Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

I was bored recently, so I bought a house. Then I rented a 25 foot moving van and loaded it to the ceiling (with the help of the amazing Tavish) with 29 years of stuff I hadn’t gotten around to throwing away yet.

Obviously, as soon as I moved in everything broke: AC, Electrical, Plumbing, etc. Consequently, I’ve been busy patching, repairing, tweaking, mowing, weed-wacking, spraying, installing, furnishing, unpacking, decorating, fighting the wasps, irrigating, and sorting through boxes. Thank you to all those who have helped with these tasks!

Oh, the house had an aging wooden swing set in the back yard (which I promptly tore down and made a roman solider from…)

The sad, yet seemingly inevitable, day has arrived– Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University professor famous for his last lecture about facing his incurable pancreatic cancer passed away today.

Our thoughts go out to his wife and children. The world will miss this inspirational man.

thanks CGA for the tip

Who said RBDN wasn’t instructional? Well, here is a video that might save your life one day, complements of our buddy Tyler:

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bottle break video (larger)

And now in slow motion!

On a walk today at work, we discovered a massive ant war on the sidewalk fought between two colonies of ants. Many of the competing ants were locked in deadly embraces. Obviously, I lay down on the sidewalk and videotaped the event. I’m kind of bummed I didn’t have a macro lens on my camera…

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ant attack video (larger)

On Friday, a few co-workers and I ran an operation freedom (meaning we ditched work and watched a matinée movie.) The selected movie? Why The Dark Knight of course.

Some people think that movie reviews shouldn’t give away details to avoid spoiling the film for others. Well I disagree. If you want a movie review with no spoilers, go here.

Most of you know that I have ADD, so 2 1/2 hour movie is very difficult for me to sit through. Surprisingly, this movie (unlike any of the horribly-long Bored of the Rings movies) captivated my attention nearly the entire time. Let me be more specific, the Joker held my attention.

Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and the other characters were side acts, and massively overshadowed by the Joker (Heath Ledger.) For one, Batman insisted on speaking in a intentionally lowered, raspy voice which irritated me to no end. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) was confusing and one dimensional. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) becomes evil and his half-skeleton face is a distraction to whatever blather came from his mouth. Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) gets illogically upset when Batman builds a contraption to locate the Joker by listening in on cellphone microphones (it’s okay to run a muck and break laws as a vigilante, but, for the love, do NOT ease drop on people!!!) And there were other characters but I forget them all. None of them is as riveting as the Joker.

He is somehow likable as he cracks jokes and cavorts about like a little kid (for example, when he exits the hospital, dressed as a nurse and get flustered because the bombs he has planted don’t all go off immediately.) Even in his murderous sadist rages, he’s still light-hearted and laughing. In fact, he always seems to be snickering at something– when Batman pushes him off a building, he laughs all the way down. To be sure, the Joker is an evil, clown-faced lunatic sociopath hellbent on terrorism (his goal is anarchic disruption, disorder and suffering– not money.) He has an unlimited supply of henchmen and bombs and remote detonators to enact his plans (or his un-plans as he claims (”Do I look like a guy with a plan?”)) His macabre, caked-painted visage, the flick of his tongue as he licks his lips mid-sentence, his complete absence of compassion (as he violently slams a mafia man’s head into a pencil, for instance), his yellow hell-hound teeth, all serve to unnerve the viewer– he is at all times “completely believable, disturbing, and nightmarishly frightening.” The Joker’s spine-tingling performance will reverberate with you for days.

Joker: How many of your friends did I kill?

Cop: Six.

Joker: SIX? [grimaces] You know, you can tell a lot about a person in the moments before they die. I probably know more about your friends than you do. Would you like to know which ones were cowards?

This movie is epic. It’s a visually stimulating shoot-em up action flick combined with complex, thought-provoking moral dilemmas. It’s a dark movie that doesn’t leave you frightened, but instead dizzily introspective: is chance/chaos is the only thing that is fair in life? (because everyone has the same odds?), would you press a button to blow up a boat of criminals if you thought they might do the same to you?

Yes, Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar.

Factoid: Did you notice the Joker told two different stories about the origins of his facial scars (His dad, His wife)?

