QuaxiDanto: January 2006

QuaxiDanto

QuaxiDanto: If you speak K'ekchi, you know what it means, but don’t understand. K'ekchi is a Mayan dialect spoken in, among other places, Belize. I made several extended trips into the high bush in southern Belize at the end of the last century with a bunch of K'ekchis who gave me the nickname Danto, which means Tapir. That name had been taken so I added the modifier Quaxi, which means crazy. What does CrazyTapir mean as far as the title of my blog? Whatever!

About Me

Name: TOC

Location: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

I am an enigmatic anachronism, facing the world jaded and uncomfortably impressed. My chosen profession is archaeology, which turns out to be way more tedious than cool. I race yachts, hang with the bohemian artist crowd, and vacation at ancient Maya cities. Its no wonder I usually feel out of place, and am oh-so-pleased to be different (even if it is not in a good way). Why TOC?: I was participating through emails in a call-in radio show that didn’t accept phone calls (it’s college radio, which covers a multitude of sins). The host had a friend named Chuck who also wrote into the show so they started referring to me as “the other Chuck.” I started signing my emails TOC (The Other Chuck). A little later I started posting to a blog that was running live during the next program in the lineup and then a couple of other places and have just kind of stuck with it as a screen name. Again, whatever dude.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

You can't spell duh with out DU!

Well I am still ultra-slack on my blogging. I have had plenty of writing to do at the office and have not sat down and taken the time to add anything to my blog. I just upgraded my cable box and I am very impressed with the new technology. The HD stuff is amazingly vivid and the new box works so much better with a 16:9 screen monitor than the old (I guess standard) digital box I had.

I was watching a documentary about Iraq from 2004 on one of the HD channels I now receive. I think it is titled Battleground. Of all the horrors of the war there was one I was not quite aware of. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but surprise, surprise the depleted uranium (DU) munitions are causing a looming environmental disaster.

There was some guy from an NGO running around with a Geiger counter getting readings 200-300 times normal background every time he stuck it in a tank or armored vehicle that had been taken out with DU rounds. These vehicles are being gathered up and cut apart into scrap metal. This is creating what are essentially radioactive waste dumps that people are running around in with blowtorches, but without any protective gear. He went on to say that they were firing DU munitions from helicopters, and presumably attack planes, at vehicles on the ground. Apparently, the bullets that miss go a meter or so into the ground and can be expected to contaminate the ground water.

If I was motivated I would go look up some data and cross-reference it, but I am not. It did get in the news and I noticed some Christian news paper saying that it was the sword of God that would fulfill some prophecy about Armageddon or some such nonsense. (GOTTA LOVE THE INTERNET) I don’t know, but it looks bad. Maybe worse than using landmines, which by the way, we still do.