Great Horned Owl

Our friend was mowing her yard (on a tractor — we have big yards out here!) when she spotted a little ball of bloody white fluff in front of her. The blood made her think she'd injured or killed the little thing, but actually it was just a rat that (apparently) momma bird had left for it to eat. The little guy was just fine. Our friend called my wife (the rescuer of all things in distress — especially if they're cute), and she got a towel around it and put it in an animal carrier. The local raptor rescue folks are on the way out here to get it; they'll take good care of it and reintroduce it when it's ready.

That incident led to a search for the nest, which they found in short order. A not very happy momma owl can be seen at right, along with the backside of at least one more fledgling owl (and we saw it move a bit, so it's alive). Debi had our trusty Sibley's Guide to Birds, and she identified it as a Great Horned Owl, southwestern variant. We were a little surprised at how white the fledgling is — but Sibley says there is some variation. The sighting of the nest resulted in a call for me and my telephoto!

Click on the photo for a bigger view.

Viking Crater

With very little fanfare and almost no public recognition, the two Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) recently got funding for 18 more months of Martian exploration. These amazing little robots have been scuttling around on the Martian surface for 15 months already, even though their "design lifetime" was a mere 3 months. Nobody knows if they'll last another 18 months — it would be pretty amazing if they did — but now they've got funding to keep collecting science information as long as they do last.

Click on the photo to get a bigger image...

Army beards

This is the first I'd heard that beards were an issue in Afghanistan. Read the whole column; it's quite interesting. Here's the lead-in:

One of the interesting quirks of Muslim culture generally, and Afghan culture specifically, and Pashtun culture even more specifically, is the emphasis on facial hair. A beard is a sign of manhood, and to be clean-shaven is considered effeminate, unmanly, and is more or less tantamount to an open admission of homosexuality (and not the older man-teenage boy kind, which is tacitly tolerated among the Pashtuns.) The Hazara, an ethnic group in Afghanistan who are descendants of the Mongols who came there with Genghis Khan, had a terrible time under the Taliban partly because many of them couldn't grow beards. They were, by the way, excellent, fiercely loyal soldiers who didn't mind playing a little catch-up now that they were on the side that was on top.

All US soldiers are expected to be clean-shaven, according to AR 670-1, the army regulation covering uniforms and appearance. That created a bit of a problem, since working with the Pashtuns while clean-shaven was a lot like being an undercover cop trying to infiltrate a biker gang while wearing a pink tutu and a lacy top. The powers that be had therefore, reluctantly, grudgingly, and sorrowfully, authorized SF teams working with the Afghans to grow beards. Of course, it being the Army and all, no way was there going to be a clean implementation of a policy that radical. AR 670-1 is the regulation most beloved of a certain kind of Sergeant Major and those who aspire to be a certain kind of Sergeant Major, and for them, allowing SF operators to grow beards was the biggest blow to their perception of what the Army should be since Clinton instituted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Also, while the senior leadership of the special operations task force endorsed the policy, they were ambivalent about the results, as were many of their subordinates.

John Paul the Great

Those amongst my readers who know me well know that I am not a religious man. Further, they may know that I have some particular antipathy toward the Roman Catholic church — based, I hasten to explain, on my reading of the church's history and not at all on any personal experience.

Nonetheless, I find a great deal to admire about Karol Wojtyla, the man who became a priest and eventually Pope John Paul II. Much of the commentary I've read since his death, while full of the expected adulation, missed the mark in terms of what I found admirable about the man. This column, by Joseph Bottum (writing in the Weekly Standard) is directly on point from my perspective. An excerpt describing the incident that first caused me to express admiration for any Pope:

And yet, however weak the Communist edifice may have been in actuality, it still seemed formidable, and the pope was at the center of the cyclone that blew it down. The KGB's Yuri Andropov foresaw what John Paul II would be, warning the Politburo in Moscow of impending disaster in the first months after the Polish cardinal became pope. Figures from Mikhail Gorbachev to Henry Kissinger have looked back on their careers and judged that the nonviolent dissolution of the Communist dictatorships would not have happened without John Paul II.

"How many divisions has the pope?" Stalin famously sneered. As it happens, with John Paul II, we have an answer. At the end of 1980, worried by the Polish government's inability to control the independent labor union Solidarity, the Russians prepared an invasion "to save socialist Poland." Fifteen divisions — twelve Soviet, two Czech, and one East German — were to cross the border in an initial attack, with nine more Soviet divisions following the next day. On December 7, Brzezinski called from the White House to tell John Paul II what American satellite photos showed about troop movements along the Polish border, and on December 16 the pope wrote Leonid Brezhnev a stern letter, invoking against the Soviets the guarantees of sovereignty that the Soviets themselves had inserted in the Helsinki Final Act (as a way, they thought, of ensuring the Communists' permanent domination of Eastern Europe). Already caught in the Afghanistan debacle and fearing an even greater loss of international prestige and good will, Brezhnev ordered the troops home. Twenty-four divisions, and John Paul II faced them down.

Do yourself a favor and savor the whole column, slowly and carefully...

