I'm Back

I'm back after spending the Christmas holiday with family in Canada. I'll post more about the food and festivities once I get around to taking a look at the pictures I took, but in the meantime I'll share a few thoughts about airport security in light of the failed attempt to take down the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit by the Nigerian crotch-bomber.

First off, I'm surprised that the flight originated from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. I've flown through that airport many times and I've always been impressed by the security procedures. Rather than having huge security lineups at the terminal entrances, the main security checks are done at the gates. Before going through the metal detectors and carry-on baggage scanners, passengers are treated to a short interview with a professional and polite passenger screener. They ask basic questions about where you've been and where you're going and why. I've never been asked more than the basics, but I assume that if the answers don't make sense or you appear nervous or distracted, more questions are asked. It's always seemed to me to be a good system that I wish would be instituted in the US.

I also wonder what it takes to be deemed to be a terrorist threat. If you make a dumb joke about bombs at an airline checkpoint you won't get on the plane, but if you're own father suspects you're a terrorist and warns the authorities; you buy a one-way ticket with cash and don't check any bags for a trans-Atlantic flight; and you spend time in al Qaeda-infested Yemen, you're good to go. Apparently this guy's name was added to the terrorist watch list, but there are already 500,000 names on that list and the airlines don't have access to it anyway. So go figure.

So what should we do? Invade Yemen? That would help about as much as our ongoing war in Afghanistan.

In any case, I braved the new and makeshift international flight security procedures yesterday at the Edmonton International airport so I could fly back home to Seattle. Normally international passengers are supposed to be at the airport at least two hours before flight time, but I couldn't find any information on the new procedures, so we arrived about 2-1/2 hours before flight time. We were greeted by a packed terminal with indeterminate lines. After standing in two of the wrong lines for a while, we were directed to the proper line by a sweet older woman who an airport hospitality volunteer. (Why anyone would volunteer to be yelled at by irate and harried passengers at an airport is beyond me!) Once in the proper line, we discovered that it wasn't moving at all because no one was at the Alaska/Horizon desk. So much for arriving early!

But arriving early did have its benefits. We were fairly close to the front of the line, so when it did start moving, we got through fairly quickly. I would normally have carried on my bag, but no carry-ons were allowed at all, so I had to check it. At least I didn't get hit with the $15 checked bag fee, but I found out later that I should have been charged. (Now it's all making sense. This is an al Qaeda plot to increase airline revenues!) Once past the ticket counter, it was on to security. Every pocket was emptied, every shoe was examined, and everyone was frisked. Oddly enough, my crotch wasn't frisked even though I've read that the Nigerian wannabe bomber had the explosives sewn into his underwear. Then it was on to immigration pre-clearance. (For all you American potatoes who've never left your couches, on flights from Canada to the USA, American agents pre-clear passengers in Canada so they don't have to clear customs at the US airport) There was nothing special there at all there. No additional questions, no piercing looks in the eye. The US immigration agents were as bored and disengaged as ever.

And then we were in the departure lounge, and the plane was more or less on time! I had been mentally prepared to stifle a crappy mood for hours, but in the end, those mental gymnastics weren't necessary. All things considered, the return trip home wasn't really too bad at all.

It's painful

It's excruciating to watch the healthcare bill make its way through the Senate. The Republicans are throwing up every roadblock possible but the Democrats, so far at least, are sticking together. But even assuming that the Senate does pass the bill on Christmas Eve, it still has to get through the conference committee process to merge the bill with the very different House bill. If anything gets changed, you can bet that those pompous popinjays Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson will wield their self-aggrandizing power again. If there's a way for the Senate bill to be passed without amendment by the House, I think the Democrats should choose that route. If this bill passes the Senate and comes back to the Senate from the conference committee, I'd bet that it fails.

As crapulent as this bill is, I'm hoping it will pass. This bill is probably marginally better than nothing, and it would be a real shame to give the lunatic fringe (is there any other kind?) Republicans a victory.

This made me bawl like a baby

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

It reminded me of Angus.

This is pretty cool

Here's a song written in gibberish that sounds like English. And it's got a catchy tune too! Enjoy.

Tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Health Care Mess

Well, it looks like the Democrats may get some sort of healthcare bill through the Senate. The debate and "negotiations" in the Senate were truly American democracy at its worst. Even though the Democrats won clear and overwhelming wins in both 2006 and 2008 and now "control" 60% of the seats in the Senate, they've allowed themselves to be held hostage at first by Republican "moderates" and then by conservative "Democrats." If this were a parliamentary system as found in Canada or Great Britain, there would have been no need for compromise with the opposition and a bill would have been passed months ago.

First, without even a debate, they gave up on the single best chance at cost control and universal coverage, a single-payer system, in exchange for a strong public option. Then they gave up the strong public option in exchange for a weak public option. Then they gave up the weak public option for an early Medicare buy-in. Then they gave up the early Medicare buy-in to get the support of Joe Lieberman, even though he had campaigned on that option as a vice-presidential candidate in 2000 and championed the idea as recently as three months ago. Then they had to strengthen the anti-abortion language to get the support of Ben Nelson. (Why, alone in the Western world, are Americans still debating abortion?) Opponents of the bill gave up nothing and got lots in return.

