You Betta Belize It!

3 years ago a certain rat and I spent the better portion of a week drinking Belikin beers and crooning to the locals, "It is such a Piiiitaaay!..." A broken hottube on an island off the coast of an obscure little country nestled on the Caribbean never felt more like home. Tomorrow Jam and I venture back to Belize and while I'll probably remember much more of this trip, I'll still be humming Ms. Steven's song the whole way through...11 days! Fourth Time is a Charm!

I love the smell of India in the Morning!

Light 'em up, we're going down! This morning I woke up and the entire city was engulfed in this sweet hazy, smokey, cloud. It's not the smell of smog (which I'm quite used to), but more like a bonfire. Mmm. Mmm. Smores, anyone? It's like that "developing country" smell without the open-sewer stench. Funny, I moved from LA to ATL and in many ways the last few months have reminded me of Cali..cloudless skies, no rain, no humidity, traffic everywhere, smokey skylines...

Apparently either Sherman is back in town or winds from the wildfires down south are blowing smoke up Atlanta's...way.

colbert strikes again!

Check out this brilliant piece...a Peanuts-Iraq war analogy..

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Kirkatuk (ve Ethan!)

Visited with Kirk this afternoon and finally met the little guy!

On the way home the radio broke out some John Lennon, almost on cue...

Ah, Michigan...

That's my home. Complete with a "Snort".

Oh Turkiye..

About 1.5 million people joined the rally... the largest protest so far by secular Turks fearful that Prime Minister is conspiring to impose religious values on society.

One good Aussie resident asks:

"For my American friends... try to imagine as an analogy huge rallies of millions of people in the cities of America protesting that the government has too much of a Christian agenda."

Well, I couldn't hardly imagine that. But, I also couldn't imagine 1.5 million people gathering for any such cause. That's real democracy and great to see. All I can think about is a bunch of Levents screaming to the heavens, "Oh God, Why are you doing this to us?" :)

Thanks for the pic/article, Nic. And for the record, Don't trust the taxis in Istanbul, or the girls from Izmir:)

Good Puppy, Good Puppy

Just got the latest edition of the Economist entitled "How Will History Judge Him [Blair]?"

Well, I thought to myself, how will I judge him?..then I remembered this video from 2002..it's a shame it was banned in the good ole US of A.



Good Puppy, Good Puppy!

don't fake the funk...

excellent, mix...and friends..

the flossay flossay

A warm weekend in LA/SoCal. Jam and I stumbled upon Crystal Cove State Park, ah California never ceases to amaze.

We're in Trouble..

..when I get nominated to join the DEOC (Director's Emergency Operations Center), the "centralized management location for any operational event" that takes place in the future (either abroad or in the US). It's all brand new, state of the art, and designed to respond to outbreaks, bioterrorism, natural disasters, etc. I'm excited to start participating in the exercises and actually doing the work when a crisis arises (see: me being deployed to some remote country with Ebola;). Learning how all these professionals work together is crucial to not only understanding what needs to be done, but what can be done better in the future.

The last exercise performed by the DEOC was covered extensively in the media:

"In the script, a student infected with a new strain of H5N1 virus returns from Indonesia where a bird flu outbreak is under way. He dies but not before infecting others, including members of a swimming team.

On Day One, 12 people contract the disease in four states and 25 percent die, a rate that shows the virus to be particularly lethal.

By Day Two, there are 25 cases and CDC is forced to consider whether to recommend ordering schools to close, banning flights from Indonesia or even shutting U.S. borders.

They decide against these measures but send experts to Indonesia, release a quarter of the U.S. stockpile of flu vaccines and force all international flights to land at just 10 airports to screen passengers and limit the disease’s spread."
--Reuters.

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