North Korea Freedom Day

Rebecca MacKinnon blogs about North Korea Freedom day. They even had a "Seoul Train". It reminds me a bit of the many people who talked about the lack of freedoms in Afghanistan before we started paying any real attention to it...one thing we cannot afford, I think, in the face of tyranny is apathy. An intelligent, well-planned, policy would be nice...

Elementary

This flash animation of Tom Lehrer's classic "Elements" is a lot of fun. For those who have not heard it, it's a list of the table of elements which you may (or may not) remember from the wall of your high school chemlab. I think Tom is probably one of those unique talents in the field of satire, one we are likely to not see again. Please do not mention that sack of crap whose initials are M.R. in the same sentence as Tom Lehrer. They're similar in the same way Charlie Parker and Justin Timberlake are similar in that they make something generally referred to as music. Link via the Modulator, who has a ton of blogs on his blogroll, with slightly complicated rules about what can go on the blogroll.

I just tend to surf around and google out interesting blogs, or more often, jump in the comments and see what some of the interesting commenters have for blogs. My only "rule" is that I generally put something in my blogroll if I want to read it at least once a day. If I had too many there, I'd need to find a way to not sleep anymore.

Some blogs, which I won't name though I do blogroll them, will not link to you if you link to people they don't like. For example, a link to LGF will incur the delinking (or just not linking) of a well known site that rhymes with "Mittenhouse". Some delinkings are just insanely stupid, like that one a while back that delinked Instapundit with great drama and flair. That's like me expecting Walmart to start worrying because I won't shop there anymore.

Anyway, not to get too far off topic, Lehrer's brilliant political and social satire really got to me in college. A friend of mine played "Vatican Rag" in her graduation recital, much to the delight of the nuns present (It was a small Catholic University near the sea). Years later, I nearly drove M_ to a murderous rage by continually singing most of his songs on a car trip. That was in 1999, and I'm still banned from singing them in her presence. Somehow, I feel delinked.

Bribery Quote of the Day

Jessa has named her price

all you'd have to do is buy me some alcohol and tacos, slip me a $20, and I'd probably review your book.

I'm wondering if you can mail tacos...

Medals? Don't give a toss

I have watched the Kerry medal boomlet go on and on, without much caring. But some have questioned what really happened. Apparently Tom Oliphant was close to the action. How close?

On the way to the fence where he threw some of his military decorations 33 years ago, I was 4 or 5 feet behind John Kerry.

Worthwhile reading, if you're interested in what he did.

I recall that many (many) years ago, I was an frenetic Canadian high-school student, with a dash of what passed for a few radical opinions in those days. At one band concert with a bunch of other bands, mostly American, they played the Star Spangled Banner. Most of the members of our band stood, but I and one young lady I had long had a crush on, declined to stand. It was partly out of protest of our perception of Reagan era policies, and that we didn't like what the present administration in the big country to the south was doing those days. In retrospect, that's a pretty stupid thing to have done, since the anthem is about the nation, not one administration. However we didn't descend to the barbarian levels I have heard about when at a NHL hockey game the US anthem was booed. That made me ashamed to be a Canadian (apologizing for the cliche of such a thought, true though it may be). And

Another time, I signed a petition to stop the testing of cruise missiles over Canada. They had a mock-cruise missile with eyes and a jaunty grin painted on it's warhead, up on Parliament hill for us to gaze upon. Once again, I signed along with a not-at-all unattractive young lady, though I'm sure that had no effect on my idealistic seventeen year old mind.

But hopefully none of this can come back to haunt me. Although I am, sadly, 35, I was not born in the US so cannot run for president. I probably had less cause for my "sins" than Kerry, who in my view, committed much less sinful acts with the medals or ribbons. Once again leading to the question, are the media Heathers on decaffeinated crack?

They're here, they're queer, etc

Excellent commentary in the LA times about gays in the workplace, and the present administrations opinions of the same:

In his State of the Union address, President Bush noted that 'the same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God's sight.' At a press conference a few months earlier, in response to a question about gay rights, the president declared it 'very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country.'

This attitude extends to the GOP congressional leadership. Discussing his opposition to same-sex marriage, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said recently: 'We must treat all our fellow citizens with kindness and with civility.'

Does all this rhetoric mean anything? It's time to call the GOP's bluff. If Republican leaders truly cherish gay men and lesbians as individuals warranting fair and decent treatment in all things except the sacrament of marriage, why not prove it? Why not once and for all protect gays from discrimination in the workplace?

Until recently, the Bush administration followed a long-standing policy prohibiting job discrimination against gay federal employees. In February, however, the Office of Special Counsel began quietly removing references to sexual orientation discrimination from its complaint form and website. When called on its actions, the office at first waffled and then, in late March, announced that it did not believe the law protected federal employees from being fired because of their sexual orientation.

After Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups protested, Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch backed away from that, issuing a press release declaring, 'It is the policy of this administration that discrimination in the federal workforce on the basis of sexual orientation is prohibited."

Would that be a flip-flop-flip, aka a 360? The column goes on to argue that we need to have employment anti-discrimination laws for private, not just federal, employees.

On a relatively unrelated note, M_ and I went over to a friend, who happens to be gay (as is the wont to say these days) for supper, bringing some rice, as our groups plan to reduce eating-out costs by having at home meals at each other's houses on occasion. Fresh Air was on the radio with a Tina Fey interview. Tina talked about how in her high school health class, one teacher had a "lesson" about gays. Mostly it was about how to spot and avoid gays. The teacher said among other insidious schemes, gays would "try and find out what kind of music you like", and "invite you into their homes". As we pulled the driveway of our pal's tastefully appointed home, I looked at M_ and said "It's true!"

Grab a book meme

Another meme I see around asks you to grab the book nearest to you, open it to page 23, and blog the fifth sentence. Who am I not to comply:

This apparently obvious and uncontroversial supposition appears to lead the the paradoxical conclusion that everyone is tall.

From Paradoxes by R. M. Sainsbury. It's a bit more academic than I had hoped, but still an interesting look at some logical quandaries.

Not chopped liver. Lox on bagels, maybe?

Allison points out that it's Israel's Independence Day. Not the kind where giant spaceships hover over every city, and Bill Pullman gives annoying speeches that don't mention the fact that the huge mothership in the movie would have caused havoc with gravitational damage just by being in orbit. Back on earth, drop by Allison's blog hear about what sounds like a typical family holiday that all of us have experienced: "I'm trying to recover from the celebrations, from keeping the kids out too late to see the fireworks, to hosting the extended family (eight adults, ten kids) and having the house look like a bomb hit it (guess we should watch that expression around these parts...)". Shalom!

Clark on Kerry

In a NY Times piece, General Wesley Clark, former US Presidential candidate, weighs in on the accusations being hurled at John Kerry regarding what he did in Vietnam and shortly thereafter. He finds the charges rather pathetic and partisan. He sums up:

Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve - often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.

The lack of attempts to reign in attack dogs may not hurt Bush. It certainly did hurt Canada's Kim Campbell, whose brushing aside of a TV ad that seemed to mock Chretien’s physical disability (a slight facial paralysis) as not being under her control, was among the problems that sent the PC party to one of the worst electoral defeats in it's history. It never really recovered.

Tortured Letters

The only thing I have to say about this letter to the editor of the PeeDee, signed

Martin Dybicz
Mary Gladstone
Cleveland Heights

To steal a line from David Letterman, it took two people to write this letter? It seems to say "we really like one of your columnists, but please consider replacing all the ones with whom we don't agree and put in a bunch of others, including our favourite moonie, Cal Thomas". Ok, they didn't say moonie. Now if only all papers would only print columnists on whom everyone could agree.