What are we left with? A mandate to buy insurance from private companies in return for not denying coverage to those compelled to buy from them. In spite of industry opposition to the bill, I think they are thrilled with the prospect of 30-40M new customers. They can still charge more for older and already sick people. And if those new customers can't afford the rates, the government will subsidize the payments. Sounds like a good deal except for those who will have to pay up to 17% of their income to pay for insurance.

The Democrats blew it big time. Starting at the top with Obama himself. He's been largely invisible in the whole process. If he devoted as much time to the healthcare debate as he did to Afghanistan, we'd be ahead in the game. If he were willing to spend as much on universal healthcare as he will spend in Afghanistan, none of us would ever have to worry about medical bills ever again. But no, he gave some fuzzy guidelines to Congress and let them hash it out. And hash is exactly what we are left with.

The Democrats picked the wrong enemy. They demonized the insurance companies rather than the rest of the medical-industrial establishment. There's nothing inherently outrageous about the way the insurance companies ran their businesses. It was like car or house or life insurance. Using actuarial tables and statistics, they try to pick the winners and try not to insure the losers. I'm not saying that body shops and parts suppliers are corrupt and monopolistic, but if car insurance rates were as crazy as medical insurance rates, it would be like singling out the insurers for the outrageous rates they charge rather than going after the corrupt and monopolistic body shops and parts suppliers. Medicine as practiced in the USA costs more than twice as much as every other industrial nation because every procedure, be it a CT scan or a blood test, and every drug costs twice as much as it does anywhere else, and American doctors order more of those procedures and prescribe more drugs. The 25-30% that US insurers take off the top only accounts for a small fraction of the difference in costs. (I think Canadian administrative costs are something like 8-10% of the healthcare bill.)

As far as I can tell, cost controls in the Senate bill are mostly non-existent. So the end result will be continuing high medical care costs and continuing high profits for the medical-industrial establishment, no improvement in medical outcomes, and a huge black eye for the Democrats. We won't get any real medical care reform until the system we now have collapses from its own weight.

Whackos are everywhere

I stopped by a Les Schwab Tire Center today to get a quote for new tires for my Audi Allroad. I was greeted by a fat and greasy, but otherwise friendly slob who quickly enough gave me a couple of quotes for four new tires. I had never heard of the brands he quoted, Zexius and Tourevo, so I asked if they were made in China or what. He replied derisively that they used to be, but "Obama took care of that!" I wasn't sure what his point was, but there was no doubt he was not an Obama fan.

I guess my first point is that there is are large numbers of people, i.e., teabaggers, birthers, and Palin-lovers, who believe anything bad about Obama even if it makes no sense. My second point is that I'll go elsewhere for tires. If Les Schwab is stupid enough to give such a vocally ignorant guy a job, I'd hate to see what they do to my car, which is right up there with Volvos and Subarus as the vehicle of choice for tree-hugging, Obama-loving commies.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

I listened to parts of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech today and then later downloaded the transcript to see what he actually said rather than relying on the color commentary of the talking heads of cable TV. My first impressions were that it was a somber and thoughtful speech skillfully delivered, but he used a couple of words and phrased that made my ears perk up. Fairly early in the speech, he used the phrase “just war” and listed preconditions for a “just war.” The three conditions he listed were: it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; the force used is proportional, and whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

Those words reminded me of one of the favorite classes given by one of my favorite professors at UW during my ill-fated midlife return to academia six years ago. Anyone who studied history at UW over the last fifty years will remember Professor Jon Bridgman. His explosive barking laugh, his nervous pacing around the podium, and the witty stories he told made him and his lectures memorable. In any case, the class in question was called War and Society, focused on Just War theory using WWI as the case history. We studied Jus ad Bellum, the causes for a just war, and Jus in Bello, morality within war. Jus ad Bellum usually contains a few more preconditions for a just war than Obama listed. A couple of additional preconditions are comparative justice (the grievances leading to war on one side are greater than the grievances of the other) and probability of success (wars should be winnable, not just a vengeful slaughter or a hopeless cause).

A good case can be made that the initial war against Afghanistan in 2003 was a “just” war. America was attacked by forces trained and supported by al Qaeda in Afghanistan; sending in 1000 US forces and airpower to help rebel Afghan forces defeat the Taliban seemed about right proportionally; the USA did nothing to directly provoke the 9/11 attacks, and the probability of success was high. (Sparing civilians from violence is usually considered part of Jus in Bello.) So George W. Bush was probably morally right to go to war in Afghanistan. At the very least, Western world opinion was on the side of America.

What happened afterward is anything but just. Thousands of combatants and non-combatants were rounded up, tortured and held without trial or charges or hope for release, all in clear violation of international law. Including those held in Afghanistan, thousands are still imprisoned nine years later. So much for Jus in Bello.

But now we have a new president who offers change and hope that we and the world, as evidenced by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, can believe in. He is sending in 30,000 additional troops to augment the 100,000 already there. What conditions exist today in Afghanistan that can possibly justify the war? The Taliban is long gone from government, and according to American intelligence estimates, less than one hundred Al Qaeda members are in the country. Are our troops fighting there in self-defense? Is this a war of last resort? Are the grievances against Afghanistan so great as to require the occupation of the country? What are the chances of success, and how is success defined? By any of the conventional just war arguments, Obama doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on.

