Next Sunday plumtreeblossom and I are making a long road-trip up to Lincoln, Vermont, to hear a concert by Gideon Freudmann (warning: unobtrusive background music), a whimsical electric cellist that minerva42 and underwatercolor introduced me to on a visit a while back. (Big thanks to them for that!) He also has a bunch of concerts in Connecticut on this visit out east (and some private concerts in schools in the Boston area, even) and one in Western Mass, but this was the only one I’m sure I can make it to, and it’s a great excuse for a drive.

I mention this in case any of my more northerly friends might want to go (it’s almost a four-hour drive from Boston) or in case I can hook any of you on Gideon Freudmann’s music. (Alas, I can’t give anybody a ride; the drive is going to be date-time.)

Here’s his calendar of upcoming gigs.

Thanks to larksdream for pointing me at Wikihistory, a very very short story by Desmond Warzel.

As a Republican senator during the decision to go to war in Iraq who has since left the party, Lincoln Chafee has a nearly unique perspective. DailyKos diarist smintheus has a fascinating post quoting Chafee on why so many Democrats (including Clinton) voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Chafee’s claim — that many personally anti-invasion Democrats voted to allow Bush to invade because they were afraid of political fallout — is exactly what I had assumed, but it’s useful to hear it from somebody who was in a position to know and who is no longer beholden to either major party.

I think I may want to read Chafee’s book.

I don’t remember how I stumbled across rojonoir’s journal, but he posts some interesting stuff.

The reporting on the recent encounter between Iranian speedboats and American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin Strait of Hormuz that I’ve heard has struck me as really odd. Even after a day or two, when NPR was mentioning “questions about the accent” of the alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers in the recording released by the military, and that the alleged threat was received on an open channel and not definitely coming from the speedboats, I felt like there must be stuff missing from the story.

Well, rojonoir has collected (and summarized) a couple of articles giving much more background about the incident, and yes, there’s been stuff missing from the coverage I’ve heard about this in the US media. Specifically,

• No part of the Strait of Hormuz is in “international waters”, because it’s so narrow. The inbound traffic lane, where the US ships were, is entirely within Iranian territorial waters. There is, however, an international treaty granting all ships right of passage through the strait, provided they follow certain restrictions (like not collecting intelligence, and surfacing if they’re submarines). The US does not follow those restrictions, and has not ratified the treaty. (The linked article suggests that the US has not ratified the treaty because it doesn’t want to be bound by the restrictions it doesn’t like.)
• The threatening statements received over the radio were probably from a known (albeit pseudonymously) prankster, who evidently broadcasts that sort of stuff all the time.

(rojonoir also reminds us of the tragic shooting down of Iran Air 655 by a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz, which doesn’t directly clarify the recent incident, but sure casts an interesting light on it.)

As always, docorion is wise in this post on our government’s ongoing efforts to protect us from terrorism by keeping us terrified itself. If you haven’t already, you should read it.

Hi. As announced here, sixmoredegrees.com is back open. Inspired by the now-defunct sixdegrees.com, it’s a way of expressing social links and drawing social graphs, except it’s a bit more whimsical; it lets you express relationships like “is loathed by” and “would do unspeakable things involving runny jello with” as well as the more mundane “has met”, “is partnered with”, and “wait, who is this person, anyway?”

( If you have no interest in this, you can skip the rest. )

Arrr! I ain’t got time to do today th’ justice it desarves, but I been meanin’ to post a link to this 'ere post on Mongolia, so I reckon as that’ll have to do. If’n that post grabs yer interest, ye may wish to check out th’ rest o’ Team Alala’s swashbucklin’ jarney ’crost Eurasia.

My delightful friend golux_org, among his other excellent qualities, is an astronomy buff and a photographer. He posts a daily photo at http://photo.bluebrook.com/potd.html, which I read through its LJ feed, bluebrook_potd. Usually he posts (gorgeous) nature scenes, but today’s photo is of the ISS, with the shuttle docked, passing overhead on Saturday. As it happens, I was there when he took that photo, and it was pretty impressive. To my eyes, it looked about as bright as Venus, and it crossed about three quarters of the sky before rapidly dimming and disappearing as it entered Earth’s shadow. It was visible to us (given that trees and buildings blocked our view as it rose) for a minute or so.

On a related subject golux_org reminded me that our mutual friend dalek (a/k/a Marek), who works with the Clay Center Observatory, was one of the people who took this impressively detailed ground-based photo of the ISS and Atlantis during the previous shuttle mission to the ISS. Atlantis is docked to the bottom-left of the main space station body, between the two large groups of solar panels, mostly in shadow and pointed away (with the main engines pointed towards earth), so we’re looking at the rear of the shuttle. The ISS is well-lit. It’s worth clicking through the picture on that page to the higher-resolution version; you can see considerably more detail.

(BTW, my userpic for this post is the Hubble Space Telescope; nothing to do with the ISS.)

sparkymonster and several other wonderful people on my Flist have called my attention to International Blog Against Racism Week. From starkeymonster’s post:

It's International Blog Against Racism Week! YAY!

How to participate? oyceter says...
1. Announce the week in your blog.

2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAR week icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAR week icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so. Here's a round up of IBARW icons.

3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc. (Linking back here (ibarw) is highly appreciated!)

For inspiration, here are last year's IBARW posts. You can also check out this post for further resources.
...

PSST: It will help a lot on del.icio.us if you title your entry something topical, as opposed to just "Intl. Blog Against Racism Week."

I’m unlikely to manage to actually manage to post anything appropriate, since I’ve been busy enough lately that I haven’t even found time to post about the important stuff that’s happened to me personally¹, but I think it’s a great idea and I wanted to point people at it.

---

¹ F’rinstance, I twisted my (other) ankle on Saturday and fell down in the middle of the street. Got an awesome bruise on my thigh from the curb. I’m fine, though; the nice drivers stopped and didn’t hit me, and I’m back to walking almost normally now.

Happy birthday to the delightful, fun, smart, and sexy dan4th!

(Also, because I have been grotesquely neglectful of my duties lately, happy belated birthday, in increasing order of belatedness, to pyrobaka, majes, aibyou_canti, onemintjulep, onemintjulep, queue, and a very late May Day happy birthday to my brother-in-law spacechicken and his brother bobtshirt. (Hey, are you guys twins, or did you just happen to be born on the same day in different years?) And to many other people, as well.

Oh, and happy Bunker Hill Day! (That article mentions this historical flag of New England, which is pretty nifty. I think we should revive it.)

[EDIT: Oh, and dan4th also writes differenceblog, on research into gender differences. Definitely worth a read. (dan4th, you know where to send the check... :-)]