Waffle

Just as the radio reported that Halloween was already on the way out in the Netherlands, I saw some kids out trick-or-treating in inner Groningen, for the first time, ever.

None of them was dressed up as Jenna Bush's liver, though.
(hat tip to Pete Ashton for the link to 2004's Scariest Halloween costumes)

Not exactly breaking news at this moment, but something I'd very much like to read more about - in print, say, a full National Geographic special - so I'll blog it for future reference:

Dwarf Human Ancestor Lived on Pacific Island. The fella shown at left, as imagined by Peter Schouten is one of them, a Homo florensiensis. They were only about 1 meter tall with a grapefruit-sized but apparently quite efficient brain. According to this Guardian article, they may have existed even later than the already staggeringly recent 18,000 years ago that the fossils have been dated at. That sounds more than a bit fanciful to me, but you never know.

I once read, somewhere, that during WWII codenames for military operations were randomly generated words. It makes sense. Easy to remember and with no possible connection to the subject matter - that's reasonable attributes for a codeword.

Now, selection needn't be completely random. Military planners have a natural affinity with martial and heroic sounding words. But that's ok, as long as the word give no clue as to what military action is being planned: "Archer". "Champion". "Jupiter". "Torch". "Overlord". "Iraqi Freedom".

The latter one is interesting, though. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" does indeed say something about what was being planned. Maybe that's why the name wasn't announced untill the operation was well underways.

There's been several operations Freedom in US history. There was, of course, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan just prior. But fossils like yours truly are probably more likely to remember Operation Freedom Train (Nixon's bombing campaign in North Vietnam, 1972), and Operation Freedom Deal (Nixon's bombing campaign in Cambodia, 1973). The analogy is there, all three operations focusing on destroying the bad guys infrastructure to degrade their offensive and defensive abilities.

Attacking infrastructure is sound strategy: The bad guys can't operate without infrastructure. Roads. Rails. Factories. Hospitals. Families, if you want to go right down to the basic element of infrastructure. Just ask the Mob. The Mafia has a very clear understanding of what attacking an enemy's basic infrastructure does to him.

So, Operation Iraqi Freedom is a logical moniker. But why just this moniker? There's been US codenames with equally long histories. "Liberty" was of course grabbed by Homeland Security at the same time - for the rather scary Operation Liberty Shield - but there were other possibilities. Why just "Freedom"?

I think I know why: Dick Cheney is a closet SF fan.

Just resently I read a novel published in 1998, "Semper Mars" by Ian Douglas. It's not a bad book; a lightweight near-future space opera with US Marines in space. The dastardly United Nations is set on world dominion. US space installations are under attack from the French Foreign Legion (mainly concisting of uncouth Germans with thick accents and looks borrowed from Nazi posters - boo!). It's a rousing read, I rather liked it.

And it's just the kind of SF Dick Cheney would like: Under French leadership, the UN starts lobbing cruise missiles at the hapless USA, aiming for population centers and public symbols like Capitol Hill in an attempt to demoralize the citizens. Of course, it does not work. Although hard pressed, the Marines strike back. And the operation is named --- Operation Freedom.

I mean, how could they NOT use that name?

There's another interesting thing with the codename "Operation Iraqi Freedom".
It's generic. A plug-and-play operational concept. Just insert your target of coice: "Operation Iranian Freedom". "Operation Korean Freedom". "Operation Dutch Freedom"....

But it's comforting to know that Dick Cheney reads science fiction. He can't be all bad.

Spike:

Yes, it can be observed in the laboratory. Shut up.

Yes, there is fossil evidence. Shut up.

No, no one claims we evolved from present-day apes. Shut up.

And yes, it's just a theory. And so is that whole "the Earth orbits the Sun" thing. Time out to look up the scientific definition of the word "theory," okay? Go on. I'll wait here.

Got it? All done?

Good. Shut up.

