Matel-in-Iraq's take on the financial meltdown scare-mongering.

John Matel at Matel-in-Iraq gives us his two cent's worth in reference to the Chicken Little predictions from the media back here in the States. It is a very interesting read, and pretty much sums up my thinking on the current "mess."

John is a FSO who just returned from Iraq after serving on one of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). Welcome back, and job well done.

Hat tip to Consul-At-Arms.

Bulldogs are 1-0 in the SoCon, Next Week: Appalachian

We ate Western Carolina's lunch this past Saturday. We had well over 500 yards of total offense, and the Catamounts did not break 200 yards until late in the 4th quarter. This sets up an interesting matchup between The Citadel and Appalachian State this coming weekend. I don't think we are necessarily better than the Mountaineers, but considering how they have been playing the last two weeks, they are ripe for an upset.

The game this past Saturday was our Military Appreciation Day. There was a flyover by some Super Hornets after the National Anthem, and the Golden Knights parachuted into the stadium with the game ball (they all nailed their landings right on the block "C"). The coin toss was done via video feed from the USS Iwo Jima, which is currently on station in the Persian Gulf. One of the Marine pilots on board is an El Cid grad and threw the coin. It was kind of neat, but I understand that it was ceremonial only, since the NCAA requires that the actual toss should occur on the field.

Warpiper and Tater enjoy a cool bevvy before kickoff.

A note on the new title picture

I remembered taking the new picture in the title window but had to dig through old CD ROMs from my Iraq days to find it. I took it in August 2004 during R&R from Baghdad. I traveled to Scotland to attend the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow. After the Worlds, I traveled around Scotland with my friend Bill and his wife Jessica. This particular picture was taken near Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen. We were at Dunatter Castle (A well preserved ruin where the Mel Gibson version of "Hamlet" was filmed) which is perched on a cliff overlooking the sea. Bill stood at the top of one of the cliffs, and I took the picture from about 300 feet below him. A seagull flew into the frame as I was taking the picture.

The actual day was memorable in that we had decided to drive out to the castle and set off from Stonehaven. As we got close to the site a thick fog rolled in. We found the parking lot off the road, and got out of the car to walk to the castle. The visibility was less than 100 feet, and the walk to the cliffs where the castle was perched was about 1/4 mile. Having never been there before, we did not know how far it was. Once we got near the castle (according to the signs) we still were socked in and could see nothing. According to the signs, the castle and the cliffs leading down to the sea were right in front of us. We could see nothing. It was rather ominous knowing that there was supposed to be an imposing structure in front of us, but all we could see was the gray mist. Within a few minutes, the fog bank began to pass, and very slowly a dark shape began to appear in front of us. It slowly materialized into the outline of a castle. I began snapping pictures. The sequence of pictures that I captured as the cliffs and the castle slowly came into view were probably the most breathtaking photos I have ever taken. It was amazing to me how we went from pea soup to brilliant sun in just about ten minutes.

The full quote by Albert Einstein:

"Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."

FS Blogs

Over the last several months I have tried to absorb every smidgeon of information I could get my hands on about the US Foreign Service. Somehow, the State Department's website just doesn't get into enough detail for me, particularly when it comes to the FS lifestyle. My sidebar has some favorite blogs by Foreign Service Officers. I will likely add some others as time goes by.

Adventures in Good Countries is a particularly well written blog by a young woman who spent her first junior officer tour in Japan. She is a very gifted writer, and her journey from the time she was hired, through orientation in DC and her tour in Japan are well documented. She really should write a book; I find her style to be rather prosaic and hard to "put down."

The Not-So-Holy City

Apparently somebody realized that we were lagging behind in our average murder rate in Charleston, so we had two in the last few days. Here's one that occurred in my area, and here's the other one.

Princeton, Charleston Games, etc.

