More Fun With Site Meter...

Or, how people arrive at EIP. Part Five (? - I'm not really keeping track) of an occasional series. Some of the more bizarre searches that cause folks to click-through, although their exact reasons remain as obscure as their search terms (usually) are. We open with this gem from Kuwait:

Time of Visit Jul 31 2007 3:48:28 am
Last Page View Jul 31 2007 3:48:28 am
Page Views 1
Referring URL: http://www.google.co...&hl=en&start=10&sa=N
Search Words: powerful african leopard superb Viagra

OK, I’ve heard about the (supposed) aphrodisiacal qualities of rhino horn, but African leopards?

And this, from the UK:

Time of Visit Jul 31 2007 3:39:14 am
Visit Length 13 seconds
Page Views 2
Referring URL: http://images.google...0%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
Search Words: pregnant ladies

They clicked through on an image of the Deuce Four Ladies I stole from Michael Yon, none of whom look pregnant. And clicked through again.

I get enough of these to make me think about changing the name of the blog to “Impala SS:”

Time of Visit Jul 31 2007 11:23:04 am
Visit Length 3 minutes 3 seconds
Page Views 2
Referring URL: http://images.google...svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den
Search Words: 96 impala ss

Another:

Time of Visit Jul 31 2007 12:57:48 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL: http://images.google...0%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den
Search Words: 96 impala for sale

Or this:

Time of Visit Jul 30 2007 8:39:18 am
Visit Length 3 seconds
Page Views 2
Referring URL: http://images.google...0%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den
Search Words: 1994 impala ss hot pink

Hot pink Impala SS? You gotta be kidding me, right?

Seriously…I get at least three hits a day on this term, or variations on the theme. That and “67 Chevelle.” OTOH, the sheer numbers of folks looking for a ’96 Impala makes me wish I would have kept that car. I probably would have kept it, had I retained a more conventional life-style.

Culinary Confusion Dept?

Time of Visit Jul 30 2007 11:00:15 am
Page Views 1
Referring URL: http://images.google...0%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
Search Words: new mexico pasta

It’s “New Mexico Chile,” Italian pasta. Doubly confusing: this was an image search and they clicked through on my pic. No noodle jokes, please.

This one, and variations on its theme (there are many, this is but the most recent), always cracks me up:

Time of Visit Jul 30 2007 8:51:54 am
Visit Length 15 seconds
Page Views 2
Referring URL: http://images.google...%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN
Search Words: nuclear plant painting

If you click the link, you’ll see the oil painting of SWWNBN I posted a link to. I didn’t post the actual picture, Gentle Reader, just the link. Why people click through on this when there’s absolutely zero relationship (SWWNBN and nuclear plants? C’mon…) to their search baffles me.

Just The Few, The Recent. Ain’t the ‘net a wonderful thing?

Old Titties and Other Things of Note

Well, this post title ought to do wonders for my google hits... but let's get on with it.

Via Gerard, we find Zombie still monitoring…and recording (for posterity!)…the Lib-Left-Craziness that infects the Greater San Francisco Bay Area Soviet Socialist Republic. This time Zombie was on hand to record, in photo essay form, the joint Breasts Not Bombs/Code Pink protest at a Hillary Clinton campaign function. The link is NOT work safe, assuming your workplace would rather you be doing…um…productive work, rather than looking at titties that are (to be more than polite) well past their prime. That, Gentle Reader, is my understatement of the day. Other than to say Zombie is a brave man, indeed. (Assuming he’s male; I don’t know his/her gender).

What would we do without eggheads? Here’s “Why do people have sex? Researchers explore 237 reasons.” Federally funded research, no doubt, but there’s an outside chance certain pharmaceutical corporations might have been involved. The article is short but includes the following:

“Why people have sex is extremely important, but rarely studied,” Buss said. “Surprisingly, many scientists assume the answer is obvious, but people have different reasons for having sex, some of which are rather complex.”

Well, I don’t think “why people have sex is extremely important,” in the general scheme of things. But Hey! If the research keeps these types off the streets and out of our classrooms where they can corrupt The Children, it’s OK with me. I think. I also think the answer to the question IS obvious, but what do I know?

Update at 1500 hrs: The NYT has a better and more extensive article on this subject here.

And speaking of The Academy… (I was, in a way) there’s this article in the NY Post, via Ed Driscoll: “Wages of Ward: Academy Exposed.”

Despite the mountain of evidence against Churchill, it took more than two years for the wheels of justice to turn. As he received more due process than ordinary Americans ever receive in the course of their professional lives, Churchill's dogged fight to keep his job only reinforced for many the notion that faculty members view themselves as a breed apart - entitled to lucrative lifetime employment no matter what they do.

That will be Ward Churchill's lasting legacy. He was the tipping point. Now, it's not just leading conservatives who view the academy as an out-of-control, disconnected bastion of petulant entitlement. In a recent Zogby poll, 58 percent of Americans reported that they now believe that political bias of professors is a "serious problem." Even more, 65 percent, viewed non-tenured professors as more motivated to do a good job in the classroom.

[…]

The academic left decries the "chilling effect" of Churchill's firing, but the only individuals who should feel "chilled" are those professors publicly spewing deranged invective at that same time that they conceal a professional past rife with fraud and abuse. In reality, there was no chilling effect in Churchill's case - only a cleansing effect as higher education scrubbed itself of the man who, more than anyone else, proved that something is very wrong with our universities.

Dark cloud, silver lining and all that. In any event, this might just be some of the best news I’ve heard lately. And I’ve read anecdotal evidence that some alumni are sending scathing letters of condemnation about academic bias in response to the annual Ol’ Ivy Fundraising Letter, in lieu of checks. More good news, that. Money, or in this case, the lack of same, always gets people’s attention.

Today’s Pic: I stayed in a lot of RV parks during my time on the road and, once in a great while, some “unimproved” locations. Today’s pic is of the camp site where I stayed overnight while visiting Fort Robinson State Park, NE. No electric, no water…just a bucolic place to park the ol’ RV. And it was wonderful, Gentle Reader. I could do that sort of thing in small doses, and it was fun. In small doses.

Fort Robinson, NE. May, 2000.

Lotsa Links Today

SN1 gets his 15 minutes*… from Myrtle Beach Online, in a McClatchy Newspapers article:

COLUMBIA - Capt. Buck Pennington's military orders to move to McEntire Joint National Guard Base came as a surprise.

Pennington didn't understand why the Air Force was sending him, an active duty officer, to a Guard base in South Carolina.

Was this a career killer?

"At first there was a lot of concern because I hadn't heard of this before," Pennington said.

Pennington's assignment came through a new Air Force idea called "active association."

The 169th Fighter Wing at McEntire is the Guard's first fighter unit to go through the program. The plan is to assign regular Air Force officers and enlisted airmen to National Guard units.

Buck is the commander of the maintenance detachment (jet maintenance, as in F-16s) at McEntire JNGB. The “J” is for Joint, replacing the usual A, for “Air National Guard Base.” One needs a program to keep up with the acronyms these days. Come to think on it, nothing’s changed in that regard.

Photoshopping celebs so they look like real people…here. Is this some new sort of art form? I had some fleeting and oh-so-slight flashes of name recognition as I browsed the photos, but my reaction to 75% of the names was “Who?” I guess I just don’t read or watch the right stuff. You may or may not find this interesting, Gentle Reader.

h/t: Clicked…a blog aggregator worth a look in its own right. Forget you saw “MSNBC” in the url. Two more cool things I picked up there: The World Drinking Map [legal age to drink] and Police Cars from Around the World. My fave cop car is from Texas, but I wouldn’t mind owning this one. Paint jobs are relatively cheap. The reader comments have lots of links to other cop cars, some more interesting than others. You can kill some serious time here if you happen to be a gear head.

Good Lord. I felt a twinge that could only be described as “homesickness” when I looked at this photo. And this one, too. Send help. Quickly. (Say what you will about its politics and its residents, there is no other city in the US of A with a more breathtakingly beautiful geographical setting. None.)

There are many, many large format photos to be browsed on this site. Another serious time waster site you can spend quality time on…especially if you’re a photographer, or like to think you’re one (in my case).

Speaking of photography… “Our photo contest attracted thousands of photographers from 86 nations. And the winners are...” Go see all 50 finalist’s photos; there’s wonderful work there. Last years winners are linked, too. The photo on the right is from the “Americana” category. You can’t get much more American than a ’59 Caddy, now, can ya?

I’ve been meaning to blog about this since perusing the photos in the June Smithsonian in the quick-oil-change store’s waiting room last week. And perusing the photos in the entry immediately above triggered that dormant “you should.” Blogging life is like that…

What people with more money than sense do for fun…

Ohhh-kaaay…

Futurists rarely get it right, the classic example being “Where’s my flying car?” for those of us who grew up in the ‘50s on a steady diet of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. But the guys at DEC were right-frickin’-on.

