Do I need glasses or is truth really getting even fuzzier?

Three days ago our Commander-in-Chief stood on the White House lawn and told America: No combat troops to Iraq.  That was pleasant to hear given that American warriors are relatively untrained in adjudicating disputes between rival religious sects.

This afternoon we learn that he has told congress he's sending "up to"  275 special forces troops to Iraq.

If I know government flackery correctly, the Ministry of Truth is warp-speed keyboarding the logical explanation that these forces are not "combat"  troops. While "equipped for direct fighting," they're really some other kind of troops. Therefore the White House/State Department complex is not nearly as schizoid as any intelligent observer would first believe.

If so -- if they are other than active warriors -- then WTF are we directing them to do? Organize block parties? Hold knitting bees? Help the Jihad reduce its carbon foot print?

When we learn to our amazement that none of this works, we can surge in some more people. Why not? It is certainly a vital national interest to promote a reasoned dialog about who gets first crack at the afterlife virgins, not to mention the lion's share of oil loot; well worth all the young American blood it takes.

Storms, then and now and leggy

I fell asleep reading about one storm, 160,000 years ago,  and woke up in time to experience another one, still going on.

As my body succumbed to the fatigue of more work (actual work; moving matter) than I'm accustomed to lately, Donald Goldsmith* was telling me about Supernova 1987A. It actually happened sometime around the era when homo sapiens was killing off, and perhaps eating, competing bi-pedals, but it was far away.  So far that the radiation didn't knock on our door until February 23, 1987.

And, rude Earthlings that we are, we turned out the lights, drew the drapes, and pretended not to be home.  The neutrinos were left to their wanderings.

Of course, everyone these days knows something about neutrinos, a product of exploding stars. They are notable for being almost non-existent in a material sense. No gravitas. But they are blessed with a blind and driving energy, and if you want to explain this to your kids by an analogy involving Barack Obama, it's okay with me.

A few days later the rest of the rays and particles from the explosion started calling. This time we were paying attention. The most noticeable result? Hundreds of ambitious astronomers and physicists rushing about and tripping over one another in a mad dash for research grants.

That part of Space Storm 1987A is calming down, as is the great Camp Jiggleview Deluge of June 16, 2014. The most noticeable result of this one will be the Commandant's activities tomorrow. Moving matter, downed burr oak branches and assorted small debris blown around here and there.

There's no real damage, just a certain annoyance that my recovery day will be delayed. I'll entertain myself by photographing the foot of so of water standing in the shallow ditch in front of the private Camp Jiggleview Forest. It's happened before, a great big puddle that goes way in a day or two.  Of course when I'm telling my Green Party friends about it I use the term "rain garden."

All that done, I'll start getting ready to replace some blown roofing on the shop-office-guest room building.  So (sigh) If I seem a little surly for the next few days, please be understanding and kind.

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I'd have preferred this one, but not even exalted Commandants get everything they want.

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*In "The Astronomers" 1991, ISBN 0-312-05380-0. (It's a little dated, of course, but still a rather useful explanation of cosmology for lay folk, especially when read with Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." If I'd read it before Hawking's two popular books I might have understood more of what he said in fewer than three readings.)

Third Reich Gun Porn, gratuitous, of course

You don't see this one often. A nice kid from nearby  Titonka captured it from one of Hitler's officers in  the North African campaign.*  His heirs donated it to the Algona POW museum where I stopped a few days ago on a long and lazy road trip.

The glass had too many weird reflections and I just glanced. Ho-hum, another souvenir PPk. I'm glad I looked twice. It's a SIG P38h, a substitute standard for the Walther .32.

You see so few because production topped out around 200,000 compared to some 5 million PPks. It is somewhat clunkier looking than the Walther.

The "h" stands for "hammerless"** to avoid, we're told, having Lt. Heinie confuse it with the big Walther 9mm. My friend Ken observed "h" could just as easily stand for "hammer." True enough, maybe. There's just no understanding the Nazis, maybe helping us understand why we killed them at every opportunity.

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*Mr. President and CinC Obama:  North Africa came before D-Day, and Patton was there,  just like in the movie you saw.  But he didn't command an army yet. That happened a little later when he "unleashed" his 7th Army on Sicily.  To make sure I'm putting this complicated chronology clearly enough for your Teleprompter, it was North Africa, then Sicily/Italy, then D-Day at Normandy, then General Patton at the head of the 3rd Army. Just in case you ever need to make another warrior speech or something.

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**Shrouded hammer, actually.

Won One

No matter how potentially evil a thing,  by itself  it is a neuter.  So next time you're in your head shop and feel like getting a glass pipe to blow bubbles with or something, y'all just go right ahead in these parts.

Keep the idea of your gun in the back of your head while you digest this. Some Des Moines cops decided to bust a store and confiscate glass pipes as drug paraphernalia. The owner sued to get them back, lost in district court, but won at the Iowa Court of Appeals.

The report from Radio Iowa says: "The Appeals Court ruling says the law requires the pipes to be used to ingest drugs to be considered illegal. The court says no drugs were found in the store and there was no evidence to conclude the pipes had been used."

There you go. Drugs are evil but glass pipes for smoking them are not, so...

Hold it Jim!

Yes, stupid of me to lose the distinction, even momentarily.

Drugs and pipes share no moral qualities. They are ethical castrati at least unless some mysterious happenstance empowers a smoky hemp plant to vote in congress.  (Tempting as it is, I won't go further in that direction today.)

People who use them are possibly evil and  probably stupid to begin with; certainly they become dumber by the puff.  Or the guzzle in the case of ethanol based drugs.

Now, about all those "illegal" guns the politicians and journos keep yakking about:  Wouldn't it be nice if a senior court hearing an appeal from an innocuous, law-abiding fellow charged only with possession of a weapon heard about the Iowa pipe case and got to thinking along the same lines?