Well, just a few points separated the Grade III band competition at Boone Hall this Saturday. The final order of finish was:

1. St. Andrews
2. Atlanta
3. Charleston Police
4. NC State

We actually had two firsts and one third in piping, and then thirds in drumming and ensemble. Piping is weighted more heavily than the others, but in the event of ties, the ensemble score is given preference. We'll polish a little more and have at 'em at Stone Mountain in October.

While we were doing the pipe band thing, The Citadel was playing Princeton here in Charleston. We listened on the radio while the Bulldogs came out flat in the first half. At the end of the first two quarters, we found ourselves down 17-7. I think coach Higgins appealed to the team's manhood in the locker room (I can just hear it now.... "Are you going to let these 1500 SAT trust fund babies come in here and BEAT you??")

The 'Dogs responded admirably and outscored the Tigers 30-7 in the second half. Final score, 37-24.

In related news, the Princeton band came to town and caused some trouble on our campus prior to the game. Apparently they had to be escorted by senior cadets for the rest of their visit so that the rest of the Corps didn't 'disappear' them. Here's the Ken Burger article on the band from today's Charleston P&C. Later at the game, one of the band members had a bullhorn and was leading chants like "We study abroad, you chase broads," and "We are here by choice, you are here by force," and other similar taunts relating to the difference in average SATs. All good fun, but by that time the Corps was in no mood to take anything from the Princeton band. All in all it was a pretty good peep into the attitudes of the Princeton band.

When our band goes up there next year maybe they can play "Dixie" all day long. I wonder if the Princeton crowd will be offended, or if we will be able to plead the "all in good fun" case as well?

There's a possum in my house, and other assorted absurdities.

Someday, maybe this year, maybe sometime years from now, I will no longer be a cop. There are many things I will miss about police work when it is over, to be sure. Sometimes you actually get to do some good. Today, however, I had a day chock full of things that I will not miss. These things generally happen with semiregular frequency. Some of these things might seem a little strange or unbelievable to you, casual reader, but cops don't even bother telling these stories to each other, because they are old hat, boring, and not really novel after you have been on the job for a few years.

Some Personal Favorites

"There's a possum in my attic!" I have this fantasy where I roll up, get out and walk in the complainant's house, pull out my pistol and shoot the [insert wildlife name here], walk out, get back in my car, and drive away without saying a word.

"Hey officer, can you give me a ride?" This is usually asked by a guy with his girlfriend in tow downtown at around 2 a.m. after barhopping on foot all night. They have usually walked so far that they don't want to walk back to their car. OR, some drunk's ride has left him and rather than saving that last 10 bucks for a cab, he decides to drink it up and then flag down a cop. I usually point to the sticker on the side of my car and ask him if he sees the word "TAXI" in there anywhere. This usually leads to him saying......

"I pay your salary!" Yeah? Well you pay astronaut's salaries too, buddy, but they aren't going to let you bogart a ride to the ISS on the shuttle. One time, I told a drunk at a party, "So YOU'RE the guy! I can't wait to tell the rest of the cops, you've got one heck of a beating coming if we don't get a raise like next week!"

"If you didn't have that badge on, I would kick your a**!" I just love this one. It is usually a little bitty skinny guy with a mullet and zits on his face who says it.

"I stepped in a manhole." I actually got this one today. This lady was walking along Calhoun Street, and apparently stepped on an unseated manhole cover. It wobbled on her, but did not fall over and she was unhurt. She continued on about her business, went shopping, and then returned home about four hours later. THEN she called the police. She wanted to tell us that we were not doing a very good job keeping the city safe (I guess by not checking manhole covers) and that she wanted to let us know that we needed to go check the cover now, because somebody could get hurt. I wanted to tell her I would check it in about four hours.

"My daughter/son is refusing to go to school." This is usually an eight year old we are talking about here, folks. I doubt Mom would have ever called the police for this one, just a hunch. An ambulance, maybe, but not the cops.

"You're just trying to make your quota." Yep. Five more like you and I get the toaster oven.

What the....?!? No Dixie Chicken??

