29.9.06

Bullets you can't see

I have previously posted about an on again, off again blog that I've found immensely fascinating. Lone Soldier is a blog syndicated in the Jerusalem Post about an apolitical American Jew who (nearly on a whim) chose to move to Israel and enlist in the IDF. He joined an elite infantry unit and fought during the height of the intafada.

He was called up from the reserves for a complex mission deep inside Lebanese territory, and he wrote two fascinating pieces about his experiences. The first is more of a factual piece, detailing what he and his unit did during the war. The second post, though, is what really got me thinking.

The post is long, but I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who is thoughtful about war and its consequences. A short excerpt of some haikus he wrote on a scrap of paper during the war:

Stars become dislodged
and race the hellfire missiles,
quitting every time

In the metal rain
summer's harvest is cut down
with the harvester

bullets you can't see.
Sagger missiles fly slower,
like red knuckle balls

Nasrallah's portrait
on a barely scratched billboard
grins above the ruins

The wall clock mocks me,
far louder then the shells' shriek
it counts aloud my breathes

He may be a spy.
his flock chews the camouflage
as the shepherd pleads

My baby nephew
in little baby Jordan's,
I smile in the bush


I can only recommend that you read the rest of the post. I wish I had things that profound that I thought about and wrote.

13.9.06

Pretty

Sometimes, I wonder if my entire schooling and career in engineering and the sciences has been solely due to my love of colorful or shiny things on fire.

I am serious.

12.9.06

Oh, my

I am in love.

Well, to be honest, I haven't looked at this too carefully yet... but it looks to be something that university (especially medical) libraries should have done ages ago. Doing lit searches in biomedicine can be painful if you actually want to read the articles, neh?

Not to mention pulling together all those useful little sites you use once every six months and then have to pull out of your bookmarks, buried in some musty folder along with some oh-so-hilarious internet meme from 1998.

5.9.06

*scratches head*

So in the last few days, there have been increasingly strong rumbles from the Arab and Israeli press that a prisoner swap is in the works for Gilad Shalit (IDF soldier taken hostage in a raid from the Gaza Strip a month and a half ago)... and some signs that a similar deal will be taking place with Hezbollah for Goldwasser and Regev. Numbers tossed around have been about 800 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit, and all of the few dozen Lebanese captives (including Samir Kuntar) and some bodies of Hezbollah members.

So my question is... if Olmert was going to cave into the terrorists' demands in the first place why all this waste? Why did some 170 Israelis die, and why did Israel have to kill nearly 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians?

The war in Lebanon and incursions in Gaza would make a lot more sense if Olmert didn't throw everything to the wind by negotiating yet another lopsided prisoner swap.

Just saying.

4.9.06

Wow

According to Ha'aretz, the city with the greatest absolute number of chess grandmasters is...

Be'er Sheva.

Be'er Sheva? A city in the middle of the desert with 185,000 people has more grandmasters than Moscow?!