This video was produced in 1994, Gentle Reader, and virtually (no pun…) everything in the vid has come to pass. One just has to ask, though…if DEC was so visionary, why aren’t they around today? There was a point in time when I thought everyone in the whole frickin’ world was gonna do it on a PDP-11 or some flavor of VAX machine…and lots did. Now? Swallowed up by HP, by way of Compaq.

This is good stuff. The web site appears to be done completely as a Flash app, and that’s too bad. Coz I wanted to cut ‘n’ paste some of the copy on the site to use here as a teaser. At any rate, I picked up a bag of Hershey’s Cacao Reserve truffles (the 65% cacao variety) while out shopping yesterday, and they are excellent. Mouth watering. The filling in the truffles is creamy and complex, and the chocolate surrounding the center is rich, just slightly bitter, and dark, dark, dark. The finest kind… While the stuff ain’t quite up there with Godiva or any number of Belgian chocolates, it’s pretty danged good.

Today’s Pic: Since SN1 has today’s lead item, I thought it would be appropriate to show him in his work environment. Here he is along with SN3 in a Cannon AFB hangar, with an F-16 as a backdrop.

As always, click the pic for the larger version.

July 2004.

Small Stuff

Just a nit, but worth a mention… My neighbor across the way got out and began mowing his lawn at precisely 0700 this morning. Sunday morning. I think that’s rude and inconsiderate. It’s the noise, Gentle Reader. Power mowers are loud and their sound is obnoxious at all times, but on Sunday morning it’s particularly so, especially in an environment where residents live in close quarters. I say this with the full understanding that it’s much easier to mow the lawn when it’s 68 degrees outside, vice 85 and up. But couldn’t you wait until 0830, say? I think you could.

Oh…I had been up since 0500, so the noise didn’t awaken me. Irritate me, yes. Wake me up? If it had been yesterday, yes. But not today.

On nerds…in today’s NYT (Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?):

By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white. Bucholtz sees something to admire here. In declining to appropriate African-American youth culture, thereby “refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded,” she writes, nerds may even be viewed as “traitors to whiteness.” You might say they know that a culture based on theft is a culture not worth having. On the other hand, the code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may shut out “black students who chose not to openly display their abilities.” This is especially disturbing at a time when African-American students can be stigmatized by other African-American students if they’re too obviously diligent about school. Even more problematic, “Nerds’ dismissal of black cultural practices often led them to discount the possibility of friendship with black students,” even if the nerds were involved in political activities like protesting against the dismantling of affirmative action in California schools. If nerdiness, as Bucholtz suggests, can be a rebellion against the cool white kids and their use of black culture, it’s a rebellion with a limited membership.

Cue up the Geico caveman, please. To wit: “Yeah, I’ve got a response… uh … WHAT?”

It’s WAR! Normally I’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy, and my tolerance extends to creatures great and small. Included in the “small” community are various bugs, with the exception of flies and mosquitoes, which are terminated immediately with extreme prejudice…always. Take spiders, for example. Spiders are generally good, as they eat other small critters and generally stay out of my way. And I enjoy their webs, which are both small-scale engineering feats and supremely artistic, as well…as anyone who’s seen an early morning web covered in sparkling dew will attest.

My tolerance ends, though, when spiders begin to overwhelm my personal space and get presumptuous about territory and such, thinking it’s theirs for the taking. While I love and appreciate outdoor webs I don’t like to see the things hanging off my table lamp, or worse, have a small spider drop down on a gossamer filament right in front of my face while I’m surfing the other web (heh). And that’s just in the front of the house. Things get worse, much worse, as you move to the rear of El Casa Móvil De Pennington. Lately I’ve been involved in a daily ritual that involves wiping away webs that have been spun overnight in both the bathroom and the kitchen, and the spiders have become so numerous that they’re scurrying around in plain sight. It’s time for a new strategy: we’re gonna surge.

It appears that GHQ Arachnid is located in the bathroom. Yesterday I took extreme measures on the HQ… emptying both bathroom cabinets, thoroughly cleaning out the spaces, and finishing off by liberally spraying the interiors of both cabinets and the surrounding baseboards with Raid. Result: no webs in the bathroom this morning. The kitchen will be a little more problematic because I don’t want to engage in unrestricted chemical warfare in that operational area. The risk of collateral damage (to YrHmblScrb, hisownself) is just too high. So we’ll just content ourselves with applying forceful thumb pressure on the little terrorists as they transit from nook to cranny. And waging chemical warfare along the baseboards and other spaces in the kitchen where the risk of collateral damage is low.

We have evidence the surge is working, as noted above. There will be NO political settlement, and we’ll take no prisoners. All I’m asking is a return to the status quo ante, or in other words, if the spiders stay in their space, I’ll stay in mine.

Peace in our time.

Today’s Pic: A rather cheeky-looking SN3 in a restaurant on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. We were just finishing lunch and getting ready to go on a cruise around the Bay. And the following transpired as we were getting off the boat, after said Bay cruise:

Me: Well, what didja think?
SN3: It was kinda boring, Dad.
Me: (Dumbstruck silence, followed by a change of subject…)

June, 2002. (SN3 was five years old.)

Strange, Stranger, and Strangest

Progressive? Or Liberal?

Just 20% said they consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically liberal while 39% would view that description negatively. However, 35% would consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically progressive. Just 18% react negatively to that term. Those figures reflect a huge swing, from a net negative of nineteen points to a net positive of 17 points.

How about “clue-free?” That works for me…

Read Hillary’s mail… Well, not really. But there are interesting excerpts from her letters to a high-school friend, written while she was at Wellesley between 1965 and 1969. A former Goldwater Girl gone bad. Hell, I can relate; we had the same sort of experiences, politically. But I came back…

And she’s gonna be president. Where’s the justice in that, Gentle Reader?

Hell, I use ‘em…why not?

Emoticons, the smiling, winking and frowning faces that inhabit the computer keyboard, have not only hung around long past their youth faddishness of the 1990s, but they have grown up. Twenty-five years after they were invented as a form of computer-geek shorthand, emoticons — an open-source form of pop art that has evolved into a quasi-accepted form of punctuation — are now ubiquitous.

No longer are they simply the province of the generation that has no memory of record albums, $25 jeans or a world without Nicole Richie. These Starburst-sweet hieroglyphs, arguably as dignified as dotting one’s I’s with kitten faces, have conquered new landscape in the lives of adults, as more of our daily communication shifts from the spoken word to text. Applied appropriately, users say, emoticons can no longer be dismissed as juvenile, because they offer a degree of insurance for a variety of adult social interactions, and help avoid serious miscommunications.

Emoticons: effectively preventing miscommunication since 1991 (or thereabouts). ;-)

Today’s Pic: Would you let this man and his crew of 25 or so UNIX gurus/sys admins/Wintel techies (none of whom were even close to their 30^th birthday) manage your multi-million dollar commercial website? American Airlines did, along with a few other Fortune 100 companies. Stranger things may have happened in 2001, but I kinda doubt it. (I took this pic for a dating web site. And it worked, surprisingly. But only in the “losers” demographic, come to think on it.)

In my apartment in Berkeley, CA. February, 2001.

Morning Coffee

So. I took my morning coffee on the verandah today…three cups of it, anyway, accompanied by about a third of a cigar. And, in so doing, I put off my usual routine of coffee/making the virtual rounds until rather late in the morning, as defined by folks with real lives and…um…dare I say it?...jobs.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when I stepped outside, coffee in hand, this morning. And it was already up to 75 degrees at 0830. A beautiful day, in other words. So, there I sat, coffee in one hand, cigar in the other, feet up and feeling pretty danged good about things. I got to thinking about days gone by and of other places I’ve had my morning coffee.

The first place that came to mind was here, and this is a pic of my deck at the ol’ homestead in Fairport, NY. I was always an early riser back in my working days, and I’d often take my first cup of coffee on the deck (and sometimes the second cup, too, depending on the schedule) and watch the sun come up over the neighborhood…say around 0530, or so. In the summer time, of course, the deck being not quite as accommodating in the winter, as you can see. The thing I loved about this particular place and time was the quiet…traffic hadn’t yet begun its crawl out of the sub-division, the birds were chirping, most of the world was still asleep, and there was always a certain coolness in the air before the summer sun began warming Upstate New York. It was very peaceful, in other words, and a good place to get organized while contemplating the upcoming day.

So…various and sundry other places popped into and out of my mind, as well. The dining room table in Ferndale, Michigan that overlooked the backyard, aka “the garden,” as the Brits say. Watching the dogs chase the squirrels in the early summer morning, windows open, and warm, humid breezes blowing in and billowing the lacy curtains back and forth.

