Sunday morning I rode my motorcycle down to the corner cafe for breakfast, then took the twisties to the top of Mount Lemon, pretty much the only motorcycle destination in Tucson during the hot summer months. I arrived at my favorite mountaintop coffee shop at 9:30 AM only to find it still closed, but the outside tables and chairs were out and it looked as if it might open soon, so I sat at a table in the shade. While waiting, I took a couple of cellphone camera photos of myself, trying to capture the pine trees behind me. Of course whenever you take a photo of youself, you get a bad photo from an unflattering angle. To compensate for my horrible self-portrait, I took another photo of my Goldwing parked in front of the coffee shop.
I’ve been looking for things to comment on this morning, but just don’t have the stomach for anything political or economic. Politics because, Jesus H. Christ, enough already and we still have a year and a half to go; economics because no one’s doing anything about unemployment and it’s clear no one intends to.
So what’s left? A few things.
- I don’t understand it, but I know it’s a big deal: scientists trap and hold antimatter for 16 minutes.
- Just finished an article in The New Yorker about the indentured servitude of third-country nationals working for contractors at US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three assertions in the article pretty much tell it all:
- The author at one point called the US military’s sexual abuse hotline (the same hotline female soldiers in the US military are supposed to use) to report the rape of a Fijian worker by her contractor boss. No one answered. She called again, several times over a period of days. No one ever answered.
- The Army & Air Force Exchange Service … the organization that lets many of these service employee contracts … routinely whitewashes reports of contractor employee abuse.
- So does the US military. Normally, they pretend not to know; when contractors deny abuse the military is only too happy to accept their word.
- The new abortionists: climate change scientists are beginning to receive death threats.
- A group of traitors led by the president of the Republic of Korea committed an unprecedentedly hideous provocation which was duly blasted by the general staff of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea Army. And no wonder … “the resentment and hatred of the army and people of the DPRK have reached an unbearable phase.”
- Donna and I are finally watching the season one episodes of the FX TV series Justified on DVD. Season two stands quite well on its own, but it’s interesting to catch up with back-story stuff we missed. Don’t wanna rave like a groupie, but this show kicks ass.