Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Finding God, Troop Deaths and Blackwater Works On.





In what can only be described as a larger scale "Where's Waldo" it seems that physicists are working on finding something that they call the "God particle". Seems that this is something that may or may not prove that there is something divine. A very interesting article at Newsweek. The project is going to begin this summer in Europe. I am actually quite interested to see what happens.

On Easter Sunday the death toll to U.S. soldiers hit 4,000. Now, I have been hearing the talking heads proclaim that the numbers were MUCH higher in all other wars. That can not be denied, but why should we even compare and contrast? Why did there even have to be any deaths? Why did there ever have to be young men and women sent into harms way? This article at AlterNet also points out something even more troubling about the service people that are not being killed, the huge numbers that are coming back with sever brain trauma and the tolls that it is going to take on our medical and mental health systems. A very significant point made in the article, that really made me think, was how it points out the lack of American media coverage. I had started to notice this recently myself. With all the political crap going on we have lost our focus on this unnecessary war. The Pew Research Center has shown that the sharp fall in the media coverage has left the U.S. public less interested in and knowledgeable about the conflict. A scant 3% on the news stories in February were devoted to the conflict while last July the number was closer to 15%. The study reports that the public has not seen the war as a top news story since last October. This, to me, is quite sad.

And finally we will end with Blackwater and their antics. Seems that they are making their services available to other countries and hiring their operatives from other countries and so on. For a good article about their latest hijinks's Mother Jones News had an excellent article. Especially as they too have dropped off the evening news radar.

Burt Update: After a week of steroids and pain meds Burt is walking once again. We are still very careful and are carrying him up and down the stairs from the second floor. We lift him up on the couch, but he will sometimes jump down before we can do anything about it. He has a bad back. It is not anything that will ever heal. A $4,000 dollar surgery was suggested, but with his heart problems the chances of him dying on the table are great. So, eventually he will need to be put down. I am hoping that it is not while John is in Finland, which by the way, he is arriving there today for 2 months, maybe longer! It is -10 degrees there right now. I think he is going to lose his tan. Too bad. So, Burt is able to walk outside on his own although we still are watching him closely. Nice thing is he doesn't wander anymore and we don't have to put him on the runner. He does his thing and comes right back in the house. Now that he is on the "juice" I wonder if we might be brought before a congressional hearing? He is getting quite large biceps. Not sure how much longer I can continue to even pick him up!! We have nicknamed him the "Burtinator".

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