Calendar

Just letting you know, posts may be few and far between for the next couple weeks because I'm heading off for Christmas to be with my wife's folks in Arizona. Meanwhile, I'm tinkering with a redesign of the blog, which could be a long, drawn-out affair of wild exploration and screaming fits of geekery. I have a couple ideas of how I want to the site to go. I'm namely influenced by this site and this one. I enjoy the white crispness and use of text sandwiched by columns of links.

I'm also jonesing to alter the text font and try to get some kind of logo or banner to pour across the top of the blog. Hell, I might even splurge to become ad-free. That's the addictive part of this online railroad set: you can build it a zillion different ways. So many options in front of you that you want to try them all, only to get bogged down with where to begin. So many things I want to learn: how to make the archive links in a drop-down menu, how do I create an "about me" page, and a bunch of other tapestries I want to weave here.

So, I'll be in and out of here a lot. I won't just dump the changes on here randomly, but place them on a "Site B." More details as they come in.

Plus, I'm ashamed to admit I'm addicted to "Taken" on the Sci-Fi channel. A 20-hour miniseries about alien abductions tends to steal a lot of time from tinkering with blog code.

Do as I say, not as I do

Story here.

The Pentagon is preparing to use anti-personnel land mines in a war with Iraq, despite U.S. policy that calls for the military to stop using the mines everywhere in the world except Korea by 2003.

To prepare for a possible war with Baghdad, the Pentagon has stockpiled land mines at U.S. bases in countries ringing Iraq, according to Pentagon records. The decision to make the mines available comes despite a recent report by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, concluding that their use in the 1991 Gulf War impeded U.S. forces while doing nothing to impair Iraqi forces.

Using the mines would stoke the international debate over the merits and morality of using land mines, which can remain deadly long after fighting ends.

From 15,000 to 20,000 people are killed or maimed worldwide each year by land mines, according to the United Nations. Of those, 80% are civilians and one-third are children.

Related links

International Campaign to Ban Landmines
Adopt-a-Minefield
U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines
Clear Landmines