Thought That Came Unbidden

One of the few benefits of chronic insomnia is that I am often up with the birds…literally.

McMillian reservoir was built by the Army Corps of engineers at least 120 years ago and now, in addition to holding a lot of DC’s water, it’s home to a huge flock of non-migrating Canadian geese. The past couple of times I’ve gotten out of bed (rather than lie there in the dark trying to be quiet as I stare at the ceiling) I’ve gotten to hear them, quiet honks filling the morning air, going both ways in what must be either regular flight practice or a short hop to somewhere with better feeding.

And there was a pretty little finch of some sort, yellow with black wings, that saw fit to serenade the world around dawn in the tree just outside my window. Kind of nice, that.

Or maybe I’m just really good at context clues:

Do chuggers bother you when you want to rock up to a restaurant with your cockapoo to hoover a supersized ruby murray?

– Potty-mouthed? New English words are just lush, Reuters via Yahoo! News

Want to know what it means? Translation below…
[Read more…] about Not such an old fart after all

ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings Dies at 67

I don’t believe that American journalism will ever recover. And I don’t know what else to say.

While I’m ruminating about various things here are some items that caught my eye in the past couple of days. We’ll start with the political…

Reported by the New York Times

JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 – An Israeli Army deserter dressed in a military uniform opened fire today aboard a bus carrying Arab passengers in northern Israel. Four Arabs were killed and at least a dozen wounded before an angry crowd beat the gunman to death, according to Israeli authorities and witnesses.

The shooting was one of the deadliest by a Jewish extremist in recent years and appeared to be an attempt to sabotage Israel’s planned evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, which is set to begin on Aug. 15.

– Israeli Army Deserter Opens Fire on Bus, Killing 4 Arabs, by Greg Myre, August 4, 2005 NYTimes.com | pdf

This follows a week of furious coverage by the news media of the Bush administration’s rebranding of the wars in the Middle East.

From the Daily Telegraph

Officials are instead starting to favour the rather less snappy phrase “struggle against violent extremism” as the administration puts increased stress on longer term initiatives – diplomatic, economic and educational – to defeat terrorism.

The phrase “war on terror” was “very simple, easy, concise”, the official said. “The definition lends itself to images of those in uniform combating extremism and terrorists but the struggle is broader than that.”

– Don’t mention war on terror, say Bush aides, by Alec Russell, July 27, 2005 [ Daily Telegraph (for an excellent roundup of coverage see The Christian Science Monitor) ]

Does this mean that in our struggle against violent extremism that we’re now going to invade Israel? After all, extremism is extremism and shooting up a bus full of commuters is most certainly violent.

Moving on to the just plain neat…

Create your own logo to go with Google. Sent to me by Jonathan

And, finally, the ridiculous…

Courtesy of Bruce over at Amphetameme.org (which you should be reading anyway)… News Hunter 2: Beat the Press (you’ll need Shockwave)

I’m awake. This isn’t a good sign.

Despite this, I found what looks like a really neat magazine and article search engine. A little bit different from the increasing homogenization of google news and yahoo news

findarticles.com

It has articles from Film Comment for god’s sake…what more could a film geek ask for?