Relief Kits "Recipes" for the "Fill A Plane" Campaign
However, cash donations remain "most effective" way to contribute

Chief Wiggles (aka Army Chief Warrant Officer Paul Horton), who founded Operation Give while serving in Iraq, just announced he has arranged for free FedEx relief flights to aid tsunami victims. Paul explains all here.

Basically, as Winds of Change explains, Paul has...

... offered Operation Give's Salt Lake City Warehouse, and FedEx has offered both to take a planeload of goods to the Indian Ocean area, but to pick up and transship those donated goods from your house to the warehouse.

1 hand towel

1 one-gallon Ziplock-type bag

1 washcloth

1 regular size hair comb (not pocket size)

1 nail file or nail clipper

1 unopened bar of bath-size soap

1 unopened toothbrush

1 unopened, large tube of toothpaste (no travel or sample sizes)

6 adhesive bandages, such as Band-Aids

Assembly instructions:

Wrap all the items inside the new hand towel and tie it closed with string or yarn. Place the bundle inside the gallon bag and seal it. You’re done!

Medicine Boxes. One box of medicines, both prescription and over-the-counter, is enough to care for about 1,000 families for 3 months. Probably a group effort for these, please see the link for details.

Other kits are listed here. Note: though a Methodist agency has developed these kits, you do not have to donate them to us Methodists. They are perfect for the "Fill A Plane" Campaign. And frankly, with FedEx providing free pickup and delivery to the stricken countries, they'll get there quicker through Wiggles's operation than the UMC, pains me though to admit it. But the key is to get the kits out as fast as possible.

Paul explains that this part is important:

Once you have gathered the necessary items, call me at 801.259.6336 and we will arrange for FedEx to pick them up at your home or at a FedEx drop-off location. On your boxes, please CLEARLY mark them “Fill the Plane” so we know it is intended for this campaign!

UMCOR lists soap as an especially critical need. Sanitation is a critical concern. I am going to send bulk boxes of various soaps myself, plus washcloths and the like. I would add as well that batteries (AA and D) would surely be needed in bulk.

I amplify what WOC wrote about using FedEx's free pickup: make the dollar amount of goods they pick up more than worth the trip.

Paul also solicits donations. I will plug as well that UMCOR accepts donations online.

Update: Please note that UMCOR says that donating money is the most effective way to help.

"In the humanitarian world we talk about the disaster after the disaster," said the Rev. Kristin L. Sachen, head of UMCOR's International Disaster Response-- in other words, the shipping containers full of used items that have no practical use in the country or no designated recipients. These goods can swamp the local economy in a disaster-stricken region. "Relief agencies have to spend precious dollars to warehouse goods and hire personnel to manage the stuff," Rev. Sachen pointed out. Recent press reports cite the numbers of ports in the 600-mile swath of affected nations that are clogged with ships delivering piecemeal goods instead of being open for vital shipments of water, food, and medicine.

UMCOR's rule of thumb is, unless someone overseas has requested the specific items to be shipped, people should reconsider their impulse to give goods. But compassionate people do have options, Rev. Sachen said. "First, people can contribute kits to UMCOR-- health kits, school kits, layette kits and sewing kits," she said. "These are of uniform makeup, quality-controlled at the UMCOR Sager Brown depot by volunteers, and are the items we have learned are most useful under disaster situations cross-culturally," she explained.

Cash gifts will help UMCOR continue to support local Christian relief agencies in the disaster area that are known and trusted. "They are the agencies to which the local Methodists belong," she said. "In India and Sri Lanka they are providing saris and dhotas-- terms for culturally appropriate clothing-- lentils and oil, household utensils, plastic sheeting, and blankets to over 50,000 families."

One problem with sending goods is that the transportation assets in the stricken areas are poor.

[T]he aid was stacking up. In an airport hangar in Medan, 280 miles south of Banda Aceh, thousands of boxes of basics such as drinking water, crackers and blankets had accumulated since Monday and were going nowhere.

"Hundreds of tons, it keeps coming in," said Rizal Nordin, governor of Northern Sumatra province. He blamed the backlog on an initial "lack of coordination" that was slowly improving.

Because money is fungible, it can be used either to buy goods as needed to buy transporation. That is why I have advised my congregation to donate money rather than send kits, even though UMCOR did issue a call for relief kits.

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 08:24:00 PM. Permalink |

US tsunami aid to climb to $350 million
CNN is reporting at the top of its site that American aid to tsunami-stricken countries is being increased to $350 million, up from the $35 million already pledged. I am pretty sure that the new number reflects only US government money, not donations to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the American Red Cross or other agencies.

Update: Is this embarrassing? It seems that for private donations, the Finns have out-donated us Americans.

