Was just surfing, and came across mention of China’s government-sanctioned Linux distro, Red Flag Linux. It has the cutest logo ever… but I wonder how they reconcile the freedom and openness signified by Tux, the Linux Penguin, with the oppressive communist regime of the PRC?
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It’s a bloggy kind of day, I guess.
Prince Harry of Jolly Old England graduated from military academy today. He may be sent to the front lines, he may be kidnapped and held ransom, who really knows? With a life so scripted that his girlfriend, arriving from Africa, is scheduled to be cross with him about his going to a strip club (between 3:45 and 3:55 British Summer Time, after a formal tea, with five minutes scheduled for rebuttal), I wonder if he really will have a chance to actually die for his country.
What really got me wondering was the name on Prince Harry’s helment. It says Wales, I’m pretty sure. That makes sense, because Dear Old Dad is the Prince of Wales, but then I was wondering… is that their real last name? Wales? I thought it was Windsor.
But I was wrong. British royalty don’t have last names at all. They are members of the House of Windsor, but Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses have no official last names. Only distant relatives outside the line of succession have to worry about last names, and then, they can choose whatever fits them best, with Mountbatten-Windsor being the current fave. Prince Edward’s wife goes by the name Sophie Wessex, because Prince ‘Ed’ is the Earl of Wessex. Which is odd, because I thought that Wessex was a fictional place used as a setting by Thomas Hardy for his “Wessex” books, such as “Tess of the D’Ubervilles”.
I just don’t get why they chose Wales. What’s his official first name – “Harry, Prince of”? But he’s not the Prince of Wales… that’s his dad.
Ah, this biography clears it up. His official last name IS Mountbatten-Windsor. His official TITLE is Prince Henry of Wales (as opposed to Charles, Prince of Wales). I still don’t know why they don’t call him Mountbatten-Windsor in military academy.
Maybe because “Wales” is easier to shout?
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When your boss sends around an email asking about interest in a meeting later on –
Not one response from anyone?? Does that mean you aren’t interested in
learning how to process your samples? Come on. Someone give me something.
– probably it’s not a good idea to follow up with a sarcastic response –
I’m sorry. It has taken time for me to break family ties and donate the legendary Holloway millions to charities. From now on, I will devote my entire life to Samples. But when I throw myself into the watery maelstrom that will consume my life from this moment on, I want it to be with a life free of connections to an older, dead, Sample-less self.
– when your review is tomorrow.
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Seymour Hersh’s article in the New Yorker about the administration’s secret preparations to embroil us in a new war in Iran that nobody – not even the military – wants, makes some disturbing reading. He was on NPR’s “All Things Considered” last night, and NPR’s “Fresh Air” today, and what he says is interesting not so much about our plans to expand our war, which everyone expects, but how the military is doing its level best to raise public opinion against it.
He contends the Bush administration wants to leave a legacy of democracy in the Middle East to secure his place in history, and will not back down. Hersh today said it is likely the new Iraqi Shiite Prime Minister, should he be confirmed, will ask the coalition forces to leave Iraq. How can we stay when we’re asked to leave? Bush won’t allow that to happen.
Iran (says Hersh) is 80% pro-American. If we bomb them, will they continue to support us?
And yet the politicians – even the Democrats – largely believe, even still, that any lack of support for the war will be seen as a lack of patriotism, or cowardice. Get off the swingset, pols… do something for the people. Bring us back to the days when if we went to war, it was because we were asked, and needed.
In Spider Robinson’s introduction to his collection of essays, “The Crazy Years”, he wrote of reading an essay by Robert Heinlein collected in “Expanded Universe”, where he predicted the US would never start a ‘preventive war’, because “John Wayne doesn’t hit first”. He cried, because the dream of the USA had fallen so far, so fast. We seem dangerously out of control to those outside the US, I see from comments from foreigners on various blogs.
And even to a USofA citizen like myself, I have to wonder — it is okay for Pakistan and India to be nuclear powers, but not Iran? Is it because we aren’t friends with Iran? I wouldn’t consider Pakistan a big friend of the US, either – and Iran was once a big ally to the US. Israel has nuclear weapons. Iran must be thinking they need parity here. This is another Cold War waiting to happen, but better a cold one than a hot one.
If there is one legacy this administration will leave behind, it is this: After Bush leaves, I predict the next five years will be of peace, as we atone for all our misdeeds of the past few years.
It would be really nice as well, if the Bush administration could spend some time pursuing the people actually responsible for the attack of 9/11, too. It would be nice to bring the people who did this to us to justice – that seems to have been lost in the unrelated Iraq war. Moussaoui was just a tool. He didn’t kill anyone.
