Sometimes jumping into any blog, including Juan Cole’s blog can be a little confusing to a newcomer, simply because of the nature of blogging.  Interviews are often a better way of pulling out something of a FAQ for the curious newcomer.  This Detroit Metro Times chat is a good read, after which I suggest you keep reading Juan’s blog.

If only people this rational and informed were actually in charge.  Of anything.

Thanks to Emo for the heads-up.

Following up on last week’s giant manta ray encounter in Kona:

The above is a frame grab from a video shot on the night. (I’d probably have something better, but their DVD had some quality issues I’m hoping they’ll resolve.)

Obviously, there are perspective issues here. In reality, the ray’s mouth was only roughly the size of my shoulders.

Here’s roughly the view I was enjoying, if you’re curious:

Granted, giant mantas — hereafter redubbed "waterpudus" — seem to have more in common with alien spacecraft than small Chilean deer. But consider: their environment is threatened, they’re nearly defenseless, and they move with a lumbering beauty.

Close enough for me.

UPDATE: pure sloppiness in editing caused me to not link directly to the creators of these images, Dolphin Dreams Images.  Incidentally, they’ve been very cool about the DVD and are sending a replacement immediately, no questions asked.  Hurray!

Vile obscenity in this morning’s L.A. Times:

That’s a VP from Lockheed Martin, at an arms show in Singapore, expressing his excitement about selling weapons of death into the Asia/Pacific region.

Sipping champagne while contemplating which bomber to buy.

Obscenity.

He’s autistic. And he’s fantastic.

CNN via Crooks & Liars.

Behind as always.  Maybe 40 emails I need to answer.  Phone calls to return.  I seem to have an excess of actual life at the moment. 

I’d like to post a few underwater pics of mantas for the Friday pudublog (neglected badly of late, with my apologies), but I don’t think I’ll have them developed in time.  (Mantas and pudus actually have several things in common: adorable, quiet, weirdly gorgeous, nearly defenseless.  Manta rays are a little like underwater pudus 15 feet long and covered in mucus.  A little.)

I’d catch up on all the freshest crap from our government, but it’s pretty much the same as always: more lies, more selling out of the national interest, more avoidance of admitting any individual responsibility for catastrophic incompetence, and more signs that the ill-prepared, dishonest, unnecessary, and illegal occupation of Iraq is leading into a spiral of violence of terrifying scope.

Nothing we haven’t already learned to expect on a near-daily basis.