Finns lined up in the cold in Helsinki to contribute. The country of just 5 million people quickly raised $US4 million ($5.8 million).

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 01:09:00 PM. Permalink |

From the tsunami: "God is good"
I posted earlier a email from a Salvation Army officer about the on-scene assessments in the Indian Ocean. Now comes an email from a Salvation Army officer present when the tsunamis hit Sri Lanka.

Things are pretty grave here.

All of our officers (clergy) survived. We had officers all along the coast. Most lost everything, but God spared their lives. We have been unable to evaluate our properties as of yet. There is too much confusion. We have been doing relief work, sending teams to make sure our people are okay.

One officer lost several family members. He just buried his wife three months ago. Please pray for their family.

Most of the deaths here appear to be children. Sunday Morning the sea was doing amazing things. The children were in awe. They called their mothers and father to watch. Then the waves came and everyone was gone.

Babies torn from their mothers arms. Grandparents at home gone.

The city of Galle is a ghost town. Sunday morning trains were full of travelers, the bus stand was full of people waiting for their transport and the open air market was crowed as usual. All gone. The trains floating out to sea, the buses full of people floating out to sea.

Usually for Christmas I take a short break. I head to the coast and take lodging at one of the hotels. This year there was no rooms where I normally stay. There was a room available at a hotel in Hikkadewa, right on the beach. I knew the place and decided it was too busy and it would not be a quiet place. So I declined. That hotel is gone, it collapsed and washed into the sea. Many tourist died there. By the grace of God, there go I. It could have been me.

Please pray for us. This county is not equipped for this type of disaster.

Neither is this territory [of the local Salvation Army]. Our Commander is on vacation in Indonesia. The earthquake happened during the time he was in the air. Our Chief Secretary (second in command) and myself are doing the best we can.

Thank you for your concern.

One last thing before I close. Our Dewheila Girls Home and Eventide (senior home), has a fishing boat sitting in its yard. We have forty girls there and 30 senior ladies. Most of the girls had gone home for Christmas and the rest were attending services here at THQ. No one was hurt. The waves lifted this big fishing boat out of the water over the railway track and over our 6 foot plus retaining wall and set it down in the yard.

God is good.

Thank you for your prayers.

Love to you all. Happy New Year.

L.S.B.

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 11:38:00 AM. Permalink |

Where I live online
Blogger Bill Hobbs and I live in the same town. You'd think we'd meet for lunch or something, but in fact we've never laid eyes on each other, just emailed a lot.

Bill took a drive through our common countryside and posted some digis. Nice scenes.

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 11:19:00 AM. Permalink |

Charles Dickens and tsunamis
Mark D. Roberts reflects on the relevance of A Christmas Carol to celebrating the New Year at a time of such tragedy in the south Asian nations.

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 11:13:00 AM. Permalink |

2,000 tourists found dead in Thailand
rescue workers have found the bodies of more than 2,000 tourists dead on a single beach north of Phuket, Thailand. The Thai government said that many thousands more people, Thai and foriegn alike, are still missing.

Meanwhile. the first US airlift-relief sortie has touched down in Indonesia, where some estimates now are that more than 400,000 people died.

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 10:15:00 AM. Permalink |

I've been profiled
Norm Geras posts a lengthy profile of a blogger every week. This week it's me. So here are 30 questions I answered for Norm. Have fun.

by Donald Sensing, 12/31/2004 09:33:00 AM. Permalink |

Thanks for the book plugs!
Many thanks for all those who put in a plug for my upcoming book today. The kind folks included Glenn Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Kathryn Lopez at NRO, James Joyner, Justin Katz, bLogicus, David Mobley, and Western Standard. I am pretty certain that my agent will be marketing it to publishers by mid-January (I have only one more document to get to him).

by Donald Sensing, 12/30/2004 09:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Indonesian dead alone may exceed 400,000
Indonesia's ambassador to Malaysia said today that his country's death toll from last weekend's earthquake and tsunami could top 400,000 souls. One city of 150,000 has only been surveyed from the air. Surveiallance found the city entirely destroyed with no sign of life. The same was true for another city of 76,000. Several populated islands off the Sumatran coast seem to have disappeared altogether.

by Donald Sensing, 12/30/2004 05:03:00 PM. Permalink |

Musings theological

Speaking of God, Norm Geras offered "Perspectives on the calamity" a couple of days ago regarding the Indian Ocean tsunami. The issue of the divine presence (or absence) in tragedy is what theologians call theodicy, literally "the justice of God." It is the most difficult problem of Christian theology (though not, ironically, of religions of the East, where the tsunami hit). Anyway, I wrote about this issue before, based on the book of Job. Here are the links:

My Buddy God

God on Trial

God Answers

A warning, though: Job is an incomplete examination of the theological problem of suffering, although it is truly profound. More on this later, I hope.

