Man, oh man, oh man...

With the exception of having gone in for twenty minutes or so last week to take care of a small administrative task, I haven't been to work since the last week of June. Up until an hour ago, I was looking (and feeling) totally scruffy. It's been such a long stretch off. But, I'm rested up and raring to go. Crowning achievement? I suppose I'm stoked that I can say that I made it to 37. We went out and had a great dinner with my mom and company last night. Thanks again!

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go....

I so love...

living where I can go get fast food at four in the morning. I suppose that what I ate wasn't too good for me, but my breakfast sure was tasty. Besides, there wasn't much better to do....

I saw a segment on NBC Nightly News the other night...

The title of the segment was "Did 9/11 create a culture of secrecy?" Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a story page on MSNBC's site.

NBC's Bob Faw was interviewing journalist/author Ted Gup about his new book called Nation of Secrets. There's more information about the exact premise of this book here. I just purchased it this evening. I'll let y'all know if it's any good. Come to think of it, I don't read enough. When I do read something (not for work), it's almost always related to politics or current affairs. C'est la vie...

You fine folks have fun now!

As it almost always happens...

I've been staying up later and later at night as my time off from work winds down to an end. It's not so bad, though. At least I'll be ready to go into work on the night shift. Anyway, I was looking for something of quality to watch on TV last night. It often seems like that quest grows more difficult. I finally stumbled across this movie on the Sundance Channel. While watching it, I was thinking what a crappy set of circumstances these folks had if the complete innocence that they tried to assert all throughout was true. After the movie, I looked around a little bit. I found the Wikipedia article about the "Tipton Three" and the Wikipedia entry for the director of the movie. Both of those pages had a link to an article from The Guardian (UK newspaper) about a follow-up story to determine the truth of the story portrayed in the movie. I will repost the pertinent part here in the event that the usual link rot occurs:

"Sisters are doing it for themselves

Andrew Anthony
Sunday June 3, 2007
The Observer

.....
Buried away in the schedules with almost no advance publicity was Lie Lab. Making use of new techniques in magnetic resonance imaging, the programme set out to discover if its subjects were telling the truth. Last week those subjects were Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, better known as two-thirds of the Tipton Three.

That was the name given to the three young men who were picked up in Afghanistan in late 2001 by American forces and transported to Guantanamo Bay, where they were held without charges or trial for two years before being released back to Britain.

Campaigners for the men have always maintained they were innocent tourists-cum-aid workers, caught up in the invasion of Afghanistan. This was also the line of Michael Winterbottom 's film, The Road to Guantanamo. And given the tone and approach of Lie Lab, it also seemed to be a belief shared by the programme makers.

But at the end of what was actually a rather dry and laborious piece of science TV, when confronted with results that suggested he was less than forthcoming with the truth, Ahmed confessed (Rasul had refused to go through with the test) not only to visiting an Islamist training camp but also handling weapons and learning how to use an AK47.

None of which justifies or excuses his sub-legal and subhuman treatment in Guantanamo, but it does raise some questions about the portrayal, in some quarters of the media, of the Tipton Three as blameless heroes. The Lie Lab seemed almost embarrassed by its findings and was neither prepared, nor set up, to follow through on the story. But perhaps another TV programme might one day ask what a British citizen (or citizens) was doing at a guerrilla training camp, learning to fire weapons, in the middle of a war.
....."

From Andrew Anthony on Big Brother | Lie Lab | Brits Get Rich in China | Hotel California: From the Byrds to the Eagles | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk: at http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2094030,00.html

I probably can't know the whole truth about what happened, but it seems like there's a lot more to this story (and movie) than meets the eye.