My Sick Mind

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Army Sargent complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech, but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq. "I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. service member," Sgt. Jim Wilt wrote. That answer is pretty simple, really. Sad, but simple. I think Sgt. Wilt knows the answer, he just wants the government to acknowledge it. Nice try, Jim. The government - your government - would rather not acknowledge the war dead because ... well ... they are war dead. When some nut-job shoots up a school, those kinds of things are known as "tragedies" or a "massacre". War, on the other hand, is a military (Government) operation, where the dead are sent by the government on a volunteer basis (for no...

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." - Neil Armstrong The blog is green for Earth Day , which is either today, tomorrow or yesterday depending on when you are reading. That's about all I'm doing, since I don't have any lamps in the place where I can put in those squiggly bulbs. I'm already running low-flow shower heads and my car is a PZEV (Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicle), so I think I'm maxed out. There's a meteor shower on Sunday night. The Lyrid one. 18 per hour, they say. I'm not all that worked-up, unless one of them slips through and hits my car. I know I shouldn't torture myself, but I was tuned into Fox News today, and they had some sort of round-table discussion of the media's coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, and whether or not the TV news got a li...

The media swarm has descended on Blacksburg, Virginia. I can only imagine the phone calls to Couric, Gibson and Williams on Monday afternoon, telling them to pack (if they aren't already) and head out to Virginia. Once the national parasites checked in, it was only a matter of time (minutes) until the locals had their reservations. Philadelphia's local news had at least two reporters from each station on the scene. Multiply that by 4 (local news here) times all the markets with local news (Umteen) and it must be a media nightmare for the locals. I don't see the value in sending a local news face to do a report on the scene. Does Action News' Dann Cuellar bring any value to the report that we couldn't get from the local ABC outlet in Virginia - who may actually know something about the town and its people? It strikes me as an invasion, and a little exploitative - but that's modern journalism for ya. In my perfect world, as mayor of Blacksburg, it would be ...

This story broke during the day on Monday. Briefly: Two shooting incidents on the Virginia Tech campus today have left 33 dead. Thirty-one, including the gunman, died at Norris Hall; two died at West Ambler Johnston Hall. Fifteen other victims from Norris are being treated at area hospitals. The VT campus is beautiful. I was there about 12 years ago on my way home from Tennessee. The buildings are beautiful grey stone that they call Hokie Stone , which is a variety of limestone that they have been using since 1901. It is quite striking against the green Virginia landscape. Until today, it was the most memorable thing about the school. When I got home from work, I switched on the TV, and up came the BBC News, which is on one of the cable outlets here. The reporter seemed incredulous that such a thing could happen. As a journalist, I could tell that he was challenged, both by Great Britain's attitude toward handguns and his own. He was professional enough to allow it to be a mere ...