Update: Dr. Edward Spence, a philosopher at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Australia, has a piece in the Syndney Morning Herald examining the theodical issues of the tsunami as well as a brief overview of historical theodicy thought.

[T]he problem of evil is an existential problem that confronts our own individual mortality and vulnerability to unknown and unexpected disasters.

Ultimately, heartfelt tears shed in earnest and with compassion, with offerings of charity for those who have suffered, are more meaningful than any theological and philosophical treatise on the problem of evil. Especially at Christmas when, according to the gospels, love is the single core message.

Perhaps this is the essence, if the legend is true, of what God learnt from us when He walked and suffered as a man among us. Ultimately, the problem of evil confronts us not as a puzzle to be solved but as a mystery to be experienced. And as Jesus and Plato before him indicated, the meaning of the mystery of life can be found only by experiencing another great mystery - the mystery of love.

Which is not far from what Job teaches, too.

by Donald Sensing, 12/30/2004 03:50:00 PM. Permalink |

Salvation Army's report from tsunami areas
A long-term friend who is an officer is the Salvation Army sent me this email about the SA's first on-scene assessments of the disasters in the Indian Ocean area.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004 – Salvation Army assessment teams returning from the field are confirming the tragic news about the aftermath of last Sunday's tsunami waves that slammed into the southern Asia region. The team returning from Galle on the south coast of Sri Lanka reported finding the entire area, including Salvation Army properties, in total disarray. Debris is reportedly scattered all over this coastal town which used to be home to thousands of residents. The cost in terms of human life was also great. Among the casualties were passengers on a commuter train and bus that were reportedly washed out to sea by the waves, resulting in massive loss of life. Team members reported finding the corps officers (clergy) and soldiers (lay members) not only providing relief aid and counselling to the survivors, but also actively assisting in the recovery of bodies of the victims.

Emergency funds have been released in response to an appeal from relief teams in Indonesia. The leader of The Salvation Army in Indonesia reports, 'Immediate and URGENT need at the disaster sites (Aceh and Nias Island) is for body bags, medical masks, hand gloves, hand sanitizers and disinfectants. Distribution of these items is being coordinated with the government. The country’s 14 Salvation Army relief teams (known locally as "Compassion in Action" teams) are actively involved in North Sumatra and neighbouring areas counselling relatives of the victims. People are still in the state of shock, disoriented, and bewildered. The government is supplying people with food, clothing and medicines. But even where there is food, people cannot eat'.

Reports from affected communities in India all are very similar in their findings of unprecedented destruction and enormous losses of human lives. Another common theme, though, is the selfless service being given by Salvation Army officers, soldiers and volunteers as they do all that they can to give practical aid and spiritual comfort to the thousands and thousands of people who have had their lives forever changed in one terrible morning. Whether it’s providing food, water, clothing and shelter to families, helping with the recovery of remains or just listening to the heartbreak of those who lost loved ones to the raging waters, The Salvation Army is a beacon of hope in this desperate situation.

Even as much is currently being done, though, there is still much more to do. An International Emergency Response Team has been dispatched from London to Sri Lanka to help coordinate the massive relief efforts there. Salvation Army personnel in the affected region (as well as those nearby) are currently working around the clock to demonstrate practical care for hurting neighbours.

by Donald Sensing, 12/30/2004 08:55:00 AM. Permalink |

Humor so subtle
Michelle Malkin reports briefly on the story of a commercial airliner being laser tracked at 8,500 feet for several seconds on Monday. Says Michelle,

And two weeks ago, the FBI issued a warning that terrorists may be planning to shine powerful lasers into cockpits to blind pilots during landing approaches. ...

We'll keep an eye on this story.

by Donald Sensing, 12/29/2004 06:46:00 PM. Permalink |

Here is my book on the fight against terrorism
Last spring I was contacted by Mr. Dan Mann of Eames Literary Services here in Nashville. The company's founder, John Eames, was also principal founder of NavPress, a major religious publisher. Dan had read my blog and asked whether I had ever thought about writing a book.

So we talked. The upshot is that I have now finished the introduction, the first two chapters and the summaries of the remaining chapters. Those pieces and a proposal document are what Dan needs to market the book to publishers.

My working title is "Truth and Its Consequences," a title sure to change because it has already been heavily used. I have posted the work so far on my server to give you a chance to look it over. If by chance a publisher happens to see this, please contact Dan Mann at 615-478-5944 or [email protected].

So here you are:

Introduction, from which this excerpt:

This war is in fact a religious war all around, even though we of the West generally shun the idea. Unquestionably, though, our Islamist enemies know it, as do hundreds of millions of other Muslims who have not taken up arms against us. Even Muslim voices who counsel peace to their brethren understand what the real religion of Western people is, often more than we.

