On station...

A very quiet night. Not a peep from the crew yet, and they've been up for just over 4 hours. According to the schedule, they should be finished with the weekly "housecleaning" of the station, and going on to other tasks.

I caught up earlier by preparing a couple of invoices. Another sweet payday coming up, but that'll be a month down the line.

Aha! Comm with the crew! The usual morning chit-chat, along with news that the proposed effort to aid the search for a missing helicopter in the Russian Far East from space has been called off, because the chopper, with the Governor of Sakhalin Island and most of the island's political movers and shakers as passengers, has been found. (There were, alas, no survivors, according to Russian news reports.)

I tried my hand, too, at writing a letter the old fashioned way (by hand, on stationery). It's actually hard to do, since I hardly write much at all in longhand any more. One thing I notice is a wildly varying writing style; I suspect a handwriting analyst (such as the ones hired by some large companies to screen potential employees) would have a lot of fun dissecting my scrawls.

I seem to have gotten back on track taking my BP meds. For a while, there, I was missing doses here and there, particularly the one I should be taking in the (actual) middle of the day, which corresponds to my virtual "pre-sleep" period between about 3 pm and 10 pm.

Off to review some flight documents.

Cheers...

The incredible, mutable record...

The BeldarBlog quotes an August 20 Associated Press story in the Houston Chronicle that said:

U.N. officials at the headquarters had refused heavy security - aside from the recently built concrete wall - because the United Nations "did not want a large American presence outside," said Salim Lone, the U.N. spokesman in Baghdad.

Interestingly enough, a visit to the Chronicle site does not contain the quote, so either BeldarBlog is lying through his/her teeth (umm... not!), or we're experiencing a bit of historical editing that may not exactly be of the scope described, say, in 1984, but which is still disturbing.

A separate AP story also filed on August 20 (and whose URL may not be static) notes the following:

Annan said he was surprised to hear reports that the United Nations turned down an offer of security from U.S.-led coalition forces, stressing that security was the responsibility of the United States as the occupying power.

"I don't know if the U.N. did turn down offer for protection, but if it did, it was not correct and they should not have been allowed to turn it down," Annan said. "That kind of decision should not be left to the protected. It is those with responsibility for security and law and order, who have intelligence, which determines what action is taken."

Yeah. Right. I cannot begin to think what fun the newsies might have if the U.S. tried to make an offer of protection that could not be refused. "Bully" would be the kindest of epithets used, methinks.

Cheers...