Since coming into the modern age and acquiring my iPod, I have converted my entire music collection over to MP3 format and now I carry years of musical accumulation around in my pocket. When I first installed iTunes on my computer (the program that allows the iPod to interface with the computer and ALSO allows you to purchase music online- for the one or two people left in the world who don't know this...) I browsed the online music and actually made a couple purchases. Within about five minutes I realized that I could easily put myself into debt similar to going to medical school two times if I wasn't careful.

Death by iTunes goes a little like this:

Hmmm... iTunes is suggesting some more albums by this same artist...



Ok, that's a tune I like.... [click] (.99 cents)

Hmm. This one too.... [click] (.99 cents)

Oooh! I love that album! [click!] ($12)


Twenty minutes later, I have racked up twenty bucks in instant gratification online one click buying. A little chill went down my spine. The shameless capitalists at iTunes had put all of these little suggestions on my sidebar, and I bit like a catfish on a hunk of rotten chicken liver. I slowly backed away from the computer that day, and I am glad to say that in three months I have bought nothing from iTunes. I felt like someone who took a dose of heroin, loved it, and then realized that I was staring into the endless abyss of addiction and immediately decided to never go near it again...

...until yesterday.

Three months of being on the iTunes wagon and I fell off. I was watching TV and I saw a reference to the band Little Feat. I LOVE Little Feat. I used to have their live album, "Waiting for Columbus," and I even played some covers of their music back years ago when I played with De Collard Peoples. Since I used to buy an average of about 2-3 CDs a week back before Mrs. Warpiper made me fiscally responsible, I figured, "What the heck? I haven't bought any music in three months. My copy of "Waiting for Columbus" has been missing for years, I'll just log on to iTunes and buy it."

I log on, and go to the Little Feat section. There it is.... "Waiting for Columbus," in all its cyber-electronic glory. Before clicking "buy," I decide to read the reviews and comments on the album by all of the other musically brilliant people like me who love Little Feat.

The first commenter notes that this album is not a good buy because the iTunes version is missing a couple songs. I figure that this is no problem since the missing songs are probably a couple of the throwaways. The commenter goes on to say that "Dixie Chicken" is one of the missing tunes.

[Insert sound of needle ripping off a record here]

NO DIXIE CHICKEN?!!?

Let me give a few analogies that will illustrate this sacrilege for those of you who are not familiar with the greatest Southern rock band of all time (..and I ain't talking about Skynyrd here, folks.) Not having Dixie Chicken on your copy of Waiting for Columbus is like....

1. Going to the local aquarium and finding out that they don't have sharks.

2. Taking the kids to Disney World to find that they have dumped Mickey from the lineup.

3. Having a Moon Pie but no RC.

4. Catholicism without the Pope.

5. Heck, forget the Pope... try Christianity without Jesus.

5. Going to see your favorite college football team play only to learn that the school has banned tailgating. (This won't apply to you Liberty fans... and don't tell me that you allow tailgating, because tailgating ain't tailgating without beer.)

Anyhow, you get the picture, casual reader.

Not having Dixie Chicken on this album is more than an insult. It is abhorrent. Dixie Chicken was Little feat's signature song. It is their Stairway to Heaven. It is their Dust in the Wind. It is their Scarborough Fair. It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest Southern rock anthems. iTunes has my eternal enmity for this slight. There is some pencil-necked computer nerd executive at iTunes that needs to have his office burned and his little pencil neck squeezed until his head pops off for making this goofy, uninformed decision. iTunes can take responsibility for my contribution to anthropogenic global warming (if that's your cup of tea), because I will forevermore do what I did yesterday.

I drove 8 miles to the dang CD store and bought my replacement copy of "Waiting for Columbus" on CD, and loaded it onto my iPod.

Stupid iTunes.

The Charleston Scottish Games

This year's Charleston Scottish Games will be held at Boone Hall Plantation, Saturday, 20 September.

