ISIS et al

Dear Mr. President,

Please allow me to propose a strategy for dealing with ISIS, since you've said you don't have one but seem to be reaching for the "fire" button for a war that does not have clear national objectives. Please try this one instead:

"Dear Arab world: You sow what you reap. You arm, finance, and encourage Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaida on the one hand but look to us to bail you out from ISIS and friends on the other. What chutzpah. Until you decide that terrorism and brutality are not acceptable even when directed against Jews and westerners, you're on your own. Let's see how that works out for you."

Seriously, why are we even considering helping Syria??? Yes, I know there is a humanitarian crisis. There was one before ISIS too, at Assad's hands. Government-directed humanitarian crises have a long and sad history in the middle east.

The state sponsors of terror will never change their ways if they know they can get our help when those terrorists turn their gazes palace-ward. This is not our fight, and it'll be good for them to learn a lesson, even though there is a civilian cost. We should stay out of it.

Pennsic bits

I never got around to writing up a big Pennsic entry, so here are some highlights in bullet form:

- Seeing osewalrus and family again was very nice -- been a while. Had the beginnings of a thoughtful theological discussion; need to figure out venue for continuing intermittently over time.

- Missed some other distant friends, again. :-(

- Camp meals got more complicated; we now have (different) people who are gluten-free, vegetarian, nut-allergic, and lactose-intolerant. All the cooks did a great job of stepping up to the challenge.

- Tisha b'Av fell during Pennsic. Thank you osewalrus for chanting Eicha (Lamentations) for me. I have complicated feelings about Tisha b'Av but this helped me engage with it.

- Our choir concert was ok. I saw some good performances, and the local commedia troupe (I Genesii) really shined this year.

- T-Mobile completely failed me this year. Last year they had cell coverage (not great bandwidth, but enough to check in with cat-sitters and the like). This year at the opening weekend there was some signal. During Pennsic itself -- nothing, not even basic phone service. (I found this out when calling Dani after I arrived.) I contacted them afterward and they shrugged, saying their coverage isn't good in that zip code. Sigh. (Fortunately, I had borrowed a Verizon hotspot from work "just in case", after determining that nobody else needed it for actual work that week. Verizon delivered 4G signal just fine.)

- The KickStarter that I (and, it turned out, one other camp-mate) supported, for a solar charger for USB devices, didn't make its planned July ship date. In fact, it's now the end of August and they still haven't made it. Next Pennsic, I guess!

- Our camp has some loud people and likes to have loud gatherings sometimes. Further, some of the loud people are late-night folks while different ones are early birds. We set up the house right next to the common area to provide shade, but this does not play well with the noise problem. But my camp-mates are good sports; after last Pennsic one person suggested a coping mechanism, and I was greeted with it when I arrived: