Mershon thing pt.2
I forgot to say how weird/neat it was to see all the people at the lecture on Wednesday. I saw 2 TAs (Captain Doty from my
American Military Policy class and my Physics 112 TA for some reason), 2 teachers (
Bridget from political science and Dr. Lewis from the Terrorist classes), and finally some guy that's in the Rifle Club that I run on Fridays in the basement of the ROTC building at 4:30. Maybe I'll see more when I go next week. I think I'll go to the Mershon Center a lot more next fall when I'll have my car down here. Hopefully I can schedule well so that the 12:00-1:30 block is open for random lectures.
Speaking of scheduling, does anyone have any ideas for awesome classes? I need to take Latin 102, and I'm going to try to take any class by Dr. Millett because he's leaving, but I'm open to suggestions. I'm still waiting for any feedback from classical type people on the wisdom of taking Latin and Greek at the same time. I think I'm going to be a super nerd and buy a copy of Caesar's war commentaries in Latin, and then I'll work on it over the summer. At least that way I'll be ahead of the curve for Latin 102!
Tactics revisited
In my opinion, a lot of the objection over the use of computer games in a class on tactics is unwarranted. I detect that some people object to the games because since they're fun or interesting, students won't be able to avoid playing them instead of learning from them. Well, I think reading books is fun, but I can certainly avoid reading gleefully until 3 am. Another thing is that the games have faults or game designs that are perceived to be a fault from the perspective of teaching tactics. Every learning tool has its faults. Reading from a book makes you use your imagination to recreate a battle scene; a prospect that is wrought with the opportunity to err. Watching a movie doesn't allow for any experimentation and can force you to look at just one perspective.
I know that older games didn't simulate the fog of war very well, but games like
Close Combat do so nicely. You can have your tanks advancing across an open field, hear several quick "ting"s, and half your tanks are brewing up from hidden AT guns. Another game,
Beyond Overlord, takes this another step forward. You issue your commands, click the big "GO" button, and the game simulates 60 seconds of combat which you have no control over. It has spawned 2 sequels covering the eastern front and the Mediterranean, each one getting a graphics and engine overhaul that makes it more realistic.
A valid point that Jim P. makes on
Warhistorian is that a commander has too much situational awareness. This is true in most games, but the latest one I've played,
Full Spectrum Warrior, keeps the camera focused on one of your two squads. You have a map, but it is a relatively barren GPS screen that is mainly used to call in recon flights or artillery strikes. I think that if this trend continues, the God's eye view of most games will become less of a problem for accurately simulating tactics. Also,
Rome: Total War keeps the camera from going out of the selected unit's LOS, helping to keep situational awareness at an acceptable level.
I think it's obvious from the number of comments generated, that this issue holds some merit. If a whole class on tactics is seen as too much or unjustifiable to a department, then perhaps the liberal application of video games and movies to "regular" history classes could still do some good.
Conference!
I didn't get to see the whole thing yesterday because it started really late. Dr. Pape's discussion was pretty interesting though. He basically said that suicide attacks aren't prompted by religious interests, but instead they are a strategic move used in select circumstances. They are only used against democracies and religion is just a secondary thing. The Tamil Tigers are shown as the originators of suicide attacks and they're leftist/socialist terrorists without any real religious motivation. I wanted to ask what kind of research he did into Marxism as a belief system/religion as opposed to the traditional view of Marxism as a social and economic theory, but I had to leave. He also showed that education isn't much of a marker in suicide attacks, with most of the attackers having at least a high school education. I also wanted to ask how he justified those results considering the prevalence of theological schools in the middle east.
I'm just going to have to wait until the webcast gets put up. I'm going to read his article that prompted the discussion too. I have all these things I want to do, but no time at all. I've had 2 Latin quizzes this week and a midterm tomorrow. Slow down Paul! Then I have a response essay for Terrorism on Monday and an 8 page essay about a bioweapons convention due on Tuesday; add to that the fact that my roommate thinks this place is a halfway house for his drifteresque friends, and you've got a stressed out Zu.
I'll probably post something good tomorrow when I'm doing my laundry. I have nothing else to do then
but blog. You, the reader, are the beneficiary of this boredom-induced writing.
Go me!
My last post was referenced over at Warhistorian and there
were lots of comments. Judging from the number of detailed comments, it looks like I raised a valid point. Go me! I guess if you fumble around in the dark long enough, you'll eventually hit the light switch.