Obama’s a brilliant guy, and maybe he is using some of that brilliance to rationalize to himself that he’s doing the right thing. But what’s with the line, “For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.”? That’s a line right of W’s Manichean playbook. America is good. Our enemies are evil. I often wondered how you can fight evil, a supernatural force, with conventional means. Don’t you need God, or at least a superhero of some description, on your side to do that? Are we fighting a holy war? Is this Armageddon and no one told me?

This was a speech that Bush’s speechwriters may as well have written. The biggest problem is that Barack Obama, the man who was supposed to be everything George W. Bush wasn’t, delivered it.

Update 12/11

At least Obama didn't try to describe the Iraq war as a just war. He mentioned Iraq only obliquely by saying, "One of these wars is winding down." Even Obama, with his formidable intellect, realized there's no way to rationalize the morality of that war.

Healthcare Hope

Just when I thought any meaningful healthcare reform was dying in the Senate, the Gang of Ten (as opposed to the Gang of Six, the Gang of Fourteen, and the original Gang of Four, but not to be confused with the energy Gang of Ten) appears to have come up with a plan that might just work. The bad news is that the public option is gone. But that's not really so bad because any teeth the public plan may have had have been negotiated out of it. In return for dropping the plan, it appears that people over 55 (like me) could buy into Medicare, the eligibility for Medicaid might go up to 150% of the poverty line, and the insurance exchanges would offer a version of a healthcare plan offered to members of Congress.

Expanding Medicare coverage would offer some real hope of cost control, and apparently people could buy in as early as next June. That provision alone would make more of a difference to more people than anything I've seen so far.

Maybe there is some hope after all.

Just a few thoughts...

Wouldn't it be something if Barack Obama went to Oslo and didn't accept the Peace Prize? He could give a great speech about how he doesn't deserve it yet, but hopes to one day. Then he could go on to Copenhagen and put the weight of the United States behind a comprehensive global warming accord.

After he got back home, he could reverse course in Afghanistan and bring the troops home. To help Afghanistan stabilize, he would offer to buy all the opium that Afghani farmers could produce at "fair trade" prices. The opium could be used for pharmaceuticals, and if there's some left over, it could be destroyed. That would be a lot cheaper than having 100,000 troops over there, and the warlords would lose a lot of their power and financing.

Then he could accelerate the pullout of troops from Iraq. There would certainly be a mess in the vacuum that's left, but would it really be all that much worse than what's happening there now? Whatever came out of the vacuum would be more stable and viable than anything an American occupation can produce.

He'd still have lots left on his plate, what with Iran, Israel, US healthcare, saving the world economy, etc., etc., but he could go back to Oslo next year and get that Peace Prize that he would so richly deserve.

I can dream, can't I?

Morning Mental Health Break

Afghanistan Costs

Here are some interesting stats on the cost of the adventures in Afghanistan. Particularly interesting is the highlighted fact that in 2010 the US will spend more in Afghanistan than any other country in the world (except China) spends on their total individual defense budgets! As in healthcare, the US doesn't seem to get much bang for its buck. Or maybe that's all they get in this case - a bunch of big bangs as the money goes up in smoke.

Putting Afghanistan Troop Increase Costs in Perspective

Travis | Dec 02, 2009 | 0

Here's a little number crunching on the Afghanistan troop increase. For additional budgetary analysis, see Chris Hellman at NPP and Todd Harrison at CSBA.

Cost of Increase (Updated 1PM)

Adding 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan will cost $30 billion during Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 (12/1 speech).

This $30 billion comes in addition to the previously requested FY 2010 defense budget of $68 billion for Afghanistan, $62 billion for Iraq, $534 billion for DOD’s “base” budget, and $22 billion for nuclear weapons and miscellaneous defense needs.

Altogether, the troop increase in Afghanistan will push total U.S. defense spending in FY 2010 to approximately $716 billion.

Fiscal Year 2010 Funding Levels

Estimated DOD war funding now required for FY 2010:
Iraq = $62 billion
Afghanistan = $98 billion
Total = $160 billion (CRS)

Putting Costs in Perspective
References are to fiscal years

In 2010 alone, U.S. military spending on Afghanistan will equal nearly one-half of total spending on the war since 2001.

The United States will spend 92 percent more on military operations in Afghanistan during 2010 than it did during 2009.

In 2010, the troop increase in Afghanistan will cost each individual American taxpayer $195 dollars. (IRS)

In 2010, the troop increase in Afghanistan will cost $2.5 billion per month, $82 million per day, $3.4 million per hour, $57,000 per minute, and $951 per second.

In the time it takes you to read this post, the troop increase in Afghanistan will have cost $85,500.

In 2010, the United States will spend more on Afghanistan than every other country in the world spends on defense individually, with the exception of China. Of course, total U.S. defense spending in 2010, at over $700 billion, will be roughly five times greater than China’s total military budget.