Something possessed me to wake up at 6:00AM yesterday and drive to American Fork to run their Steel Days 5k. (Yes, I finished.) After the race, I wandered over to Main Street and took in a bit of the parade. I snapped a few pics for you to enjoy:

Rampant, ridiculous rumors have been circulating about claiming that I had been commissioned to design a meticulously-crafted, imposing, life-sized Roman solider from discarded lumber. I would like to immediately disabuse my readers of any such notion, unless, of course, the rumors were referring to this:

Busy with work and life? Here are a few good upcoming weekend events you don’t have to plan– just show up and enjoy. They’re great for people watching and fair food. I’ve listed them in calendar order for ya:

• American Fork Steel Days — July 14-19
• Spanish Fork Fiesta Days — July 21-24
• Mapleton Pioneer Day Parade — July 24
• Cedar Hills Family Festival — July 26
• Highland Fling — July 21-August 2
• Alpine Days — August 3-9
• Lindon Days — August 4-11
• Payson Golden Onion Days –  August 28-September 1

The military charges that back in 2002, a certain Mohammed Jawad tried to kill two of our soldiers in Afghanistan by throwing a grenade at them. Mohammed, 16 years old, was captured and flown to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed has been locked up in solitary confinement since that time, not yet charged with any crime. (Nor has he been provided, until recently, access to counsel or any recourse to challenge his detention.)

No doubt, the gallant administrators and soldiers at Guantanamo (once our executive branch suspended habeas corpus and article three of the Geneva Conventions for the detainees) found it amusing to engage in alternative interrogation tactics while attempting to garner intel from this terrorist kingpin.

Did Mohammed Jawad throw that grenade? Probably. It is a war over there, after all. The salient point is that he was only a kid and if he was attacking us, we should have shot him then. Or, at least, captured him, interrogated him and then tried him for murder. Holding him without end should not have been an option. Is there any actionable intelligence that can be gathered from a teenage combatant who has already spent many years alone in prison?

Let me be clear, unlike the ACLU, I do not bristle at these words from the president, “As a matter of policy the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely, and to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.” It is obvious that there are some very bad people who wish the US much harm. Because of that, I do not argue that there is never a case for the use of less-humane treatment to extract vital, timely intelligence. However an acknowledgment that such situations might conceivably exist is not the same as a wholesale torture permission slip. Those incidents ought to be the of the extremely rare, ticking-bomb variety.

Enter Maj. J. R. David Frakt, Jawad’s newly military-appointed attorney. Frakt’s closing argument (June 19th, 2008) in favor of dismissal of Mohammad Jawad’s case contains some well crafted arguments. Here is an excerpt:

America is a nation founded on a reverence for the rule of law. We should never forget that when we take an oath to enlist or be commissioned as an officer in the United States Armed Forces, we do not swear to defend the United States, we swear “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The Oath of Office for the President contains similar words: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Tragically, under the undeniably heavy pressure to defend Americans from terrorist attack, some of our military and civilian leaders lost sight of their obligation to defend the Constitution as well.

Under the Constitution all men are created equal, and all are entitled to be treated with dignity. No one is “undeserving” of humane treatment. It is an unmistakable lesson of history that when one group of people starts to see another group of people as “other” or as “different,” as “undeserving” as “inferior,” ill-treatment inevitably follows. In the Global War on Terror generally and in the detention camps of Guantanamo especially, the detainees were seen as “terrorists,” as “the worst of the worst” something less than human, and were treated accordingly. After six and a half years, we now know the truth about the detainees at Guantanamo: some of them are terrorists, some of them are foot soldiers, and some of them were just innocent people, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the detainees at Guantanamo have one thing in common — with each other, and with us — they are all human beings, and they are all worthy of humane treatment. We should also never forget that no one in Guantanamo has been convicted of a single crime and that even in these deeply flawed military commissions, they are entitled to a presumption of innocence…

February 7, 2002. America lost a little of its greatness that day. We lost our position as the world’s leading defender of human rights, as the champion of justice and fairness and the rule of law. But it is a testament to the continuing greatness of this nation, that I, a lowly Air Force Reserve Major, can stand here before you today, with the world watching, without fear of retribution, retaliation or reprisal, and speak truth to power. I can call a spade a spade, and I can call torture, torture.

Today, Your Honor, you have an opportunity to restore a bit of America’s lost luster, to bring back some small measure of the greatness that was lost on Feb 7, 2002, to set us back on a path that leads to an America which once again stands at the forefront of the community of nations in the arena of human rights.

Sadly, this military commission has no power to do anything to the enablers of torture … All you can do is to try to send a message, a clear and unmistakable message that the U.S. really doesn’t torture, and when we do, we own up to it, and we try to make it right.

I have provided you with legal authority for the proposition that you have the power to dismiss these charges. I can’t stand before you and say that you are legally required to do so. But I can say that that it is a moral imperative to do so, and I ask that you do so.

Please know that I don’t wish to cast aspersions on our patriotic festivities– to the contrary– I’m convinced that this great country is what she is today, in part, because of a persistent willingness to face and resolve the issues which confront her. It is through candid, honest and intelligent dialog that change can be effected. Far from a liberal cynic, I am very proud to be American.

Click for the full text of Major David Frakt’s closing arguments.