Back of the Envelope

This is Storyblogging Carnival L, a collection of storytelling in blog format from around the blogosphere. Since we're using Roman numerals, every time you get to a big round number, you go down to a single digit again. Thus this, the fiftieth carnival, is L. For our fiftieth carnivals, we have seven entries from a variety of writers.

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Galad's Reprieve
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated PG.

Galad death watch is ended by the incompetence of others.

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The Joy of the Pool
by Lisa of Lil' Duck Duck
A 456 word brief story rated G.

"Lil’ Duck is easily thrilled, but nothing makes him happier than the promise of swimming in the pool."

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A Different Sort of Vampire
by Goemagog of this space for sublet
A 832 word brief story rated PG.

Venturing out into the nothingness.

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Adventure
by David N. Scott of Perrerro
A 2095 word short story rated G.

A writer looks for inspiration among seals.

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A Guilding of Lillis, Scene 2 (Beginning)
by Dave Gudeman of Doc Rampage
The next 2,213 words of a story in progress rated PG.

Rolf's sensitive nature leads to dire consequences in this continuing tale of adventure and romance.

[Rolf and Zantar are not exactly the heroic type, are they? -DSC]

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Prologue of Amelia Earhart's Blog
by Brian Carland of Amelia Earhart's Blog
The first 2,376 words of a novel in progress rated PG.

This is the begining of a serialized novel (blogel) of the last ten years of famous flier Amelia Earhart's life. Published in installments on Tuesdays and Fridays in August and September.

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You Give Love a Bad Name
by Postmodern Sass of Postmodernes Sprachspielen
A 5,224 word short story in seven parts rated R.

"I was wearing matching underwear—Victoria's Secret, hot pink, if you must know—underneath my go-go dress last night when my karaoke buddies and I went to a Kickass Karaoke party at a boozecan on Queen Street. This is probably why I didn't end up going home with Ashton Kutcher..."

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If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

I have the same skepticism about evolution as Doc Rampage, but this is interesting:

An evolutionary arms race between early snakes and mammals triggered the development of improved vision and large brains in primates, a radical new theory suggests.

The idea, proposed by Lynne Isbell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, suggests that snakes and primates share a long and intimate history, one that forced both groups to evolve new strategies as each attempted to gain the upper hand.
...
Early primates developed a better eye for color, detail and movement and the ability to see in three dimensions — traits that are important for detecting threats at close range.

Humans are descended from those same primates.

It puts me in mind of Genesis 3.

Doc Rampage has positive things to say about the new Sci-Fi channel show Eureka. I TiVoed the pilot, but I still haven't gotten around to watching it. Doc's positive comments have encouraged me to take a look.

Cynthia Lo talks a bit about the issue of proportionality in war, specifically as applied to the current Israel-Hezbollah conflict, over at Iron Chef. She quotes a lot of people without really giving her own opinion, but I think I'll go ahead and give my opinion on the matter.

The idea of proportionality has been misrepresented a lot recently. In just war, proportionality is not about doing no more damage to your enemy than they do to you. That is not a reasonable way to conduct war, as by its very nature it precludes victory. No, proportionality is about doing no more damage than necessary in order to achieve your objectives. The question, then, is whether the objective of the Israeli military is just, and whether the damage they've done is proportional to their objective. Proportionality in this sense is very technology dependent. In World War 2, you basically had to destroy a city if you wanted to take out a military factory. Precision bombing is a vast improvement over that.

So, we're faced with three questions: What is the Israeli military's objective? Is it just? And is the damage they are doing proportionate to their objective? The objective is, and I think most people are agreed on this, to cripple Hezbollah's capability to wage war against them, even destroying the organization if possible. Is this a just objective? Well, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It is not possible for Israel and Hezbollah to coexist, because Hezbollah's entire reason for being is to eliminate Israel. Some folks say that Hezbollah is now a legitimate political party, which provides social services and builds schools and hospitals. This is true only in the sense that Hezbollah is a political party dedicated to the destruction of Israel. I can't speak for the hospitals, but the schools are propaganda mills teaching a new generation of martyrs to hate Jews. And political parties, as a rule, are not also armed militias which control some territory so thoroughly that the legitimate elected government doesn't dare send police or troops there. So I think that there is a strong argument that the destruction, or at least disarmament (as called for in Security Council Resolution 1559), of Hezbollah is a just cause. Ideally, the Lebanese army would do it. It's their country, and Hezbollah is a threat to their authority as much as Israel's existence, but Lebanon is either unable or unwilling to do it. The leader of Hezbollah, Nasrallah, claims that he controls Lebanon's government, and some of what they're saying seems to conform with that.