With the additional $30 billion to be spent in Afghanistan during 2010, the United States could:

• Double the amount spent on nuclear nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, and demining ($1.6 billion)
• Double U.S. support of migrants and refugees throughout the world ($3 billion)
• Quadruple the Civilian Stabilization fund for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq ($1.5 billion)
• Triple federal funding for renewable energy research and development ($7.4 billion)
• Double overall contributions to international institutions like the WHO and IAEA ($2.1 billion)
• Double federal funding for DHS First Responder and CDC Disease Prevention programs ($4.2 billion)
• Strengthen capacity of Coast Guard to close off the far-more-likely route of nuclear weapons coming into the United States – through ports ($6 billion) (USB 2010 report)

Obama's Speech, Reaction Part II

Obama is a really smart guy - certainly the most intelligent president of my lifetime. So what's he up to? He must know that he'll never get the support of the right, and he's losing the support of the middle and the left. He must also know that trying to pacify or civilize Afghanistan is a fool's errand.

He did a masterstroke by putting the war in the budget process. That will put the Republicans in the awkward position of having to vote for his plans, because the Democrats alone won't do it. If nothing else, that will embarrass the Republicans into giving a veneer of bipartisanship to his war policies. He also knows that his supporters have nowhere else to go. What are they going to do, vote for Palin in 2012?

But in the end, he'll still be spending billions and wasting American lives on a hopeless venture that does nothing to make America "safer."

So what's he up to? Maybe he's cut a deal with Pakistan to somehow hunt down Osama bin Laden in the border areas or allow the CIA to hunt him down in return for some favors regarding Kashmir and India. Or maybe it's just plain old-fashioned cash. But wouldn't that be the surprise of the century if Obama bagged Osama? Obama could then pull out all the troops with his head held high. His base would again support him, and the right would be crushed.

Truly a "Mission Accomplished" moment.

Obama's Speech

I watched Obama's speech about Afghanistan tonight with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I don't know what he's trying to achieve and how "victory" will be defined. After a litany of how we got into the mess in the first place, he laid out his plan to defeat the Taliban so that they can't invite Al Quaeda back in and give them a safe haven. Exactly how Afghanistan differs from other terrorist-harboring failed states like Somalia or Yemen or parts of the Philipines or Indonesia, he doesn't say. And we have to keep fighting them so that the Pakistanis, who have their own Taliban/Al Queda problem will keep fighting them in the border areas. He going to do this by providing security and training Afghan soldiers and police so that they can do the job when we leave. The number of 400,000 Afghan security forces has been thrown around before, but I've never heard how the country can possibly support them. Last year Afghanistan had an estimated GDP of about $22B. At $5000 to equip, house, and maintain each soldier or policeman, their entire GDP would soon be gone. So I guess that even if we're successful, we'll be supporting Afghanistan financially forever.

The one bright spot in the speech was his promise of financial transparency. If the war is on the budget, and Congress has to debate and vote on the expenditures necessary to maintain it, it could make the Congress responsible for at least some of the coming debacle.

I don't know who was the intended audience for this speech. If you watched the speech, you could see that the young cadets were polite and more or less engaged, but the military brass looked positively pained by it all. The right will mock and block whatever he does; the left is leaving him in droves (MoveOn.org today announced their opposition to the Afghan surge); and the vast middle is just sick and tired of it all. I can't think of any block of people whose confidence he's gained.

He certainly has lost mine.

Canada, a kinder gentler nation?

If, like me, you thought that Canada is a kinder gentler nation, watch this video. I'm not so sure anymore. Amy Goodman is not a whacko or a terrorist. She is a long-time progressive writer, broadcaster and journalist. She's prominent on the left, but doesn't get much airtime on the MSM. For some reason, the Canadian border guards detained her at the Peace Arch Crossing as she was traveling from Seattle to Vancouver.

I always thought I could run back to Canada when the US becomes a police state, but I'm not so sure anymore.

Health Care Debate

The health care debate in the Senate is soon coming to an end one way or another, and I'm not optimistic about the final package. If the Senate does pass something, it will be so watered down that it will be nothing more than a gift to the insurance companies and will do nothing to contain costs. The already weak "public option" in the Senate version of the bill will probably not survive the filibuster threat of four so-called Democratic senators. If there is no public option, the insurance companies will have no competition, no incentive to contain costs, and a whole new pool of 45M people who are mandated by law to buy insurance from them. The process and the debate haven't made a whole lot of sense to me.

This isn't change I can believe in.

Afghanistan Policy

It looks like Obama is going to announce his long-awaited decision on his Afghanistan policy, and if rumors are correct, he'll be sending something approaching the 40,000 troops McCrystal has requested. I think this is a huge mistake. I can't see how Afghanistan is anything approaching an existential threat to the US, and I can't see any way to justify the costs of an open-ended campaign to pacify the country. Going back to the time of Alexander the Great, no country or empire has been able to control Afghanistan. What makes the USA so special?

