the night in his office. We have video surveillance of the whole thing via one of our probes that has never been detected. I’ve distilled the basics down to the material on this vid-disk, along with some appropriate musical accompaniment for the sad parts.

(He hands EROG a disk.)

EROG: I’ll watch it later, I suppose. So what happened?

SENOJ: Shepherd interrupted a standard briefing of the planetary news organizations the next day to deliver a rather caustic speech which invigorated the President’s political base and terrified his opposition. His newly-crafted legislative agenda passed the legislative body, and his polling numbers reached near unanimity as he headed for re-election.

EROG: And–?

SENOJ: Strangely, Shepherd decided not to run again at the last moment.

EROG: (slaps forehead again) What is it with these Earthers? Don’t they know that power is to be held onto until one’s dying gasp? Why would he do such a thing?

SENOJ: Publicly, he said that it was because he wanted to marry the lobbyist and form a life outside of the political world. Privately, he was quoted as saying, “Hey, I got this great looking redhead. Who needs to be President?”

EROG: He quit for a woman.

SENOJ: Yes.

EROG: He quit for a woman?!

SENOJ: Well, your father quit for a woman.

EROG: Shut up.

SENOJ: Come to think of it, your father gave up power voluntarily—

EROG: Quiet!

SENOJ: And now he lives on a farm—

EROG: I can’t hear you! LA-LA-LA-LA

SENOJ: Oh, well….

EROG: So what happened after Shepherd? Was his opponent elected?

SENOJ: No, actually. It was another close election, but the new President was the former Governor of the New Hampshire enclave. Strangely, he bore a striking resemblance to President Shepard’s Chief-of-Staff.

EROG: That is odd.

SENOJ: And polls taken after the election revealed that the American citizenry simply didn’t want as President someone who looked suspiciously like Roy Neary.

EROG: Neary? Oh. Well, I can hear more about the next President tomorrow.

SENOJ: Yes, sire.

EROG: Oh, by the way, whatever did become of Roy Neary? Did he like the tour of the Universe we gave him?

SENOJ: He gave it high marks, sire, although he’s been requesting to be taken back to Earth.

EROG: The answer’s no.

SENOJ: Understood, sire.

EROG: Remember what happened last time we tried sending someone back after we took him away….

SENOJ: I told you that he was a bad choice for abduction, sire. Just a few months ago he dangled his child from a balcony….

EROG: You mean, Earth babies don’t bounce the way Rigellian ones do?

To Be Continued….

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Well, no sooner did I comment on the basketball fiasco at St. Bonaventure University than the inevitable rolling of the heads began, starting with the resignation of SBU’s president and the placement of the athletic director and men’s head coach on “administrative leave” (which we all know is a bureaucratic euphemism for, “Get your resumes updated, fellas, ’cause you’re done”).

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