So the final question is whether Israel's use of force is proportionate with their objective. I believe it is, but that is an argument that has to be decided by people who better understand the military situation. As I understand it, Israel has taken action to cut off Hezbollah from Syria and Iran, and then has bombed the location of known Hezbollah hideouts. They've tried to clear the civilian population away from the area, which is probably a mistake. First, it warns Hezbollah so it can leave the area. Second, the civilians are unable to leave since Hezbollah is keeping them in place by force. Civilian casualties on either side works to Hezbollah's benefit, and they will attempt to maximize them and inflate the numbers. There have been reports of firefights between civilians attempting to leave the area and Hezbollah fighters.

Ideally, Israel would so weaken Hezbollah that the Lebanese government could send its troops in and sweep away the remnants. It would be difficult for Lebanon to publicly cooperate with Israel, though, which is why I'm hoping that there is more going on behind the scenes than there appears to be.

Do you use your blog to share fiction? Then the Storyblogging Carnival is an opportunity for you to share examples of your storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals. The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the fiftieth, which means we're back in the single digits in Roman numerals, and it will be going up July 31st. It'll be hosted right here at Back of the Envelope. (There's a high probability I'll be out of town that day, but I still intend to get the carnival up on time.)

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, July 29th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Sluggy Freelance — Uh-oh. The Grahammy they thought they had turns out to be Broadman, and he's a martial arts expert. He kicks Torg's and Riff's tails. Unfortunately for Broadman, his boasting about the owning the cows (Riff and Torg in cow suits) gets him the blame for bringing the stampede to the party, and Zoe gets the promotion she's looking for. Meanwhile, Torg blurts out that he kissed Gwynn to Riff, and Riff admits he's dating some girl named Miranda, whom the rest of them have never met.

Day by Day — The New York Times, Howard Dean, Andrew Sullivan, and terrorists get plenty of mockery, a lot of it coming from Zed and Sam at the beach. I think that's mostly an excuse to draw Sam in a bikini.

Scary Go Round — Having lost the inventing contest, fair and square as far as he knows, Tim leaves for exile. Meanwhile, Shelley's not being awarded for her journalism in trying to uncover the conspiracy.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Dave wins the swimming match, due to his superior swimming ability, but Mike thinks he cheated. Before things can get really interesting, Blue shows up.

General Protection Fault — Dexter's plan gets them past the guards, evil Nick is ignoring the reactor going critical, as it looks like a mere blip to him, while Ki's about to provide a distraction to let Dex do his thing.

Schlock Mercenary — Massey presents a novel defense: wer're guilty, but not what they're accusing us of, and by the way, the government's guilty too. TAG has an objection: he thinks the government's trying to prevent a civil war.

Many conservatives are chomping at the bit, feeling that Bush has been too soft when he should have been more aggressive in going after North Korea and Iran. Captain Ed disagrees:

Most of this comes from a short attention span. This effort will take decades, not months, and Bush knows it. One cannot hope to transform all tyrannies into democracies overnight. It takes time to build up the momentum, and it will ebb and flow as world events unfold. The crisis in North Korea has been years in coming, and Bush started off with a lousy hand, as the Jimmy Carter-imposed Agreed Framework allowed Pyongyang to do as it pleased for eight years. Unless we want to start another ground war in Asia, we cannot simply bomb the Kim regime into non-existence. The Kim regime is committing slow suicide as it is, and the Bush policy of multilateral engagement is the correct one to contain Kim and to contain the damage from the ultimate collapse that will inevitably come.

On Iran, Bush allowed the Europeans to take the lead for a number of good reasons. Primarily, the White House wanted to focus on consolidating the Iraqi victory, and the mere presence of Americans on Iraq's Western border made it clear that we had a big stake in the outcome. It also made sense to have the EU-3 handle the negotiations, since neither Iran or the US wanted diplomatic relations with each other. Europe, which had convinced itself of the folly of American unilateralism, wanted the chance to strike a deal with Iran, and since they had more at risk with a nuclear Teheran, it made sense to allow them to do so. After all, we do not run the world.