If you want to see and hear someone far more articulate than me give his strategy for the area, watch this video of Andrew Bacevich and David Frum debating Afghan policy. Andrew Bacevich is a very thoughtful and intellectual conservative and author of the book, Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. David Frum is the former Bush speechwriter who coined the phrase, "axis of evil." Canadian readers might know that he is the son of the CBC broadcasting icon Barbara Frum. David Frum is not a whacko conservative, and he styles himself as an intellectual conservative, but I think he was out of his league in this debate with Bacevich.

Israeli Slide Show

In my last posting, I said I admired Caroline's teaching qualities and had seen her in action. Yesterday, I saw her in action in the classroom again when I gave a talk and slide show on my travels in Israel to four of her classes. The talks I gave went alright, and the kids were polite and reasonably engaged, but I doubt that I really connected with them. Caroline has a way of connecting with the students that I don't have, but I enjoyed the talk and I'd do it again. I hope that the students got something out of it too.

Congratulations Caroline!

Caroline is a good teacher. She takes it seriously, works hard at it, and connects with her students. I know. Having been in her classroom several times, I've seen her in action. After putting in a bunch more hard work, she got notification yesterday that she passed the National Board Certification exams that she wrote months ago. That puts her in the elite 0.4% of teachers in the nation who have that certification as a "highly qualified teacher". This means that she can teach virtually anywhere in the country, it looks good on her resume, and if Washington State doesn't declare bankruptcy, an extra $5k per year in pay.

Way to go!

Kindle Review

I bought a Kindle just before I left for Israel and read 3-1/2 books on it while I was gone. So here are my expert thoughts:

-Overall, it works pretty well. I got into reading it just like a paperback.

-The 5-way controller, a bit like a joystick, is cumbersome to use. Rather than just using my thumb, I'd end up using a fingernail to make sure I was engaging it.

-It's not as user-friendly and intuitive as I'd like. I had to reference the user's manual several times to do simple things like setting a bookmark.

-The screen is easy to read, even in bright sunlight.

-It doesn't handle some fonts very well. The italics in Brotherhood of the Rope were almost unreadable at times due to parts of the letters missing.

-It doesn't handle pictures very well. The fonts on the picture captions in Brotherhood of the Rope were so small I couldn't read them even after using the one level of zoom available.

-Sometimes the pagination and paragraph breaks were weird. In one case, a capital letter "O" was split between two lines. It looked like open and closed parentheses.

-It's hard to flip a few pages forward or back. Even if you hit the "turn page" control several times in rapid succession, it will only turn two pages at a time.

-The rudimentary 3G web access built into the Kindle is truly rudimentary and really not useable.

-It doesn't use page numbers in the traditional sense. It uses "location" numbers instead. If you totally lose your place, like I did a couple of times, it's hard to get back to where you were.

In spite of these complaints, I did like the machine overall.

If you are considering buying one, take a close look at the competition. Barnes and Noble came out with one just after I left on my trip, and on paper it looks like a better deal. That's mainly because they have true WiFi and 3G internet capability built in.

The Sony Reader is also worth a look. They cut a deal with Google, and all of the books in the public domain that Google has digitized are available free of charge. The only issue I see with the Sony Reader is that it needs to be hooked up to a computer to download books.

Israel recap

Megan left at 4:30 this morning to catch a 7AM flight back to the real world. My flight doesn't leave until 11 this evening, so while I've got some time to kill and a decent internet connection, I figured I may as well do a blog posting. As usual, it's annoying to try and get pictures and text lined up, but here goes.





We rented a car when I arrived in Tel Aviv and spent the first night in Jaffa. The next morning we hit the road, heading south. We got about as close as you can get to Gaza at this border crossing. This used to be a busy crossing with people going to Israel to work and truckloads of fruit and vegetables crossing every day. But since the Israelis closed the border, it's pretty dead. While there, we talked to a group of Israeli veterans who were demonstrating for the release of an Israeli soldier who's been held by militants inside the strip for over three years now. We heard gunshots while we were talking to the demonstrators. They were unconcerned, saying that the border guards were firing warning shots to keep Arab sheep and shepherds away from the wall.



This is the view from our window at our overnight stop at the "hostel" at Masada. I put hostel in quotation marks because this has got to be the creme de la creme of the hostel world. It's an absolutely gorgeous hostel in a gorgeous setting overlooking the Dead Sea and underlooking (?) the ancient fortress of Masada, and comes complete with a half-size Olympic pool! You may recall that Masada is where something like 900 Jewish Zealots committed suicide in 73AD rather than surrendering to Roman forces in the aftermath of the Second Jewish Revolt.
























This is the Israeli flag at dawn over Masada.

During the climb down the Snake Path, we were treated to the sight of this Nubian Ibex and his harem.

After we left Masada, we drove through a sandstorm that reminded me of a snowstorm on the prairies, complete with crappy visibility and drifting sand across the road. It was neat to see a storm like this, but the lousy weather prevented us from stopping for a swim (float?) in the Dead Sea.

And we got so see some camels!

The separation of Israel into Israeli areas wasn't really all that apparent after we left the Gaza border. It was evident on our road map, and was physically evident on this main road to Jericho, a Palestinian controlled area. The road was bulldozed shut. No need for a checkpoint, I guess.

There were lots of Israeli war memorials, both large and small on the roads we travelled. This is one of the bigger ones on the road north into Galilee.

