Liberated from Ike's blunder creating the ROV and sending "advisors". Liberated from JFK's blunders of continuity, assassination, and escalation, from his "pay any price" rhetoric that was profoundly expensive. Liberated from LBJ's blunders of continuity and further escalation. Liberated from Nixon's blunders of continuity and mass aerial bombardments.
Liberated from the theory of Green Berets as more than snake eating snake oil. Liberated from the Domino Theory.
Liberated from John Foster Dulles, from Robert McNamara, Clark Clifford , James R. Schlesinger, from Melvin R. Laird , and from Henry Kissinger.
Liberated from William Westmoreland, from Creighton Abrams.
Liberated from William Calley and the chain of command.
When the far lane opens up, usually occupied by adult lap swimmers, the near lane(s) being used by aquatic exercise, I move Sam and Jonah out of the kids pool (3') and into the big pool (5' to 8') and lead them up and down the length of the pool, periodically shouting "swim Jonah swim" and gesturing forward. He swims fine and could spend significant time in deep water ... spinning. Sam can see linear purpose, he simply goes about linearity with unusual purpose, such as swimming underwater, vertically oriented, as if walking, knees bent, so as not to touch bottom, with his hands sweeping water from in front of his face to behind his ears. It works. It is unusual.
There is the usual friction, adult lap swimmers have minds about the size of a peanut when it comes to non-adults non-standardly non-swimming in lanes. "They're handicapped" I explain, "they swim, they just do laps differently".
Jonah likes me to film him jumping in, he says "Say cheese" to let me know, and he swims better when he sees me filming him, and he watches himself swim and splash on the camera, and on the computer, later. That is part of my evil plan, if the children see them selves they will have a better understanding of how they swim, and what they can do to improve ... or make bigger splashes.
Back and forth along the far side, starting with a splash-entry, shouting "swim Jonah swim" twice a minute to keep him on task, gesturing. But yesterday there was a big birthday party and the near side was was open, with only the middle and far side laned, and Jonah wanted to swim there too. After some splashing about, Jonah the director moved his camara man and camara to the deep end, where he joined two boys doing splash entries. Only he surprised me. After setting up his frame and doing the water entry, he then swam, swam, swam, without prompt or circle spin, steady and as purposeful and as speedy as a Lab in water, the length of the pool.
His swimming speed was respectable, and as I cried out in delight he smiled at me. Its all on film. And he'd like me to stop blogging about it so he can watch it, or write the titles of songs or videos, or find Youtubes.
Routing in and out of Europe is challenging. I've no call to do so until mid-June, but I don't assume that the ash plume will be convenient or that desire for aerien safety is the same as aerien safety.
Jonah picked this out, a 2008 Japanese animated film by Studio Ghibli, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Grace and Kezzie were pleased with the choice, and Jonah sat through the entire picture, though he spent some of the time working his Flip and the footage he shot at the Y earlier in the day jumping in the pool, and later in Target after I got batteries for the Flip.
It was swim morning at the Y. All the autism kids from BJM were up the hill at the Y and in the pool.
In the afternoon after school I took the kids to see How to train your Dragon. I picked it because (a) we got paid travel expenses for my worst trip to Europe ever (before Eyjafjallajokull), and (b) Sam's interest in Skraelings and Vikings, and (c) my trip last month to Stockholm and all the Viking kid lit I picked up for him. We got a theater to ourselves, and Jonah filmed some of the advance trailers and then settled in next to me, asking for popcorn, then for soda, and spent the next 100+ minutes watching his Flip and its videos, or adding more filming the film, and just watching Vikings and Dragons.
I couldn't get him out of the theater until the credits ended.
Walking from the theater to the truck a car slowed as it approached us and a young man rolled down his window and said "hello" to Jonah.
One of the really [un]settling things about Ithaca is that there are people here, just as there was in Portland, before we lost our house due to my unemployability, and set out on four years voyage across the seas of anonymity, who know Jonah, through work at his school.
Jonah sat next to me for almost two hours while a video played making only a few loud noises and only towards the end going under his seat to pick up and eat spilled popcorn.
When we got home he asked repeatedly for the Syracuse Zoo, and its elephants.
I co-wrote, well, actually, Andrew Sullivan wrote, but on namedroppers, the working list for the DNSEXT WG, I wrote the issue statements in a series of notes Andrew was kind enough, and thoughtful enough, to collect, and frame, together with notes by Paul Vixie and YAO Jiankang (姚建康), on proposed solutions, into two notes. The first was unpublished, as it addressed a situation which existed when the ICANN Board disclosed and voted on several resolutions relating to International Domain Names (IDNs) in Nairobi on March 12th, which was corrected on April 7th. The second, published as Comments on "Proposed Implementation Plan for Synchronized IDN ccTLDs", is less of a technical ... shot across the bows, as the prior situation and the dangers it posed had been largely corrected.
The real text is that there are two roots, one operated out of Beijing, and one operated out of Marina del Rey, and managing the divergence between these two roots is the fundamental task of "internet governance" or "technical coordination".
Hours of review of a draft I hope never sees the light of day. The DNS Directorate and others (I'm one of the others) corrects the ICANN Board, and ICANN Senior Staff, on an issue of fundamental import, framed as a technical question, but actually ... a policy problem.
I'm not sure if I should categorize this as "ICANN" or "profound failure". The latter seems the likeliest outcome.
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Items of note: Execution of a non-ambulatory wounded person, even if assumed to be a member of the opposition forces. Execution of non-combatant rescuers, even if assumed to be non-combatant opposition forces. Negligent treatment of surviving children previously targeted for execution as non-combatant rescuers. Concealment of tactical operational error resulting in the deaths of a dozen unarmed, non-combatants, and fabrication of evidence that the civilian casualties were armed opposition forces.
The NYTimes blows past the non-ambulatory wounded execution, the non-combatant rescuers execution, the negligent treatment of surviving children previously targeted for execution as non-combatant rescuers, and the concealment of tactical operational error resulting in the deaths of a dozen unarmed, non-combatants, and fabrication of evidence that the civilian casualties were armed opposition forces to report that CentCom just announced that there were machine guns and grenades found on the bodies, and the Reuters staffers got what they deserved.
A college wrote asking for registry back end operator contacts. He's going to source an RFI from the Arab League for applications for IDN (Arabic Script) and ASCII (Latin Script) strings.
One of the cool things about what I do is knowing that we are competitive, we are the best at what we do. Of course, competition ensures that we work, and I provided every contact I knew of.
Update: Later I asked for competitors I didn't know in ICANN's Vertical Integration Working Group. One new registry backend services operator identified, my former co-worker at NeuStar circa 2001. Good on him!
As surprising and unfortunate as the go-fission-with-carbon message the Obama administration pushed out the door on April Fool's Minus One Day, the Gore communications effort the same day was not fooling.
This plan continues our reliance on dirty fossil fuels – we cannot simply drill our way to energy security. Americans are demanding a clean energy future that goes beyond drilling and incentivizes the technologies that are critical to building a 21st-century clean energy economy. What we need now is presidential leadership that drives comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that caps harmful carbon pollution, puts America back to work, ends our reliance on foreign oil and keeps us safe.
Alliance for Climate Protection President and CEO Maggie L. Fox, March 31
Yesterday I learned that, in addition to putting public money into the ever-grasping hands of the nuclear nutmen, we must put public money into preparing the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea, the Eastern Gulf, and the Atlantic, from the Norfolk Canyon to the Bahamas for lease, through the DoI's MMS, to the oil and gas industry.
This will make a bipartisan climate change bill possible.
Jonah picked this out, a 2008 Japanese animated film by Studio Ghibli, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.