Cleanliness and Godliness

I better stop reading these Sandbox posts before I lose the entire workday. Another fascinating one in which the author talks to his Afghani translator friend and reveals that he blogs about him. They talk about many crazy things, including that his friend shaves his armpits and groin on Friday to stay clean, because the world will end on a Friday.

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2007/04/cleanliness_and.html

Afghan Garden of Eden

One of the few green spots in Afghanistan... Sandbox blog post describes conflict between Pashtun and nomadic Cuchies that starts when Cuchie horse drinks from Pashtun oasis.

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2007/04/the_garden_of_e.html

Author worries that it could have turned into another Mai Lai massacre of civilians - and if it had, he would have been responsible!

The Termite Mound

Blog post at The Sandbox - Doonesbury's military blog for soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This one describes conditions at a combat outpost in baghdad - very WWI-like conditions it seems.

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2007/04/the_termite_mou.html

Ends with news coming down that DoD has unilaterally extended rotations to 15 months... they find out through Yahoo news, not from the military itself. And they know some of them will die because of that decision.

Pulitzer Prize for signing statements reporting

Glen Greenwald conducts an interview with newly minted Pulitzer Prizewinner Charlie Savage, for reporting on presidential signing statements.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/26/savage_interview/index.html

Buying the War

Bill Moyers documentary on the press in the runup to the Iraq War. (90 min) How did they get it so wrong? How did the press come to be a simple relay for administration talking points, rather than a source for analysis and evaluation?

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

Swiss evidence of CIA renditions

Swiss journalists aquitted of publishing ambassador's fax revealing CIA black sites in Romania.

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/04/swiss_journos_a.html

One day something incomprehensible showed up...

Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon on how people try to create meaning out of incomprehensible events. Good illustration about the relationship between people/generations and history that we've been talking about toward the end of the class: historical events impact the individual/group, who then has to put it into some kind of interpretive box; the resulting people then generate new historical change themselves.

http://salon.com/comics/boll/2007/04/26/boll/index1.html

AP picture "shows" soldier flipping bird

The latest in the wingnut/moonbat photoshop wars. Contrast with Soviet and other historical modifying of photography. Now people are more sophisticated, both in the techniques to edit photos or to detect the modification. But it's still just as effective if people only get the first photo and never see the debunking.

http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/223905.php

Intro post

Don't know if anyone will ever read this, but if so just wanted to give a heads up as to what this is all about. I teach world history and often integrate current events and multimedia into my course. This is just a tool for me to keep track of and tag links that could prove useful in the future. Any notes are to myself only; if you've stumbled here somehow enjoy the links but don't make too much of the comments. Cheers.