Tortured Statistic Watch

The Cleveland PeeDee holds forth on teen smoking

Adolescents who smoke daily are up to 15 times more likely than their peers to use illegal drugs.
Nicotine is frequently the gateway drug into a life of substance abuse.

We are supposed to think that people who don't smoke would otherwise be likely to take up other, more expensive, drugs instead? Where's the exact link here? Most people who go on mad-dog shooting rampages played with toy guns as kids, but you can hardly claim that one is the cause of the other. I for one, despite a childhood playing with toy guns, helicopters, tanks, and airplanes made to resemble giant, missile-laden hornets, have managed not to let loose a barrage of bullets or hornet-whup ass on people who annoy me on the train. But since I have never smoked or partaken of illegal drugs, I guess this statistic has a meaning? Are there any stats on how many people who drink Starbucks for a caffeine fix end up moving on to crack? If so, I'm in danger.

Tortured Analogy Watch

The hilarious acorn doesn't fall far from the hilarity tree

- Douglas J. Rowe. Often we would sit and watch the hilarity tree. "Just wait boys" said old man Rowe. "When the acorns start falling, you'll laugh so hard you'll have permanent, debilitating damage to your internal organs." A nearby squirrel looked in vain for a place to die.

Fighting in Damascus.

CBC News is reporting explosions heard in the diplomatic areas of Damascus, Syria.

Explosions and shootings rocked the diplomatic residences in Damascus on Tuesday, including the Canadian Embassy.
Syrian state TV reported that security forces clashed with a 'terrorist band' in the Syrian capital.

That there was a clash is without doubt. As for everything else state TV in that dictatorship tells us, who knows.

Crushing blow?

This Globe and Mail article says that democracy in Hong Kong was dealt a "crushing blow" by China deciding that there will be no direct elections in 2008 for it's leader or legislature. That's right folks, stop the presses, China has made an anti-democratic move. Maybe it isn't so much of a crushing move as say, running over people with tanks, but it's something right? If you want to witness the horror of what happens when oppressive regimes take over, watch what happens in Hong Kong. Or cast your eyes a few kilometers away to look at China. If anyone needs pointers as to what would happen if Taiwan were "reunited", this functions as a sneak preview as well. Of course I'm sure that our leaders in the west will roundly condemn China's actions, right?

Only a few grenade attacks

Indian elections are on, and some six have died so far. Apparently this is an improvement!

Many in disputed Kashmir stayed away from polls after Islamic guerrillas called for a boycott and threatened voters and candidates, but the voter turnout was 21 per cent, the independent election commission reported. That's double the percentage in the last national elections in the Himalayan region, and with only two grenade attacks on polling booths and three injuries, it was considered an unusually peaceful day.

Granted this is in certain hot spots and not everywhere...this blogger voted and doesn't mention any bombs going off...It makes one think that more local political acrimony is much less worse than it could be, and perhaps that such acrimony is not a wise path to take. When some routinely decry the leaders of the political party they don't like as 'traitors' as a matter of course, it's hard to see what useful thought will come from such assertions.

Shameless Plugs for people who put in some effort

I can't get off of my lazy blog to actually start a novel...however unlike me, I know some people who actually wrote things.

My sister S_ who has poetry in some Chapbooks at Thirteenth Tiger Press..one of the ones I reread recently was a collection of poetry based on Film Noir called 'Nitty Gritty'. One has to like writing that wishes Raymond Burr had killed Jimmy Stewart who was very nosy from his wheelchair.

If nonfiction and the Greece of ages past (the ones who could actually prepare for the Olympics on time) is your speed, try my friend Dr. R_ wrote about Worshipping Aphrodite : Art and Cult in Classical Athens.

North Korea zone

North Korea zone is all over the train disaster. They have opinions by those who have been there such as one from a doctor:

Out of my own experience in the disaster area I know that the nearby hospitals in Sinuiju and Ryongchon are in a desperate situation : there is no medicine, no bandage material, sometimes even no soap and running water
- The North Korean doctors cannot give any sophisticated medical assistance for burnt victims - so what they are usually doing, sometimes even without disinfection, narcotics and with a simply razor-blade is donating there own skin like I did when I got my friendship medal

Yikes.

Discount Over?

DiscountBlogger is apparently giving up blogging. Maybe he just needs a vacation? Let's hope he rests and decides to come back, he always has been a good read.

Tshirt idea

For those who don't know, Fark is a website that has, among other things, contests where people use Photoshop to alter photos in amusing ways. This one (link via Demagogue)is about changing the t-shirt of a man at an NRA gathering (I guess) with a message that says "Christian American Heterosexual Pro-Gun Conservative - Any Questions?" I wonder if I can get one that says "Atheist Canadian-waiting-to-be-American-in-2006 Heterosexual (not that there's anything wrong with the alternatives) Pro-Gun Liberalish"? We're a pretty small group.

UN-diplomatic

Lakhdar Brahimi thinks Israel is "poison in the region". Why should we care? He's the UN envoy to Iraq. That's the same UN we're hoping to hand over the reigns to, more or less. The problem in the region isn't incessant oligarchs, repressions of freedom, and a wide variety of Arab dictatorships, but Israel eh? Israel has the distinction of being the only democracy in the region, so I can only imagine what Brahimi thinks of countries the US, Canada, and Mexico poisoning North America. Brahimi's bit that Israel is the cause of problems in Iraq makes as much sense as the old WKRP bit about a certain dictator promising free elections as soon as everyone in the nation learns a musical instrument. As far as I'm concerned, Israel has another thing going for it - relatively speaking - it's the only place in the region I'd want to visit.

Security, or lack thereof

You may find yourself, living in a shotgun shack, You may find yourself, in another part of the world. But if not, then you may need to fly there. It would be nice to think flying has gotten safer due to increased security after 9/11 "changed everything". Nahhh.

The specific results of the inspector general's report were classified, but the committee's ranking Democrat said it revealed that passenger screening is no better than it was 17 years ago. Then, screeners didn't detect 20 percent of the dangerous objects that undercover agents carried through checkpoints, according to the GAO report.

I don't know whether to be depressed, or depressed because I'm not surprised. Driving to Nova Scotia next summer is looking like a better idea all the time. But unfortunately my wife has to fly for work, so I think the emotion I'm looking for here is anger.

Streaming out of work

A company I worked for many moons ago is looking at laying off 850 back in my old home province. Oddly I moved to Massachusetts to work for them from Nova Scotia, I didn't know they had moved to my province in the intervening years. A gaggle of Nova Scotians moved to Mass to work there support various MS products like FoxPro and Visual Basic. However the call center business is a somewhat different animal. They have to call out and I would presume, make sales. One thing we figured out right away was that the company was cheap. They removed the hot chocolate dispensers and made people it buy it in one use packets from the vending machines instead. During the huge blizzard of '96, they forced everyone to come into work or burn a vacation day. The highways that day were an absolute nightmare. A state trooper waved me down and told me I should go home, that my business could not possibly be open. "You don't know Stream" I told him. After narrowly averting losing control on the highway many times, I got to work. The Canadians working there had a much better rate of driving successfully in the snow but only a third of the staff made it in that day. They sent us home early, but only because it was clearly insane for anyone to be driving on the roads. So we dared the highways again to get home.