Grade III bands competing will be the Charleston Police Pipes and Drums, the St. Andrews Presbyterian College Pipe Band, and the Atlanta Pipe Band. We will be playing the March, Strathspey and Reel sets for the competition. We have been neck and neck with Atalnta in previous competitions this year (Gatlinburg and Greenville). Hopefully we can take them this weekend. St. Andrews is something of an unknown quantity, but the word is that they will be the team to beat this year.

Gratuitous Photo of The Tater

The first taste of cake. Very exciting. Shortly after this picture was taken, she decided that squashing the cake and putting the icing in her mouth was an inefficient way to perform this operation. So, she leaned forward and buried her face in it. The future engineer.

Taken by Mrs. Warpiper on 12 September 2008.

We're Number One!!

Well, if we can't be number one in education, at least we can top another significant list. The Charleston Post and Courier delivers the goods.

South Carolina was fourth in killings, but according to the FBI report, what makes us so hospitable is our number of aggravated assaults.

The good stuff:

What pushed South Carolina higher than other states was the number of aggravated assaults, which includes everything from a non-fatal shooting to a beating. Its total of 597 per 100,000 people last year was an increase of 2.9 percent over the year before, the highest anywhere outside Washington, D.C. (Emphasis by Warpiper)

In other words, we'll give you a good old fashioned butt-whoopin down here. To be fair, the Uniform Crime Report publishes aggravated assaults that are listed under the guidelines of the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) which defines aggravated assaults by a number of factors, including whether an object was used in the assault. In other words, if I whack you with a feather duster, then that's an aggravated assault under NIBRS.

At the time of this writing, there are about 150 comments on the P&C online article. Without looking at them, I can be sure that there is a healthy debate between the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" folks, and the "we don't give people enough opportunities and counseling/treatment" folks.

Most cops will tell you that there is another factor, although this one is obviously not the sole cause. Pressure is continually on police administrators to reduce crime. Those chiefs and sheriffs pass this pressure on to their troops, and it ultimately turns into a numbers game. Make arrests! Couple this with ever increasing accountability, where even the most frivolous complaint of rudeness or misconduct can cause weeks, months, or years of hardship for an officer, and eventually that officer comes to the age old realization that the way you get in trouble is to actually do your job. This leads to the secondary realization that nobody ever got in trouble in law enforcement for doing nothing. It is called de-policing, and it as real as whacking your wife with the feather duster.

Keep Talking, Einstein.

One of the alleged cop killers in the shooting death of Colleton County Deputy Dennis Compton runs his mouth to the Charleston P&C and during his bond hearing. I love the mental picture of some poor public defender writhing in agony at every word.

The good stuff:

"The men have been held in separate detention centers in Charleston and Hampton counties and were separated Tuesday afternoon while waiting on a second bond hearing on the new burglary charges."

This is when one of the brain surgeons decides to give what we in law enforcement like to call a "spontaneous utterance." Rather than make the comments to police officers, who are liars in the eyes of all defense attorneys and 50% of all juries, Harris decides to record his comments for posterity to the Charleston newspaper. Brilliant!

That was when Harris told The Post and Courier that he was inside the house in Smoaks when he heard a gunshot outside. "I just heard it," Harris said. "When I went outside ... I was like, 'What the f---?' "He said he didn't get a "really good, clear look" at Compton. "I just seen he was a cop," he said.

Of course, Harris was so distraught at all of this that he and his partner continued on their crime spree over the days following the murder.

I suspect Harris has been duly flogged by his court-appointed lawyer.

Waiting for "The Call"

The good thing about having such a screwy internal clock due to rotating shifts is that I can wake up in the wee hours of the morning and get things done. Like this.

