Firebase Melanie

I recently came across some photos of my dad's firebase in Vietnam, where he served as a LRRP platoon leader. (I've been trying to get him to scan and Flickr his own photos, but it's near futile)



Also, I randomly found a blog post from a guy who apparently went to high school with my dad:

Ralph Bodenner: Class of 65 Ralph was known as an inventor. I believe it was Ralph who invented those sports goggles you wear with prescription lenses. In any event, during the years Ralph ran cross country at Dundee High School, who could forget the speed and endurance of Ralph Bodenner. On top of being the Worlds Fastest Long Distance Endurance Runner at the time, Ralph was a superb student, and genuine nice guy and I think he won some Good Citizenship Award as he was appreciated by students, teachers and administrators. I heard he was a life long military man and I believe that because he was such a good citizen.

Matt Bodenner EN1(SW)

My cousin just emailed me an update, with this photo:
(more here)

















On a destroyer. Somewhere in the ocean.

Goings

I'm really bad about updating my blog, but here's a quick rundown of my summer so far:

I just got back from a week-long trip to Mt. Desert Island, ME, where my pal Pepper's family has a cabin on a long finger of land jutting into the coast. Absolutely idyllic. And relaxing, particularly since I was able to get away from politics and the Internet for a full week.

Activities included: lobster eating, clam/mussel catching, kayaking, hiking, reading, card playing, mini golfing, wood chopping, polar bearing, etc.

(more photos here)

Finished up the week with a wedding in Prouts Neck, ME.


(For July 4th, I'm headed to Provincetown, MA, where I'm staying at my old boss's beach house with my housemate, Patrick.)

Liberal version of the flag-pin idiocy

Smart drugs

The Economist endorses off-label use of drugs like Provigil:

This drug is peddled on every street corner in America, and is found in every country in the world. It is psychoactive, a stimulant and addictive. Users say that it increases alertness and focus, and reduces fatigue. But the high does not last and addicts must keep consuming it in increasing quantities.

Put this way, sipping coffee sounds more like an abomination than the world's most accepted form of drug abuse. But centuries of familiarity have put people at their ease. In the coming years science is likely to create many novel drugs that boost memory, concentration and planning. These may well be less harmful than coffee—and will almost certainly be more useful. But will people treat them with as much tolerance?

GOP eulogy

This photographer recreates children's drawings.

Prompted by the CA Supreme Court ruling this week on gay marriage, I finally got around to picking up my copy of Virtually Normal.

In this particularly thought-provoking passage, Sullivan uses the logic of "natural law" to counter those who usually invoke it:

[N]ature seems to have provided a spontaneous and mysterious contrast that could conceivably be understood to complement -- even dramatize -- the central male-female order. [Homosexuality, like other deviations from the norm,] doesn't deny heterosexual primacy, but rather honors it by its rare and distinct otherness.

As albinos remind us of the brilliance of color; as redheads offer a startling contrast to the blandness of their peers; as genius teaches us, by contrast, the virtue of moderation; ... so the homosexual person might be seen as a natural foil to the heterosexual norm, a variation that does not eclipse the theme, but resonates with it. Extinguishing -- or prohibiting -- homosexuality is ... the real crime against nature, a refusal to accept the pied beauty of God's creation, a denial of the way in which the other need not threaten, but may actually give depth and contrast to the self.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Name That Appeaser

"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage ... and then sit down and talk with [Iran]. ... We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."

Listening to Bush today equate Obama's diplomatic posture towards Iran with Nazi appeasement (to which McCain agreed), you may assume those words are the Democratic nominee's. But they're not; Sec. of Defense Robert Gates said them yesterday. Will Bush call him a Nazi appeaser, too?