A Sudanese official named Ahmad Harun is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

He has not yet been arrested, however.

Instead, as the L.A. Times just pointed out, he is currently serving as a Sudanese Minister of Humanitarian Affairs.

Incidentally, I mention this in the Sudan chapter of my next book, which will be out next month. But the book is a series of very short essays, so Harun gets all of two or three sardonic sentences. All I could squeeze in. I’ll be eager to see this given wider attention.

The Times story gives photos and a much fuller picture, including some very dark conjecture about Harun’s eventual poetic fate. Well done, and good reading.

I’m in the middle of an aggressive summer cold. (Or, possibly, a swarm of angry bees have gotten into my lungs. Hard to tell the difference right now.) Either way, my doctor has prescribed new and interesting meds whose side effects include some of the most fascinating, lucid dreams I’ve ever had.

Last night, for what felt like about an hour, I was about 15 years old and Dick Cheney lived next door to the house I grew up in, and he was trying to sneak into our yard without anyone noticing. He was clearly up to no good. But I kept yelling Cheney! Cheney!, sort of the way people in monster movies yell Godzilla! Godzilla!, and pointing and sounding the alarm, and Cheney would look up at me and sort of snarl and stay on his side of the fence. For now.

This went on for a really long time.

The weirdest part was that it was neither scary nor amusing; it was simply a fact of life, something you just sort of had to do every day. Kinda like real life, unfortunately. Sigh.

As long as I’m tripping, you’re welcome to join me. Here’s the Shat doing "Rocket Man." Seems about right.

P.S. While we’re at it, here’s a supremo computer ad from the pre-iPhone era. Just too cool not to post. Enjoy.

I couldn’t pudublog last week, so this week, I present the following, which contains enough cute to fill two weeks, if not actually warp the time-space continuum itself:

This is the fine work of Los Angeles Zoo photog Tad Motoyama, who deserves the Nobel Prize in Ungulates. The photo was forwarded by one of the great folks over there who gave this site a private tour a few weeks ago. The cuteness still tingles.

Take a gander at the most recent national report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

America’s bridges rate ahead of our dams, drinking water, roads, schools, power grid, navigable waterways, and more.

When you’ve got a federal government — and a voting populace — that prioritizes tax cuts ahead of infrastructure, you can’t be too surprised.

Actual poll data from the Cleveland Indians’ official site the other day, just after I voted for Tris Speaker:

For anyone who cares, these results are a bit like asking which doctor discovered penicillin, and seeing Alexander Fleming come in third to Patch Adams and Dr. Ruth, with the other nominees being maybe Phil McGraw, Julius Erving, and Johnny Fever.

Kenny Lofton is a six-time all-star, no question, with eight or nine outstanding seasons in his 17-year career. Grady Sizemore has become an elite player in his three-plus years, you betcha.

Tris Speaker, however, was dominant for 19 of his 22 years, with a lifetime On Base Percentage (OBP) 16 points higher than Lofton (whose strength is getting on base) managed in his best year, and a career On Base plus Slugging (OPS) 20 points better than anything Sizemore (who strength is his combination of leadoff and power skills) has ever achieved. And Speaker amassed those superior numbers while playing most of his career in the dead-ball era.

Speaker is also considered one of the best defensive center fielders of all time, the game’s classic play-shallow go-get-it guy. That Tris Speaker was possibly the finest position player in Cleveland history should be no more obscure than knowing that Babe Ruth was once pretty good for the Yankees.

A glance at the stats will show that Earl Averill is the second-best player on the list; he’s also the only one besides Speaker in the Hall of Fame. The inclusion of the popular Rick Manning is simply bizarre; he had exactly two good seasons before becoming an average-at-best player for the rest of his career. Meanwhile, seven-time all-star Larry Doby, who broke the color barrier in the American League and had eleven stellar seasons, belongs on this list more than Sizemore, Lofton, Butler, and certainly Manning.

I bother not because baseball matters — it doesn’t, of course — but because a supremely simple question has been asked of a public which (a) is actively interested and (b) has excellent, unfettered access to the basic facts, none of which are hard to understand. And almost everyone involved has whiffed spectacularly, including the Indians employee asking the question.

And now I imagine even attempting another discussion about Iraq, Iran, health care, or anything else where the basic facts aren’t quantified to the third decimal point.

Agh.

Maybe next year…