Sambal

Not much to say, except that being on vacation in a foreign country is an excellent way to avoid following the blow-by-blow war coverage. Finally found a good internet cafe in Prague, which is how I’m updating now. Basically we’ve been busy relaxing.

It’s been very interesting to be here while reading Adam Smith. I understand better what Communism did to this country. They stole all the wealth — the capital, the means of production — and they pissed it all away over the next forty years. They ran textile mills in Central Europe! Even Warren Buffet gave up on textiles in the 1970’s!

When an industry runs at a loss, that means wealth is being destroyed.

Jane Galt writes:

US Calls off UN Vote

The President will speak to the nation at 8 pm tonight.

Alea iacta est.

Can we lay off the Caesar-crossing-the-Rubicon-and-creating-an-empire quotes already, please? Even if you genuinely feel that the U.S. is going the way of Rome or (worse) George Lucas’s old Republic, please, for the sake of us all, just stop. Find a different inappropriate historical analogy.

Blogging has been light because it turns out that for me, writing is incompatible with the heavy beer-drinking program I’ve been following here in Prague.

I can just feel your sympathy.

Anyway, a couple of quick Czech news notes follow, and then off to bed.

It looks like the Czech government hasn’t decided yet about whether to commit its chemical decontamination team to the coming war in Iraq. They’re pretty good, so I hope they can help us. Actually, I really hope that we don’t wind up needing their help.

There was a bomb scare at the main railway station today, about three hours after I met somebody there.

And Canada won’t come along without another UNSC resolution. Anyone surprised?

Got here Tuesday morning. Jetlag was mercifully light. I think it helped that we napped for a few hours on Tuesday afternoon. There’s never any consistent trick to overcoming jetlag, I find. There are just better and worse trips.

We watched a Lithuanian movie — The Lease — part of the “Days of International Film” festival. My best irrelevant observation so far is: if that film had been made in Hollywood, they wouldn’t have used the actress’s feet. They’d have used a foot model.

Before the main feature there was a short claymation movie called PIRAT, which was about a pirate. He drank a lot of rum, ate fish, and shot things with his musket. Immediately before the pirate movie was a trailer for Bowling for Columbine (including the bank/gun scene that’s been debunked elsewhere), and while I was watching this pirate shooting birds and octopi, I thought: Of course, the United States is the world’s source of cartoon violence.

Right.

How do people pronounce “academe”? Is it ah-kah-DEM or ack-a-DEME?

It can’t be the former, or else don’t they’d write it properly — italicized and with a grave mark — acadème?

But how could well-educated (snobbish!) people slaughter French pronunciation with the latter?

And what’s wrong with “academia”?

I hear a raspy voice saying, “Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark sidewarbloggerdom will be complete.” But I can’t stop myself:

This Mark Steyn column is a must-read!

My favorite line was

Although there’s lots of funny stuff on the internet, this is something special. I don’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve laughed until tears stream down my face.

I used to be a self-described cat lover.

Now I’m not.

I still like our cats. Our two cats.

But the others — our housemate’s two cats, and the two cats we’re watching for a friend who’s living in England — I tolerate, just barely.

They piss everywhere (into an outlet, once). They vomit everywhere. They fight through the night. They yowl and scratch the doors.

Never again am I going to have six cats in one house.

Damian Penny notes that the Observer has edited the alleged NSA message to restore the “original” spelling.

They also modified the “headers”. My earlier post records what they used to have in the From: line. Now it’s

From: FRANK KOZA [???] Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA
Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16

More like a memo — no “@” sign in the From: line. But why would a memo have a record of the hour and minute sent? And the Observer calls it an “email”; so why does it have a “Sent on” line instead of an Internet-standard “Date:” header with a properly formatted date (like this: Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 12:00:05 -0500)?

I wasn’t really trying to start a conversation with Colby regarding the bombing of Cologne. I was just pissed off and needed to vent. But I did it publicly: that was stupid.

As Colby writes:

[UPDATE, March 2: Sam Mikes takes umbrage with my entry on the flattening of Cologne, though on frankly unclear grounds

I was irritated at his dismissal of C. David Noziglia’s claim (in a letter to Virginia Postrel), that the USAAF deserves credit for the survival of the cathedral. Certainly not all the credit: Colby justly pointed out that the cathedral’s survival of the 1000-bomber raid is no credit to the USAAF. But in subsequent raids when the USAAF was dropping bombs, further damage to the cathedral was minimal even though it lies quite close to several legitimate targets. So the USAAF deserves some credit.

And on losses, six bombers lost in air-to-air combat may not seem like much compared to 41 (according to this page) lost in the 1000-bomber raid. But the figures aren’t directly comparable. The nominal B-17 strength of 3rd Air division was only 520, I don’t know how many planes flew that day, and I only have hearsay figures (reported in 1st Air division’s logs) on air-to-air losses for this day. For the 1000-bomber raid, we know that 41 of 1047 aircraft were lost but not to what cause (RAF has estimates). I haven’t been able to find detailed numbers on daily aircraft losses per missions flown, and I don’t care enough to go to the library over this.

Colby and I probably agree that inaccurate, self-important American grandstanding is unpleasant. Perhaps we disagree on whether this is what Mr. Noziglia was doing. But we probably agree that bombing Cologne is a stupid topic for continued discussion.