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December 1st, 2009
maxomai
 | 05:10 pm - Obama's Escalation Speech
So...today, President Obama announces that he's going to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, and explains why. You can watch his speech here.
The good:
• The goal of this operation is very narrowly set. This is a good thing because it helps to better set criteria for success or failure, and gives better focus to the mission at hand.
• It sets a date for the end of the first phase of the mission (at which time the process of turning security to the Afghan government begins): July 2011. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is when we're supposed to be out of Iraq.
The bad:
• There's precious little in the way of achievable milestones.
• There's no timeline for the end of the mission. This might make strategic sense (former Bush officials have argued that a timeline would just encourage AQ to sit it out), but it significantly increases the risk that this project will run out of control.
The ugly:
• The Afghan government is corrupt and illegitimate.
• Whatever else this mission is intended to do, it implicitly supports said government.
• 30,000 more American lives, in addition to the 65,000 or so already there, are being put at risk to support said government.
• Oh, and by the way, we're already stretched way the fuck too thin, fiscally and militarily.
• Afghanistan has earned its reputation for destroying empires, repeatedly.
• It's not clear that stablizing Afghanistan will put an end to AQ, particularly since they have demonstrated a remarkable ability to just get out of the way.
• There is a real danger that Afghanistan will generate several fiascoes that will undo Obama's work in reaching out to the Muslim world.
In the meanwhile, Dick "I Can't Believe He's Not In Jail" Cheney says that Obama screwed up the decision by taking time to think about it. You know, as opposed to going in, guns blazing, full speed ahead, into a completely un-necessary war. If there was ever a person who should SHFPH on this, it's Dick.
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best_enemies
[x_losfic]
 | 06:57 pm - Weekly Drabble Challenge 11
This week's prompts are: Cradle and/or Grave
Please either leave your drabble(s) in the comments, or, if you prefer to cross-post from your own lj, link to it/them below.
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kinkyturtle
 | 06:56 pm - FurAffinity still down, so HERE'S new art
Turns out FA itself is fine; just that it has no connection to the outside world because their ISP is down. I don't know why; could be a cable cut, could be a DDoS attack from some subhuman moron.
In the meantime, I got new art I wanna show off! Where I'm gonna put it if I can't get to FA? Oh wait a minute, I could put it on my own website, couldn't I? So that's what I did. I uploaded a bunch of art even though there's no HTML written for it yet.
First, I want to call attention to my two newest drawings:
KT and friends dressed for winter
Is Teleia wearing slippers?
Those and more can be found here:
http://kinkyturtle.masemware.com/cartoons/2009/?C=M;O=D
Also there's PORN! that you may not have seen yet, here:
http://kinkyturtle.masemware.com/cartoons/a/2009/?C=M;O=D
(Careful! Don't click that link if you're at work or are easily offended!)
(Although if you're easily offended, what are you doing here?) :}
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mytholder
 | 12:43 am - Dead Presidents
Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there. One of the most successful games I’ve run recently was an Unknown Armies game called Dead Presidents. I left the players to come up with some campaign frameworks, and they decided to play reincarnated presidents with superpowers. I blame The West Wing. (The other suggested campaign, which I think is utter genius and really must run sometime, was about a unit of marines in Iraq who get zapped by a curse. By day, they appear normal. By night, they appear to be scary Jihadists to anyone who sees them.)
Dead Presidents went to some bizarre places. Here’s the transcript of a conversation between the bad guys, which the PCs managed to obtain with the typewriter used to write the Watergate story and some sorcery. On Thursday, I’ll recap the campaign and discuss why it worked so well.
Read the rest of this entry »
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pretty_elegants
[shadow666x]
 | 06:12 pm - Greetings
Hello Dears. I just joined this community and I have a few questions. Firstly is there a Sales_Comm associated with this community? I got on EGL_Comm_sales and VK_sales but never find too many Aristocrat type clothes.
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tagmeth
 | 04:45 pm - And yet more fishies
How about this? Most salmon die after spawning, males in particular. Some females survive and are venerated as the mothers of the school (right word?). When these are caught, they are examined and released. Males are almost always animated solely by their infestations, ie zombie fish. They would be easy to spot.
Oh, I like that. See what happens when I ask questions?
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galactic_conman
[plaid_slytherin]
 | 05:43 pm - FIC: Little Pieces of Forever (Ten/Jack) 1/1
Title: Little Pieces of Forever
Author: The Plaid Slytherin (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) plaid_slytherin)
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Jack
Rating: All Ages
Spoilers: Utopia
Summary: The Doctor and Jack visit a significant day in Jack's history.