In the last several hundred years the West evolved a distinctive answer of what is truth and what is its authority. In contrast, Islam's progress in that inquiry mostly stopped just as the West was shifting out of first gear. Until the last half-century, the divergence between the West's and Islam's theology and philosophy of truth was not a basis for contention. After World War II the divergence took on a character that unfortunately was much more adversarial than cooperative, and finally more violent than peaceful.

This history, later coupled with cheap technology, worldwide communications and increasing globalization of economies and politics, butted headlong into Islamic societies that were ruthlessly patriarchal, theocratic, tribal and anti-democratic, all antithetical to what the West had become. After a four-hundred year hiatus, armed conflict between the West and a powerful strain of Islam broke out again.

This book is an historical, philosophical and religious exploration of how America and the West came into potentially catastrophic conflict with a prominent strain of Islam. For that topic, everyone, regardless of religion, creed or nationality is intensely interested in questions about truth and its authority. Like Pilate, both we and our present enemies realize that some answers are very threatening and that not all answers can be reconciled with one another. Unless we improve our understanding of the deep roots of the conflict and what is really at stake, we can't effectively discern what to do next.

Three stages of Arab terrorism

Terrorism has been used by peoples and nationalities around the world throughout history, but the terrorism carried out by Muslims has for several decades has either been done by Arab Muslims (all nineteen hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001) or has been inspired by Arab sponsors or teachers (Abu Sayyef terrorists in the Philippines). Hence, the problem of Muslim terrorism is almost exclusively a problem of Arab terrorism.

Arab terrorism has gone through three stages. The first was a revival of strict Islamic devotion. Islamism, as the movement came to be called, was originally a reform movement calling secularized Arab governments and societies to return to the basics of pure Islam as the reformers defined it. Islamism began in Egypt in the early 1920s. It was and still is fundamentally religious in nature. It was not originally violent but became violent fairly soon; Islamists believed that they were obligated to strike those who defied Islam as Islamists perceived it.

The second stage of Arab terrorism was born by the displacement of Palestinian Arabs from their homes by the United Nations' establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. When it became obvious that Israel would not be defeated in conventional battle, as the wars of 1948 and 1956 proved, armed Palestinian groups arose to fight the Israelis.

These groups were essentially secular-political in outlook rather than Islamic; nationalism was a strong ideal in the Middle East at the time. For example, the famed Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, was founded in 1964 as an umbrella Palestinian nationalist organization, not a religious one, to coordinate the tactics and strategy of several existing violent and political groups. While the PLO used terrorism to fight Israel, it did not overlay Islamism atop its agenda.

By the end Soviet war in Afghanistan many thousands of Arab men had embraced Islamism and jihadism. Arab terrorism reached a new stage in the early 1990s. Henceforth, Islamist terrorism would be directed not only at insufficiently Islamic governments or Israel, but also directly at the West, especially the United States.

by Donald Sensing, 12/29/2004 04:45:00 PM. Permalink |

Amazon tsunami relief drive
Amazon.com has made available the HTML coding for its tsunami-relief fundraising drive on behalf of the American Red Cross. So far, Amazon has raised more than $2,000,000.

Here is the clickable graphic, for which you can obtain the HTML code by right-clicking here and "save as" the text (.txt) document at the link. Since it's only One KB, it'll save plenty fast. Open the dicument and copy and paste the code therein.

by Donald Sensing, 12/29/2004 03:43:00 PM. Permalink |

Tsunami scams are here
The Nigerian widows have apparently got a new gig going: scamming people for tsunami relief. Here's the email:

TSUNAMIS DISASTER EMERGENCY
Dear Sir/Madam,

With sympathy and heavy laden hearts, we hereby appeal to your sense of generosity to assist by donating any amount you can afford towards The "TSUNAMIS DISASTER HELP FUNDS", which is aimed at assisting the victims of the Asians Tsunamis which took place on Sunday the 26TH December, 2004 .

We are a non- governmental charity organisation with offices and members across 5 continents namely Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Our goal is to assist poor, innocent survivals of both man-made and natural disasters. Our officials and members are scattered in places in needs of human and material relief as seen in cases of Sudan ( Darfur ) and Haiti etc.

We would appreciate it, if you can send us an email ( Via [email protected] ) For further enquiries on how to make donations towards the Tsunamis Disaster Help Funds ( T D H F )

by Donald Sensing, 12/29/2004 02:06:00 PM. Permalink |

Islam education
Bill Hobbs links to piece in yesterday's Tennessean that explains next month's class series on Islam at Nashville's Tennessee State University:

[Awadh] Binhazim and other leaders of the Islamic Center of Nashville will hold free weekly classes on Islam at Tennessee State University starting next month. As outreach director of the center, it's Binhazim's job to promote understanding of the Islamic faith in the community — one of the center's primary missions.