Or sitting on my patio at the house in Oklahoma City (Choctaw, actually, a suburb of OKC), looking out over the property which consisted of two acres dotted with numerous scrub oaks and two or three “real” trees (i.e., over ten feet tall). One of the real trees was a towering oak of about 40 feet or so that sported an old-fashioned two-seat swing suspended from a thick low-hanging bough. Coffee was taken in that swing too, often in the company of The Second Mrs. Pennington…but she usually only joined me in the swing on the weekends.

And then there were those times back in my Work Days, when I was on the road and had to arise, get cleaned up, and get fully dressed before I had my first cup. I took those first cups in various dining rooms or coffee shops at the hotels I stayed in. London. Singapore. Beijing. Moscow. The coffee was uniformly bad, nearly always. A good cup of coffee, in the days before Starbucks and especially overseas, was a rare thing, indeed. Eventually I took to carrying my own coffee with me.

I thought about other places where morning coffee was had…places like the various apartments I’ve lived in, the Air Force chow halls, and the RV parks I’ve stayed at/in, too. My morning coffee, and the rituals surrounding it, is perhaps the one thing that has remained unchanged throughout my life. A lot of things change in life as we move forward …people, places, and things… but some things remain the same. And my morning coffee ritual is one of the constants. The end is nigh if that ever changes…

The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty Danged Cute...in reference to the Little Guy

Here’s another paean to Robert Heinlein, this time in the WSJ…

Science fiction at one time was despised as vulgar and "populist" by university English departments. Today, it is just another cultural artifact to be deconstructed, along with cartoons and People magazine articles. Yet one could argue that science fiction has had a greater impact on the way we all live than any other literary genre of the 20th century.

When one looks at the great technological revolutions that have shaped our lives over the past 50 years, more often than not one finds that the men and women behind them were avid consumers of what used to be considered no more than adolescent trash. As Arthur C. Clarke put it: "Almost every good scientist I know has read science fiction." And the greatest writer who produced them was Robert Anson Heinlein, born in Butler, Mo., 100 years ago this month.

The list of technologies, concepts and events that he anticipated in his fiction is long and varied. In his 1951 juvenile novel, "Between Planets," he described cellphones. In 1940, even before the Manhattan Project had begun, he chronicled, in the short story "Blowups Happen," the destruction of a graphite-regulated nuclear reactor similar to the one at Chernobyl. And in his 1961 masterpiece, "Stranger in a Strange Land," Heinlein--decades before Ronald and Nancy Reagan moved to the White House--introduced the idea that a president's wife might try to guide his actions based on the advice of her astrologer. One of Heinlein's best known "inventions" is the water bed, though he never took out a patent.

I learned something new from reading this— as is the case with nearly all the reading I do —and now have a new favorite quote (Heinlein, of course):

"Some people disparage the female form divine, sex is too good for them; they should have been oysters."

Ah. Good, innit?

A Bad Idea… “US Senators call for universal Internet filtering.” I’m aligned with these guys (a case of strange bedfellows, if there ever was one), rather than the geriatric yet illustrious Senators Inouye and (most specifically) Ted Stevens, he of inter-tubes fame. The whole thing about Stevens was beat to death last year, but just in case you’ve forgotten…here’s a partial quote:

Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

In a monumental first for EIP, I’m gonna quote Jon Stewart (from the wiki article on Stevens):

Stewart compared him to "a crazy old man in an airport bar at 3:00 am", then going on to answer his question, "Why?" with, "Maybe it's because you don't seem to know jack shit about computers or the Internet — but that's okay — you're just the guy in charge of regulating it."

(Stewart’s a funny guy, I don’t deny that. But his “usual targets” are people and things I hold dear and thus I don’t find him all that funny. Most of the time. But he’s spot-on, here.)

The good senators claim government regulation filtering blocking censorship is needed to “protect the children” from child pr0n and predators. Just how blocking and filtering technology is going to affect the process and mechanics of on-line child predation escapes me completely, but…whatever. In Stevens’ defense, he’s asking the FTC to “form a working group to identify blocking and filtering technologies in use and identify, what, if anything could be done to improve the process and better enable parents to proactively protect their children online…” At this point, that is. Gub’mint being gub’mint, there will be studies, proposals, laws and finally funding for the FTC, the FCC, yadda, yadda, yadda. And it’s hard to argue against the effort, because it’s “for the children.” I’ve seen this movie before.

But the basic answer to Inouye and Stevens’ proposals is “No!” PARENTS are the responsible parties, not the government, thank you very much. Slippery slope, First Amendment, and all that minor stuff.

Captain Ed is on the same page as I.

Today’s Pic: For the Children! This is perhaps my absolute favorite pic of SN3 and I. I may have posted this before, but whatever…everyone goes into re-runs occasionally.

Key West, FL. March, 1998. And my our (? - TSMP took the pic) 52^nd digital photo…ever.

Rant State: "ON"

::rant::
One of my bigger hot buttons (and I have more than a few) is all those frickin’ “direct to consumer” pharmaceutical ads on TeeVee. I am SO tired of them, in each and every respect. The one thing that galls me the most, however, are the government-mandated “warnings” included in these ads. I went googling to find out just who, or what, is responsible for this BS. In so doing, I found this:

As required by the US Federal Drug Administration, direct-to-consumer press ads for pharmaceutical products currently carry acres of small print, spelling out warnings of potential side-effects.

Big Pharma doesn't like this. Nor apparently does the Federal Trade Commission, which on Tuesday urged the FDA to allow drug print ads to run "brief summary" risk alerts of the kind used in broadcast commercials.

The FTC request was contained in a letter to the drug regulator, whom it also urges not to stand in the way of direct-to-consumer drug advertising. The FDA is currently engaged in a review of its rules for direct-to-consumer drug marketing, which annually generates an estimated $2.4 billion (€1.99bn; £1.39bn) in adspend.

Suspicions confirmed: it’s the FDA. I kinda agree with the FTC; I seriously doubt anyone ever reads all the mandated small-print warnings in magazine drug ads, while they’re not “acres” of small print, they are pages of same. Literally pages (plural), Gentle Reader. But that’s print, not TeeVee. You can thumb right over a drug ad in a magazine and ignore it on your way to finding out how Paris survived her jail time, not so when the bastards come right into your living room and tell you that you need — or should consider, at the very least: “Ask your doctor about…” — the latest wonder drug to control your leaky bladder, lower your blood pressure (and your cholesterol, while you’re at it), settle down your restless legs, or revive your flagging ardor…or the means to that end.

Some pharma-firms have gone all “creative” with these warnings, to the effect of having the actor/model-spokesperson recite the warnings as part of the scripted ad dialog… As an example we have the fat, bespectacled, and otherwise highly obnoxious chef of the fictional TV show “Cooking Healthy” (could be another title, I write from memory) going on about how her prescription drug of choice lowers her cholesterol while working in her digestive tract, not her liver, and “may not be appropriate for women who are pregnant or may become pregnant.” WTF? Doesn’t this eliminate all women who are post-puberty and pre-menopausal…including, presumably, her-own-self? That’s just one thing I don’t get…

And then there are the “E-D” ads. I’ve written about these before, especially about the fact these ads are broadcast during prime-time, and the inevitability that your average curious nine-year-old will ask Mom or Dad “What’s erectile dysfunction?” Just how the Hell does one answer that question? Other than “never mind, Dear.”

The pharma industry claims these ads are educational in nature, and serve to increase public awareness of treatment options and alternatives. I call bullsh!t. These ads exist for the exact same purpose as any other advertisement: to sell product. The kicker is you can’t just jump into the car, drive down to the pharmacy and ask for a handful of Viagra, or Nexium, or Enablex. Nope, you gotta ask your doctor for a script. And I’ll bet that drives your average doctor freakin’ nuts…probably more so than the ads irritate me, and that irritation, Gentle Reader, is much more than considerable.

I liked life a lot better before the drug companies decided it was OK (with concurrence from the AMA and the FDA) to barge into my living room and flog drugs I neither want nor need.

(Just a note…I think the E-D drug manufacturers really missed the boat when choosing names for their products, e.g., Viagra, Cialis, et al. Since I’ve only just recently begun seeing ads for Enablex, one assumes this is a relatively new drug and the name, or variations on it, was available during the ED drug development cycle. If I would have been in charge of choosing a name for, let’s say, Viagra, I’d have used “Enables-X” instead. Say it out loud.)

::/rant::

Today’s Pic: Apropos of absolutely frickin’ nothing, other than the fact I’ve been thinking of the woman a lot over the course of the last few, here’s the ex-GF and I.

Dallas. February, 2004.

Scandalous Behavior

While I haven’t been following the latest scandal(s) du jour in pro sports all that closely, I am generally aware of them. It’s a sad state of affairs, really. But…as a hockey fan, I’m compelled to draw your attention, Gentle Reader, to the following, written by Pamela Barone, at NBC Sports:

While three professional sports leagues sit embroiled in scandal, we hockey fans can sit back and laugh. Steroids? Nope. Point-shaving? Don't think so. Dog fighting? We're talking about Canadians, here. (ed: and Swedes, and Russians, and Czechs… and Kazakhs, too!)