Now we know that the EU failed, and the EU knows that it failed. We still have the big military in place in the region, and the Iranians know that we will not stand idly by while Iran threatens our position. If they had not realized it by now, they certainly understand it in our refusal to rein in Israel in Lebanon. We cannot simply start attacking Iran simply because their leader makes nutty statements about the Holocaust and has abrogated a treaty on non-proliferation. We need to build up as much of a consensus as possible to take action -- just as we did with Iraq -- and then strike if necessary.

I believe in a strong defense and pre-emption when necessary. I don't see the necessity at the moment, and in fact I see Israel's action as putting off that day for a while longer. If Israel crushes Iran's proxy and chases the Islamists out of Lebanon, Iran will find itself isolated even further -- and then they will want to cut a deal that makes sense.

Captain Ed makes some good points, but I really do not know whether he is right or not. There is too much I don't know about Iran and North Korea, and unfortunately, I'm not sure anyone knows. I hope we're taking the right approach, but I don't feel qualified to judge.

Mark Steyn has a book review of Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn. The book's premise is that anthropologists have whitewashed the violence in primitive societies, allowing the myth of civilization's evils and the primitive man as peaceful and in tune with nature to thrive in the popular mind, despite it's lack of a factual basis:

But the passage that really stopped me short was this:

"Both Keeley and LeBlanc believe that for a variety of reasons anthropologists and their fellow archaeologists have seriously underreported the prevalence of warfare among primitive societies. . . . 'I realized that archaeologists of the postwar period had artificially "pacified the past" and shared a pervasive bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare,' says Keeley."

That's Lawrence Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois. And the phrase that stuck was that bit about artificially pacifying the past. We've grown used to the biases of popular culture. If a British officer meets a native -- African, Indian, whatever -- in any movie, play or novel of the last 30 years, the Englishman will be a sneering supercilious sadist and the native will be a dignified man of peace in perfect harmony with his environment in whose tribal language there is not even a word for "war" or "killing" or "weapons of mass destruction."

Anyone who's studied ancient history should have little trouble seeing the lie. War, slavery, and oppression are not inventions of Western culture. They've been practiced by just about every culture man has come up with.

Lawrence Keeley calculates that 87 per cent of primitive societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. "Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century," writes Wade, "its war deaths would have totaled two billion people." Two billion! In other words, we're the aberration: after 50,000 years of continuous human slaughter, you, me, Bush, Cheney, Blair, Harper, Rummy, Condi, we're the nancy-boy peacenik crowd. "The common impression that primitive peoples, by comparison, were peaceful and their occasional fighting of no serious consequence is incorrect. Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating the opponent."

Why then, against all the evidence, do we venerate the primitive? ... We want to believe that the yard, the cul-de-sac, the morning commute, the mall are merely the bland veneer of our lives, and that underneath we are still that noble primitive living in harmony with the great spirits of the forest and the mountain. The reality is that "civilization" -- Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian -- worked very hard to stamp out the primitive within us, and for good reason.

Genocide was considered the normal way of war in the ancient world. The rightness or wrongness of war was not considered, only whether you were strong enough to take what you want from the neighboring village, city, or nation. Aside from the high points of a few ancient civilizations (the Greeks, for example, often practiced limited warfare between professional armies for limited gain--and ultimately lost to the Romans, who did not practice limited war), it is only recently, in the last few hundred years, that we've come to believe wiping out the opposing nation is wrong, to believe that civilians are not legitimate targets in war, that it is not permitted to start a war simply to conquer another nation. Is it any wonder that large numbers of people have not been convinced yet? They'll take advantage of our distinction between combatant and civilain, but they won't follow it.

Mankind is fallen, given to sin and violence. Peace is the aberration, not war. It won't survive on its own.

It took an hour and a half to get home from Bible study last night. Now, as my Bible study is in Boston, and I have to drive to the subway and take two different subway lines to get there, it usually takes about an hour to get home, forty-five minutes if I'm lucky. Tonight, it took twice that.

This was mainly because there was a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, so the T, Boston's subway, was packed. I arrived at my Green line stop to find about a hundred people trying to get onto a train that could comfortably hold fifty but was already filled with twice that. After spending a couple of minutes betting with myself whether ten or twenty people would manage to get on, I decided that I wasn't going to make it onto a train anytime soon. I knew that it was a quick walk across the Harvard Bridge over the Charles River to MIT, and cutting through MIT would bring me to the Kendall T stop, on the Red line, which would take me back where I was parked. I figured the Red line would be less crowded. So I sacrificed the $1.25 I had already spent to get into the station and walked across the River.