I currently subscribe to a Yahoo group for people like me who have passed all the hurdles to become Foreign Service Officers. We sit around idly, waiting for "The Call," which is actually "The Email" that offers us a position in the next batch of new FSOs. In the few years since Secretary Powell's tenure as SecState, the lists of eligible hires have increased in length. These lists are called the registers, and there is one register for each of the FSO career tracks, or "cones." Those career tracks are Consular, Public Diplomacy, Political, Economic, and Management. I am a Consular candidate. I figured consular work fit my specific skill set and experience the best, and somewhere along the line, someone at State apparently agreed with me, because here I sit on the Yahoo group, commiserating and reading tea leaves with the rest of the hopefuls.

Once on the register, a candidate "ages off" after 18 months, so getting hired is a time-sensitive thing. Lately, hiring trends have caused the registers to shrink, which makes me rather optimistic about my chances.

The Yahoo site is all abuzz right now, because State has done something that hasn't happened since Secretary Powell brought in loads of new FSOs during his Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. They are having a November class! Normally, A-100 classes (the name of the orientation course for new FSOs) are in January, March, May, July, and September. Most of us had hunkered down for the fall after the calls went out for the September class, knowing that there would not be another class until January. Needless to say, the tea leaves have now come out again. Personally, I am hoping for a call for the March or May class. If hiring trends continue, then my ranking on the register might just be sufficient for a call for one of those dates.

Bulldogs Show Lots of Good Things in Klempson Loss

Overall it was a good weekend in the Upstate. We abandoned Tater and Stinky Butt to Tropical Storm Hanna and drove up to Greenville. Mrs. Warpiper and I spent Friday night at the Downtown Greenville Friday Night Jazz behind the Hyatt. The Greenville Citadel Club threw a party just down the street at The Corner Pocket afterwards.

During the evening, an obvious Gamecock fan and amateur historian came up to me to wish the 'Dogs luck against clempson, and related some little known Tiger history to me. As most people know, clempson is an agricultural school. They drive tractors there just like at NCSU. Anyhow, this gentleman explained to me that clemson's Tiger Paw logo is not really a tiger paw. Back in the day, it was actually a cow udder. Just turn it upside down and you'll see it. Also, IPTAY did not originally mean "I Pay Ten a Year," as most clempson fans will tell you. It used to mean, "I Pull Teats All Year." So there you have it, a little history lesson in every post.

Saturday found us at Clem's Son around lunchtime tailgating and working on the beginnings of what would be farmer's tans for both of us. Note to self: next time bring an oxygen tank and coagulants for the nosebleeds. We were literally at the very top corner of the visitor's side at Death Valley. I could see Yanceyville when I stood up.

Kickoff was at 1530. The Bulldogs looked quite good. The score really told half the story- the Tigers were as good on offense as their score suggests. Our score does not, since we missed two field goals and we were picked off in the red zone twice. Not bad against what is supposed to be the best secondary in college football. Andre Roberts had a big league day, as did Bart Blanchard.

The Post and Courier article provides some interesting numbers here.

We hung more than 400 yards total offense on them and all 17 points were legit. Overall, we would have liked to have scored more points, but we are more than ready for the App States, Woffords and Georgia Southerns this year.

Saturday night found Mrs. Warpiper watching TV in the hotel room while I snored. Going from midnight shift to days to midnights to days makes my inner hibernation clock do somersaults.

Arrests in Latest Lowcountry Cop Killing

From the Charleston post and Courier:

http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/sep/09/charged_deputys_death53519/

Andy Paras reports: "State Law Enforcement Division agents charged both Travis Javon Harris, 19, of Smoaks, and Jacoby Jermaine Fields, 18, of Walterboro, with murder and first-degree burglary. SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd said he does not anticipate any more arrests in the case."

Reckon this means they have their perps.

Welcome

Here it is. Enjoy.

To friends and relatives: this keeps me from spamming you with emails that you will just delete without reading. This also helps me avoid sending all this wonderful content to your work email which will cause you to be watched closely by your employer at best, and reported to the authorities at worst.

If pictures of Tater show up on here, it is because I was not feeling particularly clever at that moment in time.