Canadian forces in Afghanistan

The Canadian War Museum has a new exhibit showing the work of two journalists who have been following the action for five years.

See also: First Afghan War, Second Afghan War.

Archy needs a job

Archy, in his John McKay persona, needs a new job at the end of this month:

After four and a half years as a contractor at my current job–time enough to feel like one of the team, just lacking paid time off and benefits–my position fell victim to a budget adjustment and I was told my services would no longer be needed after the end of February. What I haven’t mentioned is that I have also been sick and physically miserable for the last month…. Every morning I wake up and think, “I’m too miserable to get up.” Then I have to go through this careful self-analysis. Am I sick or am I depressed? If I’m depressed, I have to go to work. If I’m sick, I have to decide if I’m sick enough to stay home. I almost always have to go to work, a fact that is both depressing and sick.

I have one suggestion: he should mention what he does for a living and something of his experience. Then maybe the blogosphere will generate some job opportunities.

Big Pork apologizes for ham-fisted tactics

The Lactivist and the U.S. National Pork Board have come to an agreement. Breast milk is the original white milk. And they apologized for the insinuations and tone of their lawyer’s original letter.

It’s OK to eat pork again. Although some people are now saying that smoked turkey tastes better anyway. And look what I found on e-Bay tonight, size XXXL.

Quoting Kim Stanley Robinson

In The Years of Rice and Salt, in the story of “The Widow Kang,” the character Kang Tongbi says

“So you see systems of thought and religion coming out of the kinds of societies that invented them. The means by which people feed themselves determine how they think and what they believe. Agricultural societies believe in rain gods and seed gods and gods for every manner of thing that might affect the harvest (China). People who herd animals believe in a single shepherd god (Islam). In both these kinds of cultures you see a primitive notion of gods as helpers, as big people watching from above, like parents who nevertheless act like bad children, deciding capriciously whom to reward and whom not to, on the basis of craven sacrifices made to them by the humans dependent on their whim. The religions that say you should sacrifice or even pray to a god like that, to ask them to do something material for you, are the religions of desperate and ignorant people. It is only when you get to the more advanced and secure societies that you get a religion ready to face the universe honestly, to announce that there is no clear sign of divinity, except for the existence of the cosmos in and of itself, which means that everything is holy, whether or not there be a god looking down on it.”

The Years of Rice and Salt is a massive alternative history starting in the 1300s. In this history, Europe is wiped out by the Black Plague and civilization returns from the East. For notes on this book, see The Years of Rice and Salt Trivia & Study Guide.