Midlife Meditation

These weapons are different. That's the argument President Obama has used to justify intervening in Syria: chemical weapons cross a line. Go ahead and kill civilians with bullets, grenades, missiles, bombs, and as long as there's no chemical in there except explosives, we're good. Gas them, and we're no longer good. It's an odd argument to make, but wholly consistent with the hypocrisy of international law in matters of war. The Chemical Weapons Convention was introduced in 1968 by an 18-nation coalition. Since then, 175 other nations have signed the treaty, though not all have ratified it. If Syria adds its name to the treaty, the total will be 194. Chemical weapons are, without a doubt, horrible things. Slow, agonizing deaths by seizure and asphyxiation are crimes against humanity. There is no question about this. The question for me lies in the fact that these weapons have been singled out for condemnation. Biological weapons have also been condemned f...

I have now updated this post to include photographs I took of the eclipse. There are not as many of them as I remember taking, but at least one of them--my friend Bruce with a box on his head--is well worth taking a second look at this. And the eclipse isn't bad, either!   * * * * * The sky did not look promising that morning. There were a busload of us sleeping on the gymnasium floor of Goldendale High School. It was a field trip combining Philomath High TAG students and my senior physics class. We rode up to Goldendale, Washington, on February 25, stopping at the Bonneville Dam to take the tour of the massive turbine room and watch a barge pass through the lock. Those were awesome sights, but what we were really there for was to come early the next morning. I had a cold, and slept even worse on that floor than I normally would have, but I was awake at 6 like everyone else. I can't remember what we had for breakfast. We were all outside by 7:00, filling the staging ar...