A/N: Originally written for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) wintercompanion's November 2009 Challenge Remembrance.
The morning the guns fell silent was gray and chill, the November sky unaware of what went on beneath her.
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doctorslashjack
[plaid_slytherin]
 | 05:41 pm - FIC: Little Pieces of Forever (Ten/Jack) 1/1
Title: Little Pieces of Forever
Author: The Plaid Slytherin (plaid_slytherin)
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Jack
Rating: All Ages
Spoilers: Utopia
Summary: The Doctor and Jack visit a significant day in Jack's history.
A/N: Originally written for wintercompanion's November 2009 Challenge Remembrance.
The morning the guns fell silent was gray and chill, the November sky unaware of what went on beneath her.
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tagmeth
| 04:09 pm - More Fishies
I've had two comments on the spawn-and-die response of salmon. As far as I can make out, that's true of Pacific salmon but not of Atlantic ones. Is the latter info wrong?
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frater_treinta
 | 03:50 pm - Update
I am not dead.
Google Wave makes me happy.
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cericonversion
 | 01:24 pm - Weight Watchers, week 28
This was the second of two no-weight-tracking weeks, as I've been seeing how my body takes to amlodipine. The answer: really, really badly for a couple weeks, but I'm experiencing enough relief yesterday and today that it does make sense to do what my doctor suggested today - stick with it another week or two, unless bad reactions come back.
Speaking of doctor...
This summer my A1C, the measure of long-term overall blood glucose level, was at 8.3%. The range for healthy adults is 3-6%. As of the test two weeks ago, it's 5.5%. There'd been a delay in getting the results delivered to Dave so he was actually looking through the report while I was there. He turned the page, read that line, put the report down, turned to me, and nearly shouted, "Dude!" (For which he apologized later, but I giggled. I'm willing to forgive an exuberantly happy doctor.)
He'd been hoping for about half a percentage point improvement. Apparently each half-percent reduction in A1C reduces the risk of kidney and liver failure and of damage requiring amputation of fingers or toes by about 20%. I asked him if a three-percent reduction meant I should expect to be growing anything. He didn't think so. :) But he says it's the best result any patient of his has ever achieved in the initial six months.
So I'm a happy camper today. Measuring weight resumes.
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dadiceguy
 | 04:20 pm - Offered without comment
There are days when I need an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt with the arrow pointing up. And other days with the arrow pointing down.
Current Location: in bed
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/aliens/sick.gif) sick
Current Music: A Really Cool Dance Song - Bowling for Soup
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bright_lilim
 | 11:12 pm - Hellboy: Seed of destruction
By Michael Mignola and John Byrne
This is the collection of the first Hellboy miniseries. It’s also part of the first Finnish Hellboy trade.
The first chapter is set in the final years of WWII when the Nazis are trying to get magical help. A mysterious magician performs a mighty spell which seems to go somewhat wrong.
( Read more... )
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tagmeth
| 02:58 pm - Pip and Fishy Matters
Hurrah, I'm back to riding Pip. So far, he hasn't tried to buck me off. In a solo lesson with Marc, I think I finally learned how to hold Pip's mouth, which is to say firmly but without hanging on it. It's a delicate balance between giving him courage and not checking him. I've always been too soft with him, afraid to hurt. Marc has told me that over and over, but it's a different matter sensing it for oneself. God, I hated feeling like a coward.
Knock on wood that it lasts.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to work out a spring fish festival for the Merikit -- this, without knowing the first hand's-on thing about fishing. How does the following sound?
Posit a breed of salmon (called the rainbow) that swims north in the fall from the Southern Sea to the northern-most end of the Riverland. There they are selectively netted by the Merikit for winter fare. The fish who win through lay their eggs, then hibernate in a glacial lake north of Merikit territory. In the spring the smelt hatch (the OED says they have “a peculiar smell” – anyone know what that's like?). In the spring when the ice breaks, the smelt and survivors of the winter swim south. This is around the vernal equinox. They are pursued by a breed of fish called the blackhead that lives in the shadow of Perimal Darkling. If caught, the salmon become the hosts for the blackheads’ young and swim on south until they burst with the invader’s parasitical young. Thus the blackhead migrate. To eat one is disastrous. The Merikit pay their due to the Silver and the Eaten One each spring by netting and destroying as many blackhead as possible. Adult salmon are also netted, both for food and to check for infestations. The smelt slip through the net.
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warren_ellis
 | 02:09 pm - Induced Epidemics
I have a couple of friends in this one, if you’re in the LA area:
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)
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![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/happy.gif){kind=small}
silly