I was right, as it turned out, and I found the Red line train virtually empty when I got there half an hour later. Of course, by the time I got where I had parked, some of the traffic had caught up, and I still had a hard time getting onto Route 2 and back home. So overall it took an hour and a half. But it was worth it.

As I was walking through MIT, I got an idea for my next Ryan and Emily story. It'll be a while, maybe a whole year, before I get around to writing it, but now I have a pretty good idea what it will be: an MIT ghost story. There's a lot of potential there, but I have to be careful how I tell it, as there's also the potential to needlessly upset people with this story. I won't go into any more details here, because I don't want to give too much away, but that should be enough that I'll remember something about the ideas I had when I come back to it.

The comment spam has started to become a problem. I considered several possible solutions, but the one that seemed like it would work best for me is to require my approval before a comment will appear on a post. This would not work if my posts generated lots of comments and debates between commenters, but as I only get the occasional comment, letting it await my approval before it appeared seemed the easiest and most transparent solution. If I get complaints about it, I may switch over to another solution, such as requiring accounts which must be approved by me. I like this one less, as there's no way for me to tell who's a spammer until after they've been approved. It's real advantage is that it puts a higher threshold that the spammer has to get past before they post.

In anycase, I don't stop posts because I disagree with them or because they insult me, merely when they're spamming this blog. Now, if I could just do the same for trackbacks.

This is Storyblogging Carnival XLIX, a collection of storytelling in blog format from around the blogosphere. Rather than wasting time, let's just get to the entries. This week we've got a lot of non-fiction entries, many of them stretching the definition of story a bit. I decided to be lenient, partly because I'm a little short on stories these days.

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Brass Blues
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated PG.

Brass is a person not a piece of metal in this tale.

[This reads more like poetry than prose. -DSC]

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Why I love Canada: An Immigrant Family's Story
by lecentre of Centrerion Canadian Politics
A 423 word brief story rated PG-13.

My ancestors came from a dangerous place to Canada, and Canada helped them a lot. In contrast to many ungrateful immigrant extremists who would blow Canadians up... while being funded by Canadian welfare.

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Osama bin Laden — Give it up man
by Bob Parker of The View From Silverhorn Lodge
A 462 word brief story rated PG.

A view of life from the owner of a mountain lodge.

[A lawn gnome's tale. -DSC]

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Bragging on my Little Toddler's Latest Accomplishments
by Lisa of Lil' Duck Duck
A 724 word brief story rated G.

"You see, I wouldn’t want to return to that foggy first year, but I do think it passed by so quickly, and his second year is passing even faster, if that is possible. That’s why I’m setting aside this evening to write about all the things that I just love about him right now, to brag on him a little even."

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The Exterminator
by Polly D. Boyette of Life is a Buffet
A 1,190 word short story rated G.

Find out the best way to debug your life.

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A Guilding of Lillis, Scene 1
by Dave Gudeman of Doc Rampage
The first 1,854 words of a story in progress rated PG.

The infamous Rolf and Zantar meet for the first time. The subject of Rolf's ears comes up.

[Rolf and Zantar are back! Well, not so much back as appearing for the first time in this prequel, only it isn't a prequel, since it was written first, it just wasn't posted on Doc's blog before, but on his now defunct website. -DSC]

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If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Sluggy Freelance — Kiki and Bun-bun are at the party too. Kiki sneaks into a pie, with which the monkeys hit Zoe's boss while aiming for her. Zoe takes that as her cue to make a hasty retreat, where she runs into Torg and Gwynn, who've caused quite a bit of damage. Admittedly, it wasn't really Torg's fault, as it was Gwynn who sicced the monkeys on Zoe and Riff who started the stampeded, but he is at the party wandering around in a cow suit. Just as it looks like the party is ended by stampede, Torg spots Grahammy. Yay! Hopefully the guys won't be wandering around in cowsuits anymore.

Day by Day — Jan just doesn't get the NRAniks, Zed doesn't get Sam, and Rove doesn't get the base, in this week's Day by Day. The terrorists do, however, understand American culture well enough to borrow from our playbook. Finally, on Sunday, the USS Cindy Sheehan doesn't do too well against the alien invaders, so Captain Murtha makes a run for it.

