Jackalope Pursuivant

Four Hands Guitar

Like a Luddite, I resisted the advent of internet video for a long time. The early stages of the process were so abjectly horrible that I ignored Youtube and its ilk for a long time after they became popular. I still feel no need to go digging around on the internet for video, but in the course of my employment I'm often forced to watch some horrible rap video or somesuch. This is the first time I've ever seen a video that I genuinely wanted to share. Two men playing one guitar. Well.

Or is it something to do with possums?

I think the guys at Exurban League are right, Obama's new logo appears to be a Wedgwood Jasperware china pattern:

But what's that motto? At first glance it looks like "Nero Possumus," which my ASU-grade Latin education informs me means roughly, "We can do Nero." Optimistic, but one doesn't think that strikes quite the right tone, Senator.

An excerpt from my most recent discussion post, on the concept of "center of gravity" in the theories of Carl von Clausewitz

If this interpretation is correct, then Clausewitz is really just prefiguring the Franklin Covey system of personal productivity. You start with an understanding of your personal values, and develop a personal mission statement—this is a picture of who you want to be, not who you are. So we get Frederick’s mission statement for Prussia: “Prussia will be a powerful, independent force in European affairs.” Then we set some long-term goals that contribute to the mission statement, like obtaining contiguous, rationalized borders for Prussia, or cowing a nearby rival. These are, in Hyrum Smith’s concept, elephants that must be eaten. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So we set medium-term goals, like annexing Silesia.

But we can’t just go pouring our armies into Silesia all willy-nilly and expect to accomplish our goals. We need a strategy. What is the most effective way to accomplish this goal? If the strength of the country is in its army, the army must be defeated. If, by capturing the capital we could accomplish our goal without meeting the army at all, it is often more efficient to do so. If, by depriving our target of its most powerful ally we may force their surrender without any bloodshed at all, this may be the best course. (I’ll spare you the tedious details of how Frederick would go about breaking his invasion of Silesia into practical, day-to-day tasks, ranked according to priority, and entered in his $200 premium-leather Franklin Covey-brand planner. Monarch size, of course!)

Feet

A couple years ago, I worked for a summer as a park ranger at Mt. Rainier National Park. Also on the crew was an especially enthusiastic former Marine, new to the Park Service. He was a newly-minted EMT, and though he wasn't in a job that called for those services much, he never failed to volunteer at the first hint of an injury or missing person. He was so ubiquitous on the radio network that behind his back he was known by his call sign, Five One Nine.

In one of the stranger incidents from the summer, he went hiking high up on the mountain one day. He was in a snowfield, somewhere below the 10,000 foot mark, when he discovered a foot. Specifically, a human foot in a climbing boot.

This is not really unusual on Mt. Rainier. Fatalities occur pretty regularly; I can remember at least two in the last 7 months. Planes have been known to crash into the mountain at high elevations in the fog. (This is a phenomenon known to pilots as "a cloud with rocks in it.") Body parts are occasionally lost at high elevation, and when there is a snow field involved, they can survive a very long time.

But perhaps we should have called out the special agents? (Yes, they do exist. Special Agent Park Rangers.) From the Guardian:

In the latest episode of a bizarre and deepening mystery, another human foot has washed up on the shores of British Columbia - the second this week, and the sixth in less than a year.

The latest, believed to be a man's right foot, was discovered at the hide-tide line on a sandbank off Vancouver Island yesterday morning by a beachcomber. It was still inside a black size 10 Adidas trainer.

British Columbia is after all adjacent to Washington State. Perhaps feet have been, in fact, showering from the sky up and down the length of the Cascade range?