Sure, there aren't many of us these days. But maybe these latest headlines will be enough to convert some disgruntled fans of the so-called big three. If not -- who cares? We know why the NHL is the best professional sports league.

Just in case, though, I thought I would take this time to review some of the reasons.

As Ms. Barone sez: “Let’s review.” And she does a bang-up job of it, as well. My basic point, aside from the power, grace, beauty, speed, and excitement of the game (did I miss anything?), is this: you can’t find better role models in the community of professional athletes than hockey players. Period. Full-stop. Hockey fans know this fact is as constant as the eastern sunrise. Want your kids to emulate a sports star? Point him towards the rink, Gentle Reader. You can certainly do worse these days, and I’ll submit you can do NO better.

Blog-buddy Morgan has had admirable success in the realm of on-line dating (see his comment here). Ah, would that I could make the same claim. In those same comments linked in a preceding sentence I gave you the “Reader’s Digest” version of my issues with on-line dating. And now for a short war-story about this sort of social activity…

I was pretty active in the on-line dating game for a few years, most notably in Rochester, NY, and during my two-year sojourn in the Peoples Republic of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. It was in SFO that I had one of my most traumatic on-line dating experiences…

It started as these things always do…I read her ad, dropped her an e-mail, she responded, we spent a few hours on several consecutive nights in instant messaging conversation, followed by several phone calls. We both decided we should meet, and we did. She turned out to be everything she appeared to be, and I was happy with that. There were distinct possibilities, in other words, for something other than casual dating. In a nutshell: articulate, intelligent, owned her own business, a voracious reader, great conversationalist, and not at all hard to look at. Fetching, if I may go that far.

So. It was on our fourth date, and we’re having coffee and cognac after dinner at one of SFO’s numerous superb restaurants. We don’t have any firm plans for after dinner, and I casually ask “Well, where to now?” She smiles and says “Your place?”

There couldn’t possibly have been a better answer.

We get back to my place and I’ll spare you most of the details, Gentle Reader, save for this one tiny thing. The lights are low, things are getting hot and heavy, we’re in a state of dishabille, and the deal is about to go down. Suddenly, and I DO mean suddenly, she sits up on my couch, pushes me away to arms-length and says with a very serious look on her face “I have something to tell you.”

“Uh, OK,” sez I, thinking “WTF?”

“I have herpes.”

Wow. Talk about mood-killers! So. The lights come back up, I go to the kitchen, freshen our drinks, and return to the couch, where we spend the next hour or so discussing her problem. “There are ways to work around this,” sez she. “Umm-hmm,” sez I, nodding. The bottom line, as she suggests, is that we should both give serious thought to where we’re going and what we should do. I agree. We finish our drinks and I take her home.

And that, save for two subsequent phone conversations wherein I explained myself in great detail, was that. Work-arounds or no, herpes is forever. I wasn’t willing to take the risk. She understood, and we went our separate ways.

I’ll always appreciate the woman’s honesty, if not her timing. I hope she found someone because, with the exception of this one tiny (?) flaw, she could have been a potential mate.

There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them. But it’s pretty illustrative of my experiences with on-line dating. I don’t have any good stories to relate, in other words, Gentle Reader, and I have a couple that are worse. Much worse. But let’s not go there.

Wrong and Oh-So-Right

This is just wrong… From BlogCritics (I left the links intact):

Today I filed an Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Kos Media, LLC., better known as DailyKos.com. I allege that they operate as a political committee and are therefore subject to FEC rules.

I first thought of this complaint during the Cindy Sheehan debacle over at Daily Kos, where Cindy pledged to run as an independent against Nancy Pelosi, and the Daily Kos basically turned on her. While some conservatives took great delight in this, I really didn't care because it's politics as usual. The right has thrown their fair share of people under the bus for not drinking the Kool-aid too.

The last sentence is correct, to be sure. There are lots and lots of folks on the Right who are still pissed at John McCain for that abomination known as “McCain-Feingold,” which was the first (recent) step down the slippery slope of limiting political speech. McCain deserved to be thrown under the bus for that, to cite but one example of under-the-bus-throwing. But it’s flat wrong— incontrovertibly WRONG — to attempt to limit a blog’s speech, even a blog like dKos. On top of that, the action is supremely inconsistent with the Right’s American principles, as championed by the Right. You gotta walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

I’m both amazed and appalled at the “conservatives” at BlogCritics that initiated this bullsh!t. Retract your complaint, Mr. Bambanek. It’s the only honest and honorable thing to do.

Great comments to Mr. Bambanek’s post, by the way. Can you spell L-E-A-D B-A-L-L-O-O-N? I knew you could…

(Via memeorandum)

Today’s Pic: Here’s the used-to-be inanimate object of my affections, nicked from SN2’s blog. She became mine back in 1978, for less than one thousand Yankee Dollars…a bargain, in anyone’s book. Miles of smiles, she was. And is, 29 years later. That's the cool part.

I spent many, many hours in her saddle seeking out— and finding — twisty-turnies in Oregon, California, Michigan, and Oklahoma…and a lot of points in between. Strangely enough, she was nameless (and remains so, as far as I know). She was always known simply as “The RD.” And she was blindingly quick in her day, able to keep up with and occasionally beat bikes twice her displacement where sheer acceleration was concerned. Note I didn’t say “fast,” as her absolute top speed was approximately 100 mph, but she got there VERY quickly. But that was almost 30 years ago, Gentle Reader. Motorcycle art and technology have come a long, long way. She’s still pretty quick from what I hear, but can’t begin to be competitive with today’s sport bikes.

The pic was taken by SN2, presumably in Omaha. Presumably recently.

I’ll be back in a bit.

A Random and Strange Sort of Thought...

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced

—Bob Dylan (“Tangled Up in Blue”)

That’s my favorite Dylan tune and it’s played fairly often on Radio Paradise. I listened to RP a lot yesterday. And I was immersed in the music, paying close attention to the lyrics of songs new to me and singing along with the songs I know quite well (TUiB being just one of many), to the great annoyance of my neighbors, more than likely. The combination of sheer volume, coupled with my off-key singing, probably wasn’t as much fun for anyone within earshot as it was for me. Early in the day, anyway, while the windows and door were still open and before I buttoned things up and turned on the AC. The neighborhood got a lot more peaceful after that.

But good music and bad singing isn’t the point.

One of the most common questions a couple, any couple, gets is “Well, how did you two meet?” It’s not the first thing you ask someone, but the question always comes up in the process of making friends, at mixers of various sorts, and so on. It’s good, safe, polite conversation.

The Second Mrs. Pennington and I could hold forth on this subject for hours back in the day, given a little encouragement and interest on behalf of the person(s) asking the question. Everyone’s story of “how they met” is unique, yet I feel ours was pretty romantic, what with our having met in Tokyo — she an exchange student and me in the Air Force — on a blind date not with each other, and the subsequent adventures we had during our extended courtship in Japan and back in the US. There were many great stories to be told, good stories that got better and more treasured with each passing year. And that got me to wondering.

How does TSMP answer that question today?

There are several possibilities, and I’m just spit-balling these scenarios:

“We met in Detroit several years ago, back in the early ‘90s.” And change the subject. Or…

“We were introduced by a mutual friend.” True enough…that friend would be me, of course. Or…

“We were friends for quite a while before we became lovers. We met in Detroit; I moved away for a few years, we kept in touch via instant messaging during that time — becoming closer and closer — and we began seeing each other when I came back to Detroit to visit. It got serious, I moved back to Detroit, and the rest is history…” Once again, true enough but it's not "the whole truth and nothing but the truth." The devil’s most certainly in the details. Or…

“What’s-His-Name saved me. I was trapped in a loveless marriage and he came along and showed me what true love is.” I sincerely doubt this is the answer, but ya never know.

Whatever the story is or has evolved to be, I’m quite sure it has little to do with the way things actually happened. I’d love to be a fly on the wall and listen to the response the next time that question’s asked. Or maybe she just turns to what’s-his-name, gives him a look and he starts into “Tangled Up in Blue.”

It could happen.

A Better Day Today

By way of The Flight Deck…an achingly beautiful song by a woman who “gets it,” who loves her man, and respects what he does. Originally posted at The Wood Shed.

Now, I ask you: Is that beautiful, or what? And the song is excellent, too.

It was but a few short days ago I posted a link to a snarky article that mentioned, in an offhand way, the fact that Jana Bennett, the BBC’s director of vision, had invited BBC producers to come forward and confess their sins…specifically the sin of misleading the public with distorted programming. Well, come forth they did:

Much to the apparent surprise of Bennett and Abramsky, two experienced and highly respected corporation bureaucrats, a procession of contrite and nervous producers came forward to ’fess up. The public, it seemed, had been deceived with unnerving consistency, particularly over programmes with phone-in polls and competitions. And on the corporation’s most noble flagship enterprises, too. Comic Relief and Children in Need, for example.