''We want to say to people that they can't use the actions of a few to judge the faith of 1.5 billion people,'' Binhazim said. ''Our religion does not promote violence and doesn't accept anything related to terrorism.''

If they'd put up "Pray to Allah for Peace," or something along those lines, fine. But the message "Enough Killing, Enough Revenge, Stop the War" strikes me as a call for America to stop the war, a war the sign-writer at the Islamic Center of Nashville apparently believes is mere "revenge" rather than a justified response to an act of war against us.

by Donald Sensing, 12/29/2004 01:08:00 PM. Permalink |

UMC tsunami relief fund
The Red Cross now says the death toll from the weekend's tsunami in the Indian Ocean area will likely go to more than 100,000. The United Methodist Committee on Relief, an agency of the General Board of Global Ministries, has set up a designated fund to accept donations for relief work in the stricken areas. Full details may be found here.

UMCOR will be working with partner church-related and other humanitarian agencies in providing food, clean water, shelter, and sanitary services in a broadband of nations from Asia to Africa. Virtually all of the Indian Ocean area was affected by the December 26 earthquake that set off tsunamis (tidal waves) of massive size and force.

Contributions may be placed in the offering plate of any United Methodist Church or sent directly to UMCOR at Room 330, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115. Please indicate that the gift is for "Advance # 274305, Southeast Asia Emergency Relief."

by Donald Sensing, 12/29/2004 01:01:00 PM. Permalink |

End states and exit strategies
Syndicated columnist and Army Reserve Colonel Austin Bay presnts an exceptionally insightful analysis of potential and acceptable end states for Iraq - a long way to go, for that - and why talking of an exit strategy is fallacious. His piece is called, "The Millennium War," appearing in The Weekly Standard. Go read it!

by Donald Sensing, 12/27/2004 09:54:00 PM. Permalink |

BIPping your computer
Years ago when I was an Army field artillery battery commander, I fashioned some BIP cards from heavy-gage paper. I carried them around and whenever I found one of my battery's vehicles looking unacceptably unmilitary (we were of and armored division so we had lots of vehicles), I would place a BIP card on the windshield.

The first time I did so I got the expected protest: "Hey sir, what does this means? What does BIP stand for?"

"BIP stands for 'Blow In Place.'"

"Huh? What for?"

"Well, Sergeant Schnuckatelli, your vehicle looks like crap so much that it would embarrass the rest of us for it to be part of our next road march. So if you can't get it squared away you'll have to blow it in place and walk."

Now read my Christmas computer travails and Gerard Van Der Leun's more philosophical treatment of the subject, and you'll see why would like to BIP my computer. I'm sure Gerard would approve.

by Donald Sensing, 12/27/2004 09:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Tsunami blog established
A blog dedicated to news of the Indian Ocean tsunami has been established. It is also a central reference for all agencies that are assisting and how you can contact them to offer donations.

I think that this blog also serves to illustrate what Hugh Hewitt is talking about in his new and timely book, Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World, as well as what Jeff Jarvis has been saying for a long time: blogs are changing the way people disseminate and consume information. There is certainly no way in pre-blog days that all the tsunami blog's information could have been spread worldwide so quickly.

by Donald Sensing, 12/27/2004 08:49:00 PM. Permalink |

A Top Sergeant reports on Rumsfeld
This email is from a first sergeant serving in Iraq who was present last week for one of the troop visits by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The email was forwarded to me by a Tennessee Army Guard field-grade officer. One of his comments was,

Once again our soldiers (and vets) do not recognize what the press reports. Our experience is in the full context of events and I suppose only we can or will tell that complete story.

This is a shotgun blast response to the media reports on Secretary
Rumsfeld's visit to our Camp. I was fortunate enough to be there and even shake the man's hand. When the media reports were released concerning the event, I could not believe what I saw and heard. There are over 12,000 troops on our base. Only 2,000 or so had the opportunity to attend the gathering and I can tell you, those were hotly contested seats.

Not as the media would have you believe, so we could voice our displeasure, but rather to have the opportunity to see and hearthe man we admire. Mr. Secretary spoke for 10 minutes or so on the war in Iraq and what freedom meant to the people of Afghanistan. He was there for the recent elections and shared his wonderful insight. After his prepared remarks he opened up the floor for questions and made it very clear that nothing was off limits.

Folks, this is extremely unusual for a dignitary to do. Also, we as leaders, were instructed to not screen our soldiers questions. They were to be honest and from the heart. Mr. Rumsfeld fielded a number of questions, took down notes for the ones he did not have answers to and genuinely enjoyed talking to the soldiers.

