Misbehaving Tree

Last night it got down to 47F here — a harbinger of autumn. And as a direct result, the morning here was just lovely, in the 60s and low 70s. So I thought I’d tackle one of my many queued-up outdoors jobs, queued up because the summer heat makes working outdoors just unbearable.

I decided to work on pruning our pine trees. This is something we have to do every two or three years. The Italian Stone Pines (pinus pinea) that line our driveway have the rather stupid habit of growing their branches straight outwards until the weight of the branch causes it to droop to the ground, or snap, whichever comes first (it’s about 50/50). These longer branches are always the bottom branches, since they’re the oldest. So over time, I’ve been pruning off the branches higher and higher up the tree trunk. On some of my biggest pine trees, the lowest branches are now erupting from the trunk at 12 or 13 feet off the ground. Sometimes I don’t cut the branches at the trunk, but rather at some distance out. When I do that, I’m usually aiming to keep the branches at least 8 feet high, so we can see clearly under the trees.

So this morning I had my biggest step-ladder out. It’s not really very big — only six feet tall — but when I stand on the next-to-top step I can reach branches about 12 feet off the ground, so it works out pretty well. As I’ve often done before, I was standing on the next-to-top step, sawing away at a branch. This one was about 3 inches in diameter, and the end I was cutting off was about 18 feet long, drooping down to almost ground level. When I saw over my head like this, I’m always careful to put the ladder toward the side that’s NOT falling, even though that means I have to cut sideways (which is quite difficult, physically). This is because for some silly reason I’ve always believed it would be a bad idea to have the branch fall on me (or the ladder).

Something very odd happened when I cut this branch: somehow it snapped and the cut end moved up, hesitated for a moment, and then moved straight toward my face, quickly. This was, to say the least, quite disconcerting! So I did what came very naturally — I dodged it, moving my upper body to the right. But remember where I was standing — my feet almost six feet in the air at the top of a stepladder. Of course when I dodged right, my feet and the top of the ladder went to the left — Newton’s principle of action and reaction demonstrated. The end result was that my whole body rotated clockwise (from my perspective) until I was horizontal in mid-air, and my feet left the ladder (which then continued to fall over).

That’s what you call an “Oh, shit!” moment. There I was, holding a very sharp saw, about 8 feet above the ground with nothing but air under me.

I knew that I didn’t want my head, a hand, or a foot to be what hit the ground first, as I might actually hurt something badly that way. So I pitched the saw away, and tucked my hands and feet in. That had the disconcerting effect of making me spin faster, and I could see that I’d be doing a half-somersault and landing on my back. I remembered reading somewhere that if you’re going to fall, you should try to hit on your back, but off to one side of your spine — that’s where your ribs have the strongest resistance to impact. Somehow I managed to squirm around so that I’d hit a little bit on one side. This all happened in a fraction of a second, but it sure seemed like a lot longer!

When I hit the ground, it was just below my right shoulder, slightly head down. What happened next made me feel a little bit like an acrobat or a gymnast — and anyone who knows me knows that this is a most unlikely thing! When I hit the ground, I rolled from my shoulder down my side to my hip, and the momentum popped me right back up on my feet. I stood there in complete astonshiment for a minute or two — I had just fallen off a rather tall ladder fully expecting to end up in a pile of broken bones and mangled flesh — and not only was I completely unhurt, I ended up on my feet!

I’ll bet I couldn’t do that again if I tried a thousand times…

The biggest problem ended up being finding my saw — I threw it a good 75 feet away, and it ended up about 5 feet high in a manzanita…

Terrorist Moms

Tip of the hat to Rick P. for the first terrorist pun I’ve heard yet:

Two Muslim mothers are sitting in a cafe chatting over a pint of goat’s milk. The older of the mothers pulls her bag out and starts flipping through photos and they start reminiscing.

"This is my oldest son, Mohammed. He’s 24 years old now."

"Yes, I remember him as a baby,” says the other mother, cheerfully.

"He’s a martyr now, though,” mum confides.

"Oh, so sad dear,” says the other.

"And this is my second son, Kalid. He’s 21."

"Oh, I remember him,” says the other, happily. “He had such curly hair when he was born."

"He’s a martyr, too,” says mum, quietly.

"Oh gracious me,” says the other.

"And this is my third son. My baby. My beautiful Ahmed. He’s 18,” she whispers.

"Yes,” says the friend enthusiastically, “I remember when he first started school."

"He is a martyr, also,” says mum, with tears in her eyes.

After a pause and a deep sigh, the second Muslim mother looks wistfully at the photographs and says:

"They blow up so fast, don’t they?"

Groan…

But this leads to a ponder… I’ve noted on quite a few occasions the proud comments of the parents of a jihadist 'martyr' who has blown himself up. These parents sound like an American parent whose kid made the winning run in a Little League baseball game. But their kid is dead, and in a violent and gruesome manner — killing innocent people in the process. Is there any more crystal-clear example of the differences between the culture of radical Islam and the culture of the West? Such a thing would be utterly unimaginable in our culture…

The liberals would (and do) argue that all cultures are morally equivalent; they urge us to make no judgment about other cultures based on our own mores.

To which I say “Bullshit!” I refuse to grant even the possibility of moral equivalence to a culture that celebrates the death of innocents, that takes joy in the 'martyrdom' of its children, and which believes that it is their duty and obligation to kill me and the people I love. Nope, radical Islam is a culture that is distinctly inferior and primitive by comparison with ours. And if they insist on maintaining jihad against the West, then I believe we (in the West) have no choice but to grind their sorry asses into camel feed.

And if that’s not politically correct, well then that’s just too damned bad.

Inevitable In Iran

Some time ago I concluded that there was only going to be one way to stop the threat of nuclear weapons in Iranian hands: direct military action. Diplomacy has been a complete failure; Iran is 'playing' the West with the greatest of ease.

Charles Krauthammer agrees with this, and has written an interesting piece about the calculus. His conclusion: yes, military action will be costly, both in blood and in treasure — but it must be done. His conclusion:

... These are the costs. There is no denying them. However, equally undeniable is the cost of doing nothing.

In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, nonnuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.

Yup, he’s got it.

I just hope we can muster the courage (are you listening, Mr. Bush?) to take action — unilaterally if necessary — before the mad mullahs demonstrate their new power by vaporizing London, Munich, Paris, or New York…