Aside from all this no one should look at a call center job for an outsourcing outfit like Stream as a real long term gig. And certainly the towns in Nova Scotia should not have assumed it would turn out to be a long lasting industry.

Freak Out Falluja!

KiPow's (Knowledge is Power) Sondra is raising money for the troops in a kind of direct donation plan that's all over the blogs now. Seems like a worthy cause!

Massive Sac

Kelley, who I love to read though she seems to think I'm named Jeff, posts an absolutely massive number of links in the return of her "Cul de Sac" feature. There's enough reading here keep you busy for the better part of a day. She has even helpfully categorized everything...how I am supposed to get work done when there's all those links! Damn you!

Update: Kelley knows my name (cool, to be recognized by a bloglebrity [Ed: bloglebrity? I thought you said no using blog with other words]) by in typing in billions of links AND descriptions she just flipped my name a bit. She's has a lower error rate than me, that's for sure. I hope she doesn't get carpal tunnel...

Visitors from Kelley, you are here looking for a 92 year old woman post, click Edit/Find "bloomers". Damn permanlink doesn't seem to work for it. Blogger does this to me sometimes, and I have no idea how to fix it. I'd love to switch but MT and the like usually require me to have MySQL which my host doesn't support without more money...

Too lazy to type entire words

Dave lists some acronyms that I term "Acronyms That People Often Need Communicating Cliches Like Wild", or ATPONCCLW, to be more clear. I'm not sure when exactly the computer industry started spouting off acronyms (UNIVAC?) faster than MTV creates new reality shows, but it's time to admit something. It isn't making anything clearer to anyone.

They've been used in shorthand for classes of products, as in PCMCIA, which stands for "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms". They bled over onto USENET, which is short for "Where people used to post mindless crap before the web", then onto IRC, which is short for "Internet losers typing in the dark". Using acronyms like LOL for laughing out loud became common on chat services, in fact it still is. The truth behind these happy monikers was made abundantly obvious to me one cold Autumn many, many years ago. I was visiting some friends and noted one avoiding real human interaction chatting on the net. She typed, LOL, LOL, LOL, LOL, whilst keeping on her face the most lifeless and cold expression since I last saw a postal worker. So what's the point of even using them then?

I'm also keeping an eye on some overused phrases that may soon need to be expunged from their place on blogs (some that I am guilty of as well) like "Read it all", "Indeed", and "I will not put you in my blogroll if you put X in yours".

TCP Weakness

BugBlog mentions a new weakness discovered in TCP, one of the basic internet protocols. It seems to be a liability with certain Cisco devices. For end users, it may not mean much. Could be more DOS attacks that take down some websites and possibly net services, if their Cisco routers are attacked.

Update: My phrasing is a bit lazy. As Steve notes This could affect more than just Cisco (should the weakness be attacked) although Cisco was mentioned a lot in the link I posted. In fact "Systems that rely on persistent TCP connections" will be affected, and this could include many other types of systems. Some of the gory details:

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is used to exchange routing information for the Internet and is primarily used by Internet Service Providers. For details about BGP, please see Cisco System's documentation on BGP.
A vulnerable situation arises due to the fact that BGP relies on persistent TCP sessions to function. Since TCP is an insecure transmission protocol, it is possible to inject TCP packets into sessions between hosts given the appropriate information. The TCP/IP Initial Sequence Number vulnerability (VU#498440) is one example of how an attacker could inject TCP packets into a session. If an attacker were to send a reset (RST) packet for example, they would cause the TCP session between two endpoints to terminate without any further communication. In the case of a BGP/TCP session, this would cause the BGP application to restart and attempt to re-establish a connection to its peers and cause a brief denial-of-service period until the routing tables could be repopulated.

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Wahoos

A letter writer (to the Cleveland PeeDee) opines that the logo for the Cleveland Indians baseball team, the always smiling 'Chief Wahoo', is not in fact offensive: "The reason Chief Wahoo is so popular is that most people find him cute and appealing". Maybe being defined as cute, as a race, is not so much a good thing. Broad swipes at assigning virtues or vices to whole swaths of people are always going to seem racist or at least very stupid. One site I found shows what other races might look like with this logo, such as Africans, Asians, etc. I think it's offensive, but I also think that since they are a private organization, they can call their team whatever they wish. The Team itself is not advocating we distribute poisoned blankets to Native Americans, so I don't think they can be tarred as inciting hate. Since they are a private organization, I also think the city should not have built them a stadium for dubious economic benefits, but that's another quiver of arrows. Bottom line is I'm going to a game on May 28th with my dad, visiting from Nova Scotia.

Kill X

Some ideas are so obvious I wonder why no one has thought of them yet. On the one hand, you have Mel "Dystopia with Dune Buggies" Gibson who had a hit movie with the Passion of the Christ. Then there’s my pal Quentin Tarantino, whose Kill Bill Series I was enjoying last night. Bear in mind that seemingly odd combinations sometimes make the most entertaining ideas, like Aliens versus Predator, chocolate and peanut butter, Fox and news. The obvious combination of these two films would be titled ‘Kill Christ’. Surely those Islamic countries who might otherwise be offended by the very daring and unveiled Uma Thurman as the Bride would be heartened if she turned out to be a Jew. The only two questions in my mind, such as it is, is what would Jesus use for a cool weapon (cross is too bulky) and what 70’s retro music would accompany his appearance.

Reviews

Bookslut is more than a blog, it has articles and reviews by various contributors. It's worth perusing, take this graf from a review last year:

You can probably tell a lot about a person by knowing at which point during How to Lose Friends and Alienate People he or she started to hate Toby Young. It's actually possible to start hating him by page xxvii of the prologue, which is pretty sad. I mean, most authors wait until the pages with the Arabic numbers to begin alienating their readers.

It certainly has more entertaining reviews than those found at Amazon.

Wente on Iraq

She's on the money, in a manner of speaking

So much for theory. In reality, the oil-for-food program was one of the larger rip-offs of all time. Under the UN's nose, Saddam Hussein skimmed off billions. He sold oil to friendly firms at deep discounts, which then resold it for huge profits. They paid him kickbacks of 10 per cent. He also paid inflated prices (in return for more kickbacks) for inferior food and medicine. That was easy, because Saddam's regime had the power to approve all the suppliers. He spent some of the proceeds on bigger palaces and fleets of new Mercedes for his goon squads. He also paid out generous bribes to foreign friends, friends who were politically connected and opposed sanctions or military action against Iraq.
It's now estimated that Saddam stole at least $5-billion, money that was meant to feed hungry Iraqis and save sick babies. He made another $5-billion from smuggled oil. The biggest victims of this massive fraud were the Iraqi people.
The extent of the corruption is common knowledge in Iraq, where the program is derisively known as 'oil for palaces.' And it is a rude wake-up call for people who imagine Iraq would be better off under UN administration.

The solution cannot be to blindly hand it over to the UN. But those who strongly opposed the war just want to see us out of there, and the Bush Administration just wants it out of the news before the election. Sorry Iraqis, we know you kind of removed your army...but we have this election to do...so good luck and take it away, Kofi!

Definitions

Tim Cavanaugh at Hit and Run notes:

George Orwell, unwitting godfather to the many blowhards who today call Osama bin Laden a fascist, said a long time ago, 'The word Fascism has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies 'something not desirable.'' Militant Islam is clearly not desirable, but to call a movement that is consciously multi-ethnic, international, borderless and anti-nationalistic 'fascism' demonstrates only that a) you don't know what fascism is, or b) you do know but you're trying to demagogue an issue that hardly needs any more emotional inflation.