The article didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but I don't think it was written for me. It was written for the 44 percent of Americans who, through force of will, misinformation, or simple ignorance, don't actually understand evolution, or refuse to understand it. It's for the special class. This issue's for that kid who shit in the study hall garbage can. It's for the Young Earth Creationists among us going through their homeschooled kid's textbooks with black Sharpies, crossing out the blasphemy. This one's for the snake-handlers picketing the Harvey Milk school in New York, and the hysterical Baptists rolling around on the cement in front of courthouses while Ten Commandments monuments are jackhammered out of the lobby floor.

What's she referring to?

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My recent immersion in my work has also resulted in a slowdown of shrill partisan screeds from me, for which I'm sure many people are thankful.
On the issue of the stolen explosives, I want to mention quickly that I'm not buying the "they were gone when we got there" line, and that I follow it through Joshua Micah Marshall's summaries and commentary. He's on this like a terrier. Ed Brayton's ongoing commentary is worth a look too.
Update: As is Juan Cole's:

Despite the new attempt to defend Bush from charges of incompetence over the disappearance of 380 tons of dual-use explosives (which can be used to detonate nuclear bombs) from the al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq, there is really no excuse. The Pentagon's attempt to maintain that the facility was inspected in early April by US troops has fallen apart. It has 1000 buildings, and the troops had no orders to search them exhaustively. Thus, the statement that they did not see the stickers of the International Atomic Energy Commission does not in fact suggest that the explosives were already gone. It indicates that they didn't have time to see much of the facility.

The gravity of the disappearance of these explosives cannot be underscored enough. Not only can they help in the detonation of a nuclear bomb, they are deadly in their own right. A pound can bring down a jetliner. There are 2000 pounds in a ton. Bush let enough high-power explosives disappear to bring down (God forbid) 760,000 airliners! What if this stuff leaks from Iraq to al-Qaeda?

Time has run out for me to decide whether to run a double ROCR episode on Friday. I've decided not to. I've made some progress, but those Kangra flashbacks are turning out to be more time-consuming than expected. Today I had a setback when I realised that the pages I'd colored were scanned at the wrong resolution. A quick test scaling one of them down to the final size revealed that the line quality would suffer visibly, so I had to re-scan and re-color.
More importantly, though, I have spent several days working well into the night, and even that gets old after a while. So instead, I'll use the progress I made to increase the buffer so I will have time to work on other stuff next week... and have a life.
Look at me, making excuses for not giving you more art than the scheduled 3 pages a week! To think that other cartoonists regularly miss updates. But well, I'd all but promised something extra.

Meanwhile, shrewd readers have picked up on the fact that the flashback style I've chosen for Kangra is based on that great, great comic El Goonish Shive.. I picked that one because it has a cute, friendly style that can still be used for serious story content. When I wrote that I was looking for a slightly childlike style, I was thinking of a children's book or kids' comic style, rather than something that looked like it was by a child. Kangra is a naif but she is not mentally retarded. Dan Shive's style seemed to fit the bill with its soft shapes and big eyes.
Dan Shive's style is actually harder to imitate than it looks. The problem is that a lot of it is generic, and that he's a young guy who is still learning. Shive is a talented and meticulous artist but there is a difference between the way he draws things that he's studied a lot and things that he doesn't have a clear idea how to draw. In a mature artist, that would be considered that artist's style; those artists can then be copied by impersonating their distinctive faults as well as their distinctive strong points. With Shive, it wouldn't be fair to do that, and the imitation would date as soon as Shive overcame those faults - which I'm sure he will.

In the end, I did the best I could with the most prominent signifiers of Shive's style: the eyes and faces, his limited palette (when he uses color at all) and his careful, regular line (the hardest part for me to follow). Oh, and his use of the Comic Sans font and rounded-corner rectangular word balloons. For all that many people loathe Comic Sans, I hadn't even noticed that that was what Shive was using!