“We just sat there absolutely stunned,” one executive board member told me, “shocked beyond belief. Nobody had any idea that this was going on on such a scale.”

Not even Bennett and Abramsky, when they asked for producers to come forward?

“Nobody. Nobody at all. And we had the very powerful sense that there was a lot more to come. And we thought this time no excuses, something really has to be done.”

Dang. The proverbial light bulb illuminates above their wooly heads. But what’s to be done?

In the short term this might mean the ceremonial defenestration, for the benefit of a baying Fleet Street and an angry public, of some high-ranking executive. Bennett perhaps, even though she is one of the corporation’s most talented and savvy apparatchiks?

“But if Jana, why not Mark [Thompson, the director-general]? He is about as remote in the hierarchy from what went on as she is.”

The feeling within the upper echelons of the BBC is that the sacrifice of a senior figure would be a capitulation too far to critics, although how far that view is shared lower down is a moot point. There is a certain glee and schaden-freude in some parts of the corporation, long dismayed at the grubby and antiReithian business of chasing the ratings with lowest common denominator broadcasting.

It’s one of those nightmare moments that occur in every organization, no matter the size. There used to be this ol’ saw floating around many years ago about the six phases of a project, the last three steps of which were “search for the guilty,” “punish the innocent,” and finally, “distinction for the uninvolved.” No doubt— abso-frickin-lute-ly none at all — this is what’s gonna happen here. You’ll note, if you read the Times article, that this has already happened in the case of an outside production company that was a source (just one!) of the current brouhaha.

Unfortunately the issue will not be resolved by throwing one, two, or three very senior members of the Beeb’s senior management out of Auntie’s top floor window…or even getting rid of the whole frickin management team. The issue will only be resolved when individual reporters, copywriters and editors (especially editors) at the working level are fired for demonstrated and substantiated incidences of biased and/or misleading reporting. Once the word gets out amongst the rank and file that it’s hazardous to your financial health to introduce your personal point of view into news (as opposed to op-eds), the biased reporting will stop. But not until then.

I saw on the news last evening Algore’s son is being charged with two counts of felony drug possession, two misdemeanors for drug possession without a prescription, and one misdemeanor count for marijuana possession. No schadenfreude here…I feel genuinely sorry for Al Gore III. And his parents. At the same time, I sincerely hope more sons and daughters of our political shooters get busted for drugs…simply to highlight the sheer ridiculousness of our drug laws.

The cost of this massive growth in incarceration is staggering. Americans will spend nearly $40 billion on prisons and jails in the year 2000. Almost $24 billion of that will go to incarcerate 1.2 million nonviolent offenders.⁴ Meanwhile, in two of our nation's largest states, California and New York, the prison budgets outstripped the budgets for higher education during the mid-1990s.⁵

The number of people behind bars not only dwarfs America's historical incarceration rates; it defies international comparisons as well. While America has about 5% of the world's population, almost one in four persons incarcerated worldwide are incarcerated in the US.⁶

Perhaps if more relatives of our politicos (and other “nice” or “good” people) get their asses put in this particular sling there will be sufficient motivation to change the laws. The general public is apathetic, at best, and vengeful, at worst, about our drug laws. By “vengeful” I mean… “they got it comin’”, ya know? I hear this reaction more often than not when the subject of drug laws comes up in “polite company.” Spirited debate always ensues…but I’m quite certain it’s just talk, no minds are ever changed. Change requires a catastrophe, and a catastrophe is when something bad happens to ME…not YOU.

Today’s Pic: Going deep into the archives…Here’s the fountain in the central plaza of Matamoros, Mexico, with the cathedral in the background. (apologia: taken with a first-generation digital camera, quality commensurate. But you get the picture, right, Gentle Reader?)

February, 2000.

Oh. I owe ya. For the record, I took the Tylenol yesterday morning and finished the coffee without going back to bed. Further…it rained off and on all freakin’ day, but we came nowhere near the forecasted high of 85. We might have hit 70, but that would have been a stretch. We did get some serious rain, though. And we’ll pay today with murderous humidity.

Blech...Bleah...Whatever...

The skies match my mood today: overcast, gray, raining on everyone's parade (here in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park, anyway). All I'm lacking is the thunder, and the most I can muster in that particular category would better be described as "grumbling." I almost wrote “whining,” but I never whine. Ever.

This, Gentle Reader, is the result of staying up way too late, sleeping in way too late, and…to top off a perfectly ugly sort of morning: a mild headache. The headache piece may or may not be the result of not being fully-caffeinated as of yet. Whatever. I see Tylenol in my future. My immediate future.

Today's Pic: Taken about seven minutes ago, just before a brief (yet violent) cloudburst that produced enough rain to make the Green Hornet look like the Green Leopard, but not enough to do the lawn vegetation any good. Forecast: thunderstorms all day, 85 degree high. Mississippi-like WX, in other words (I’m speaking of the heat/humidity combo only).

I might be back later. Right now it’s a toss-up: back to bed or another cup? I’ll let ya know. Eventually.

Harsh and Harsher

Dang, Ralph…that’s harsh!

FP: What are your thoughts on Obama wanting to attack Pakistan? That is after all where the terrorists are lurking.

Peters: It's a classic example of the fateful mix of hubris and naivety on Capitol Hill. Mr. Obama has yet to supply any details, so let me help him out: Sure, we can invade Pakistan. Of course, we'll need a draft to round up enough troops. And we'll have to kill, as a minimum, a few hundred thousand Pathan tribesmen and their families, and we'll have to remain as an occupier for many years. Oh, and Pakistan's got nuclear weapons and it's already torn by civil strife. But no worries there for good, old Barak--who was too important to serve in the military himself (military service is just for chumps like me or for those who are, as John Kerry pointed out, so stupid they're stuck in Iraq).

Now, I'm all for targeted air strikes and special ops raids in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan where al Qaeda has been re-grouping. But, hey, I've actually been there. It's some of the toughest terrain in the world, and the mountain ranges are vast. A classic military invasion isn't the answer. So, if Obama wants to invade, I'd just like to hear the details of his plan. Of course, he hasn't got one. He's just blowing smoke. He knows less about military matters than I do about neurosurgery. The difference between us is that he's convinced he's qualified to operate.

In the Queen's English, the guy's a wanker.

For those of you unfamiliar with Brit slang, here’s the definition of “wanker.” I think Col. Peters got it right, even though it’s kinda hard for me to visualize Her Highness calling anyone a wanker.

Hat tip: Lex.

Harsh, Part II. Or...About Today’s Pics… Two views of a radar site that overlooks Layton, Utah, taken while I was visiting SN1 last month. This particular site is most likely owned and operated by the FAA, but it could very well have been part of the extensive network of USAF radar sites that were built in the ‘50s and decommissioned in the ‘70s. There was once a time when every single square inch of the Lower 48 was swept by a USAF radar beam every 20 seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Continuously. Not so any longer.

I spent two-thirds of my USAF career on sites just like the one in the pictures…the only thing that really varied from site to site was the elevation. In the flat parts of the US of A, the sites were situated on the highest ground to be found in the vicinity, which was often only a slight rise of 20 to 25 feet above the rest of the countryside. In other places the sites were perched on mountain tops that were literally thousands of feet above sea level, specifically in the coastal mountain ranges of the west coast and up in Alaska, where some truly spectacularly scenic locations existed. “Spectacularly scenic,” of course if you only just looked at a picture of two little dots perched on a mountain overlooking, say, the Bering Sea…not if you had to live and work in that sort of isolation for a year, which was the “standard” tour. And if one was in the radar business back in the day, one could look forward to doing a “remote” tour every four years or so, just like clockwork. I never did go to Alaska, but I did have orders to Cape Newenham that were canceled at the very last minute. I was sent to Fortuna AFS, ND, instead. And was probably the only guy to ever report in to that God-forsaken location with a smile on my face. At least Fortuna was in the US of A, albeit just barely.

So why am I on about this today? Simply because I chased up another Lex-link, this time it was photography of abandoned military bases. Buried within that link was a mention of Boron AFS—another radar site I called “home,” once upon a time. And then the synapses began to fire off, just like clockwork. The mind is a funny thing.

Update: If you follow the Cape Newenham link, don't miss the "Information Brochure," circa 1976. Since I received my orders to Cape Newenham in 1977, the chances are quite good I would have received this very same brochure, had I not been diverted to Fortuna. Just reading the thing sent shivers up my spine...