Scary Go Round — Shelley's got the goods on what's happening at this invent-off, but Elaine Wu catches her in the act and beats her up to take her phone. Fortunately, Esther makes short work of the political operator.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — This week, we got comics on Tuesday and Thursday. Dave challenges Mike to a swimming race over his cell phone debt. Meanwhile, Marsha's feeling guilty about April, which is interesting, as April's feeling guilty about Marsha. Hmmm...

General Protection Fault — It turns out that Dexter's evil twin isn't interested in helping out, which upsets Dexter. Fortunately, he has his own plan to get Fooker and Jason past the guards.

Schlock Mercenary — Tagon doesn't do a great job following the script, so Massey convinces Petey to let him represent himself.

Wondering what became of this blog? I'm not posting as much as I used to, and it's usually just short posts linking to other people. Well, generally blogs wax and wane in their content, sometimes posting a lot, and sometimes very little. Right now, my blog is at a slow point as I'm focused on other things. I expect that I'll be posting more at some later date, but it won't be right away. Meanwhile, other bloggers are posting a lot. Doc Rampage, for example, has a lot of posts, on subjects ranging from evolution to the liberal answer to Coulter. He has interesting stuff to say on all of them, and numerous debates going on in his comments. Have a look.

By now, you've heard the news of the death of a 38-year-old woman due to a falling slab of concrete in one of the tunnels of Boston's Big Dig. I've driven in this tunnel quite a few times in the last couple of months. There but for the grace of God go I.

The Big Dig has been a boondoggle since before I moved to Boston a decade ago. The cost overruns, the leaking tunnels, the substandard concrete, the gigantic icicles forming on the bridge and crashing down on motorists--it's hard to believe you can get this level of incompetence without trying. This is the epitomy of a federal project gone mad (the Big Dig cost $14.6 billion, when it was supposed to cost $2.5 billion, much of it federal money). And yet we think a federal project in New Orleans, an area known for its political corruption, will fix its problems.

I think huge projects have a tendency to run away like this. That's why I'm cautious about proposing such things.

From Jonah Goldberg:

It seems an obvious point to me that flying space Marines would be a valuable contribution to the arsenal of democracy.

There's simply no way I can follow that.

Do you use your blog to share fiction? Then the Storyblogging Carnival is an opportunity for you to share examples of your storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals. The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the forty-ninthth, and it will be going up July 17th. It'll be hosted right here at Back of the Envelope.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, July 15th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Sluggy Freelance — It's a wild ten minutes at the party. Gwynn's monkeys attack, Zoe shoots herself in the foot with her clever insults, Gwynn kisses Torg, and Riff starts a stampede. The Sunday at the end is particularly brilliant, as it forces you to go back to a past strip and see that what appeared to happen was only Gwynn's glassesless perception of reality, and it ain't accurate.

Day by Day — Uh-oh. On a techie note, Chris Muir has changed his webpage so the old links I used will no longer work. On the bright side, it's really nice looking, the permalinks are easier to find, and the full size Sundays show up better. So overall, a net gain. Speaking of Sunday, the Superman rewrite of the last one is followed by Bill Keller cosplaying as Spiderman. Then it's on to mockery of the Dixie Chicks and North Korea, Ken Lay conspiracies, and the race problems of Biden and Rove. We finish up with Skye, Sam, and Jan ganging up on Damon, who was just asking for it.

Scary Go Round — Esther is disappointed in the Boy, but there's little she can do as the match begins, and Tim begins construction of a catapult. Shelley and her sister are keeping an eye on things, but they're beginning to realize that there are bigger things going on than a simple invent-off.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Marsha's ticked at Mike, but he makes a break for it. He'd have made it, too, if Dave hadn't collided with him. The two good friends then set out to manipulate one another.

General Protection Fault — The biggest news this week is that Jeff Darlington is no longer updating daily. He, like Maritza Campos, is now down to three days a week. Too bad, considering that evil Fooker's death is about to cause a base to explode. Now we'll be watching it happen in super-slow-motion.

Schlock Mercenary — Massey has an idea. Didn't Massey's last idea get them into this mess? But this time he's convinced that if Tagon follows the script, all will be well, except the part where Ennesby comes up with some new information which invalidates the script.

In short, I don't have one. If you send an e-mail to me, or post in my comments, I may very well hold it up for either praise or ridicule, as it deserves. One thing I won't do is give out your e-mail address or personal information, not without permission, but I'm not reluctant to link to your sites.