I've been busy getting over my cold and writing essays for other classes, so I didn't get to update the blog over the weekend. But since I did 2 entries on Friday it should be ok.
How did I get my cold you ask?
That rain sure cuts through you if you stand in it long enough. Also, you'll notice I am throwing up "the horns." That is because I am metal.
I'm going to another of those
Mershon Center lectures tomorrow. I just wish they weren't the whole way on 8th. Look how far away it is from my dorm!
Anyways, I'll write about how that goes tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to go study for my Latin quiz tomorrow and the midterm later this week. The workload makes me rethink my plans for taking Latin and Greek next fall. Maybe I'll just stick with Latin. Any classical linguists out there with advice?
I remembered!
I just recalled one of the blog ideas I had over the weekend. I was reading over at
Warhistorian about Fort Necessity and there was talk about the placement of the fort and how it was a very poor choice. Whenever a serious talk about tactics comes up, I always feel like I am on the outside looking in. In all of my history classes, whenever we have enough time to talk about a specific battle, it's usually just glossed over. I think this is a disservice.
I think that they should have a class based purely on tactics. Just a progression from classical tactics, the middle ages, through Napoleon, and into the modern day. Instead of using sand tables, the class could take advantage of advances in video game technology.
Rome: Total War has excellent historical scenarios that come with the game, and the engine could be used to demonstrate a wide variety of tactics. The Middle Ages could be covered with
Medieval: Total War, and just to round out the trilogy, Feudal Japan is modeled nicely in
Shogun: Total War, the first in the series.
There are a bunch of Napoleonic wargames out there, and I admit that I never played them as extensively as the others, but
Waterloo seems like a good choice. The Civil War has an excellent and easy to play model in
Sid Meier's Gettysburg. Professor Grimsley played this in class for us one day, and it went over very well. There's not a lot of World War I games. I suspect that the static nature of trench warfare doesn't lend itself to an action-packed game. World War II is by and far the source of inspiration for most wargames. For tactics, I suggest the excellent
Close Combat series. The mods available for Close Combat III cover almost every war of the 20th century.
More modern tactics are covered excellently in a third person shooter called
Full Spectrum Warrior. Originally designed as an official training tool, this game teaches basically every infantry level tactic. Suppression fire, bounding overwatch, smoke deployment, flanking, the works. Plus you get to see it all in great detail.
Here's a demonstration video of some troops moving down a street. Thankfully the southern drawl and football analogies don't make it into the actual game.
As far as assignments in the class, I think the students could be given a hypothetical scenario and write up a small report detailing how they would approach the battle. As a final, maybe each student could be assigned a historical battle and then write a larger paper describing what they would have done compared to what actually happened.
Chinese people are maaaaaaaad
There sure is a big stink going on in China about the new Japanese history textbooks. The Chinese are very upset because they feel the new book glosses over the deeds of the Japanese army in WWII. Having read a few descriptions of the book, I tend to agree with them. The brutal crimes of the Nanking Massacre are referred to as an "incident", and there isn't any mention of the infamous unit 731. The book also says the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes on par with the Holocaust, but mentions nothing about Japanese sex slaves, experiments on POWs, unrestricted biological warfare against civilians, etc...
The Japanese refuse to apologize for their deeds outright, instead skirting around the issue and issuing rather neutral and emotionless statements of "regret". I suppose that the lack of a sincere apology, coupled with the continuing trend of ignoring the past, is genuinely angering the Chinese. Germans have apologized for the Holocaust and our late Holy Father apologized for the non-action of the Church, but the Japanese don't. America apologized for the interment camps, which were a million times more humane than any camp run by the Japanese, but Japan pretends like they were the victim in WWII. I remember reading something in the paper a few years ago how in a survey done in Tokyo, a large majority of the people claimed that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in retaliation for the use of the A-bomb against Japan. That's not hard to believe when you hear about the textbooks that are used.
I wonder why Japan won't issue an earnest mea culpa. Is it pride or shame? You'd think that in a culture where ritualistic suicide was used to cleanse one's honor, they wouldn't have a problem with saying "our country committed evil deeds during the course of the Second World War and we deeply apologize to all of those affected. Nothing can ever change what happened, but we should work together for a peaceful future that would honor all of those that died." I think that would be an excellent step forward to reconciliation, and it wouldn't be a loss of face. If anything, I think other people would respect Japan for admitting their past sins.
Habemus Papam!
Habemus Papam!
Mershon thing
So I went to that guest lecture earlier. Well, I actually got confused and tried to get into the Mershon auditorium. That didn't work. So then I was like "oh crap, I have to walk the entire way across campus!" so I did. I showed up like... 12 minutes late, refused the complimentary sandwich because it was like 80 degrees out and I just hiked a mile across campus, and then snuck into the back of the room.
It was really interesting. Dr. Paul argued that America was in a unique position as an unofficial hegemony, and that as long as it didn't become overtly hostile to the sovernty of other states, it theoretically shouldn't decline like other "Great Powers" did. Then he went on to differentiate between soft and hard balance. Soft balance was diplomatic and institutional ways of affecting a power. He used Kosovo and Iraq as examples where other countries influenced the decisions of the US through UN debates and separate diplomatic efforts. Hard balance would therefore be overt military action and the like. I'm generalizing here, but that's basically it.
The lecture was really nice. The Q&A period was not. Some guy asked a question by launching a diatribe against the Bush administration, and then at the end asking "So if they went into Iraq, found connections with Al Qaeda, and found huge stashes of WMD's, would the other powers balance that with hard or soft power?" I'm not entirely sure because of his accent, but I think Dr. Paul said that the UN would probably add its stamp of legitimacy after the fact, and that the balancing for the most part was all pre-war.
Then another guy started asking a bunch of frantic questions about the terminology. He kept saying it should be called cost analysis and that balance was a bad choice of words because it suggested brute force. Dr. Paul tried to answer why he called it balance, said that if anyone could think of a better term then he would like to hear it, and basically said that regardless of the terminology, his theory was still valid. The questioner just wouldn't let it go however. He kept saying the term used should be cost. Dr. Paul explained why cost wasn't an all encompassing word, and went on to answer another question about the new US appointee to the UN. That other guy still wouldn't let it go and kept blurting out stuff while Dr. Paul was talking. Well, there goes the naive notion of academic professionalism that I had.
It was really hot in there too. I'm hungry now, I should have taken one of those sandwiches. They looked fancy. Maybe they had fancy mustard. I
like fancy mustard.
Conclave
I feel truely blessed to be taking Latin at this time in history. As I watched the procession into the Sistine Chapel and listened to the litany of the saints, I actually understood what was being said. It was pretty easy, all chapter one style stuff. The saint's name and then pray for us. Still, as I watched I couldn't help but be moved to tears at the sheer awesomeness of the event. The beautiful imagery of the chapel and the Cardinals, and the wonderful music. It is truely a momentous event, even moreso because anyone in the world can watch. To go from an event shrouded in the utmost secrecy to a very open ceremony is amazing. I watched it via a streaming video feed online, and now commentators are telling me that the floor of the chapel was raised a foot to accomidate advanced ECM equipment. The merging of old and new is quite striking.
Well, I'm off to the mershon center thing.
Origin of "The Zu"
One of the most important contributing factors to my decision to persue military history was a video game that I played religiously for years. My friend Jeff and I stumbled across
Close Combat III by chance in a game store in the mid 1990's, and we played it online almost every night. The game was different from other ones we used to play because of how realistic it was. Soldiers had morale meters and would break and run in the face of artillery or a tank assault. All of the units in the game were modeled realistically; tanks had different armor factors for the front, side, and rear, while the effect of their guns was modeled with real world physics.
Right around the time we started to get bored with the game, we discovered a burgeoning online community. Players with near encyclopedic knowledge about guns and tanks were getting together to argue endlessly about all kinds of war-related stuff. Even better than the forums was the growing mod community. People who were tired of the limitations of the original programming were making new graphics, units, maps, and campaigns. Before too long there was a comprehensive patch released by the community that made the already complex units even more realistic. Soon after that, someone made a bunch of American and British tanks and put together a mod that turned CCIII into a West Front game. Before long, there were mods that let you play most battles from WWI to Vietnam.
Anyways, I just found the CD in a bunch of old stuff that I thought I lost, and I've been playing it all weekend. It's still really awesome, the old forums are still filled with angry discussions about HVAP vs standard AP shells, and I'm still addicited to it. Plus it's good at revitalizing my interest in history. Yay educational video games!