It's easy to drain a word of meaning by using it without thought.

There's a voice

Any of you Canadians recall the cheesiest series in history, 'The Littlest Hobo'? A superintelligent German Shepard traveled from town to town solving everyone's problems, just like real strays do! Flea has the lyrics (scroll down a tad) if you wish to sing along...

Blue Moon

Andy Sullivan says the gas tax is too low. It's not reflecting the real costs to obtain the product and it's impact on the environment. Lileks (linked in Andy's article) says (ironically) "driving your child to school and using fuels sold at market rate is immoral. If not gratuitously cruel and merciless." When I drove to work, I noticed that virtually every car had one driver. Whatever the confluence of policies or carmaker PAC's that brought us to this point, it is inarguably extremely inefficient. To be cold blooded about it, that which is inefficient tends to fail sooner. I don't think a little effort in reducing gas usage is such a bad thing. Is a tax too regressive a tool to do this? Perhaps, though I'd like to see more support of public transit. But the government only has so many arrows it can shoot, and taxes are one of them. Lileks defense seems to be that DC would spend the money wastefully, but this seems to be to be addressing a completely different problem, while ignoring the first.

PretzelWatch #1 People in Log cabins shouldn't shoot fire arrows

The Log Cabin Republicans (gay/lesbian, for those of you who don't know) are debating endorsing Bush for President. I think Tom Lehrer said irony died when Kissinger got a Nobel Peace Prize, but I'm afraid Irony is about to get dragged out of it's grave and run round the town square again. It's just getting over the postmortem beating it had when Arafat won the Peace Prize. I'm curious just how openly Bush has to be against gays before some of them decide it's not such a great idea to support him. I don't think they need to give him an endorsement, however. I'm sure if they all go back in the closet, that'll be endorsement enough.

Happier trains

George on Brewed Fresh Daily looks at how we might improve commuter moods by giving them books to read. It worked in Mexico...Plus they might put musicians at the stations, suggested Ladygoat...anything's better than the crap that's piped in their now...

Ask not for whom the cellphone tolls

Over at Filtering Craig he ran into someone who he nominates as the worst cellphone user ever. However I have seen some contenders in my day. Like most people, I read on the train, and also like most people I read books on complex mathematical-philosophical theories. Suffice it to say, it's not as easy to breeze through as the typical John Grisham pile of crap. Plus as I get older I really need to concentrate, lest I drift off in thought, remembering the war, or the not-so Great Depression, or how I never realized the Village People were gay until the 1990's. It's even less fun when a wandering suburbanite is talking on his cell phone, on one those hands-free jobbies. That would not be so bad, except his speaking style is as one who is conversing with a half-deaf person in a windtunnel. Loud. monotone, like several college professors I'd prefer to forget. In addition, it's evident from his yammerings he's as dumb as a tree frog addicted to sniffing glue.

Plus he's one of those types, who in every conversation, emit a long string of worthless words while never pausing to see if their companion is saying anything in return. We've all heard these types in restaurants, spilling their verbiage in 10 minute increments as their tablemates scarcely get to utter the occasional "uh-huh". The different now, is that even if their associates wisely flee their irritating presence, they just call them on their cells.

As an experiment in this particular case, I attempted a gentle chiding, "SHUT UP YOU IDIOT" - but it was not heard. I think he had a special tube inserted...Somewhere...so that he no longer had to pause even to breathe. I retreated with my Russell tome to the farthest part of the train. His voice still drifted down my way, as several passengers craned their necks to see the less than human source of this continual noise. As I think these types offend people on the left and the right, I think there is surely some way to combine abortion rights and gun rights, with a bagging limit, to reduce this particular modern pollution from our ears.

Depleted brains

Some nice debunking of Depleted uranium myths by Michael Fumento

DU has been politicized by GWS victim groups, environmentalists who loathe anything related to man-made radioactivity, and those to whom it represents U.S. military actions. DU disinformation has been spread by Saddam apologists and groups with names like 'Workers World Party.' But ten years of study have found the only real injuries to non-enemy troops from DU is that when people hear the word 'radiation' their brains turn to mush.

Some people just want things to be true because they fit so neatly into their tidy, well-organized, wrong view of the world. It's hard to tell seemingly well-intentioned folks they're wrong...but the truth has nothing to do with who you are, or how sympathetic you may be. I truly feel awful for vets who have maladies. But feelings don't have any bearing on how those maladies may have come to be. Like breast implants before them, these lawsuits have all the marks of something with no basis in science at all. I guess we can count ourselves lucky that no one has made breast implants out of depleted uranium. Link via Medpundit.

Competency

From the Woodward piece on 60 Minutes last night

'McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the oval office. The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And, and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says 'Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. That isn't gonna convince Joe Public,' says Woodward.

In his book, Woodward writes: 'The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'This is the best we've got?''

Says Woodward: "George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case."' And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, ‘The case, it's a slam dunk.' ...I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director – 'Slam-dunk is as I interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go through the hoop.' Others present, Cheney, very impressed."

What did Woodward think of Tenet’s statement? "It’s a mistake," he says. “Now the significance of that mistake - that was the key rationale for war."

Anyone who has been on business meetings for extremely bad predictions can smell BS when they hear it. It's short on factual details, short on rationale, and long on cliches. When the sports related cliches come out, I start to worry. I once had a rah-rah speech given to me at a business meeting on a software program by someone describing how to inspire little league baseball teams. I guess I should have been warned by the fact this person liked to wear a cowboy hat. In Cleveland, OH. And no, he didn't ride a horse to work.

The questions is exactly how many things does Tenet get to be wrong about before he gets walking papers? And even if he doesn't, one can't help but feel "poorly", as they say on 'Deadwood', about the current administration's potential to reward mistakes. I only wish the stakes were lower than at business meetings I suffered through at my old consulting company.

Remember

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. In recorded history a lot of evil and despicable acts have taken place, but it's always worth noting this one will forever be remembered as one of the very worst chapters in the span of our species.

Eve of Remembrance

Allison notes that tomorrow is Yom HaShoah - that day when the Holocaust is officially remembered.

Unfortunate Headline of the day

Considering it's a story on education, this was sad to see:

Kerry balmes Bush for tuition spike

Cleveland Bikers for the troops

Bikers will gather in the thousands in a rally to support the troops in Cleveland on Sunday April 18th, at noon at Public Square in downtown Cleveland.

People can donate clothing, money or international calling cards, said John C. Kikol, the man who organized the event.

The cards allow the troops to call home, he said, and the USO has requested sweat pants or shorts, gym or mesh shorts, T-shirts, flip flops, slippers, sports bras, boxers, hygiene items, stationery and reading material.

I think it will be quite a sight with all the bikes, not to mention a good cause.

Update: 4/18 8:17 PM. I was in Michigan but other people got some good photos.

Drop the bloomers

Airport security is very reasonable these days. It's not like they're strip searching 92-year old women and letting an "admitted al-Qaida financier and confidant of Osama bin Laden" in with emergency passports (and no strip search, naturally). Oops, they are. In an attempt to become a parody, apparently, they randomly picked out grandma as she and her Korean War vet husband returned from Florida. Marty Kahn, the grandson, said

"I have no idea what the whole-case scenario is - all my grandfather told me was they strip-searched her," he said, adding: "It's ridiculous. You have to understand that she can't even walk without her two canes, or a walker or a scooter."

