National Guard providing cardboard “Flat Daddy” cutouts to families of faraway soldiers

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The Flat Daddy, the National Guard’s idea of a replacement for the actual daddy:

Flat Daddy!

I kid you not.  The Boston Globe had this a couple of days ago — "Flat Daddy cutouts ease longing" reads the sub-head:

At the request of relatives, about 200 Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy photos have been enlarged and printed at the state National Guard headquarters in Augusta. The families cut out the photos, which show the Guard members from the waist up, and glue them to a $2 piece of foam board.

I dunno.  I guess if the families are getting some solace out of it, whatever.  But it just seems so damn sad that things are so bad that people are actually thrilled to have cardboard replicas of their family members.

First noticed via BoingBoing.

For those here because of the L.A. Times/UPI thingy

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I’ve long wanted to upload some of my favorite pictures, and the L.A. Times thing asking me for seven cool places I’ve visited seems like a good excuse, especially since all of these places appear briefly (very) in the new book:

1. The Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey

St. Sophie's place

The above was taken with my back toward the Blue Mosque, near a tea vendor with a giant metal contraption strapped to his back.

Inside, below, notice the Arabic script for both Muhammed and Allah (I think), sharing stage time with the Virgin Mary looking down with Jesus from above.  It’s
two, two, two churches in one.  (Actually, it’s now a museum,
reflecting almost 1500 years of Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and
Islam, now in one cool secular building.)

St. Sophie's

2. The Cape of Good Hope, Western Province, South Africa

Dang, that's a cool cliff

Dang, that’s a cool cliff.  The baboon thing was about twenty minutes later.

Double rainbow

Not on the cape; just a cool double-rainbow I saw driving to Johannesburg, so, well, here.  I swear I haven’t tinkered with the color — and it was like that from horizon to horizon.

3. Bruny Island, Tasmania, Australia

Fairy penguins as viewed through night-vision goggles.  You must do this sometime.

Beware the Demon Bunny!

Beware!  It’s the Giant Demon Bunny of Bruny Island!  Run for your lives!  (Actually, it’s also known as the albino wallaby.  Sounds a lot less scary, though.)

4. Besakih Temple, Bali, Indonesia

Besakih temple

Bali.  Words fail.  A difficult place, though, because even months after the bombings everybody seemed to be palpably hurting.

Traffic circle

I’m pretty sure this was actually in the middle of a traffic circle.  Bali is what you might call a god-rich environment.

The Man Sarong: A Look I Will Not Pursue

Incidentally, the Man Sarong, while mandatory in the temple where this was taken, is not a look I intend to pursue.

5. Avana Harbour, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

Supposedly a bunch of Maori guys hopped in their canoes near this spot and paddled across open ocean all the way to New Zealand.

Welcome to Screensaver Island

Hard to see why anyone would leave, though.

Rarotonga airport

Although, sadly, I had to eventually myself.  I was glad not to be using a canoe.  This is the Rarotonga airport, or most of the terminal, anyway.  And those bags were actually more than I needed for the whole trip.  Pack light.

6. Sibelius Monument, Helsinki, Finland

Looking straight up Sibelius' ah-OOH-gah

Sibelius monument, proctology view.

Sibelius monument

A better angle.  The teeny blob at left holding up a cell camera is my former Jeopardy opponent and now dear friend Leslie Shannon, whom I adore.  The game where we met is in the book.  (We actually had our first conversation onstage at Radio City Music Hall.  How much fun is that?)  Also she laughs like this: giggiggiggigg.  Man, she’s cool to hang with.

7. Batu Caves, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Upsy daisy

Upsy-daisy…

Inside the Batu caves

Is this a great place for a Hindu temple, or what?  And look, over there! — it’s Harrison Ford being chased by a boulder!

Wanderlust.  Coming.  Back.

Must.  Go.  Now.  To.  Airport.

Snap Judgments R Us

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Fresh research out of Princeton shows that human brains — mine, yours, Rush Limbaugh’s, Mohandis Gandhi’s, Osama Bin Laden’s — are hard-wired to make snap decisions about whether a face is trustworthy within a tenth of a second — so fast that our reasoning minds simply may not have time to intervene or even become aware of the process.

"We decide very quickly whether a person possesses many of the traits we feel are important, such as likeability and competence, even though we have not exchanged a single word with them. It appears that we are hard-wired to draw these inferences in a fast, unreflective way."

Interesting.  Probably some survival thing rewarded by natural selection.  Among a group of hunter-gatherers, I guess the ability to read the faces of potential competitors would be a big factor in an individual’s survival.  Although these days it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth, given that unexamined racism and xenophobia from all sides are an enormous threat themselves.

Still, I couldn’t help but think of the faces you see below.  See what snap decision your brain makes:

All ten of these are innocent Americans illegally placed under surveillance by the Bush administration, typically because of their constitutionally-protected peaceful opposition to the Iraq war.

I don’t know what your instincts are telling you right now, but I do know what mine are telling me.

I mean, never mind the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, or the democracy we’re supposed to be fighting for.

I guess we’re just supposed to trust this guy instead:

Trebekistan article in the L. A. Times online

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Was hoping this piece in the Los Angeles Times online edition might not run until the book is actually out, but what the heck, here it is.

Deborah Netburn asked me to come up with a number of lists related to
the book’s content, one of which was my seven favorite exotic places
I’ve visited since starting to travel so much in the wake of Jeopardy!.

So this is the list I came up with.

UPDATE, 10:23 pm 8/24: A chunk of that tiny piece has apparently just been picked up
by United Press International, and is now running (online at least)
everywhere from the Washington Times to DailyIndia.com to the North Korea Times.  Whoa.

Before this goes any further, there are three errors in the UPI article,
one of which is my fault, and I’d like to correct these asap: