I’m testing a new blog writer thing - Post2Blog - a desktop blogging client for Windows. I’m still learning how it works and if I like it. It added the "a desktop blogging client for Windows" and the link all by itself, which was a ’lil irritating, but I was able to disable it. Anyway, I was using Windows LiveWriter, which I really like, but with my computer having so many issues with, apparently, SP2 (I’ve had to reinstall the operating system 4 or 5 times in the past week or so) - which is needed, along with .NET in order to run LiveWriter, I think I’ll just go ahead and go with something more low-tech.

So that this is not a completely navel gazing post I’ll add some links to some stuff in the news and/or on blogs.

China’s been having a rough (and often tragic) time this year… and now this:

BEIJING—First there was the freak snowstorm in February. Then the Tibetan riots in March. Then in rapid succession the controversial torch relay, Sichuan earthquake, widespread flooding and an algae bloom that’s tarnishing the Olympic sailing venue. Just when it seemed that nothing else could go wrong this year in China, the locusts arrived.

Locusts? What is going on here? The litany of near-biblical woes would seem to lack only a famine, frogs and smiting of the first born.

I sometimes joke(?) about the plagues of disasters that seem to hit us in California whenever we have a Republican governor… as if the very earth is trying to tell us something, but I think we’ve yet to have this one. via.

The Internets are still wacky with primary fallout - I just thought I’d mention that. I won’t put any links mainly because I am too rushed (and lazy) to look them up right now, but I do plan on doing some sort of piece about all this, soonish.

Apparently someone has decided that contractors in Iraq should not be able to operate outside the law after all… (yeah, right - where’s the loophole?)

The US has agreed to scrap immunity for foreign security guards in Iraq, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says.

The US embassy in Baghdad has not confirmed the announcement, which comes as the US and Iraq are negotiating a controversial security pact.

Foreign firms employing thousands of guards won huge contracts in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion, but were not subject to Iraqi or US military law.

Iraqi frustration became fury last year when guards killed 17 people in a day.

[...]

The firm involved in the 2007 killings - Blackwater, one of the biggest security contractors in Iraq and which protects US diplomats - says its guards were acting in self-defence.

These are the same people (Blackwater) who are doing something or other on the US border, no? Comforting.

And now for something completely different…

I can just imagine multiples of this guy adorning the table at a party at Doc Logan’s house.

Here’s a couple more:

No matter how much time I might have on my hands I couldn’t create this stuff. Very cool.

Anyone been up to anything? Y’all have a great day.