Everyone on the Right Side of the ‘Sphere Is Gonna Link This…

…so why should I be different? She Who Will Not Be Named is taken down, mightily, in the flipping Guardian, of all places. “The epic narcissism of (SWWNBN)” is an epic read. With great links, too, I might add…not the least of which pictures SWWNBN laid out on the grave of her son for a Vanity Fair photo shoot. The last two sentences of the piece reads thusly:

(SWWNBN) is a self-styled sanctimonious didact. May her second retirement come swiftly, and may it last a lot longer than the first.

Oh, yes. What he said. One wonders how she’s managed to remain in the spotlight, such as it is, now that the Left has abandoned her and the Right shunned her from the very beginning.

Who among her supporters remain? (Aside from “Don’t call me Hew-Go,” that is…)

This JUST In...

Really. Gerard put it up today. And like he said, it was fun while it lasted.


All kidding aside...can you visualize life without the 'net? Me, neither.

Yet Another in a Long Line of Placeholder Posts...

Via Lex, Lex on Lex. And blogging, milblogging, the military, politics, the war, and life in general…as interviewed by one Juan Devis on behalf of KCET (NPR in Los Angeles). The interview is 38 minutes, 13 seconds, in mp3 format. Worth your while, to say the very least. And you get a bonus, too—interviews with three other well-known milbloggers, Sean Dustman (Doc in the Box), Army Girl (of Desert Phoenix), and Colby Buzzell.

This is yet another placeholder post. I haven’t completed this morning’s rounds (nor the coffee...and yeah, I know full well it ain’t morning any longer), and if you follow the link above you may understand why. Over forty minutes were spent cruising around just one site this morning and listening to Lex talk about a lot of stuff, as well as reading the opinions and POVs of the commenters over at his place. Time consuming, it was, but it was time well spent.

Today’s Pic: The setting sun in Old Town ABQ catches the bare limbs of a gnarled tree. I really wish underground utilities were more prevalent in America…those frickin’ wires just ain’t good for the aesthetics, ya know.

ABQ. January, 2004.

Delay, Snark, and a Puzzle

Stop Presses! This just in… Well, not really “just in.” Yesterday afternoon a work crew from Yucca Telecom’s fiber-laying contractor were wandering around the perimeter of El Casa Móvil De Pennington, looking a bit puzzled and irritating the Hell out of the neighbor’s dog…who was barking madly while snarling, leaping, and straining at the rope she’s tied to. Much noise, in other words. I opened the window and asked “Whatcha guys doin’?” I got a question back in return: “Is your neighbor home?” Well, I think not, as Tara (the dog) had been barking for…oh…six minutes straight (my neighbor would never allow Tara to go on like that). I answered in the negative and asked “whatcha doin’?” again. Silly me… I assumed the crew had arrived to (a) install the on-premise equipment for my long-overdue fiber connection and (b) turn me up. Coz it IS mid-July and my fiber connection was due back in January. Or so.

But no.

Fiber-layer: We need to get to the pedestal in your neighbor’s yard.
Me: That could be a problem, what with the dog.
Fiber-layer: We noticed.
Me: Whatcha gonna do at the pedestal? Run a connection to my RV?
Fiber-layer: Oh, no. We have to take the fiber OUT.
Me: WHAT? Take it OUT?
Fiber-layer: Yeah, they put the wrong fiber in; we have to tear it out.
Me: I suppose this means my connection is delayed. Again.
Fiber-layer: Yeah. But don’t worry. A crew will be right behind us to install the right fiber.
Me: Mmmm-kay. Have fun!

So. My neighbor comes home about an hour later, the crew comes back and mucks around at the pedestal, and goes away. I never did see the follow-on guys. My best guess is this lil glitch will add about another month before I get my connection, what with installation, QA, testing, and “lighting up” the fiber. Which begs at least one question, Gentle Reader…where was QA when the fiber was put in the ground back in January/February? And why did it take so danged long for Yucca to realize the wrong fiber was in the ground?

This whole fiber-to-the-prem project is beginning to look a lot like an episode from the Keystone Cops…

Via Chap…a short, maximum-snark take-down of the Beeb in the most-recent Sunday Times (UK). Excerpt:

And Jana Bennett, the BBC's director of vision - whatever the hell that means - let the genie out of the bottle by calling for producers to inform her of any other programmes that may somehow have misled the public. Oh dear.

By lunchtime on Friday the queue of contrite producers outside Bennett's office stretched down Wood Lane and into the Goldhawk Road. The team behind The Crouchers and several other situation comedies confessed to having misled the public into believing that their programmes might contain some humorous element, when this was very far from the case. The executives behind the reality shows Celebrity Dog Handlers on Ice and I'm an Exhibitionist Moron, Give Me Some Money admitted suggesting that their programmes came under the heading public service broadcasting and were therefore worthy of the statutory licence fee, rather than ratings chasing dross.

Controllers of a host of BBC wi-fi hi-definition digital internet radio channels nobody anywhere - including Bennett - had heard of (available only in Islington) were forced into similar admissions about the “public service core broadcasting remit” of the BBC.

Then came the television news teams ’fessing up that they may have inadvertently misled the public over the single European currency, the inherent competence and decency of Hamas, Fatah and the Taliban, the desirability of unconstrained immigration and the notion that bunging loads of money in aid to Africa would solve that continent’s problems.

“Director of Vision.” Now there’s a frickin’ title for you! I don’t doubt for a second that there actually IS a “Director of Vision” at the Beeb. I scoured the innernets looking for a picture of Ms. Bennett, and this is the BEST I could come up with, Gentle Reader…

Vision. Every state-owned broadcaster needs it. Few, if any, actually have it.

“One of these things is not like the other…” (All y’all can hum along, if you like) See if you can tell which item is different. Found while chasing another Site Meter Google MSN-search link. Danged if I know how that got in there… Oh, those wacky guys in Redmond!

OK, it’s past noon. Time to cut off the disorganized surfing and post.

Milestone

I’ve been playing around with Site Meter. Again.

What does this mean?

Exile in Portales: December 2005

Wakkanai was a surveillance site, with a (then) state of the art system known as a FLR-12. The FLR-12 had a huge antenna farm. ...

exileinportales.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_archive.html - 551k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

It’s the Google search that resulted in EIP’s 25,000^th visitor last night (actually at 0051 hrs, 7/17/2007). All the way from Hessen, Germany. It’s a milestone, of sorts, and at the very least it’s a nice round number. I kinda wish it would have been one of the regulars, ya know.

It's Past Noon, Pennington. Where's Your Post?

… And didn’t I tell you to get a frickin’ haircut? What’s up with you, lately?

Yessir. No excuse, Sir. I’ll do better, I promise.

Well, you better. I’m watching you, ya know.

The opening paragraphs in an op-ed in today’s WSJ:

While the number of Americans who self-identify as "libertarian" remains small, a substantial proportion agree with the core stances of limited constitutional government in both the economic and social spheres--what is sometimes called "economic conservatism" and "social liberalism." But if they watched the Republican presidential debate on May 15, many Americans might resist the libertarian label, because they now identify it with strident opposition to the war in Iraq, and perhaps even to the war against Islamic jihadists.

During that debate, the riveting exchange between Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul about whether American foreign policy provoked the 9/11 attack raised the visibility of both candidates. When Mr. Paul, a libertarian, said that the 9/11 attack happened "because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," Mr. Giuliani's retort--that this was the first time he had heard that "we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. . . . and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11"--sparked a spontaneous ovation from the audience. It was an electrifying moment that allowed one to imagine Mr. Giuliani as a forceful, articulate president.

And the closing grafs…

Still, there are those pro-invasion libertarians who are now following the progress of Operations Phantom Thunder and Arrowhead Ripper. They hope that the early signs of progress in this offensive will continue, so that American and Iraqi forces can achieve the military victory necessary to allow the Iraqi government to assume responsibility for protecting the Iraqi people from terrorists, as well as from religious sectarian violence. They hope this success will enable American soldiers to leave Iraq even before they leave Europe and Korea, and regain the early momentum that led, for example, to Libya's abandonment of its nuclear weapons program.

These libertarians are still rooting for success in Iraq because it would make Americans more safe, while defeat would greatly undermine the fight against those who declared war on the U.S. They are concerned that Americans may get the misleading impression that all libertarians oppose the Iraq war--as Ron Paul does--and even that libertarianism itself dictates opposition to this war. It would be a shame if this misinterpretation inhibited a wider acceptance of the libertarian principles that would promote the general welfare of the American people.

Why, yes, now that you mention it, that would be me… I’m not refusing to self-identify with the Libertarian label, I just don’t identify with that nut case Ron Paul. I wish many more Americans understood what Libertarians are all about, and Ron Paul ain’t helping things one tiny bit. And, as Mr. Barnett notes, Mr. Paul’s views, opinions, and stated policy on the war actually HURT the Libertarian cause.

