Hat tip: http://wizbangblog.com/archives/005303.php

As I was driving Number One home from her Girl Scout meeting, we heard the report on the radio that a Bulgarian soldier was killed in Iraq.

“I can’t really blame them,” she said after a moment’s pause. “If I was there, and fire came from a place I didn’t know, I would open fire too. You don’t know who it is and who they’re shooting at.”

Then she looked at me. “What would you have done, Abba?” That’s a good question. I gave an answer something along the lines of the same thing: if I saw fire coming from a place that I thought was free of friendly troops, I would open up too. But she hit it right on the head perfectly.

If a twelve year old can understand it, then why not the rest of the clowns reporting this? The same situation of making a quick decision with incomplete information applies to the shooting of the Italian security agent. Forget about the appeasing of terrorists with ransom for a moment. When someone does an action that can be perceived as hostile, like running at a checkpoint at high speed, there are likely to be fatal consequences, like getting shot. Of course, it makes for better conspiracy theories if we chant like Easton and make allegations of deliberate targeting of journalists, rational thought be damned.

Now, even though I’m not the biggest Carl Sagan fan, there is an intelligent quote attributed to him that his appropriate here: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The Americans targeted some nothing Communist writing for a nothing rag? Pony up. This I gotta see.

Evidently, there were 300 to 400 rounds fired. Wow. But, looking at the photos of the vehicle, there don’t seem to be a lot of holes. In my experience, machine guns make a lot of holes. Fast. This car doesn’t seem to have a lot of them. So I am led to think two things: 1. the ammunition expended wasn’t that high, and 2) most went into the engine block or the air. Which would be consistant with firing to disable the oncoming vehicle or warn off the driver at the checkpoint.

The money quote is from Sgrena, the Italian muckraker: “So I don’t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target.” Obviously, not being bound by logic or objective rationalism, she is not able to see what is going on around her. Running a checkpoint gets the vehicle shot up. Not because you are a libelous mouthpiece, but because you are a nudnick. Or, rather, the driver of the car was a nudnick, but there is enough to go around.

As for the appeasement of paying a ransom, well, that is just idiocy. Paying up only encourages this activity of grabbing more hostages. I am not aware of any group that got money in exchange for hostages has come out saying “thanks, and we are done doing nasty things since we have enough dough now.” In fact, we could go as far as saying that Sgrena and her payors are responsible for the next hostage taken. Bet that Italian hostages continue to be taken; there seems to be a good return on investment.

Unless, of course, allied forces get the terrorists first.

Standing up and saying no to the groups involved is what is needed. That is what stops the kidnappings. Word filters out that getting involved with the terror groups doesn’t result in a glorious battle against infidels, but a quick ignomious end.

“Are you writing me a love letter?”

I stopped typing the email that I was working on and looked up at my wife.

“Um, no. I was replying to an email from Mom about using robot swarms as soldiers.”

Now, my wife knows me well enough that there is a high likelihood that I am serious when I said that. I was. I am a wise-ass too, but robot swarms wouldn’t be the punch line to one of my gags. (Robot swarms are very serious.)

“You guys are definately different. And you are all the same.” Interesting statement. I disagreed, although I have picked up enough at this point to recognize 1) what she means by same, 2) what I mean by same, and 3) we look at the “same” thing differently.

What I immediately thought was something along the lines of: well, we are different heights, hair color, and even genders. The similarities in things like gait and facial structure are small enough that I have heard comments about others thinking we weren’t siblings at first. The tastes in subject matter are way different. Nope, not the same.

What she meant was that we all have a wide net in what interests us, a very analytical outlook, and extremely curious natures. If we come across something that doesn’t fall in the natural category of “oh, I am so into that,” we will still pay attention and ask questions. In that case, same.

Which I have to agree with. I would put the term as “similar” not “same.” Clones, no. Intellectual comrades-in-arms, yes.

Later, I was installing a RSS aggregator on my PC. I should have done this a while ago. The list of blogs and news items that I try to keep up with is well beyond the point of being able to have a few bookmarks that I check up on. Right away I was able to put most of the sites into the aggregator. And away I went.

Of course, now that I am moving these sites of interest into the aggregator, I have a chance to see a totality of my interests, albiet a totality of my blog interests. (Newsletters and the like are not included in the aggregator as I get them via email.) So I can see what interests me from a different perspective. After all, when things come in a trickle, it is hard to estimate the whole population. And if I am just poking around to one or two places at time that I can think of off the top of my head, that doesn’t capture the summation of all the sites that I have thought “hmm, have to check this out again.”

So what interests me? Jewish themed blogs are far and away the biggest area. The individual focus might roam a bit over the idealogical map; some are observant, some not, and some are in between. It is interesting to get a feel for different parts of The Tribe.

Technology is another area. Well, that figures. I am a technically oriented person and do so love the science. Or most of it. I really don’t have the patience for, say, sociology unless it’s framed in terms of Complexity and Emergence. As opposed to my sister, who is a sociologist, which supports my take on the above thinking of “not same.” (There’s the gender difference too, but we’ll ignore that as a “duh.”)

One thing that did pique my curiousity is the number of blogs about language. Which might seem odd at first, since I am the first to admit that I have a limited grasp of English. Oh, I can speak it. I know what the individual words and ideas mean. If the grammer is wrong, I “know” it only because it sounds wrong, not that I can point out “that thingy can’t follow the whoisit since the something is over there.” But I have never quite fully understood it. Frankly, it baffles the hell out of me.

This has always been the case with me. Spelling as a child was a nightmare. Basically, brute force and rote recitation were what I used to make it far enough through school for spell checkers to be invented. Although, by then I had graduated into college, but still.

Now, since I don’t “get it,” but I use it daily to communicate, how is it that I understand anything? Obviously, the letters in certain combinations are meaningful, but what makes that so? How is it that we are able to convey information with these combinations in such a way that they are, for the most part, always understandable? And why is it that I can’t see the rules that are in play?

An example: Poems are collections of words. Haiku is short enough for my discussion and cool enough to have a definition of how long it can be. So, in theory, I can write a program to make a haiku.

Let’s say we make a list of words and say to the computer “pick a random 5 syllables, then another random 7, then another random 5.” Poof! Instant haiku, right? No, we get things like “Behavior Green Was / Dispensing Crash Consider / Column Feircely Has.” Crap. We can tweek it a little to make something like “Green Ideas Sleep Furiously,” but the point is syntax matters to make the ideas presentable. And the “rules” of syntax baffle me.

So language for me is a puzzle, an intellectual challenge, and one that I relate back to information science a lot. Even though I have a hard time with it.