In Galilee we passed signs pointing out the site of the Sermon on the Mount. (Remember the Beatitudes and all that from Sunday School?) Well, apparently it happened here.

After spending the night in a pretty grubby hostel in Tiberius, we continued north to the Golan Heights. The scenery and the roads were good, except for the occasional abrupt zig-zags surrounded by minefields.

We didn't venture too far from the car, just in case the signs weren't kidding.

Believe it or not, there is a ski resort in Israel at Mt. Hermon on the Syrian border!

It has five lifts, and actually looks pretty interesting. By the look of it, I've skiied in worse areas.





I wish I would have had my camera at the breakfast we had at at the Beit Shalom hotel restaraunt in Metula, on the northern border with Lebanon. We had loads of freshly made bread, homemade cheeses, olives, dips and jams. This was the best meal we had in Israel!

As for views from our hotel room windows, what could possibly top this view from the St. Gabriel Hotel in Nazareth? This is a converted convent, and either the nuns lived in the lap of luxury, or someone did one hell of a job on the renovations.

This is the interior of the Bascilica of the Annunciation. It was commissioned in 1969, and has got to be one of the best examples of modern religious architecture in the world. It has an austere interior of bare concrete walls and pillars, but for whatever reason, it works.

This isn't really the view from our window, but it is the view from the kitchen of the hostel we stayed at in Jaffa. It is right in the middle of the Jaffa flea market, which goes on for blocks and blocks. If my flea-market friend Hal ever goes there, it will takes weeks to drag him out. We turned in the rental car, spent the night in Jaffa, and then took a sherut taxi to Jerusalem.

We arrived in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, in time to wander over to the Wailing Wall at the foot of the remains of the Jewish temple that was destroyed in 69AD. It was quite a sight to see mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews praying at the wall.

All sorts of strange headgear were evident everywhere in Jerusalem.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. It was beautifully and movingly done, covering the rise of Hitler, the Final Solution in Europe, and the emigration to Israel.

The next day, we got another view of the State of Israel with and "alternative" tour to Hebron. We got our first look at the walls that Israel is building to separate the Israeli areas from the Palestian controlled areas. It was an eye-opening day.

Here's Megan and some of the other women in the garb they had to wear to get into the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the Palestinian controlled area of Hebron.

The mosque itself is quite modest in comparison to the Christian controlled cathedrals and churches.

The mosque is divided in two - with Jewish access on one side and Moslem access on the other. We came in on the Moslem side. This is the view of the Tomb of Abraham looking at the Jewish side.

There is a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn living in Old Hebron. They moved in illegally in 1967,a nd have been there ever since. There are about four Israeli soldiers for every settler, and are stationed on rooftops and intersections everywhere.

There are checkpoints everywhere restricting the movement of Palestinians to the Old Town which supposedly is under joint Palestinian-Israeli control.

Humiliation of the Palestinians is a daily occurance. Here the Palestinian shopkeepers have installed a wire mesh to protect shoppers from the pelting of garbage they get from the Jewish settlers living above them.

Then, it's back to Tel Aviv, which seems devoid of the divisions elsewhere in the country. Tel Aviv is a modern European-style city, with highrises along its gorgeous beaches. You'll rarely see an ultra-Orthodox Jew or hear the Islamic call to prayer here.

There is lots of interesting Bauhaus-style architecture here, but unfortunately most of it isn't in very good shape.

The water and beaches, even at this time of the year are fabulous.

We had a great trip!

Tel Aviv

After failing to find an easy way to get from Jerusalem to Jordan, we decided to spend the last few days of our trip a block off the beach in Tel Aviv. The weather here is still good, with clear skies and highs in the upper 70's, so we are getting a bit of beach time. Tel Aviv is very different from Jerusalem - more modern and more European in feel. It's unusual to see an ultra-orthodox Jew on the streets.

And here's a bonus tip for anyone trying to figure out how to walk around the labyrinth of streets in Israel (or anywhere else for that matter), Google Maps has turn-by-turn walking directions! We went and saw Julie and Julia last night at a theater about a half-hour's walk from here. We would never have found the place without the directions from Google. And yes, we both loved the movie!

Jerusalem

It's early morning here in Jerusalem, but the bustle and street noise are pouring through our hostel windows on Jaffa Road. We got here on the Friday in time to go to the Wailing Wall to see the thousands of people lining up for Sabbath prayers. It was quite a sight with all the ultra-orthodox in their black suits and strange headgear. We met an American couple that evening at the Armenian Tavern, and ended up having dinner with them. Interesting folks. He works in Gaza for the UN, and commutes every weekend to their apartment in Jerusalem.

The next day we took a walking tour of the Old City, and then yesterday went to Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem. So now that we've had a couple of days of immersion in Jerusalem, we're off to the Palestinian city of Hebron. It will be an interesting contrast, I'm sure.

Israel continued

We've spent nights in Jaffa, Masada, Tiberius, Metula, and Nazareth. Tonight, we're back in Jaffa and will be heading to Jerusalem tomorrow. Here are a few first impressions:
- Israel isn't cheap. If you come here, expect to pay US-type prices
- Swarmas (sp?) are great street food! They're gyros with French bread or pita bread. I love them!
- Israel has been a friendly place. It's interesting to me that the friendliest so far are Arab Christians. I'm surprised there are so many of them.
- Israeli drivers tailgare only slightly less than Greeks.
- I didn't realize you can ski in Israel. We were at the slopes and saw the lifts!
- Israeli sunflower seeds are amazing! Spitz better look out. They have competition!
- It takes some getting used to seeing Israeli soldiers in coffee shops and malls with their guns casually slung over their shoulders.
- I didn't know that Israel grows huge amounts of bananas!

We'll spend a few days in Jerusalem and do some excursions to the Palestinian areas. Later next week, we'll probably go to Jordan for a few days.

One of these days, I'll try and do a post with photos, but so far, I'm too lazy. A good long post might have to wait till I get back

Israel

Sorry folks. It's been a while since I've done a posting, but a lot's been going on. I'll fill y'all in with a future post, but suffice to say that right now I'm in Tiberius on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, having a great time.

I get back to Seattle on November 14th.

I have a new toy

My new Kindle was delivered yesterday. Even though Barnes & Noble is coming out with an e-reader in November, and there are rumors of a Google version, I bit the bullet and bought a Kindle. I was looking at the reading material I wanted to bring along on my next travel adventure and soon realized that I'd be schlepping around with a suitcase half-full of books. I've got 10 books loaded in right now, with room for 1500 (or something equally ridiculous).

Initial good impressions:

-The screen is amazingly readable, even in bright sunlight.

-The font is easily scalable, so if I get stuck without my glasses, I can just jack up the font size.

-It has a built in dictionary that will give you the definition of a word without exiting the book and opening the dictionary.

-It has rudimentary web-surfing capabilities, and you can subscribe to newspapers or blogs.

Initial bad impressions:

-The screen is smaller than I thought it would be.

-The 5-way controller, kinda like a joystick, takes some getting used to.

-Turning a page takes just a smidgen too long to be seamless. You can turn a page in a real book faster than the Kindle loads a new one.

-The device is a bit too thin to fit comfortably in your hands.

I'll report back after I actually read a book on the thing.

Tattoos

Yikes!

Check out the 20 Worst Tattoos for Men. And if that's not enough for you, check out 20 Worst Tattoos for Women.

Hot Yoga

Imagine contorting yourself into unnatural positions for an hour and a half in a sauna. Imagine so much sweat pouring off you that you can hardly see. Or imagine the toxins fleeing your body and your muscles loosening in ways you never thought possible, all the while reaching a mental state approaching Nirvana. Which reality is it?

Daughter Caroline is becoming a member of the cult, and she convinced me to give it a try. What was the result?

I expected it to be a totally miserable experience somewhat akin to the 6th circle of Dante's hell. Or maybe the inner circle of the 7th. I expected it to be a form of torture to which no normal person would voluntarily submit.

My expectations were met, and I'm currently trying to arrange an intervention for Caroline.

Michael Moore Awards

Andrew Sullivan has been one of my favorite must-read bloggers ever since I started surfing the net a zillion years ago. He was one of the original bloggers who was doing it full time long before it was cool. He is an incredibly prodigious writer whose opinion I value, even if I don't agree with him all the time. In any case, one of his regular features is the awards he gives out regularly for particularly insightful or stupid opinions. His award for divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric is called the Michael Moore Award.

After watching Capitalism: A Love Story, I think Andrew Sullivan should change the name of the award. I saw no evidence of the attributes associated with the award in Michael Moore's latest film. Even though I've cringed at times like Moore's ambush interview of an obviously senile Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine, I've liked all his films. Michael Moore reduces his credibility whenever he goes over the top, but even when he does, the basis for his claims is essentially true. He restrained himself this time, and I saw only a hard-hitting, heart-wrenching, and sometimes funny movie. Everyone should see it.

News from Canada

The big news while I was up in Canada is that Steven Harper, the Prime Minister, isn't really the stuffed shirt that he seems to be most of the time. Here he is performing an old Beatles song, and Holy Cow! He can actually sing! And he even sings the original words, "I get high with some help from my friends."


Ps. He's a Conservative, but by American standards, he's a communist. Gay marriage was legalized across Canada under his watch, and he's made no effort to dismantle the single payer health care plan that most Canadians think works reasonably well. And he's a wuss because he's committed to pulling Canadian troops out of Afghanistan in 2011.

Canadian Thanksgiving

Canadian Thanksgiving isn't the huge deal that Thanksgiving is in the US, but it's still a day of family gatherings and food, lots of food. I like the Canadian date better. It spreads out the holidays a bit more, and besides, wasn't Thanksgiving supposed to coincide with the end of the harvest? The Canadian date (which happens to be Columbus Day in the US) is much closer than the American date.

In any case, Farley and I ventured up to our ancestral lands last week to spend Thanksgiving with the family in Saskatoon. I got this great shot of the moon over Lynden, just before I crossed the border into Canada.

Megan and Caroline flew up to Edmonton on Friday, and drove to Saskatoon with Pete and Marian and Tom and Devin. The only ones missing were Sarah and Alvin, but I guess we can give them a pass. Lusaka to Saskatoon travel is neither cheap nor convenient.

