Humpday Musings

Sometimes it becomes necessary to just start typing and let the muse take over and tonight the muse is weak and unsuccessful, so I will offer acouple articles from the OPJ.
Victor David Hansen added on to his recent articles on his trip to Iraq.
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"If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan, it hardly seems so to 130,000 U.S. soldiers still over there. They explain to visitors that they have always had a design: defeat the Islamic terrorists; train a competent Iraqi military; and provide requisite time for a democratic Iraqi government to garner public support away from the Islamists.
We point fingers at each other; soldiers under fire point to their achievements: Largely because they fight jihadists over there, there has not been another 9/11 here. Because Saddam is gone, reform is not just confined to Iraq, but taking hold in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf. We hear the military is nearly ruined after conducting two wars and staying on to birth two democracies; its soldiers feel that they are more experienced and lethal, and on the verge of pulling off the nearly impossible: offering a people terrorized from nightmarish oppression something other than the false choice of dictatorship or theocracy--and making the U.S. safer for the effort. "
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I found this article by B.L.Sherer and related link intriguing, as I am into geography and history, and very interesting.
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"Because almost every archaeological dig unearths new facts, however, our view of the ancient world has continued to evolve since the publication of the Barrington Atlas. The constant need to update information led to the establishment of Chapel Hill's Ancient World Mapping Center (http://www.unc.edu/awmc/), of which Prof. Talbert is now acting director. The center is comfortably based on the fifth floor of the UNC library, and is open to all who are interested in the field. The Web site itself is very clearly organized, with existing and planned links to a variety of basic areas, as well as a very rich research page with further links of its own. In January, the center received a $390,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a multilingual online workspace for updating and expanding information about ancient geography."
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I like maps and compass work, it is a needed skill in the backcountry. I don't have a gps device and if I did it would be used to store cool spots, not to navigate. I am frequently off trail with neither map nor compass so I have learned to pay exquisite attention to the details of my surroundings as I explore. The toughest to navigate by gut are heavily wooded flatlands and desert devoid of hills or mesas. I have lost the well traveled road at times though I have never been lost. It is attention to the detail of stumps and the cadavers and matriarchs of massive trees, the rock formations and their, climbing potential, waterways and common sense. Still I like maps, I like to look at them, analyze them and determine the best way. That can be applied to politics as well, it is why I now choose to vote GOP.