1  The excellent Thersites is back and commenting on the hostage crisis:

The current situation of Iran’s capture of Royal Marines & naval ratings is a sad reflection on the state of our armed forces and the lack of respect — or fear — shown by the armed forces of other nations, made worse by the presence of women in the front-line. That naval boarding operations were being carried out without the necessary back-up, tactics and rules of engagement to prevent capture shows complacency and a serious lack of ability and planning. Prior planning prevents p*ss poor performance. 

2  Cleanthes gives his take on Thersites’ post:   

I disagree and in this I am supported by an interview (a link to which currently eludes me) that a senior army officer gave to the BBC. In it, he suggested that problems in the front arose not from the failing of women but from men. It is not that women are not valued, it is that they are too highly valued.  Men in the front line have not adjusted and have not hardened their hearts to the fate of their female compatriots. We, as a society, have not done so either. this leaves us wide open to heart string tugging by our enemies. Worse still, we are too blinded by the heart string tugging to notice that we are being manipulated in an unscrupulous – and ultimately illegal – manner. 

3  That leaves Flying Rodent to give his unique take on the matter:   

Still, it’s good to see the British playing military operations by the book. Admittedly, the book in question seems to have been Bravo Two-Zero, but they’ve followed the plan to the letter… 

Step One – Arrive at target. Step Two – Get lost.Step Three – Get captured.  I suppose that we should probably look on the bright side – our troops are probably a hell of a lot safer in Tehran than in Basra. No doubt the Prime Minister has an audacious rescue plan in mind – after all, he’s talked a good game for the past few years. I bet he’s just lulling the mullahs into a false sense of security.  Then Bam! 

4  To round this topic up, Sisu, from across the pond, gives both an American and a woman’s perspective on the hostage crisis:

“I think we should do our best to humiliate them” says Fox News’s Geraldo, a human person we rarely quote with approval, but he’s right on about the latest pathetic Iranian attempt to intimidate the weak horses of the west. Unfortunately, Tony Blair is no Margaret Thatcher. Wobbliness could occur at any time.  We’re no fan of mothers of very young children who go off to war. Presumably the family came to terms with her decision. Whatever her choice, there is no excuse for the Mullahs’ obscene use of her as a prop in their megalomaniacal fantasy. 

5  Back in the UK, Mr. Eugenides takes a long hard look at Gordon and his colleague, the bespectacled one:

Gordon Brown’s poll numbers are looking fairly wretched at the moment, but the guy is, in his own way, a formidable operator. He’s built up a reputation for economic competence – however massively undeserved – and while the skills he’s so brilliantly deployed to maintain his hegemony over his Labour colleagues for a decade are rather different from those required to woo the voters (who are being to realise that he’s a thief; and are increasingly sick of his incessant ratcheting up of the tax burden), I think it’s crazy to write the One-Eyed Bandit off this soon.

Miliband? He’s a no-mark. A non-entity. He’s got all the personality of a day-old cheese toastie. 

6  Whilst Prodicus gives his inimitable take on the former: 

He’s robbing the poor to pay for the rich(er). But they seem to have spotted it, despite his fantastic ‘fill the stage with flags and flowers trick’ and his setting off fireworks just before he sat down. Seems no-one was distracted. Well, except the BBC, obviously. Although, to be fair to Evan Davies, he was rather snooty about it all.  I am now putting a fiver on a snap election as soon as Brown moves next door. The stupid bastard thinks he has pulled it off. Well, I think he has, in a way. Off the table and on to the floor with a crash … tablecloth, china, glass, the lot.  

7  Serious Corner, for a moment, while Bonnie Wren mentions the unmentionable word ‘cancer’:  

Thank goodness we know people who have survived cancer, too, or who are fighting it successfully—like Sang is. To me these people are walking, talking miracles; the souls who have been through hell and back while all the rest of us had to worry about was whether or not the repairman showed up when he said he would.

This week Sang finally gave in and got a port for her chemo and was a little sore. I won’t go into detail about this procedure, but let’s just say it’s close to Roto-Rooter Meets Your Carotid Artery and damn! I immediately stopped griping about having to do our taxes.  

8  Still in the Serious Corner, the Two Wolves, in a tightly written piece, look at the dilemma of the increasing complexity of agriculture and where it’s going: 

Thus increasing the energy [output] of their society, agriculturalists can arbitrarily raise their level of complexity. This draws all individuals in that society, and all neighboring societies, into a catastrophic game of prisoner’s dilemma. Because complexity is subject to diminishing returns, the effort required to further increase complexity rises, while the value of such an investment drops. Competition, however, keeps driving the assemblage forward, even after further investment in complexity has long ceased to be an economic decision.   If any party does decide to make that investment, however large it may be, then they will enjoy an edge over everyone else, forcing all parties to move to the next level of complexity to remain competitive (Globalization being a hyper-variant of this model). Thus, competition drives civilization headlong towards collapse. 

9  Vox Day sees the connection with education levels and extraordinary book publishing decisions: 

While I am second to no man in expressing serious doubt regarding the effectiveness and importance of a college education for most people, I rather suspect there may be a direct connection between the gentleman’s lack of an education and the way in which so many Tor books absolutely and utterly and completely suck from a literary perspective. As Spacebunny once muttered in exasperation while determinedly slogging her way through yet another execrable hardcover: “who on Earth keeps giving these people book contracts?” Answer: a guy without a high school diploma. Thus is great American literature born…. 

10   Jon Swift writes about the Presidential right to hire and fire or not: 

I thought President Bush could fire anyone, but he was just extremely reluctant to do so even when someone screws up. But it turns out that there are a bunch of people in the government he can’t fire.“Unfortunately, we have Civil Service, which protects most federal employees from being fired,” Surber explains. “This makes it difficult to have the government serve the people.” I did a little research into this government cabal called Civil Service and it turns out that things were not always this way. Back in the early nineteenth century when everything was better in this country for everybody, except for blacks, women and apparently civil servants, everyone in the government served at the pleasure of the President and anyone could be fired at any time for any reason. 

11  And Morag’s finally back posting, thank goodness and this evening she relates the vicissitudes of the travelling blogger.  [By the way, does anyone know the technical term for using three fullstops [periods] to link passages?]:

Morag on the move … Sitting on a bus in Costa Rica staring out the window while eating the most delicious banana I have ever eaten (which for someone who grew up in Jamaica that is really saying a lot). I have given up trying to remember my access code to get into my blog and have decided to just take in what I am seeing and reporting upon my return … a brilliant idea.   And it was, except for the time I stuck the battery pack for my microphone in the back of my undergarments then somehow managed to saunter across the stage with the back of my dress tucked up in my … well at least I now know that I was wrong all along and yes it IS possible for me to be embarrassed …  

12 Finally, this evening, on a happy note, the Periodic Englishman is excited because cricket fans make better lovers.  Yes they do – don’t argue. The PE introduces his proof: 

Sport is weird. Men who take sport seriously are weirder still. Men who call other men weird for taking sport seriously, whilst all the while taking a particular sport seriously themselves, are perhaps the weirdest men of all. I take cricket seriously and say that other men who take other sports seriously are not only weird, but stupid. This makes me both stupid and hypocritical. And last, but by no means least, it irrefutably makes me weird as hell.  I’ll live. 

Hope to see you on Wednesday evening once again.  As Cleanthes would sign off with: “Toodle pip!”