a poem (these tide pool poems date from the early 1970s when I was taking Marine Science classes at Orange Coast College, and working as a porter at the Sandpiper Inn in Corona Del Mar)
Abalone
The tips of my fingers hurt from the rasp
Of the rock I pulled over.
For a moment the sun warmed water
Of the tide pool wavered.
It cleared and I steadied my gaze.
A limpet released its hold on the rock
And fell to the clutter of broken shells.
A dark spot moved, abalone, baby abalone,
Seeking the new underside of the rock.
I tugged, gradually, until abalone relinquished.
The flesh of my hand white and clean in the clear water.
Abalone, the size of my thumb's end,
Took hold of my skin, extended two black antennae,
And I felt abalone walk.
Among the shells, two tiny unbroken abalone,
A row of small holes, pink and silver green.
DolphinWords
GG
So, so, last night I'm waiting for the cbs show, The Good Wife (I've been a fan since the first episode!) to show up on their web page...I don't have cable tv, so see the delayed showing on the web...and to pass the time I watched 60 minutes...skipped the first story, Biden going on about things, and watched with incredulity the second story about the US command center for the war plane flights over Syria and Iraq...Hollywood has portrayed these command centers, so I'm familiar with what they look like, but it all looked a bit much, even for Hollywood...the story followed the flight of a bomber crew...it's scary when they take off because of the bomb load weight, and the thin hot desert air doesn't provide much lift...and after seeing on the giant tv screens bombs hitting their targets, the story narrates how the bomber goes after a second target...a sniper on a roof...but the sniper disappears, and another target is hit...a tunnel system in a village...the newsman asks the obvious question in the command center...'a bomber goes after one sniper?'...and the explanation is that no target is too small...and about here, I flap my arms, and say, 'I suppose so, but you dumb bunnies, don't you see that that one sniper wants to engage as much of our resources as he can, and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams!'...
well, lemmee go looksee what the web chatted up about this episode...brb...
quote
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-films-live-bombing-of-isis-target/
60 Minutes films live bombing of ISIS target
Correspondent David Martin gets an unprecedented look inside the command center where the U.S. is conducting its air war against ISIS
unquote
One can find in the comments, which are the usual!, the self same reaction to the sniper story I had...but consider...
quote
The Arab Bureau of Britain's Foreign Office conceived a campaign of internal insurgency against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. The Arab Bureau had long felt it likely that a campaign instigated and financed by outside powers, supporting the breakaway-minded tribes and regional challengers to the Turkish government's centralised rule of their empire, would pay great dividends in the diversion of effort that would be needed to meet such a challenge. The Arab Bureau had recognised the strategic value of what is today called the "asymmetry" of such conflict. The Ottoman authorities would have to devote from a hundred to a thousand times the resources to contain the threat of such an internal rebellion compared to the Allies' cost of sponsoring it.
T. E. Lawrence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
unquote
Here's Bill Moyer's take, standard fare from him...
http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/27/learning-from-lawrence-of-arabia/
And here's Glenn Beck's take, which annoys his chatting followers, but looks to be spot on...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/18/the-100-year-old-agreement-you-need-to-know-about-if-you-want-to-understand-whats-driving-the-islamic-state/
Here's Bill Moyer's take, standard fare from him...
http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/27/learning-from-lawrence-of-arabia/
And here's Glenn Beck's take, which annoys his chatting followers, but looks to be spot on...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/18/the-100-year-old-agreement-you-need-to-know-about-if-you-want-to-understand-whats-driving-the-islamic-state/
hmmph...I had thought to go on about morphogens, Koch snowflakes, Brownian motion, L-systems, and such...:)...but got diverted...those things, for tomorrowmorrow...tic tic tic tic tic...
DavidDavid
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