@Pam: Richard did get hold of his father. His immediate family is alive, homeless for the moment but otherwise okay. He did lose two cousins, however.

@Therry & St Jerome (249): I’m very thrilled that you namechecked me (and Ginjoint) as being among the people you come here to listen to.

Geocurrents is awesome! Incredibly informative, and great maps too. How do you find these things?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011061153131430.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_world

Quoting from the article:

—
When he goes before the inquiry, Mr. Blair is likely to be questioned about accusations that he offered President George W. Bush support for an invasion as early as April 2002 — a year before legislators approved Britain’s involvement.

In testimony Monday, Mr. Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, denied that Mr. Blair had agreed to invade in 2002. Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., Christopher Meyer, has told the inquiry that Messrs. Bush and Blair used a meeting that April at Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to “sign in blood” an agreement to take military action in Iraq.

[... snip ...]

Mr. Blair, whose popularity suffered because of his decision to back the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, will face several hours of questioning at the five-person tribunal Jan. 29.

The inquiry was commissioned by Mr. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, to examine the case made to Parliament and the public to join the war, along with errors in planning for postwar reconstruction.

[... snip ...]

The inquiry won’t apportion blame or establish criminal or civil liability, but will offer recommendations on how to prevent errors in future conflicts.

Its findings will be made public by late 2010 — after Britain holds a national election, which must take place by June. Labour, the party of both Messrs. Blair and Brown, is expected to be voted out after 13 years in office.
—

I’m wondering if the inquiry’s findings will be made public in time to become an issue for the US mid-term general elections in November 2010. There might be some intersting revelations that would reflect poorly on the GOP.

On another front, I got forwarded the following from The Advocate:
‘

‘John Ireland, a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and actor, has announced that he is filming daily reenactments of the Prop. 8 trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and will broadcast them in daily installments on YouTube beginning Tuesday.

‘Ireland, who began casting for the production through a Craigslist ad posted February 15, told On Top Magazine on Sunday that, “People want to see this drama unfold and there is a tremendous narrative that was propelled by that first day of testimony…. I don’t think you need to be gay or lesbian to see there is a tremendous human story being told but so few people are actually hearing it.”

‘Ireland said he got the idea for the reenactments after the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the planned broadcast of the trial, which got under way in San Francisco Jan. 11 and resumes Tuesday.’

I don’t censor easy.

Ditto on the relative sparseness of AB’s presence on the blog these days. She’s been kind and hospitable enough to leave this space open for a medley of interesting folks to chat about whatever comes to mind.

More often than not, the conversation involves politics, art, science, math, comics, news, language, cats, music, opera, and various foodstuffs such as bacon, maple syrup, and garlic. Did I mention chocolate? Pizza? Maoist orange cake?

And when our kind host does post, we scamper from the old thread to the new, first commenting on AB’s post, and then segueing into our usual diverse conversations.

Think of it as a very interesting social gathering or party. Ostensibly we are all here as admirers of AB, but ultimately we are admirers of one another and the intelligent, interesting, and lively conversation and community contained herein.

As for length of posts, most of us are readers, many of us are writers, we have good attention spans. Take up haiku or Twitter if you want short.

Ok, here’s haiku *and* Twitter:

Short attention span
One four oh characters are
All I can manage.