An Iraqi perspective

Today Mahdy Ali Lafta is the head of the Iraqi Teacher's Union, an educational activist. His story provides an interesting glimpse of how an Iraqi views the transformation of Iraq. Also interesting is that this article is from the Guardian, a British newspaper that isn't exactly known for reporting good news from Iraq. The article ends:

Which brings us to a difficult question. Is Iraq better now than under Saddam? "Certainly," replies Mr Lafta. "But the people of Iraq did not want the war. Which nation would want to see itself occupied with no sovereignty or freedom? But it was Saddam who brought this upon us.

"The Iraqis should not be made victims again by the occupation. Iraq has become a subject of international debate. It is open to the world to see. We fought Saddam Hussein and many died, now we want to build our nation. Where better to start but with our schools and universities? We need solidarity for that."

He pauses, then adds: "We should focus on the good news too. The heroic acts of the civil society, of men and women who work hard and sometimes pay the highest price. Of the teachers who continued to teach through those years, and those who want to help rebuild the country now. That's worth telling."

Before our interview Mr Lafta had wandered around an exhibition of Spitting Image puppets in the Guardian's newsroom. He was transfixed by the image of Saddam, grotesquely out of proportion and all the more recognisable for it, nestled among sketches of Lady Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Osama Bin Laden.

Reflecting on it, Mr Lafta shivers. "He's the beast, and even an insult to the beast doesn't destroy the fear of that beast. I look at that and I think of mass graves and atrocities and for me, someone who loves teaching, I think of the damage to education."

"All those feelings, but I also feel happy that he can be depicted like that. That it's allowed. The rest look like saints compared with him."

I can't help but wonder why the U.S. liberals have so much trouble with stories like this. Some that I have spoken with seem to be focused on the fact that it was a war (spoken in tones that imply the obvious evil of it) that brought this good thing, so therefore it cannot possibly be justified. Others seem to be focused on the fact that these stories repudiate firmly held liberal beliefs and make some conservative positions look, well, good and effective — and therefore these stories must either be false or else examples of the shining exceptions plucked out of the muck by conservatives. What puzzles me most of all is that this denial, the liberal averting of the eyes, takes place no matter how credible the source of the information.

There are a few exceptions to this, of course. Some liberals have, however reluctantly, been recognizing that through some mysterious means they don't understand the American policies, led by President Bush, have accomplished some very good things indeed. But I'd feel a lot more comfortable about the sanity of my liberal countrymen if this was a more common reaction than it is...

A tip 'o the hat to Chrenkoff for the pointer to this story...

Apology privilege

TigerHawk proposes that an apology privilege be created in law, so that one could apologize to someone who felt wronged without admitting culpability under the law. TigerHawk says:

The problem, of course, is that the law burdens contrition with a significant legal cost. If you apologize, you can and will increase your liability, because the apology will be converted into evidence of culpability rather than civility. If you don't express your sorrow to an injured person, though, you both coursen our society and increase the chance that the person will become a plaintiff against you. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. This is a ridiculous Hobson's choice, all to preserve the very dubious probative value of the apology.

Why is an apology of dubious probative value? Because in the absence of legal considerations, people apologize or express contrition or sorrow in all sorts of circumstances when they do not believe that they are actually culpable. They may do so because they want to help the victim, or because it is their habit stressful situations, or because their parents taught them to acknowledge the suffering of others. The fact of an apology in the moment of crisis or grief proves next to nothing, so justice does not benefit very much by making the apology available to the plaintiff's case.

The apology privilege, however, should extend beyond doctors to all potential defendants. As I wrote last time,

"It seems to me that we would benefit tremendously if corporations, CEOs, negligent neighbors, the local streets and sanitation department, the police, the school system, managers of playgrounds and athletic programs and the manufacturers of lawn darts all had the ability to apologize without fear that their sincere expression of remorse will expand their liability."

I also believe that there would be tremendous political power in a national apology privilege. Other than the trial bar, who could publicly object? What politician is going to vote against "saying you're sorry"? The benefits — a society in which people felt free to express their sorrow — would so outweigh the costs that every state in the country should adopt this legislation.

I don't doubt that there are an interesting number of cases where an apology would have headed off a lawsuit. And I also have no doubt that anger is a significant piece of the motivation for many, perhaps most, lawsuits. But I am very skeptical that something as simple as an apology would magically make very much litigation disappear.

A couple of reasons for my skepticism:

1. Even if someone is angry, and even if that anger was part of what motivated the lawsuit, there are still many cases where a genuine and unredressed (in the absence of litigation) harm was done. For instance, suppose the deliveryman drives his heavy truck across my yard, knocking down my fence, injuring my dog, and destroying some landscaping. I'll certainly feel better about it if the deliveryman and his company apologizes to me for the incident, but if they're not forthcoming with appropriate damages and nothing I say seems to convince them they should — well, then, I'm likely to sue them to recover my damages. Even though I got an apology.

2. Even if the law says that apologizing will not have legal ramifications, many people (I have no idea what percentage, though) simply will not apologize anyway. Most people have run into one of these stubbornly unapologetic types during their lives. Their motto seems to be "I'm right, whether I'm right or wrong." It doesn't matter one bit what the facts of the matter are, they still believe they're right, or justified, or both — and I can't imagine anything so wimpy as the lack of penalty forcing them to cough up an apology. They'd rather gouge out their eyeballs first.

So color me a skeptic. But I still like the idea, because a little more civility and a few less lawsuits is a winner no matter how you cut it. I just don't think it will be the panacea that TigerHawk thinks it will...

Quote for the day

Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.

   Aristotle