I've got a couple more ideas for good blog entries, but I've got to go study for Latin. Maybe I'll have time to post one tomorrow. There's a
lecture at the Mershon Center tomorrow. Apparently if you RSVP'ed, you get a free lunch. Thumbs up for that! I just emailed the person in charge because Dr. Lewis said we were supposed to. I didn't even know about the food until I was putting links in right now!
success!
I swear... Every time I can find the time to write in my academic blog, blogger.com is down. It's like some kind of hilarious joke that I'm not in on. Jerks! But this time I decided to beat the system and write stuff down in notepad for posting later. Take THAT blogger.com! You are most decidedly not the boss of me!
Anywho, I've been pretty swamped with work. My schedule is pretty light if you just look at class time, but 2 of those classes require LOTS of reading, and then my Latin class has homework every night. It's getting increasingly complex too. 6 chapters in like... 2.5 weeks? What's up with that OSU? I seem to be hanging in there pretty well though. I'm not as accomplished as Laura, who I intend to add to my growing links session, you know... just as soon as blogger stops being a jerk, but I'm getting there. I like when the teacher is like "you'll all make lots of mistakes translating this into Latin" and then I do it and don't make any mistakes at all. He seems disappointed and enthused at the same time. I think I have an ear for it, although since its dead I don't know if that cliché works. I hear it in church sometimes though. My cliché is still valid!
Speaking of church (check out the smooth segue), I happened upon a picture of the back of my head at a 6pm Mass at the St. Thomas More Newman Center. A combination of the lighting, my crew cut, and the way I slept makes it look like there's a massive scar on the back of my head. I assure you that it is just an optical illusion. Do not fear for my safety loyal readers, for I am well.
Doing this in notepad makes putting links and pictures in somewhat problematic. I have to remember the html tags. This vexes me. I'm terribly vexed.
I had a pretty eloquent thought yesterday in my terrorism class, but I chose to express it at the end of class and no one appreciated its grandeur. We were talking about the rationale behind early terrorists in the 1850's, and the one passage we read, I think it was by John Most, talked about how they'd prefer to fight and win solely through the force of their convictions, but they can't so they have to use force multipliers like dynamite. I said that it seemed that terrorists then and I suppose all terrorists throughout time wanted to be Leonidas, standing bravely against all odds, making a powerful statement against their enemies. This was possible in the ancient times, but now a brave stand can be broken up with machine gun fire or tear gas. Therefore terrorists, even ones who are demanding a return to the conditions of the 10th century, are forced to use the latest technology in place of their natural inclination to heroic martyrdom. I like invoking classical names and places in my discussions in class because the other people in the class are like "huh?"
As far as the thesis goes, I'm still trying to sneak reading and thinking in between Latin and books about chemical weapons. Luckily a book that I checked out last quarter highlighted the most important war and violence related passages from the church fathers, so I won't have to spend a lot of time wading through totally unrelated material.
I was thinking of how I was going to do the thesis yesterday. I usually write an essay from beginning to end in one or two sittings, but I have a new plan for this one. I'm going to build it like a person. I'll layout a rough skeleton, like an outline with more oomph, and then I'll tack on stuff as I go. I figure I'll work on it when I can now, and then complete it over the summer. Luckily most of the source material is available on newadvent.com Woooo Catholic websites!
I wonder how long of a paper I should shoot for. I think I remember seeing 30 pages as the maximum length for some application I had. I guess I'll write as much as I can, ask some professors to look over it, and I'll add or subtract depending on their feedback.
Speaking of professors (another slick segue), I saw that Professor Grimsley posted his question about a military history canon over on H-war. It got really intense feedback on his site, I wonder if anyone will speak up on H-war. They usually just yell about tanks and uniforms and stuff. I'm seriously considering unsubscribing from them. The whole email-based discussion group is archaic, and I always get like... 30 at once. My yahoo email notifier gets really mad and yells "yahooooooo!" frantically. I wish they'd set everything up on a forum or something. Meh.
Well, blogger is STILL down, so I'll save this and try and post it later. And I guess I'll be able to spell check and stuff too. That's always a plus!
Argh
I think I have blogger-writer's block. It's probably because it's unseasonably warm outside. In the spring, a man's fancy turns to one thing:
Baseball. Also there are lots of girls walking by my window in daisy dukes. Ahh spring. But I figure I ought to write something in here that's related to my thesis. I wouldn't want my fans, of which there are
LEGIONS, to think I was slacking off.