I suppose I better get my flame-retardant underwear out and put it on, coz you know what happens if one mentions the words “Ron Paul” in a blog. They swoop in out of nowhere…like bats in the moonlight. (Associate those last five words in any manner you choose.)

Some encouraging news on the status of Internet Radio (you may read that as “Radio Paradise”):

NEW YORK - Internet radio broadcasters and the music industry appeared to be moving closer Monday to resolving a dispute over a new system mandating higher royalty fees for streaming music online.

Participants described the negotiations as constructive and said they hoped to build on the momentum achieved last week, when both sides promised quick progress on the issue at a closed-door Congressional meeting held by Rep. Ed Markey, D.-Mass.

The talks were continuing past a July 15 deadline, when a new set of royalties mandated by a panel of three copyright judges went into effect. The judges made the ruling in May after the music industry and Webcasters were unable to agree on a new royalty system to replace a previous set of agreements that expired at the end of 2005.

I said “somewhat encouraging,” didn’t I? (ed: No, you didn't. Oh. My Bad.) Well, at least they’re talking…

And then there’s this on RP’s main page:

Thanks to the tremendous outpouring of support we received about the royalty rates that the big record companies were trying to impose on Internet radio stations like RP, the US Congress has intervened and told the RIAA guys that they had to play fair and negotiate a rate with webcasters that won't bankrupt our entire industry.

All of the dust hasn't settled, but it looks like we will continue to pay the highest royalties of any class of broadcaster in the US — but not the absurdly high rates that the record companies had wanted (and that the US Copyright Office had rubber-stamped). For all of the details, see last Friday's edition of Kurt Hanson's RAIN newsletter, or this Wired blog post.

If you’re interested. Me? I’m just glad RP is still alive and kicking playing kick-ass music.

Anniversaries

Well, I almost made my noon posting deadline. But Hey! deadlines are oh-so-arbitrary these days.

Reader Bec dropped a link in the comments to The NYT's Defeatism that should be on EIP’s front page. So, herewith is the link to “Here is the news (as we want to report it),” from The Telegraph. The subject is a recurring meme here at EIP…BBC bias. The article is written by former BBC producer Antony Jay, and is an abridged extract from 'Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer,' which is due to be published in Britain today. Here’s Mr. Jay’s conclusion:

Media liberal pressure has prompted a stream of laws, regulations and directives to champion the criminal against the police, the child against the school, the patient against the hospital, the employee against the company, the soldier against the army, the borrower against the bank, the convict against the prison - there is a new case in the papers almost every day, and each victory is a small erosion of the efficiency and effectiveness of the institution.

I can now see that my old BBC media liberalism was not a basis for government. It was an ideology of opposition, valuable for restraining the excesses of institutions and campaigning against the abuses of authority but it was not a way of actually running anything. It serves a vital function when government is dictatorial and oppressive, but when government is ineffective and over-permissive it is hopelessly inappropriate.

I can't deny that my perceptions have come through the experience of leaving the BBC. Suppose I had stayed. Would I have remained a devotee of the metropolitan media liberal ideology that I once absorbed so readily? I have an awful fear that the answer is yes.

I’ve given you the destination right up front but it’s the journey, Gentle Reader, that is illuminating and entertaining. Which is a left-handed way of saying the usual: “read the whole thing.”

Kris (in New England!) is celebrating her 24^th wedding anniversary today. Why don’t you take a minute and drop by her place to wish her a Happy? She has a beautiful wedding picture posted, too. Just another lil incentive, ya know…

A New Mexico claim to fame… Today is the anniversary of the first nuclear explosion in history, which happened on this day in 1945. Trinity occurred 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what is now White Sands Missile Range. White Sands hosts an “open house” at the Trinity site twice a year; the next one is scheduled for October 6 of this year. I think I’m gonna go.

Today is also the anniversary of the installation of the first parking meter.

The world's first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City, on July 16, 1935. Mr. Magee had been appointed to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce traffic committee, and was assigned the task of solving the parking problems in downtown Oklahoma City. Apparently, folks who worked in the area were parking on downtown streets, staying all day, and leaving few spaces for shoppers and others who visited the central business district.

I don’t know which anniversary (of the last two...certainly not Kris'!) is the greater tragedy.

Today’s Pic: An SN3 baby pic from the archives. Taken by TSMP, the caption could be “Look Mom, I got one out for ya!”

Perinton, NY. June, 1998.

The State of the State

Outside: 88 degrees, light rain, calm (yes…you read that correctly. It’s calm. Amazing.).

Inside: Coffee nearly finished (note the post time…I’m such a slug today), ditto the “normal rounds,” motivation lacking. News of the World unattended to and will likely remain so. Because, Gentle Reader, it’s Sunday.

Item of note: As promised, SN2 has put up more wedding pictures.

I may or may not be back today, depending on what I find in my miscellaneous meanderings.

All three pics taken about ten minutes ago. Pic Number One is the general environment; Pic Number Two is looking northeast...where the WX is pretty clear; Pic Number Three is looking southwest, where the rain is coming from. I do believe it's gonna rain off and on all day. Not good for the nine-to-fivers, but I'm totally ambivalent...not to rub it in, or anything. {insert smiley face thingie here}

Wedding Photos

I don’t want to steal Sam’s (SN2) thunder, but… I just had to share at least ONE wedding photo with all y’all. There are many more photos (five, to be exact... with more promised) at the link. Stasia was indeed a beautiful bride and Alex (her Beloved) is dashing in his dress blues. Those Jarhead uniforms are impressive; I’ll have to give them that. And SN2 is pretty impressive in his uniform, too.

You should go.

Stranger than Fiction

Here’s the strangest story I’ve read in a looong time, in today’s WaPo:

A grand feast of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp was winding down, and a group of friends was sitting on the back patio of a Capitol Hill home, sipping red wine. Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-year-old guest.

"Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he demanded, according to D.C. police and witness accounts.

The five other guests, including the girls' parents, froze -- and then one spoke.

"We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, blurted out. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"

The intruder took a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupéry and said, "Damn, that's good wine."

You just have to read the rest. I’d say (a) the dinner party guests were extremely fortunate and (b) I’m gonna go looking for some Chateau Malescot St-Exupéry. That’s gotta be great wine.

The NYT's Defeatism

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in New York’s City Journal:

On July 8, the New York Times ran an historic editorial entitled “The Road Home,” demanding an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. It is rare that an editorial gets almost everything wrong, but “The Road Home” pulls it off. Consider, point by point, its confused—and immoral—defeatism.

I saw the NYT editorial in question this past Sunday. It seemed like the entire ‘sphere was on about it, in one way or another (Shorter Left: “See? Told ya so!” Shorter Right: “Typical NYT. Terrorist lovers/enablers!”), so how could one miss it? As VDH notes, the editorial was “historic,” and not in a good way. I chose not to blog about this, but simply shook my head and thought “this really, really sucks.” The editorial, speaking as it does to the NYT’s core constituency (Blue America), certainly didn’t speak for me or to me…other than to demonstrate, as VDH notes, the sheer immorality of preaching defeat while the war is still in progress, not to mention the fact that the US’s new strategy has just now begun to be fully implemented and, oh-by-the-way, is showing positive results. As to the last point, VDH says:

We promised General Petraeus a hearing in September; it would be the height of folly to preempt that agreement by giving in to our summer of panic and despair. Critics called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a change in command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops. But now that we have a new secretary, a new command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops, suddenly we have a renewed demand for withdrawal before the agreed-upon September accounting—suggesting that the only constant in such harping was the assumption that Iraq was either hopeless or not worth the effort.

The “summer of panic and despair.” Interesting phraseology, that. I don’t think we —the nation— are in a “panic and despair” mode. I think Bush’s foes, and they are legion, smell blood in the water and are moving in for the kill. Panic and despair are just two emotions Bush’s enemies are using to manipulate public opinion into backing a premature withdrawal. It appears the strategy is working, now that the NYT has officially, rather than tacitly, signed on. It's a damned shame that Bush's political enemies are putting their partisan interests ahead of the nation's best interests. I never thought I'd see the day...

It’s getting uglier and uglier. And it certainly isn’t easy or fun being a member of that 30% or so of Americans who simply aren’t willing or able to accept an American defeat in Iraq. Especially when it looks like we can win it, if we want to. And that’s become the salient question: Do we want to win? It sure doesn’t look like it…

And now, Gentle Reader, I have to go out to Cannon Air Plane Patch for a doctor’s appointment. I’ll be back later.

Linkage

One the day’s more interesting reads, via Chap…a short biographical sketch of Robert Heinlein in Reason Magazine. July 7 was the centennial of Heinlein’s birth.

Heinlein venerated the armed forces, most notoriously in his 1959 novel Starship Troopers, which celebrated an elite military order. Just two years later, he was publishing the counterculture classic Stranger in a Strange Land, with its simultaneously beatific, sexy, and heroic vision of Martian-inspired communal living. A rich mix of bohemian and straight-arrow values, Heinlein's unique take on American individualism made him the bridge between such disparate '60s icons as Barry Goldwater and Charles Manson.