Here's Marian and Caroline just before tucking into the turkey dinner with all the trimmings that Mom prepared. She's slowed down over the years, but she can sure put together one hell of a feast.

Tom and Dev on the couch at Grandma's.

Mom and Megan.

Martha and Allan and Megan.

Without internet or even a cell phone, Martha is an analog (except for her big screen HDTV and satellite setup) gal in a digital world.

Here's Farley getting (and giving) some love from Katrina. He was a big hit with everyone, except possibly with Lucy, Martha's little white mutt. Within about 30 seconds of arriving at Martha's, Farley had managed to vacuum up the entire contents of Lucy's open-feeding dish of dog food. Later in the trip, he managed to eat a half-dozen buns and more off Martha's counter. Like the rest of us, he was well-fed while in Saskatoon.

An extra added bonus on this trip was my Mom's brother Pete's 80th birthday celebration. I got to see a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins I don't normally see.

Here's a shot of Mom with her sister Susie and their baby brother Corney.

Here's the birthday boy himself, with his friend Celeste. There must be good genes on my Mom's side of the family. She has two brothers and a sister over 80.

The weather in Saskatoon was strange. It was cold and windy when I arrived last Tuesday, breaking a nice spell of Indian Summer. Then on Thursday, the snow came. It was odd because the leaves on the trees hadn't even turned brown yet. I wish I would have got a picture of the green leaves that fell off the trees on to the freshly fallen snow. A bit of cognitive dissonance, I'd say.

This shot was taken in Hinton on Monday. Mostly the roads were in pretty good shape, but as I approached the mountains on the way home, there was a stretch of snowy, icy conditions. I had left Edmonton shortly after 6AM to get a good start on the 800 mile drive back to Seattle, but when I got to Hinton the road was closed due to a major wreck. 3-1/2 hours later I was on the way again, but my early start didn't do much good when it took me 7 hours to do the normally 3-1/2 hour drive to Jasper.
Another reason for the slow pace was a herd of mountain sheep, licking the salt off the road. There were oblivious to the cars, but Farley wasn't oblivious to them.

As well as being a good sea dog, Farley proved to be a good car dog, and a great companion on the road.

It was a great trip!

Not such an internet wasteland after all

In spite of the fact that my sister has not yet joined the 20th (let alone 21st) century, internet here is readily available. This morning I drove around downtown Saskatoon looking for a coffee shop liklely to have free wi-fi. I didn't find one, and settled for the pay service at Starbucks. Well, lo and behold! Saskatchewan's communist(by American standards at least) government phone company has blanketed downtown Saskatoon in free wif-fi! Cool! So even though I may be too lazy to write a decent blog post, at least I can do a decent net-surf.

Blogging will be light

I'm headed to sister Martha's internet wasteland in Saskatoon, so blog posts will be intermittent at best for the next week or so.

Before and After

Daughter Megan recently returned from a trip to La Paz, Mexico with a freezer full of tuna, mahi-mahi, and other assorted denizens of the sea. Having never been fishing before, she annoyed a lot of people on the trip by catching the biggest fish! I too was somewhat annoyed, or maybe jealous is a better word. I've never caught a fish that big. She's also a star, becoming the featured story on the website of the fishing charter company.

Here's some of the same tuna a couple of weeks later, just before it goes on the Big Green Egg.

With some baby red potatoes, green beans and carrots, all washed down with a bottle or two of wine, we had a great meal. Thanks Megan!

Kiefer Sutherland's Grandfather

There was a good segment on The World on NPR this afternoon. They talked with Roy Romanow, a former premier of Saskatchewan, about the fierce battle fought for universal healthcare in Saskatchewan in 1962. I guess history really doesn't teach us anything, because the rhetoric then and now hasn't changed much. I was ten years old at the time, and the thing I remember most is that our family doctor, Dr. Franz, closed his practice and moved to Alberta. When doctors across the province went on strike, the government brought in doctors from the UK to provide basic services. (That part I don't remember.) Somehow, we survived it all.

The premier of Saskatchewan at that time was T.C. (Tommy) Douglas. He had the balls and the vision to push through the first government run universal health care plan in North America. Oddly enough, the world did not come to an end, and four years later, Medicare (as it's known in Canada) was brought in across the entire country. A few years ago, the CBC commissioned a poll to find out who was the greatest Canadian. I don't know if it was of all time or the 20th century or exactly what, but the winner was T.C. Douglas.

Today, if you talk to any Canadians about health care, they might bitch and moan a little, but I've never talked to anyone who wants to end Medicare. It's a big part of the national identity, and most Canadians are very proud of it, especially when they engage in conversations bashing their ignorant neighbors to the south.

Here's an interesting side note - If any Americans have ever heard of T.C. Douglas, I'd be surprised. Probably the only ones who have are rabid fans of Kiefer Sutherland, aka Jack Bauer, of 24 fame. T.C. Douglas is his grandfather on his father's side! T.C. Douglas' daughter Shirley became actor Donald Sutherland's second wife. Kiefer was one of the progeny of that marriage.