That said, I rarely draw attention to comments. Positive or negative, they can usually stand on its own. Most of what I get is spam anyway. Trolls and spam feed on attention, and I don't like giving it to either. I will delete spam without hesitation. I'm a bit more reluctant to delete trolling posts, as I don't like deleting comments that disagree with or even insult me. If the language is foul or if it's irrelevant to the post it's commenting on, I'll do it, but otherwise I'll let it stand and destroy it's own credibility.

I miss Skeptics Anonymous! To the best of my knowledge, no one has used this webform to ask a question about Christianity in a long time. As originally conceived, Skeptics Anonymous offered seekers an opportunity to ask their most pressing questions about Christianity to believers who would try their best to answer with no strings attached. You didn't even have to include your contact information, just curiosity and a willingness to wait (generally about 2 weeks) for us to come up with a response.

It hasn't been used for years, and I'm not sure it will again. However, if you have a question about Christianity, you could try asking me. I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

It's an act of provocation any way you look at it. North Korea launched seven missiles yesterday:

All of the seven missiles fired by North Korea early Wednesday local time — six short-range variants of the Soviet-era Scud and one long-range rocket — fell into the Sea of Japan.

The long-range missile, the Taepodong-2, failed about 40 seconds after it was fired, U.S. officials said. Some analysts believe the Taepodong-2 is capable of hitting the western United States.

As might be expected, diplomats are talking about imposing sanctions, which of course are opposed by China and Russia, who may have contributed to North Korea's missile capablities in the first place. If that is the case, I vote for sanctions against China and Russia and permanent removal from the security council (and can we get rid of France as well?), but there's no mechanism to do that.

The question on everyone's mind is why the Taepodong-2 crashed into the sea. Was it defective? That would be good news, but not that good. Did the US shoot it down? That would be better, but it's unlikely. Was it only supposed to go a short way? That's not good.

Despite all this bluster, North Korea is desperate. Its economy is falling apart, its people are starving, its infrastructure is non-existent. It is reduced to stealing trains to keep its railroads running. At heart, North Korea is a thug which has nothing but the threat of violence to get what it wants. The smart thing to do would be to stop giving it what it wants. It couldn't survive long without international support, but the fear is that it will lash out in its death throes and kill millions, either with nuclear weapons (which it may or may not have) or with a massive ground assault on South Korea. It's doubtful it could win--it doesn't have the infrastructure to support a prolonged war. Even the Western will isn't so weak that it couldn't outlast them. However, even in losing, North Korea could kill thousands, perhaps even millions. The Western nations would rather just appease it until it collapses, while Russia and China see it as a useful tool against the US. But my guess is that propping up a dying regime is only delaying the inevitable, and meanwhile millions of North Koreans are suffering and, yes, dying, in Kim Jong Il's war on his own people. And every year Kim Jong Il extorts food and money from the West with his thuggery, more dictators are convinced they can do the same.

The latest storyblogging carnival is now up at Our Adventurous Song. It's short, but it's good too. Have a look.

I'll be hosting the next carnival here at Back of the Envelope. If you'd like to volunteer to host a future carnival, let me know.

Sluggy Freelance — Gwynn's desperate to stop her monkeys from ruining Zoe's career, so she crashes the party. So does Torg, still dressed in a cow costume. Meanwhile, Broadman and Midgetski are determined to ruin Zoe's career, or at least stop her from advancing above them, so they're sure to try to crash the party to.

Day by Day — Skye meets Zed, and surprisingly, they seem to get along okay, despite the fact that Skye is overly affectionate.

Scary Go Round — Shelley uses her feminine wiles to win the Boy's cooperation in spying on Tim, and gains a prime vantage point to watch the invent-off.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Everything's back to how it should be: Dave's depressed, Roger's oblivious, and April's slutty. Okay, that's not quite how it should be. Dang it, April, get your act together already!

General Protection Fault — Fooker's still fighting his evil doppleganger, and the battle brings them into contact with his brother and the Dexters. I hope they can successfully join forces.

Schlock Mercenary — Tagon's really overmatched in the lawyering. I hope that Massey can help him out, especially if they're right and it really is a set-up. They are guilty, just not guilty of what they're being accused of.

Update: I had forgotten I did two weeks last time, so I failed to increment properly and the links were off by a week. It's fixed now.

I'm back from vacation, but I haven't had much time to blog. So I'll get caught up on the usual stuff either tonight or tomorrow.