"I can't believe they would do this to this woman, or any woman in the same physical capacity or obvious physical impairment that she has," said Kann, adding that he at least wants airport or government officials to apologize to his grandparents. "It's not like she had a gun hidden in her canes."

A spokeswoman with Canada Border Services Agency said she couldn't discuss specifics of any case.

But "personal strip searches aren't something we take lightly," said Patrizia Giolti, who's with the government agency's Greater Toronto Area division.

"We do follow strict procedures and we would discuss that with our manager before we proceed."

It's the fact that they depend on procedures that worries me. Although they're great at annoying law-abiding types, they are of little use against those trying to circumvent procedures. It's an attempt to put an ideal - screening procedures and rules - up against a material reality. It's no substitute for intelligence of course. But it's a victory for those who would like to think the next terror attack will come from the aged, perhaps seeking to force the governments of the West to put Matlock back on the air.

The Blog Québécois

The Blog Québécois has moved to a new url http://blogquebecois.com so update your bookmarks and keep track our Canadian pals! Haven't read them? Start.

Open empires

I just finished The Open Empire by Valerie Hansen. It's a history of China up to 1600, but it's not as dry as it might seem at first. Rather than a rote recitation of dynasties, emperors, battles and the like, Hansen seems to try and capture all levels of society and what their daily lives might have been like. Chinese society was very stratified, and she looks at the petty problems they had like determining the purity of silver slips used as currency. As the centuries slip by, you get a sense of the changes affecting art, commerce, scholarship, and methods of governing. She moves between descriptions of historic finds in modern times to what they imply about life through China's very long premodern history. She stops to look at poets and writers through the ages and how they fit into life as it must have been. I found the anecdotal tales very well melded to illustrate points about a culture, and made the people seem like living beings and not names and dates to be memorized. It's very worthwhile for those like me without much reading on Chinese premodern history.

Buy a gun day - not so much

Mollbot makes note that April 15th is Buy a Gun Day. However, with the way the INS BCIS nice folks who I would never dream of offending at Immigration work is that charges of certain offenses, even if later overturned in criminal court, can lead to deportation. Since I will never commit any crimes, I'm not worried about that aspect, but it's a very mushy area of the law as far as the government, guns, and not-yet-citizens go. In this case, I have a three year waiting period til I become officially able to do so without worry. Until then, I guess I can rely on witty rejoinders to fend off attackers, should the need arise.

Reason number 2,322 we need better grammar instruction in schools

"My fingers are so much huger from typing!"

-overheard in a neighbouring cube.

Taxing situation

Tomorrow will mark the 1,444th day of working in the US and paying all the same taxes as citizens do, without the ability to vote. Only about 653 more days to go - excluding weekends of course.

In May the parents come down from Nova Scotia for a ten day visit. That's ten days. Ten. Assuming we retain our mutual sanity, we'll visit some local attractions and maybe take in an Indians game. That would be my third Indians game since I moved here...I find activities like baseball best taken in limited doses which makes them seem nostalgic and fun. M_ will trek up to Michigan to take B_ (my mom) to visit the Great Lakes Mall, a mighty edifice of commerce without equal back in Nova Scotia. All whilst making my parents work like indentured servants. Well, they are the only people I know with any gardening skill. I'd kill a stone fountain were it left up to me to care for it.

My parents are obviously and exquisitely Canadian, much like yours truly. It pains me to hear people put down my homeland because it didn't join in the Iraq War. Let's not forget Canada went to, and is still in Afghanistan, where Canadian snipers are taking out bad guys at over a mile - apparently they are among the world's best. And let us not forget that Canada went to war with Germany back in Dubya Dubya two quite a bit before the US. I think people who put down Canada just resent the cheap prescription drugs, and the fact we kicked America's ass in the War of 1812. Even though I've moved here to Ohio and am planning on becoming a citizen, where I can enjoy the much superior free speech laws (until Commissioner Powell starts fining blogs), I would rather Canada was not summarily dismissed. Especially since we're such good shots.

Too much soup

Over at Rittenhouse, Jack Canfield is in for a beating for his inane "...for the Soul" series of books. He's written far more than I could have imagined

...chicken-soup supplements including those for parents, mothers (at least four separate volumes), mothers and daughters, fathers, couples, grandparents, women (at least three separate volumes), working women, senior citizens, singles, teenagers (at least seven separate volumes, including one for Christian teenagers), pre-teenagers, "kids," brides, volunteers, veterans, gardeners, travelers, horse lovers, writers, nurses, college students, sports fans generally, Nascar fans, golfers, fishermen, cancer survivors, prisoners, teachers (two separate volumes), sisters, pet lovers, baseball fans, expectant mothers, romantics, the "unsinkable", office workers, caregivers, Christian families, Christian women, Jews, "country folk", Americans, and Canadians

Canadians?! It all smacks of the old "Make Friends and Influence People" book, where the author offers not very original insights into things the average consumer already believes. I guess I will have to wait a while for the Chicken Soup books for atheists, trombonists, or computer programmers.

Presidents

Bush is preempting the TV show 24 tonight to tell us about that memo. Not a good plan, say some. Let the rallying cry go forth: "My president is David Palmer"!

A bridge too far gone

I found out recently that my younger brother, B_, was afraid of high bridges when a child. Apparently one trip to Quebec City had him screaming from one side of the bridge to the other. Still he was just a child, it's not something adults should fear, right? In Cleveland at least, wrong.

Intensive oversight began after an Ohio Department of Transportation engineer discovered a badly deteriorated support column for a bridge in the Flats just west of Jacobs Field when he was in the area on other work June 2.


The engineer, Michael Malloy, notified city, state and federal officials of the problems. The next day, he e-mailed pictures of the column, saying he recommended closing the bridge and ad joining ramp .

"If this one column fails, the entire inter change area would collapse," wrote Malloy. Cleveland took a look and closed both the bridge and ramp two days later.

Malloy's discovery led to a joint inspection of the bridge by city, state and federal officials on June 6. The bridge was found to be in far worse shape than Cleveland previously had reported, setting off an alarm that has since changed the way the city inspects its bridges.

After jointly inspecting 15 bridges last July, federal highway officials concluded that Cleveland often had rated its bridges higher than it should have under state and federal standards.

I know going on the trains affords the view of some of the bridgework from underneath. To me it often looked rather crumbly, but not being an engineer I figured that experts kept an eye on such things. Unless they feel the need to have the exact date and time the bridges plan to fail in order to stop it....not to mention anyone else in government who thinks the same way. In any event, I still have an open invitation for B_ (and also my brother D_ and my other brother D_) to come visit us here in Cleveland, and I'll just apply a bit more speed over the bridges to soothe his nerves.

Price of coming here

The cost of moving to the US is about to rise by 26% (free registration required to view article) as fees for immigrants are going to go up. They won't call it a tax, which is what it really is....

"The fee increase is expected to take effect 'as soon as possible,' according to William Yates, associate director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The public had until March 4 to comment on the proposal. Those observations usually are reviewed before a final decision is made, but government officials appeared to indicate that there was no turning back.

The officials said that the hike was necessary to cover the cost of national security enhancements, improved refugee processing, naturalization services for immigrant military personnel and the new Office of Citizenship, among other things.

'We are concerned about fees being high, and people not being able to afford the increased burden, but we have to recoup the costs,' Yates said. He said that new security checks had added to the price of processing applications, but that such measures were crucial.

