Like a firehose

I hate repetition, and I hate feeling unwell. So I’m just lovin’ this post.

The Norwalk virus - yes, it has a name - has lodged in my gut once more, with all the symptoms of viral gastroenteritis that you know and love. Feeling better today than last night (which was not hard, believe me), but in no condition to go to work tomorrow. Additionally, I haven’t left the communicable phase of this, and I’m sure my coworkers would cast big, big votes for me staying away from the office. So.

Before you die, you see Hannah Montana

Time: Honestly, when I see that pic of Miley Cyrus, I think of the horror flick “The Ring.” I think it’s the hair.

Congress must investigate crimes against women soldiers

The effort to prompt a renewed investigation of the suspicious death in Iraq of PFC LaVena Johnson has always had a strong ally in retired Army Colonel Ann Wright. Today, Col. Wright speaks out on LaVena’s case and that of other military women - in-theater and in the US - who have died following sexual assault. The introduction from the article at CommonDreams.org:

The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begins — before they are even recruited.

But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the United States, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from “non-combat related injuries,” and then added “suicide.” Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide, strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of “non-combat related injuries,” with several identified as “suicides.”

94 US military women in the military have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in OIF. 13 US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.

Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by “natural causes,” and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.

8 women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of “non-combat related injuries” on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious “non-combat related injuries” on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as “suicides.”

Col. Wright recaps the story of LaVena Johnson in some detail, but also speaks on the “suicides” and “non-combat related injuries” of such personnel as Army Private First Class Tina Priest, PFC Hannah Gunterman McKinney, Major Gloria D. Davis, and others. The alarming prevalence of such deaths and assaults against the women who serve in the military demands earnest investigation by the armed forces - and by Congress, should the services fail in this trust. I highly recommend reading the essay by Col. Wright in its entirety.

“Affordable quality outcomes”

Will someone with a press pass - anyone! - please ask John McCain what the hell this means? Because I am dead certain that he himself has no idea.

We must move away from a system that is fragmented and pays for expensive procedures toward one where a family has a medical home, providers coordinate their efforts and take advantage of technology to do so cheaply, and where the focus is on affordable quality outcomes.

My God. It’s as though McCain’s aides sat him down in front of a Boggle game and told him to string the letters into words and just say that.

Cold hard cache, and WordPress 2.5.1

Maintenance day activities here at Waveflux:

Casual browsing at Airbag Industries directed me to a Coding Horror screed protesting the lack of built-in caching in WordPress. For those of you in a hurry, the highlights from the diplomatic Jeff Atwood:

… incredibly scary… completely unacceptable… appalling… absolutely irresponsible … naive… brainlessly stupid…

Stately, measured prose! Reminds me of the last office meeting I attended. Good times.

Having already experimented with WP-Super Cache last week and found that no matter which URL visitors clicked, they were always delivered to the front page of the blog, I opted today for the older WP-Cache instead. Things seem to be running smoothly. We’ll see what happens the next time I get actual traffic. In the past, this blog has been Deadspun, Wonketted, MichaelMoored, TalkingPointsMemoed, and DailyKosed, but never tested by an extinction-level event (Digg or Slashdot). It’ll happen, though.

So Atwood’s ravings did me good - got me off my duff and addressing the caching lack. Thank you, sir. Now about that temper of yours…

It should be noted that WP is indeed ( and at last) bringing its official attention to the caching thing this year. The challenges of providing a solution that works for the many different kinds of WP users may be daunting, but until this is solved, WordPress will always have a glaring perceived weakness compared to some other platforms. Conversely: once this is solved, the competitors will be robbed of a major talking point.

What else? Oh, yes, WP 2.5.1 was released today. Unlike a lot of coddled whiners who complain how haaaarrrd it is to follow the five-minute install instructions, I remember what it was like to walk ten miles in the snow, going uphill both ways upgrade Movable Type. Upgrading with WordPress is, on the whole, a more straight-forward matter even without going the push-button Fantastico route.

I upgraded three blogs; the one your reading now breezed through the procedure, but I ran into a problem upgrading the two subdirectory blogs. Files were all correctly installed, but trying to run the upgrade script or to access the admin or even the blog itself produced error messages with such unappealing phrases as “Fatal error: Call to undefined function.” I misdiagnosed the problem, thinking that an incomplete or otherwise faulty FTP upload was to blame, and so spent time repeating the upload a time or two. The true roadblock became apparent when I compared the wp-config.php files of the blog that worked with those of the blogs that didn’t: somehow the text of the later config files had all moved to one line, which mucked up how the code would be read. I restored the original arrangement of the file, then followed these instructions to solve a subsequent “headers already sent” error.

And then…things were just fine. In the words of your favorite pirate and his: complications arose, ensued, were overcome.

As for the program itself, WordPress 2.5.1: All I’ve had time to notice thus far is that when you create a link using the visual editor on the Write page, the “http://” is pre-selected just like it oughta be. That may sound like a tiny change, but when you’re linking all damned day, you really appreciate it. More to come, I’m sure.

When analogies attack

Taking off from the springboard of the John Cole post that’s making the rounds, J&J Politics invokes the vivid and unflattering image of Tonya Harding to describe Hillary Clinton. Funny! Really, it is. Made me smile. This meme has also been - unsurprisingly - making the rounds for a while.

The obvious conceptual hazard, however, is that if Hillary is Tonya, that pretty much sticks Obama with another vivid and unflattering image:

If I was an Obama guy - which I’m not, any more than I’m “for” Hillary just now - I’m not sure that’s the association with my candidate that I’d want lodged in the public’s frontal lobe…now, or during the general election.

Just sayin’: Analogies, they’re slippery. Like ice.

It’s springtime for the Indiana GOP. And Germany.

An utterly charming story out of Indiana, via Chet Scoville at Shakesville:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

It’s fair to say that the photograph of Zirkle at Shakesville gives the lie to his claim. So too does just about all of the original story by Jason Miller of the News-Dispatch, which is well worth reading in its entirety. The money line:

At the event, Hitler’s birthday was observed with a cake with a photo of Hitler and the words “Seig Heil.”

As Marshal Sam Girard said in The Fugitive: Do you want to change your bullshit story, sir?

I hate Indiana Nazis. Also, Republicans venal enough to associate with them and dishonest/stupid enough to lie about it.

A virtual fence provides, er, virtual security

CNN: A twenty-million dollar fence made out of 100% fail. Feeling safer, America?

Pony up, early adopters

Gizmodo: Obnoxious but true: Paying more for enhanced formats is the way of the world. Cha-ching.

Bluetooth irritation

Bob Rybarczyk at the Post-Dispatch says what most everyone feels about people who wank their ear canals with those annoying, showy Bluetooth thingies.

When we see you wearing an earpiece, we are not fooled into thinking you’re important. Important people do not wear earpieces at the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon. No, they don’t. Important people don’t feel a need to put their importance on display. People who try to look important never are, just as people who describe themselves in personal ads as “classy and intelligent” never are. Trust me. I’m yer daddy. I’m right.

Yep. He’s right.

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