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Dsquared is troubled by the ongoing bombing campaign in Fallujah. This doesn't stop him from channeling Monty Python:

I am, as a result haunted by a nightmare in which I am flying in a helicopter gunship above the town of Fallujah, looking down on the wrecked buildings and bodies below. I find myself having a conversation, through a megaphone, with one of the residents:

Me: Just hand over Zarqawi and we’ll let you live!
Resident: OK! OK! We’re having a bit of trouble finding him!
Me: A likely story! Bomb them again, Lurch!
Resident: Could you just give us a hand? Like maybe tell us where in Fallujah he’s staying?
Me: I don’t know. But we have excellent intelligence that tells us that you’re harbouring him! Bomb that coffee shop, Lurch, it looks like an ammo dump!
Resident: Well, what does he look like?
Me: Everyone knows what Zarqawi looks like! You’re just playing for time! Bomb him again!
Resident: Well, how many legs does he have? Give us something to work with here!

And at that point I wake up, screaming.

My head-banging buddy Danny pointed me to this: Information SuperhighwayStars II. I'd been playing with the idea of setting something like this up myself, because the first version of this project was so cool. The name is pretty quaint by now though. Who even remembers the phrase "Information Superhighway"?

Now, to think of a track to cover...

A sad day for music: Discjockey, concert presenter and host of the Peel sessions John Peel has died aged 65. From the classic rock era to the heyday of The White Stripes, Peel's voice has graced hundreds of concert and radio session recordings. Peel was consistently on top of the latest developments in rock music, and remained committed to seeking out the best right until the end.

The Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt said: "John Peel was a broadcasting legend. I am deeply saddened by his death, as are all who work at Radio 1.

"John's influence has towered over the development of popular music for nearly four decades and his contribution to modern music and music culture is immeasurable.

"Hopeful bands all over the world sent their demo tapes to John knowing that he really cared. His commitment and passion for new music only grew stronger over the years.

"In fact, when I last saw him he was engaged in a lively debate with his fellow DJs over the state of new music today. He will be hugely missed."

Update: I've been looking at the tributes that have poured in just about everywhere remotely connected to Britain. I think Pete Ashton has one of the best, explaining why people took to him and going beyond the (true but not all-explaining) "he was like a friendly uncle who knew cool music" line:

Throughout the 90s I tended to be the only person in my immediate group of friends that listened to him. As time has progressed this has changed as when that identification is made one tends to have made a friend for life and this evening nearly every weblog I read has a post like this on it. I don't think he has fans as such or followers. Rather he made a certain frame of mind acceptable and this, I think, is his real legacy.

In fact I'll go out on a limb and say it's not really about the music. The music is a conduit for something else, something quite intangible which I think comes down to that fucked up sense of juxtaposition he imposed on us. He made having an open mind cool, which is saying something when you think about it. Once you'd accepted that you could listen to every form of every form of music and appreciate it on its own merits then you could apply this to everything else in life. Any form of creative endeavour is worthwhile. The fact that someone, anyone, is doing something different and interesting becomes vital.

On the whole fans (for want of a better word) of him tend to be sensitive folk who just want things to be nice, who feel beaten down by the relentless enforcement of mediocrity. He not only provided a place on the radio for us to retreat to, his spirit encouraged others to do the same. Every small club, fanzine, website, setup of any description that implicitly encourages people to just do stuff owes him a debt, and they know it. The generation, generations really, that grew up with him learned something important and it stuck with them. We're the ones who smile when we see enthusiasm, who know that there is so much more to life...

My own personal memory of Peel, by the way, started with his radio show on Dutch VPRO, 20 years ago. I didn't always get the music, but I loved the sound of Peely's voice and his outspokenness about his likes and dislikes (he did have dislikes, Bruce Springsteen being one of them), the strange items such as reviews of mix tapes sent by him to critics in Senegal or what have you, and the fact that he hardly ever played anything twice on that show. What a guy.

Playing at the studio now because Jeroen brought it: Appetite For Destruction by Guns'n'Roses. Fuck, they were a great band at that time. Must have taken them a lot of work to hush that up later on.