Afterward, he spent over an hour with the enthusiastic troops who literally mobbed him and would not let him leave. He smiled forall, shook hands and had pictures taken. It ended only when his security forced us away.

He was applauded, he was given a standing ovation and he was loved. He stood there like a professional, like a man, and he took the heat because that's what leaders do. And yet somehow, the American media turned that wonderful event into "disgruntled troops meet with Secretary Rumsfeld" headline. Incredible.

The morale is high, the equipment is good and improving daily. Disregard what you read and hear from the media and trust in the American fighting men and women to do the right thing. We have excellent leadership and are doing what we signed up to do.

by Donald Sensing, 12/27/2004 08:19:00 PM. Permalink |

Christmas tech support
I returned home Christmas Eve to discover that the Windows XP on my computer had fled with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Total system failure. I didn't want to mess with it late at night so I called HP's tech support early Christmas morning.

I got through almost immediately - the lines to New Delhi were uncluttered on Christmas Day. Both techs I spoke to on two separate calls were polite, fluent and both wished me Merry Christmas. India has a large Christian population so it's quite possible both men were Christian, though I don't think so, since the first gentleman asked to confirm it was Christmas. Be that as it may, I appreciated the sentiment.

The upshot is that Windows' boot files are corrupted and unrecoverable. The only solution is to run the computer's resident recovery program (F10 while booting to get to it). But the tech warned that doing so returns the computer's hard drive and settings to what they were when it was manufactured. In other words - kiss your data files goodbye.

That was unacceptable, of course, so that's where I stopped. I was in a bit of a tizzy because my sermon for today was on the machine but that turned out to be simple to transfer to my new 512MB Cruzer USB drive once I got into command-line land.

There is a "normal" recovery setting that promises not to delete my data files, but the tech said he didn't trust it. Ergo, neither do I.

So I need to back up about 85GB. Any ideas? External hard drive with USB hookup? Other? Please leave a comment!

Update - 7:40 p.m. 27 Dec.: Things are not looking too good. I bought a LaCie external hard drive and an external enclosure for my desktop's hard drive and hooked them both to my notebook computer. In that manner I was able to copy almost all, but not quite all, my essential files from the internal HD to the LaCie. Some files registered at corrupted and I was not able to get them. But I am nearly certain none of them were critical.

I did recover all my digital photos of family and such, save a very few, as well as my MPEG versions of videotaped home movies that I was converting to DVD. And I drilled down to the remote folder where all my email data was stored and got that, too.

But when I reinstalled the HD into my desktop and attempted to run the HP Recovery mods, they didn't work. Neither of would extract the files. And before I tried that I tried to repair ("fixboot") to boot process from an XP CD, using the repair option. Fixboot worked fine, but when I tried to run the FIXMBR command, a warning message arose that said the MBR was nonstandard and continuing would likely ruin the partition and permanently block access to all files therein. Needless to say, I stopped.

I've been at this most of the day and right now I'm going to go watch the last MNF of the season.

Many thanks to everyone who left comments! They were most informative and I am keeping them for future reference. And the emailed offers of free tech support are much appreciated - fear not, I may call you yet!

by Donald Sensing, 12/26/2004 05:21:00 PM. Permalink |

Christmas Eve reflection
My Christmas Eve reflection is online at my sermons subsite. Click here.

by Donald Sensing, 12/24/2004 01:47:00 PM. Permalink |

Potter book headed for a fall
Glenn Reynolds points out that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, sixth novel of the series, is already ranked number one is sales on Amazon.com, even though the book won't be released until July.

Well, fine. Let me remind you that sales of the last volume, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, turned out to be very disappointing after the initial rush.

Sales of the breathlessly-anticipated fifth Potter novel started strong when stores put them out for sale at midnight, but dropped sharply within just a couple of hours.

"This is a disaster!" exclaimed Ms. Imelda Czechs, treasurer of Borders Books. "We really expected the book to take off like a rocket, but it only started strong. By 5 a.m. almost no books were being sold anywhere, except to obsessive-neurotic internet surfers who clicked onto Amazon.com."

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 11:31:00 AM. Permalink |

"A much better view"
The council of the Mexican city of Villahermosa has adopted a law banning nudity indoors.

Opposition party councilman Rodrigo Sanchez said .. "I have no idea how you detect the naked. You'd have to have a big operation to try to bring it under control," he added.

[City councilwoman Blanca Estela] Pulido said she was confident that citizens who catch a glimpse of offenders would report them to police -- though the law also threatens jail for peeping Toms.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 10:50:00 AM. Permalink |

White Christmas - this'll have to do



View from my front door

After heavy rains all day yesterday, the temps dropped overnight. The rainwater froze and then got topped with just enough snow to make driving really hazardous.

