Caveat: Casualties

According to this article on the AP, suicides have exceeded war casualties among troops in Afghanistan this year. Partly, that underscores how few troops actually die fighting in Afghanistan – the drones help assure that mostly the people who die are on the other side. But this whole suicide-while-in-the-military tells me they're doing something very wrong. I can speak from my own experience in the Army – when you feel there's some moral failing in what you're doing, it's much easier to feel despair and get depressed. I think, therefore, that this suicide rate among troops is something we should pay attention to, vis-a-vis our moral instincts – do we have any?

What I'm listening to right now.

Radiohead, "Go To Sleep." This song is awesome, and the video is cool too – I'd never seen it before searching for a version of the song to paste here.

Like every song from this album (Hail To The Thief), it makes me nostalgic for my massive 2003 road trip in Australia, when I discovered my rental car had a CD player and I went into some suburban Sydney Target store and bought a couple Radiohead CDs, which thus became my soundtrack for the trip up the coast from Sydney to Cairns (2000 km).

Caveat: Animals

Some kids drew pictures of zoos for me.

Dayeon's is the best. Do you see that her zoo has hamsters and ants (lower left)? Do you see the girl taking a picture? Do you see the awesome alligators, with only their eyes peeking above the water? She's a pretty good artist for a third grader.

Zoo 002

Here's a few by some other kids.

Zoo 002

Zoo 002

Zoo 002

What I'm listening to right now.

[Update 2017-06-22: Video embed of song removed, due to link-rot, and because no other online embeddable version can be found. Sorry.]

Bob Dylan, "Man Gave Names to All the Animals." It's hard to find a good online version of this song. This is a live one that isn't such a great recording, but it's nevertheless an awesome song, and thematically appropriate for the evening. It always makes me remember, vividly, driving to Duluth in the 1980s.

Here are the lyrics.

Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago.

He saw an animal that liked to growl
Big furry paws and he liked to howl
Great big furry back and furry hair
"Ah, think I'll call it a bear".

Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago.

He saw an animal up on a hill
Chewing up so much grass until she was filled
He saw milk coming out but he didn't know how
"Ah, think I'll call it a cow".

Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago.

He saw an animal that liked to snort
Horns on his head and they weren't too short
It looked like there wasn't nothing that he couldn't pull
"Ah, I'll think I'll call it a bull".

Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago.
He saw an animal leaving a muddy trail
Real dirty face and a curly tail
He wasn't too small and he wasn't too big
"Ah, think I'll call it a pig".

Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago.

Next animal that he did meet
Had wool on his back and hooves on his feet
Eating grass on a mountainside so steep
"Ah, think I'll call it a sheep".

Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago.

He saw an animal as smooth as glass
Slithering his way through the grass
Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake ….

[Daily log: walking, 4 km; running, 3 km]

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