I was sitting in my Terrorism class the other day and though we're not talking about it just yet, the topic of religious extremism came up. Professor Lewis mentioned something about the IRA and continued back onto the topic of the terror of the French Revolution, but I stayed with the idea of Christian terrorism in my mind.
In Jewish and Muslim tradition it is acceptable to wage war and acceptable to rise up and rebel against your oppressors. In Christianity whenever Jesus makes any reference to war and fighting, he leans hard towards the idea of a state, and only a state, having this authority. Jesus was preaching to a people who were simmering with insurrection, a flock that was chafing under the heavy collar of Roman occupation, and yet Jesus told them not to fight. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus told all who were gathered to love their enemies. If they were struck on one side of the face, the Jews were to turn and offer the other cheek.
WOOOO THE INDIANS WON EVEN THOUGH WICKMAN IS A BAD CLOSER!Ahem. Let me return to the subject at hand.
The key with this bible scene is that it invalidates ANY terrorist or revolutionary action by Christians. Independence movements like those in America and France, albeit leading to free and just societies, were big no-no's from a Christian perspective. And while there might be a little bit of wiggle room with the American Revolution because it was fought, for the most part, in a gentlemanly and "Christian" fashion, the terror of the French Revolution, and the bloody acts of terrorists today are strictly verboten.
I suppose we can throw the French Revolution out the window because of the strong secularism from the enlightenment, but how can modern Christian terrorists justify their actions? How can an Irish Catholic justify the brutal murder of a Protestant who lives down the street? Well, maybe that Protestant was planning to blow up a building in retaliation for an earlier action. Let's get him before he gets us. Maybe that Protestant had killed several children the week before. Revenge is certainly a valid excuse for violence.
Not so fast my friend! Jesus refuses you the right for revenge. He even refuses you the right to hate your enemies! Hey nutty fundamentalist with a backpack full of TNT! Yeah you! The one behind that abortion clinic! The God that you claim to be fighting for said you weren't allowed to do that. I'm sure he'd rather you throw open the doors to your heart and your home to that confused young mother instead of throwing insults and figurative stones.
I've strayed a bit off topic, but the fact remains that there is no solid theological foundation for terrorism in Christianity. The Jews have a history of escaping bondage, and the Prophet began his ministry by attacking a nearby town, but Jesus never ever once advocated violence in this manner. I imagine you could trick yourself with convoluted logic about the ends justifying the means. After all, Jesus condemned violence but required it to be crucified and sacrificed as a lamb to the Lord. But that only works when you forget that Jesus gave his own life WITHOUT hurting anyone else.
Also, I found a book about the Gnostic Gospels on my shelf and I think I'm going to examine what they have to say about fighting and war. I think that it could shed some light onto the formative period of a warrior ethos.
Ok, I'm gunna go wash up and get ready for churchin'. Three cheers for the 6pm mass! It means I can sit around in my sleeping clothes all day and watch sports.
Bah!
I haven't posted in a while because the internet is leading an insurrection against various programs on my computer. I'll try and get something worthwhile up tomorrow though.
::engages Anti-virus software::
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...
Happy..err... Tuesday!
Man it's nice out today. It'd be nicer if OSU would turn off the heaters. Nothing ruins a beautiful spring day like an industrial sized heater pumping out hot dry air. Latin is getting increasingly harder, stupid word endings, and my Terrorism classes are taking up a lot of my time with readings and weekly essays and stuff. I think that I'll write up a quick paper for the Terrorism class tonight, and then when I'm done with class tomorrow, I'm going to sit down and collect all the scattered ideas I've been posting and percolating in my head into a crude essay. Hopefully I can find the time for sleep somewhere in there as well.I was reading the latest entry over at Warhistorian and I followed a link to Amazon where I read some passages from Iron John. I'll probably be proven wrong in the future, but I think I've already got a handle on what he's talking about. I have the reflective sensitive guy, but then I've got the "primative" guy too. Sometimes they're one in the same, like when I go hunting. I think that might be a reason why I've got both sides firmly under control. You've certainly got the primitive aspect down pat when you're scooping the innards out of an animal in the woods, but then there's an intellectual side to it where I contemplate the justness of killing an animal so that I can use it for food.Well, I'm going to go cram 2 chapters of vocab into my brain. That should be fun. Oh yeah, I know there's lots of people looking at the site, but there aren't ever any comments. This vexes me so... I'm terribly vexed.