We're leaving home later to pick up my Marine son from the airport. He's flying in from Camp Pendleton, Calif. (okay from the San Diego airport), where he said the temps have approached 90 degrees in recent days. He originally wasn't going to get home until Christmas Eve evening, so we're pretty happy about the earlier arrival.

When he called late yesterday afternoon to say he'd been released for travel early, I called Southwest Airlines to see whether I could change his reservation from tomorrow to today. The lady on the phone told me there was one seat left for today. So I grabbed it and Stephen cleared the base in record time. He arrived at the airport last night and stayed overnight at the USO, then checked in for his 7:45 a.m. flight at 5:30 a.m. As I type, his plane should just have taken off.

One seat left. Sometimes you wonder how and why things work out. I know some people who would ascribe the seat's availability to the direct hand of God. Problem is, I know there surely had to be others who wanted the seat, too; Stephen told me there were scores of Marines at the airport hoping to fly standby. I don't see how we merit the seat any more than anyone else.

So I'll just accept the early arrival as an undeserved gift of grace, and in all things give thanks to God.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 09:33:00 AM. Permalink |

"Wait" - the unkindest Christmas word
Austin Bay takes a break from politico-military affairs and writes about Christmas.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 09:31:00 AM. Permalink |

Firearm accidents at all-time low
That's the good news from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Last year, 101,537 U.S. residents died in accidents of all types. Less than one percent, 700, involved firearms. The most common deadly accidents involved motor vehicles, falls and poisonings, claiming 72 percent of all accidental deaths.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 09:28:00 AM. Permalink |

Linkagery

Davids Medienkritik posted excerpts of a highly enlightening interview with Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin.

Mr. Gedmin's observations cut to the very heart of European animosity, both overt and concealed, towards the US and Israel. Gedmin also mercilessly exposes the double-standards, bias and moral relativism of the continent's 'intellectual elite.' It is an absolute must read.

Indeed.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 07:28:00 AM. Permalink |

Back on the job
Bill Quick, who had previously announced he was taking a break from blogging and would probably give it up altogether, has changed his mind. Why? Because he decided he has to do what he can for the cause of freedom. He's right.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 07:11:00 AM. Permalink |

The case for a bigger Army
Andrew Olmsted, an armor officer, lays out a detailed and convincing case for substantially increasing the size of the US Army. More than anything else - and there is a lot else - this seems inarguable:

And doing the simple math that one soldier deployed actually requires three soldiers: one training to relieve him, one actually deployed, and one retraining and recovering after deployment, that means that maintaining 150,000 soldiers in Iraq actually chews up 450,000 troops. That leaves the cupboard pretty [del.] bare for other contingencies, even when a growing fraction of that 450,000 soldiers is coming from the reserve component. Add in the fact the reserve component may not be able to sustain the current tempo and the argument we don't need a larger Army doesn't seem to stand up to serious scrutiny.

by Donald Sensing, 12/23/2004 07:00:00 AM. Permalink |

The Christian Carnival is up
This week's Christian Carnival is online at Patriot Paradox. Lot's of good stuff of the religious nature - thought provoking for Christians and non-Christians alike, I would say.

by Donald Sensing, 12/22/2004 06:01:00 PM. Permalink |

Mosul bomb was likely an IED
Today's Pentagon answer-botching exercise

Gen. Richard Myers just announced that the explosion in the American mess tent in Mosul was likely caused by an improvised esplosive device, or IED. This is a change from yesterday's announcement that the tent was hit by a rocket. Secretary Rumsfeld emphasized that this announcement is not the final word and that the investigation continues.

That means that yesterday's claim by the "Ansar al-Sunnah Army" that the attack was a "martyrdom operation" is factual. And as I posted yesterday, the terrorists followed the suicide bombing with deliberate mortar attacks on the US Army hospital.

It should be disturbing to US authorities that a suicide bomber loaded with many pounds of high explosive was able to infiltrate the forward operating base and the very crowded dining facility.

Rumsfeld was asked about this topic at today's Pentagon press conference and pretty well botched the answer: "We have to be right all the time, the terrorists only have to be right once." Then he bailed the question over to Gen. Myers, who botched it, too: "The way we beat this is we win" the fight against Islamic terrorism.

Sorry, no. The specific question concerns the fact that a terrorist gained access to the base, either carrying a large amount of explosives or picking them up there. And he entered the mess tent without anyone alerting.

I don't have to be the Secretary of Defense to know that the security there stunk to high heaven for this attack to occur, providing that the explosion is confirmed as from a suicide bomber. Waving the thing away by saying, basically, that the bad guys got lucky, is unacceptable.

