Card-carrying member of the "Greatest Generation" says, "time for a draft?"

I found Andy Rooney's commentary this past weekend to be especially thought provoking. The title: "Bring Back The Draft? If America Fights A War, Should The Government Draft Soldiers?" Some tidbits: 'Recruiters are granting thousands of what they call "moral waivers". A "moral waiver" it turns out means they'll take someone who has committed a crime or even someone who has been in prison. Last year, a total of 8,129 "moral waivers" were given to men who volunteered for the Army. Are these the people we want representing us?' and 'Now comes the part of this I never thought I'd hear myself say: Whenever we, as a nation, decide to fight a war – in Iraq or anywhere else – it should be fought by average Americans who are drafted.' Here's a counter-argument of course: Did we, as a nation, decide to fight this war? My answer is no, we didn't choose to fight (who would?) but rather the fight has chosen us. The bottom line is that we are fighting this war, and will continue to fight for our survival for the forseeable future. There is great evil in this world (I know, I've seen it) and the only thing it knows is strength of will and the conviction that they are fighting for their "god given rights." The only thing that will counter this is a professional military made up of non-losers. I think that a draft would be hard—Rooney admits as much: 'I hated everything about Army life. I hated the Field Artillery regiment I was assigned to. Most of the guys in it were high school dropouts and the Army wasn't using the term "moral waiver," yet but a lot of them would have needed it.' But 60 years later we realize that it was the right thing to do. And so it is again.

Kantara—media coverage in Morocco

Dylan's hero got back from his tour. Check out the videos from YouTube, they are both in Arabic (and one partially in French) but don't turn down the sound if you check them out since the music is the point. Brennan is the guy with the beard speaking English in the one video. Riadh (the owner of the conservatory) is the other guy interviewed. Most of you can't read Arabic, but in the first video they have Brennan as "Bernard Dilmore" and in the second it's "Breenan Kilmorgh". But we do the same thing translating names from their alphabet to ours...but that's for another post. 2M Morocco Moroccan Channel 1

More from Star Wars Land

We saw the Tatooine cloaks all over the place--I think that maybe we'll start to stockpile and sell them.

Kantara

Tomorrow evening (24 February 2007), Stefanie, her mother and I are going to go to a concert here in the Tunisian suburbs. The name of the group is Kantara—it means "bridge". I was at the press conference announcing the tour—Brennan is Dylan's hero. While a student at UVA, Brennan had a band called Walker's Run—their only CD is available on Amazon, I was able to download it on iTunes. Walker's Run is (was) a bluegrass group, Brennan played mandolin and was the lead for most of the vocals. I've also seen him play banjo and guitar—he says he can also play fiddle. Riadh (also mentioned in the press release) plays the Oud and is the owner of the conservatory where Sofia and Dylan take music lessons. They've created their own genre, Arab-Appalachian music. It is a very unique fusion of the two styles—they really work together. Here's their website: www.kantaramusic.com. If you click on the music link you can download several mp3's. My favorites are Wayfaring Stranger (that's Brennan singing) and Hobbi (=my love). The lead singer on Hobbi is Amel—who speaks perfect English and couldn't stop laughing at me the day I backed my car into a lady out front of the mosque in Sidi Bou Said. We are very excited for the concert—check out the music, it's very unique, I think you'd like it.

The Lars Homestead

Here are several pictures from Luke Skywalker's boyhood home. I don't know who was more excited, Dylan or me.

Our Weekend in Southern Tunisia

We just got back from a trip to Southern Tunisia--we had a great time and wanted to share some pictures. We knew we were entering desert country when we saw this sign: This was from a few days later, but I thought the baby camel was very cute: Here's the four of us sitting on a sand dune in the Sahara:

And Stefanie and her mom:

After having ridden for days and days on our camels:

Just kidding, it was less than an hour. We were surprised later that this wasn't the first time that any of the five us had ridden a camel. We hung out with Berbers:

And Bartholomew Cubbins' brother:

And then we ended up in a very cool place. I'm not going to tell you where this is, you have to guess. I have other pictures that give it away, but post a guess if you have an idea. I'll post more pictures related to this last one in a few days or when someone gets it right, whichever comes first.

So I am trying out Office 2007…

And I found out that I can use Word on my desktop to write blog entries and then have word communicate with blogger to post the blog entry for me. I like Office 07 so far, there doesn't seem to be any added features, but the features that are there are much easier to get at—no more digging through drop down menus. If you need something, it's right in front of you. I need to find a host for pictures now. Flikr is free, I think—does Yahoo! Have anything?

The biggest change though is that MS changed the default file format. They've gone to Office OpenXML (OOXML)—if someone sends you a document created in Word using the default setting, it'll come across as a .docx – you can change it to .zip and see the XML files directly. Versions prior to 2007 will have to have a compatibility update.

I also downloaded Vista, but I haven't been able to get the downloader to validate the file, and I don't feel like downloading the 2.5 gigabytes again.

Oh—probably the coolest thing though is OneNote, I use it to keep track of my schoolwork, it works like a notebook, creates tables automatically, an automatic calculator function. I bet though that it's at its best on a tablet though.