The Pope
I'm really torn about the death of the pope. On one hand I'm glad that he has passed on. The pope had been suffering ever since the day he was shot by a wouldbe assassin and now he's in a place with no pain. Still, for my entire life there has been one pontif, and I don't really know how to feel about a new one. It's like if your grandfather died and then they were like "don't be sad, we're going to get you a new grandpa." It's just weird. I guess it's because, for me at least, he wasn't just a religious icon, he was a cultural and ethnic icon. Every time someone called me a polack or told a dumb polack joke, I could think "Yeah, polacks are dumb. That's why the spiritual leader of millions, the man who helped to destroy the Soviet Union without violence, the man who sits on the throne of Saint Peter, the guy who has one of those red hotline phones with 'GOD' written on it. I guess he's just a dumb polack too."
*I wasn't really sad about it until yesterday when they started showing all kinds of clips on the news. I think the saddest one was from a world youth day when all the kids were cheering for the pope, and he said "You are young, but the pope is old".
Eh, I guess it won't be that bad to have a new pope. There are significant changes that need to be made in the Catholic church in America. My church at home can't keep a priest for more than a year or two. There's all kinds of problems with sex abuse, the role of women in the church, abortion, contraceptives, mercy killings, and all kinds of stuff.
Well, I was going to talk more about the Pope and his views on war and how they contrast with traditional teachings, but I have to go to church. I shouldn't have spent so much time looking up good Polish jokes.
* I do have a few favorites though.Q: What do you do if a Polak throws a pin at you?
A: Run like hell - he's still got a hand-grenade between his teeth.
Q: Did you hear about the Polish Godfather?
A: He makes you an offer you can't understand.
Q: What would you call a bunch of Polish guys wearing turbans?
A: Pakistanleys.
And then my favorite, this variation of the joke Professor Millett and me did in my American Military Policy class a few years back. (note the last second military history tie-in)
Q: A Polish soldier was confronted by a charging German soldier and a charging Russian soldier. Which did he shoot first, and why?
A: He shot the German first--business before pleasure.
I'm back!
This first week of the quarter has been kind of hectic, hence the lack of updates. Plus I managed to cut deeply into my thumb with an exacto knife before Easter, and the 4 bandaids I had on there made it hard to type. I'm taking Latin 101, which is really cool, despite the fact that it's our teacher's first time teaching. I'm mad that we have to use "Roman" pronunciation. I'm so used to church Latin that it's going to take a looooooooong time for me to pronouce a V as W. I'm taking
two International Studies classes with Dr. Lewis about terrorism. 501 is on WMDs and 553 is on terrorism in general. I wanted to give these classes prope links, but the international studies department has its courses all together in a PDF file. Savages!
The first day of class Dr. Lewis made us all introduce ourselves and say why we were taking the class. There were a few people in there who were interesting. Some guy ran homeland security for a local county, and another guy used to work at NORAD and I think he said he would have been on shift during the morning on September 11th if something hadn't come up. When he got to me, I said that I was in military history and that I thought it would be an interesting class to take. Dr. Lewis said he came up in history of technology and then he asked if I knew Dr. Grimsley. I was like "yeah, he's my advisor" and Dr. Lewis nodded and went on with class.
Speaking of Professor Grimsley, he added a link to this blog on his bloglist. I checked sitemeter the other day, and I was amazed at the increased hits I was getting. Then I looked to see where the people were coming from and I saw a bunch of "warhistorian.org" urls. I like that my humble blog is right next to Victor Hanson's. Thumbs up for having a last name in the Z's! I used to really milk that for all it was worth at award ceremonies when I was in high school. You know how they always go "hold your applause until the end", and I was always the last one up, so everyone would start clapping as I stood up and walked to the front. I would wave and grin at people, like it was all for me.
Anyways, thanks to Professor Grimsley for the link. Now I guess I should get back to work with the blog. Now that I've gotten used to this new schedule (with the exception of the government stealing an hour of sleep), I should be able to post a few times a week. I can't guarantee that they'll all be 100% on topic vis a vis the thesis, because I don't really think I can force creativity like that, but they won't be pointless placekeeper posts either.
Alright, time for laundry. I'm really contemplating stealing one of those lobster bibs from a seafood shack. It'll be a lot easier than cleaning up various salsas and sauces; colas and coffees;
yogurt and
gyros. (The alliteration works if you pronounce the G like the Greeks do!)