'The security of the American public has got to be paramount as we screen applicants for the process of naturalization,' Yates said.

He said the cost of legally obtaining citizenship was reasonable, considering that many would-be immigrants were paying thousands of dollars to enter the country illegally.

So now I have to pay more to become a citizen because of the rising cost of the coyotes smuggling illegals across the Rio Grande? Logically then, drug companies should pump up the prices of pain pills when heroin and crack go up in price. Or is Mr. Yates advocating that we have the choice of entering illegally, but heck, the legal way is still cheaper? this is the stupidest rationalization I'll read today, and it's just after 9 AM.

Science and such

Chris Mooney looks at John Marburger's defense of Bush administration science policies. One graf:

There are myriad cases of apparent science politicization, reported in the media and in scientific journals, that don't appear in either the UCS report or the Waxman report. Let me just cite four recent examples: 1) the administration's decision to replace two pro-stem cell research members of the President's Council on Bioethics with three anti-research members; 2) a recently reported case involving the Fogarty International Center Advisory Board at HHS; 3) the charge that the National Marine Fisheries Service dropped the views of six leading marine scientists from an analysis of salmon recovery methods; and 4) the administration's dubious attempt to challenge the obvious link between junk food consumption and obesity in a document submitted to the World Health Organization

It's informative for those who care how the government treats scientific research. Overall, the conclusion seems to be that it's not doing well.

A modest proposal

Problem one: The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is losing money

Since 1990, its average annual loss has been $8.1 million, which taxpayers pick up.
The zoo is experiencing a see-saw attendance pattern that goes like this: A new exhibit opens. Attendance goes way up. The next year, attendance dips. Another exhibit opens. Attendance is up again. The novelty wears off, and attendance drops again.
During 1993, the still-popular RainForest exhibit's first full year of operation, attendance hit an all-time high of 1.4 million people. A year later, attendance dropped by 180,000 and continued to slide until 1997.
That was the year when the Wolf Wilderness exhibit opened. That year, attendance went up 150,000 but was below its peak of four years earlier.
Like Cedar Point, the zoo needs 'a bigger and faster roller coaster every year' to bring back visitors, zoo Director Steve Taylor said.
Costs to stay open, feed its more than 3,000 animals and pay for new exhibits are covered by money from a Metroparks tax issue, which Cuyahoga County voters last approved in 1995.
The issue expires next year, and it most likely will be on the ballot in the next 12 months.

This is a bit deceiving because the attendance at all zoos and museums tends to drop after the initial openings and big shows.

Problem Two: Budget cuts may force people out of low-cost housing into pure public housing, if not out on the street.

Their chance of getting help became more precarious this spring with the administration's proposed 2005 budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The administration's proposals include providing $13.1 billion, or about $1 billion less than in fiscal year 2004, for the voucher program, the nation's largest housing program for low-income renters.

The vouchers cover most of the cost of a place to live; the voucher holder pays no more than 30 percent of his or her income toward rent.

Housing advocates say $1.7 billion more money is needed and the cuts will hobble the 30-year-old program, formerly known as Section 8.

The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority estimates that it will lose money for 750 subsidies under the Bush plan, which would go into effect Oct. 1.

I think the answer is obvious. We can open new exhibits at the Cleveland Zoo containing people without homes. We could even combine them with existing exhibits. Who wouldn't pay to see wolves chase grocery baggers? For those residents in low-cost housing that would object to being placed in zoos, I would not advocate feeding them directly to zoo animals. Clearly, that's insane. But I think it's time our officialdom learned to turn two problems into one elegant solution.

Two frog songs

Well I have a guest visiting so I've been out to the absolutely stunning Cleveland Botanical Gardens. So I haven't been on the net or watching the news so much....though mostly it's bad news, accompanied on the blogs by many angry recriminations. Like so many times in US history, perhaps we should turn to thoughts of the very introspective Kermit the Frog...and hope our leaders do as well...

First, image our President, singing this to the tune of "Why are there so many songs about Rainbows"...

Why are there so many
Angry Iraqis?
I though they were on our side
I had a vision
Of WMD’s
Thought Saddam had something to hide
So we've been told
And some choose to believe it
We were wrong - apparently
Someday we'll find it
The terror connection
But don’t be sad, be free

Second, John Kerry gives us his interpretation of "It's not easy being Green"

It's not that easy being from the Northeast;
Where there are fewer votes than there used to be
When I think it could be nicer being Southern, or Western or from the Rockies
or something much more colorful like that.

It's not easy being from the Northeast.
It seems you blend in with so many other ord'nary things.
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Seen as too much of an elitist
Like stars in the sky.

But the Northeast has lots of places to ski
And Maine can be cool and friendly-like.
And we’re near to the ocean, we have some pickups,
Plus that cool motto
"Live free or die"….

Wente on Anti-Semitism

Margaret Wente reconsiders anti-Semitism in Canada, in light of the recent firebombing of a Jewish library in Montreal. She also mentions Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters.

Mr. Lasn would no doubt be outraged to be lumped in with the library firebombers and the nutty people who think Jews drink blood. But they all share a common set of beliefs. They all think Israel is uniquely evil among nations (with the possible exception of the United States). They think the Jewish state has no right to exist. And they think that Jews are at the root of the world's worst troubles

The more people that note this, the better. Some intellectuals, such as they are, want to play a double game with democracy. When it comes to Arab nations in the Middle East, it's a goal for people who are stuck in systems for which no blame can be assigned to them, only to others. When it comes to Israel, they're mostly concerned with how Israelis and Jews are causing their own problems at the least, and many more vile beliefs whilst cloaking their views in academically hazy speech. It's about time more people let them know a lot of people are aware of the connections, ideologically, between them and the scum that bombed that library.

Mote in one's eye

Back in my old home province of Nova Scotia, a woman blinded in one eye another woman she saw standing beside her boyfriend with a beer bottle. She was sentenced to eight months in prison, but her "supporters" were in the courtroom. As the woman with one good eye left the courthouse, one of these supporters pieces of crap sneered at the victim

When Ms. Smider was led outside the courtroom and down a set of stairs, Ms. Weatherbee's current boyfriend sneered at her and said: 'Sucks to be you.' Other supporters shot her angry looks.

I'd like to see that scumbag's name in the story, so we can all be reminded of his behaviour for the rest of his life.

Daily Proverb

"Her body was like congealed lard and carved jade"

...from observations by a imperial functionary of a potential wife for the emperor, written about in this book. Believe it or not, it's meant as a high compliment. People on the train looked at me funny when I laughed...

Ten years ago

Jake Rosenfeld posts over at Political Aims on the ten year anniversary of the Rwanda genocide:

Starting ten years ago today, Hutu militiamen and women - often armed with little more than garden hoes and rusting machetes - methodically slaughtered close to a million Tutsis and Tutsi-sympathizers. The genocide lasted nearly 100 days, during which time the developed world - led by France and the United States -stood idly by knowing full well what was happening in Rwanda.

Harsh, horrible, true.

Funny is as funny does

Ezra Klein ponders the difference between Republican and Democratic humor, in the form of a strip by Chris Muir called 'Day by Day'. Personally I haven't found that strip that funny, maybe because I find the character's perpetually raised eyebrows annoying, but I think attempts to argue someone into thinking anything is or is not funny are as fruitless as an Atkins diet. When Margaret Cho does jokes about things she has observed, she's funny as hell. But I find her speechifying boring for the most part. Likewise some may find humour with a political bent that doesn't match their own not amusing. Perhaps they sense they are in part the targets of such jokes. Attempts to label things I don't find funny as "unfunny" is a bit specious, since perhaps others might like it. I am less than convinced when people who don't like Al Franken attempt to label him as "no longer funny", when he is pretty consistently hilarious. A more detailed critique might be in order if it's say, the horrifically acted and written Shelly Long movie, 'Frozen Assets', which may be the least funny film ever made by humans.

Cousin Joe

Sondra talked to cousin Joe (who's at the War right now) and reacts

I haven't been able to go there,
to the place where all the evil and ugly things have been happening.
I shut it all down and tried to pretend it wasn't there anymore.
I shut it all out because if I didn't I'd have gone mad.

Sondra runs a great weblog called "Knowledge is Power", or as I call it, KiPow. Worthwhile reading, despite the fact we hold opposite opinions on certain mini-skirted newspaper columnists.

As an aside, anyone know what the origin of the term "Hoo-ah" in a US military context is? I know that it can't all be coming from the Al Pacino movie...

Warshippers?

LGF helpfully points out some of the, um, worshippers at a mosque. Are RPG's a new branch of Islam that I am unaware of?

Annotated religious texts on the web

Interesting site has the Skeptics Annotated Quran and Bible. The main question of why we should follow these or any other heavily edited, written after the fact, ancient text is left open. I've always thought we could somehow combine 'Gilgamesh' and 'Beowulf' into a religious belief system. Or do some heavy metal bands already do this? Link via Israpundit.

Separated at Birth?

Ladygoat has a separated at birth type photo entry on her blog...with a special bonus for those of you obsessed with the green slave girl on the old Star Trek series. Plus there's a more recent photo from the scifi TV series Lexx. An old high school chum of mine, Ruth the clarinet player, once worked on the lighting for that show.

Iraq happenings

From Zeyad

No one knows what is happening in the capital right now. Power has been cut off in my neighbourhood since the afternoon, and I can only hear helicopters, massive explosions, and continuous shooting nearby. The streets are empty, someone told us half an hour ago that Al-Mahdi are trying to take over our neighbourhood and are being met by resistance from Sunni hardliners. Doors are locked, and AK-47's are being loaded and put close by in case they are needed. The phone keeps ringing frantically. Baghdadis are horrified and everyone seems to have made up their mind to stay home tomorrow until the situation is clear.

He's there, and it's worthwhile reading in full if you want to know what's happening from an Iraqi point of view...

I am the very model of a modern Kos blog follower

Like most issues, the whole Kos thing is best described in song...

(to the tune of 'I am the very model of a modern Major-General')

It started out when Daily Kos
said something that he should have not
Then his readers beat him up
and he put an explanation up
LGF said Kos had deleted all his Google cache
Turns out, well, not so much, so that part was an unneeded bash
Michele delinked Kos and was followed by some bands merry
Who delinked him then Michele's will influenced her pal John Kerry
Finally our friend Wonkette said Kos was just just one of those misunderstood guys
And said, perhaps in jest, that LGF and Michele were spreading blogospheric lies
I'm not sure if Wonkette delinked these two for I do not read her everyday
Though she links to Rittenhouse, who has delinked her in every possible way
Glenn Reynolds chirped in from Tennessee that a blog-cat-fight had commenced
Tween dear Michelle and Wonkette based on the conflict in which they seem incensed
These are all the delinkings that I so far have discovered
And there may be many others but I really can't be bothered.

What the terrorists want

This Tom Tomorrow strip hits the nail on the head.

Repression of dissent

Sondra was threatened with being cut off in a bar for being too pro-Bush. I wonder if the cretins in question have a clue what makes America a great country. A clue - it ain't telling people you disagree with to shut up. I was once banned from a birthday party for being too liberal, so I can sympathize with being ostracized for political views. Let's keep Sondra's right to say what she likes and not be sober!

The Hours

Good piece in the NY Times (free registration required to read the article) today about companies that delete hours from their workers electronic time records, thus denying them pay illegally. The managers are under pressure from district managers to do this to improve profitability. Besides altering pay records, they also "move" hours worked one week to another so that overtime is not required. This is also illegal. I have had jobs where we were required to "move" our hours by management, and I wasn't even working a minimum wage job where I was terrified of losing my job, like many of the workers in the story. Why do the companies (like Wal-Mart, Family Dollar, Toys-R-Us, and Pep Boys) do it? That's obvious, but the reason some think managers do it is this:

"A lot of this is that district managers might fire you as soon as look at you," said William Rutzick, a lawyer who reached a $1.5 million settlement with Taco Bell last year after a jury found the chain's managers guilty of erasing time and requiring off-the-clock work. "The store managers have a toehold in the lower middle class. They're being paid $20,000, $30,000. They're in management. They get medical. They have no job security at all, and they want to keep their toehold in the lower middle class, and they'll often do whatever is necessary to do it."

Worthwhile reading...one person says that this is one problem that McDonald's does NOT have, they keep track of hours well apparently.

When Puppets attack

Tom Paine has photos and the story of a giant puppet protest in Australia. Even though I disagree with them I fully support the rights of people to make giant papier mache mock-ups of politicians, if only to give bloggers something to mock without having to try very hard. I think if Sweetums was there, he would have kicked some serious ass.

Please don't give a gun to the guy who says 'Ol Bessie'

Columnist David Giffels whines about Ohio's new concealed carry law. Basically it states that after registering with your local sheriff, and taking a training course, you can carry a concealed handgun. Giffels has a few complaints:

But in real life, as in theater, the specter of a loaded gun changes everything. It adds tension. It raises questions. It sets the heart to a higher beat and races the mind toward possibilities.

As opposed to before the law, when we all we knew is that law-abiding types could not legally carry guns (except in their hands or open holsters)? David let's us in on what he's really concerned about, and that is the type of person who might register and carry a gun:

You're getting your Monday-morning coffee. A co-worker tells you about his prowess at the shooting range over the weekend. He pats his hip.

'Ol' Bessie did me proud,' he says, pulling back his suit jacket to reveal a pearl-handled revolver.

Beware of hicks with guns, I would assume is the unstated subtext of that quote. Perhaps the coworker got a country accent and grammar just from owning a gun. The very idea!

By next weekend, you could very well be standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, watching the woman in front of you fumble through her purse, seeing her move her derringer aside to reach her checkbook.

As fascinated as I am by the contents of complete strangers purses, I don't see why it's my business what every single person carries on them. But perhaps he's more troubled by who will carry them:

It's no more strange than guns in diaper bags, or in briefcases, or strapped to the leg of your dentist.

I wasn't aware that the dental profession had some kind of anti-gun oath. Maybe we should submit a list of professions, economic classes, and social groups and Mr. Giffels could get back to us with a better awareness of who should and should not have guns. I wouldn't know what to think without this kind of input.

Definitions

If you type the word Jew into Google right now, the first hit is a hate-filled site. This is probably not the best place for people looking for information on those whom the film 'The Life of Brian' called Red Sea pedestrians. For some this might serve as a definition if they looked no deeper. I know I get hits from sites looking for info on the poem this site is named after, and there's nary a poetical word spoken here. If I wasn't so damned atheistic, and descended from Irish, I would do my darndest to be a Jew. Think of all the fringe benefits...you get a secret badge to be in the world wide conspiracy...which is so successful that Jews have been harassed and killed on levels almost beyond compare for a few thousand years. Michele might then include me in her song parodies. Plus there's something to do with bagels and lox...my understanding of Judaism is woefully gentile. Anyway, if enough bloggers link to the word Jew we might cause a Google shift, and that's a good thing.

Dance in Cleveland

Our friends D_ and F_ took us out for an evening of modern dance at Case Western, and although we don't know much about modern dance it was invigorating. Most of the numbers featured Paloma McGregor, who is a Master of Fine Arts Candidate, and has more coordination and sinewy strength than I will ever possess, needless to say. Many of the numbers seems to be in a postmodern school, though honestly I know very little of terminology in the world of dance. I just have a vague awareness that Martha Graham was an innovator...We liked "January ThiryFirst" which featured Paloma and Richard Dickinson. Many of the movements were slow and stylized, and even without a "vocabulary" of dance in one's knowledge, you could not help but be transfixed. It was like watching a living painting where the dancers were both artist and cavas. M_ and D_ especially like the costumes in a number called 'By Definition'. If you live in the Cleveland area, they have these types of events a lot (as per the link above) and even as a neophyte, I say I'd like to attend again.

Also on the Case Campus is a restaurant that used to be called 'That Place on Bellflower', now just titled 'Flowers'. The Rosemary chicken was a welcome visitor to my palate, and the asparagus and potatoes were nicely done as well. It's a bit pricey but a great place to go after an evening of what used to be called high culture.

Bad Weddings

Bill, sadly, has to attend a friend's wedding without the benefits of alcohol. I've been there, brother. It's hard to accept the strange folk and their costumes and, if you'll pardon, inanities without a little lubrication.

I was once invited to a Jehovah's Witness wedding. It was the strangest one I've seen yet. They had the bridal party up at the front of the church all sitting in chairs. This is not a good sign for those of us who are hoping for a quick ceremony. They droned on and on about the headship of the house, which was about to be conferred on the groom. They said:

Now the wife may have had a bad day too. You know, the washing machine may have broken. But when her husband comes home she must greet him warmly, because he has been working all day for his family

I think that gives you the gist of the specifying, which was oddly similar to the worst office meetings I've heard. Then came the alcohol free reception. Yech.

Bill, if you ever get to Heaven, which I don't happen to believe in, you'll be let straight in, since you will have seen your share of Hell.

Feeling safer? Maybe not

Jen gets poked at the airport for no readily apparent reason. Then this:

When they jabbed it in my crotch, and I mean IN, I got a little testy with them. I admit it. But they never once even offered a sympathetic word or glance. They just growled and kept poking me.

Growling, I started to pull my skirt up to just above the knee thinking it would help. Immediately I'm rushed like I'm trying to whip out a gun.

"No one wants to see that ma'am! Do you want us to pull you into a private room for a full check?" she clearly threatened snarling at me. "Do you want that?"

That's right folks, the searching is not used to stop terrorists, but to intimidate law abiding citizens. Or at least that's how the security people see it. My wife has gotten used to carefully not wearing any bras with wires in them as they attract a lot of attention from the guards at the airport as well. It's less than three years since the event, and already they've forgotten why we want better airport security. This story would be funny in one of those ironic, isn't the world screwed up ways, but for the fact that I, my wife, and my family will need to fly, and getting killed by terrorists? We're pretty much opposed to it. I wish I had more confidence in the security apparatus, but so far, it looks lousy.

Outsourcing and the future

Brad DeLong has an essay on outsourcing that's worth reading. Although in favour of it in terms of the economic theory, the social safety nets are going to be grossly insufficient. It will be a big change, as he notes:

Because this is an economic transformation that is going to hit not in one shot next year but over the course of the next generation, we have plenty of time: time to build the social safety net, the education and retraining programs, the social and economic institutions needed to turn the coming of trade in white-collar services from a win-lose to a win-win affair for America and Americans; time to rebuild confidence that employment will be full and the duration of unemployment spells short. But we will need all this time, because the magnitude of the approaching economic trade shock will be much larger than anything in our historical memory.

Read it all, as they say.

I will say I was not impressed with Dell's clearly outsourced support. I'm not saying locals would have done better mind you, as stupid knows no boundaries. I emailed them letting them know I needed to update Microsoft Office from the web, and it was demanding a CD be inserted. The copy of Office I had came preinstalled, and for some reason I had no CD when I got my Dell. So clearly they needed to send me a CD, right? It took 25 emails back and forth, where they kept repeating a line from what was obviously a script:

"We are sorry you are having problems installing Microsoft Office. You can get the CD key that is printed on the CD case"

No matter how many times I calmly explained that was not what I was doing, and what I needed, they kept repeating back the same line to me. I imagine them casting half an eye on my emails somewhere in Bangalore, not reading it, and replying with the rote line with no comprehension at all. Then they would laugh and listen to the latest forgettable US pop music on their Ipods. Finally I had to resort to being irate in email and demanding to speak to a supervisor. At last a human actually read my email and shipped me the CD. Of course they got my zip code wrong, leading to a slow delivery. And they shipped me the wrong CD, despite me telling them what I needed. Can I get someone to live my life via an outsourcing contract? I can't take it any more.

Critics

Quote from an Amazon review on a book I am reading now: "The book has a lot of author's own opinions and points of view that often contradict with and deviate from the conventional Chinese history". Well heaven forbid!. Another critic advises readers to try another book..." which covers the same time period, in the same introductory manner though with different emphases, with at least as many words..." If there's one thing I hate, it's a history book that doesn't give you enough words!

Sexy salamanders

A discovery of an early arm bone in Pennsylvania sheds some light on the emergence of life from the sea to the land.

It's upper arm bone or humerus, which was discovered along a road cut in Pennsylvania, bridges a major gap in our grasp of the progression from fins to limbs, say authors Neil Shubin and Michael Coates of the University of Chicago and Ted Daeschler of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences.
"It immediately became evident that, wow, this really helps us understand the evolution of the limb," Dr. Daeschler said. "The story of the emergence of animals with limbs from their fish ancestors is the sexiest part of what we do."

I bet you can wow the chicks with a 365 million year old tiny bone...still it's a cool find. Some find the idea that everyone you know is basically descended from aquatic life forms that scrambled out of rivers millions of years ago unimaginable...but the details of these facts can't help but fill you with a sense of wonder. There's more info and a diagram here as well. Panda's Thumb also uses it's advanced shoulder joints to push up from the river bottom to have a few words on the subject.

Why I don't do April Fools

There are some things I wish had happened on April fools but they happened on random other days...I've convinced the normally not naive K_ that our friends are up to bizarre sexual antics many times, all lies, of course. But simple fibs in jest are not great pranks,

When I was in a pit band for a play, we were required to wear all black. We needed to blend into the shadows as we sat in front of the stage, and not distract from the action on stage. We had little plastic gels to dim the glare from our stand lights too - we just had to be as dark as possible. So you can imagine the consternation of our director on opening night, 5 minutes before we were to go on stage when he saw me. I was wearing brand new white sneakers, a blaringly white shirt, and white pants. His jaw worked up and down like a marionette with a cut string, as he worked through an apoplectic fit. Fortunately for his sanity I was wearing black clothes underneath, but it was funny at the time. I think he's still mad at me though...

I told a girlfriend I was deathly allergic to strawberries. In reality I just don;t like them very much. I kept this charade up at gatherings, dinners, and restaurants for two years. She found out I wasn't, and she chased me with a knife. Not the bemused reaction I was looking for.


Maybe it's safer that I don't do these too much