Where is Derb? In the Land of Overstretch, that’s where. End-of-month

diary & some columns coming up.

Just two quick notes:

(1) Many thanks to the military / retired-military readers (I logged 68 of

you) who responded to my bleg for opinions on the Graner sentence. Opinion

was overwhelmingly anti-Derb — that is, practically all of you thought the

sentence just right or too light. (There was a sizeable contingent in favor

of having Graner shot.) As John Hillen reminds me, “military sentencing in

general over there is pretty harsh.” Main reasons for the strong

anti-Graner sentiment: He dishonored his service & nation, he inflamed the

enemy, he endangered his comrades. However, military people all see

Graner’s behavior as the mark of a rogue soldier taking advantage in a slack

unit, and want some accountability for Graner’s superiors, who permitted the

slackness. By way of consolation, everyone who commented agrees with me

that the Abu Ghraib horseplay does not rise to the level of “torture,” nor

even to the level of routine arduous-training exercises in the U.S. armed

forces, and the stupendous fuss raised by the media & congressional

bedwetters is at least as big a scandal as the prisoner abuses themselves.

This, remember, is from people many of whom want Graner shot.

(Though none of my respondents quoted it, I can’t resist recycling the old

adage that “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.”

Anyone know the origin?)

(2) A new bleg concerning cat-5 cable, i.e. the kind of cable you would use

if, oh, you were wiring up your house for a home network by way of

establishing a new, hi-tech home office for your self. (Which of course I

am not doing. No! Certainly not! ESPECIALLY not without getting

everything approved & signed off on by my town’s code-compliance

bureaucracy. Good heavens no!)

Here’s the bleg. I have seen on various websites that your cat-5 cable

should be kept at a distance from ordinary power cable. This is proving

really hard to do in some locations. (I mean, it WOULD, for anyone cabling

up an old house — which I myself AM NOT DOING. No!) How important is

this? What distances, actually, are involved? I can’t find anything that

tells me.

Also: I have yet to crimp on my first RJ45 connector. How hard is this?

Any suggestions? I got a tool from Radio Shack, but my experience with

Radio Shack stuff has been… variable.