I was mentally composing a post about Dukie's new home among the Arabers, their connection with Homicide in the first episodes of Season 1 and such ... but when I got around to posting, you guys had beaten me to the punch!

Sleuth has been running 'Homicide' again, and I've been watching all those episodes I missed when I was working too long hours to see 'em first run. What Simon learned from Barry Levinson (in all the best possible ways) is really striking, though the Wire far exceeded anything in that show.

Just the same, my helpful suggestion: Homicide reruns are the perfect methadone for when we have to kick the Wire after next week!

nah, i'll be giving.

and also giving to the peasquat-poor public school here in my newly adopted corner of north georgia. if i can target programs, i'd love to add money for reading, especially literature.

that 'hairshirt' quote from Wired is depressing, though. Strange how a show flies under radar for four plus years, suddenly gets noticed by the digerati, and now has to be evaluated on its political merits by hairshirt-wearing white liberal tech writers (i'm being unduly harsh, having not read the article, but you get the drift).

it's been a really great series of stories that get under your skin and stay with you, like the characters do, as if they were members of your family, reducing the space between human beings, just like litrachure ought. maybe we should be giving to reading programs for Wired editors to remind them?

Webb has said in recent years that his view has changed, so don't give up on him yet. Change is good. Ditto for generals who were once dead set against letting gay soldiers serve, who have since come out and said either that things have changed, or they were wrong all along.

In fact, the whole leitmotif about women in combat is change, in warfare and in attitudes. The current conflicts have blown away a lot of what remained of attitudinal barriers, as in the 'non-linear battlefield' female soldiers and marines especially have taken on 'real' combat roles, regardless of their MOS.

My own experience followed that arc; I served in all-male SOF units and didn't come into contact with many female soldiers until later in my career. I carried the same biases until three of those soldiers (one officer, two NCOs) demonstrated to me how wrong I was. They were truly remarkable, by any standard, but I figured that odds were they weren't the only three in the force.

Like I said, change is good.

I was in transit (back) to Afghanistan shortly after the invasion started, so my memory and sources may be suspect. But as I recall, there was a big difference in how the media handled responses to skeptical generals and how they have now handled the story about the co-optation of cheerleaders.

Gen. Wesley Clark sat on CNN for several nights during the invasion's first days, not as a 'military analyst' (Don Sheppard's job) but as something else, I don't remember what. He was good. He explained rather detailed and technical points in an accessible manner, took calls from soldier's parents and explained in very human terms what their kids were likely seeing, and so forth.

He also delivered some very even-handed and what I thought was mild criticism of how the operation was going during the infamous stall enroute to Baghdad. Pretty much what you would do in an after-action review, telling the truth about, well, that didn't go so well, or this could have been better and this was a mistake, but dumbed down for the home audience who wouldn't be able to follow the arcana.

That night and all the next day, the networks went batshit ... Tom Delay's eyes bugged out (pun intended) and he called Clark a 'blow-dried Napoleon' (which I guess he's entitled to do, given all those cockroaches his brilliant leadership saw the end of), other people said how can CNN have this guy on, he's obviously biased, others pointed out he was a Democratic presidential candidate (which he was not at that point), etc. A few days later, Aaron Brown bid the General adieu.

I have yet to see any treatment of that kind for any of the legion of current analysts, even when what some have said is complete and utter BS on the face of it.