Campanastan

Darfur and the New Year

Have a wonderful 2007!

Let's all resolve to do something about the desperate situation in Darfur. Many of the folks there don't have much to look forward to in 2007. Write your Congressional delegates and President Bush urging the USA to take a firmer stand with the Sudanese government. Support those groups who are providing aid and comfort to the Darfur refugees. They need your assistance - as many as 700,000 in Darfur have become internal refugees, with another 110,000 escaping to eastern Chad. To see which groups are working there and need your financial support go to www.interaction.org/sudan/index.html. 

You can go to www.SaveDarfur.org to read the latest news, identify local support groups, find speakers, and learn what you can do.

Remember, after the genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, we said "Never again!" Well, it's baaacckkkk....But this time we need to do something.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." --attributed to Edmund Burke

Green Nukes, Press Releases, Backwards Bush

While listening to NPR the other morning I heard about the competition between Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to design a new nuclear warhead for our submarine-based missiles. One of the more interesting comments by a lab spokesman was that their design would be a "green" warhead. So here we have a guy, who, with a (presumably) straight face, can call a weapon designed to obilterate lives, ecosystems, and everything else on a massive scale "green". George Orwell must have spun a few thousand revolutions in his grave - what a great example of "newspeak"!

My sister Ellen sent me one of those nifty "Backwards Bush" countdown timer keychains (go to www.bushbackwards.com). The problem? There are still 751 days to go before he leaves office! What would be REALLY useful is a device that can generate a wormhole to take us to January 20, 2009. I also got a countdown 2007 wall calendar, replete with wonderful snippets, watershed events (e.g., Bush finishes My Pet Goat, September 11, 2003) , quotes, etc., from the Bush administration (get your calendar at www.funnytimes.com). One of the more memorable quotes from Ronny Dumsfeld graces the bottom of today's post.

Just what you have been waiting for! I posted two more previous attempts at humor - my infamous April Fool's press releases from 2005 and 2006. When I first sent these out, many people could not tell reality from fantasy. This was especially true of the first one in 2005.

Download corps_of_engineers_press_release_1april2005.pdf 

Download crap_press_release_1april2006.pdf 

"Secretary Powell and I agree on every single issue that has ever been before this administration except for those instances where Colin's still learning." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, January 14, 2002

Travel Reports: Kazakhstan and Georgia

I just posted two downloadable travel reports: Kazakhstan (August 2005) and the Republic of Georgia (October 2006). The latter is a "reformulation" of an earlier report. Enjoy (or not)!

Download kazakhstan_reportaugust_2005.pdf

Download the_georgia_reportoctober_2006.pdf 

Today's quote comes from an Armenian friend, Dr. Armen Saghatelyan. After seeing the quote a colleague of mine actually asked me if "Kalashnikov" was a Russian dialect. I told him "Yes, a very powerful one, often used to persuade people to accept your point of view."

"The optimist learns English. The pessimist learns Chinese. The realist learns Kalashnikov." -- Armen Saghatelyan, Tbilisi, Georgia, October 2006

Welcome to Aquablog

Okay, here we go. So as to avoid inflicting my ramblings on others without their acquiescence, I've entered the blogosphere and become a blogger along with a few million others. I can now post all my infamous semi-fictional "travel reports" and whatever drivel (funny or bizarre news items, aphorisms, stream-of-consciousness missives) I wish to write, and if folks want to read them, they can do so at their leisure (risk?) without my cluttering up their inboxes. Some might say this is, like Seinfeld, a blog about "nothing".

Welcome to Aquadoc's blog, aka

                                                              AQUABLOG!

So come back for more, and remember to....

"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups." -- John Kenneth Galbraith