I don't expect Rumsfeld or Myers to know all the details of force protection of every base in Iraq, not should they get involved at that level of detail, anyway. But Rummy needs to understand that his role at this press conference is not merely that of a department manager. It is also as the keeper of American lives whom moms and dads and husbands and wives have entrusted to the department.

To his credit, Gen. Myers did strike something of a right note by emphasizing later that the anti-democratic insurgents in Iraq are determined to fight and attack us. He said that comprehensive force protection is very difficult. The enemy has a strong will, he said, but we have a strong will and we are determined to prevail.

I know that "stuff happens" and the enemy's weapons will get through, especially when the weapon is a man determined to die in the attack. I've helped plan real-world force protection plans against actual threats, not exercise ones. I'll testify that trying even to imagine every potential threat is practically impossible, much less actually defend against them all.

I also know that what military leaders insist be done well tends to get done well. And what I saw today was the US secretary of defense communicating that he doesn't really insist force protection get done well. As the father of a Marine probably heading to Iraq this spring, my confidence in Donald Rumsfeld (never high to begin with) is falling fast. I have written that calls for his resignation so far are absurd. But if he keeps this up it won't be long before I join the chorus wanting his political head on a platter (not that I assign any significant weight to my opinion in Rumsfeld's future).

Update: The official transcript of the press conference is online. Here is the section I summarized on the fly above:

Q Mr. Secretary, what does the incident at Mosul say about U.S. security on those bases? How could something like that happen? And what could be done to prevent it in the future?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well -- and I'll have Dick respond as well -- but as we know, someone who's attacking can attack at any place at any time using any technique, and it is an enormous challenge to provide force protection, something that our forces worry about, work on constantly. They have to be right 100 percent of the time. An attacker only has to be right occasionally. And we've seen that in all kinds of circumstances around the world over the decades. And I think that we've seen attacks like this previously in the country. Remember the attack on the U.N. team that was there when Mr. de Mello was killed? There have been other instances of it. It's a tragedy. The loss of life is just heartbreaking. Dick, do you want to add anything?

GEN. MYERS: You bet. This attack, of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11, the same type of insurgents who attacked in Beirut, the same insurgents who -- type of insurgents who attacked the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the list goes on. So the way you prevent this is you win the war against the extremists, and I've talked about that at length myself. And I'm not saying that's a war in a sense that the military can do this, but that's how we do this. We make this kind of extremism, this kind of action, which shows no moral boundaries -- because while this was an attack against coalition forces, U.S. forces and contractors in Mosul, we've seen attacks on children in Baghdad and Iraqi citizens. So the way we prevent this is we win, and that's what we're going to do.

Q: But isn't this someone who made his way on to the base, someone who was a trusted individual, an employee or something? Somehow he had to get -- the base is not insecure. Somehow he had to get on the base with an explosive, with bombs.

GEN. MYERS: Well, we'll find that out when the investigation is complete, exactly how that happened.

This is an insurgency. And I think if you step back a minute and you think about insurgencies versus conventional warfare, in conventional warfare at some point you're going to get to an unconditional surrender, and in many cases you have very neat front lines. We have no front lines. The front line can be the dining hall, it can be the road outside the base, it can be the police station or the governor's office or the mayor's office down at Mosul. That's their territory. They operate all over that. They can wear -- and they do -- wear clothes like every other Iraqi. It's a much different thing and the mindset has to be much different.

What it tells us is -- and we know this from our history with insurgencies -- it's going to be very tough. And as this insurgency has changed in its nature and is character and has become more intense, our resolve just has to be all that tougher. And I know the Iraqi resolve is hard and tough and I know that our resolve is hard and tough.

My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been killed and with the wounded and with their families and with all those military and civilian personnel who have volunteered to place themselves at risk in our country's behalf. We honor them today, just as generations will come to honor their courage and commitment, and we pray for the successful outcome of their important work. They have the deep appreciation of our country. ...

The holiday season is an especially hard time to be away from friends and family. And wherever they are stationed around the world, I want every one of the men and women in uniform who are defending our nation to know that they are in our thoughts and prayers.

In a moment, I will be responding to questions -- Dick and I will -- about the problems and controversies in the global struggle against extremism. But I want the American people to understand how much our nation is contributing to a better world, how important that work is, and that the work of the armed forces of the United States is making a difference. And I should add how much it is appreciated by me and by all of us. ...

I, and I know others, stay awake at night with concern for those at risk, with hope for their lives and for their success. And I want those who matter most -- the men and women in uniform and their families -- to know that. And I want them to know that we consider them -- the soldiers, the sailors, the airmen, the Marines -- to be America's true treasure, and I thank them and I thank their families.