[…]

This one-two punch of curious, powerful novels (ed: Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land) seems to indicate two opposing strains of thought. But to Heinlein, these dueling visions-a world of sinister alien bugs fought off by powerfully disciplined soldiers, and a beatific Man from Mars teaching humanity how to love freely-had the same message, as he once wrote to his fellow S.F. writer Alfred Bester: "That a man, to be truly human, must be unhesitatingly willing at all times to lay down his life for his fellow man. Both [novels] are based on the twin concepts of love and duty-and how they are related to the survival of our race."

That quote, from a man so proud of his love of freedom he once joked that "Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me," shows yet another side to the Heinlein paradox. As a literary influence on the emerging libertarian movement, Heinlein was second only to Rand.

My dog-eared copy of Stranger in a Strange Land disappeared many, many moons ago after accompanying me most of the way around the world. While I didn’t read any of Heinlein’s books in “hard cover” (i.e., when they were first published), I had a huge collection of his works in paperback. I read Heinlein not because he was a master of science fiction, but because he (a) was a wonderful story teller and (b) I bought his philosophical vision of the world hook, line, and sinker. The man just made sense. I’m quite sure there’s not a single American male in my generation (and many more than a few women, as well) who hasn’t read at least one book by Heinlein. I’d put serious money on that bet.

Oh and by the way…Chap attended the Heinlein Centennial conference mentioned in that Reason article. His AAR is here. Interesting stuff, this.

Via Lex…Ralph Peters interviews General Petraeus in the NY Post. Excellent stuff. EXCELLENT.

Via Gerard…entries in Nikon’s “Nikon International Small World Competition” micro-photography contest. Some truly amazing photography here…and you can vote for your favorite!

The Nikon International Small World Competition first began in 1974 as a means to recognize and applaud the efforts of those involved with photography through the light microscope. Since then, Small World has become a leading showcase for photomicrographers from the widest array of scientific disciplines.

A photomicrograph is a technical document that can be of great significance to science or industry. But a good photomicrograph is also an image whose structure, color, composition, and content is an object of beauty, open to several levels of comprehension and appreciation.

[…]

The official judging for the 33rd Annual Small World Photomicrography Competition took place on May 10, 2007. The winners will be announced this fall, but we’re giving you the chance to pick your favorites among this year’s top entries. Click on the “Start Voting” button below to begin. You will be presented with a random image, which you may rate on a scale of 1 star to 5 stars (5 being the best). Have fun, and check back in this fall to see which of these images were the top selections of our distinguished judges panel.

My fave? This one: it’s Dr. Stephen Nagy’s photo of “Navicula clavata var indica (Greville) Cleve (375x).” Which is one of many (speculating, I am) Montana diatoms…I only know coz the brief explanation accompanying the photo sez so. At any rate, if you’re into photography, you’ll enjoy this.

Gerard has lotsa other good links, as well, including this one (looks like I quit smoking too soon) and this highly entertaining “Periodic Table of the Internet,” which ranks web sites in an unusual and interesting way.

Good News

Good news for both Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt and the US Marine Corps: The AP reports the outcome of the Article 32 investigation surrounding the events in Haditha in November of 2005…the events described by Congressman Murtha as “cold blooded murder” (I paraphrase). The AP:

The government's theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt had executed the three men was "incredible" and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis, Lt. Col. Paul Ware said in the report, released Tuesday by Sharratt's defense attorneys.

"To believe the government version of facts is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, and sets a dangerous precedent that, in my opinion, may encourage others to bear false witness against Marines as a tactic to erode public support of the Marine Corps and mission in Iraq," Ware wrote.

On the other hand, just who was it that developed the government’s case, to begin with? I ask because this isn’t the first time an Article 32 inquiry has rejected courts martial for the alleged crime(s) committed at Haditha.

It is the second time an investigating officer has recommended charges not continue to trial in the killings. In the case of Marine lawyer Capt. Randy W. Stone, the investigating officer recommended his dereliction of duty charge be dealt with administratively.

Our efforts to wage a “kinder and gentler” sort of war are admirable, according to Western classical liberal values, less so to jihadists and their sympathizers. And much less so when these “kinder” efforts get in the way of actual…you know…war fighting. Thank GOD for the UCMJ and its processes and procedures that guarantee the rights of the accused. And while I’m at it, thank God for the integrity of the officers charged with examining the facts and making appropriate recommendations, especially in this case. Other wise, Murtha and the media would have strung these Marines up at least a year ago.

Now the question being asked all over the Right side of the blogosphere is: “Will Murtha apologize?” Sure he will…and Satan his-own-self will be distributing pitchers of ice water in Hell around the same time.

Today’s Pic(s): Another ride I lust after, from the same car show I posted a pic from yesterday. This time it’s an early Corvette (1956, I think) done up in a questionable color scheme. Orange? ORANGE? What was GM thinking? And why did people actually buy orange ‘Vettes, when there were other, much more pleasing colors produced that year (the aqua/white combination comes to mind…more colors here)? I suppose it all goes to prove that taste is indeed in one’s mouth…

Amarillo, TX. March, 2004.

Update: I found a '56 Vette brochure and orange wasn't a production color scheme in 1956. So this means this particular car either isn't a 1956 Vette or the owner repainted the car and installed orange seats, mats, etc. That's a lot of work and is a pretty rare occurrence in the Vintage Car game; most owners elect to keep restorations of the sort pictured here "stock." I'm leaning toward the opinion this particular car is a '57...or a '58... Whatever. Orange is still a crappy color IM(not so)HO.

Dream Car

Well. Today’s self-imposed post-by-noon deadline has been well and truly blown, nu? I don’t have much to offer in the way of excuses, aside from the usual late-night and other variations on that theme. Well, one slight addition: I spent the morning outside, taking advantage of the cooler temps, drinking coffee, and batting the breeze with the neighbor lady, which activities were both refreshing and entertaining.

The upshot is I haven’t really paid attention to the usual blog-fodder, e.g., the outrage of the day and other such subjects. So, just for a change of pace: a flight of fancy.

Pictured is my Dream Car…in yellow. If I (a) bought tickets and (b) actually won a significant lottery prize, I’d have one of these babies…in black. Or maybe green like the Green Hornet. It would be a small-block…the 302…not the 427. Coz I’m all about balance. And keeping my license. And not buying rear tires every 1,000 miles or so. It should go without sayin’ that the car would be a genuine Shelby, and not one of the thousands of ersatz Cobras (read that: kit cars; not that there's anything wrong with kit-cars) that roam the highways and byways in the US of A.

I saw the car in the pictures at a car show in Amarillo and got to chat a bit with the owner. The man was as proud of that car as he is of his kids…and said so. I suppose I would be, too.

Amarillo, TX. March, 2004.

PSAs are Different in Europe...

Note: you might not want to view this at work. While there is no nudity or naughty bits on display, the theme is most definitely sexual in nature.


PSA being, of course, Public Service Announcement. By the way, this clip has been viewed 3,237,209 times (as of this writing) and provoked 665 comments...not all of which I've read.

My reaction? Meh. So what, already?

h/t: Cassandra

Would Someone Turn Down the Heat? Please?

It's hot...89 degrees at 1145 a.m. And it's gonna get jes a lil bit hotter before it's all over today. But it ain't as hot in P-Town as it is in some places here in the US of A...

So…I wander off to the Daily Mail’s site today to read yet another snarky article about Live Earth (“Live Earth has been branded a foul-mouthed flop”) and what do I find? Gossip about Jack Nicholson. Good gossip. With photos of Jack and friends (all female) letting it all hang out (in Jack’s case, not the friends, unfortunately) in the south of France.

I just couldn’t resist, Gentle Reader, coz I luvs me some Nicholson. Didja ever see “Five Easy Pieces?” Early Jack, CLASSIC Jack. One of his best. There sure is a world of difference between the Nicholson of 35+ years ago and the Nicholson of today. But Hey! We all get older. Would that we all could holiday in the south of France in the company of Sweet Young Thangs.

Just sayin’.

Speaking of Live Earth… “Skeptical of Performers’ Motives, Public Tunes Out Live Earth Event.” No comment; I’ve wasted enough bandwidth on this subject. No, I didn’t watch…in real-time OR via streaming vid.

World Net Daily, one of the… uh …more interesting… British tabloids has a good article on Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Party of Liberation, backed up with audio clips of speeches and interviews with several Islamist radicals. It’s the audio clips that are worth the going. While the article claims “nearly 3,000” Muslims attended a rally outside a London mosque featuring radical Islamist speakers, the audience in the clips sounds like it’s composed of tens, perhaps hundreds, of people responding to the speakers’ exhortations. Still and even, this is chilling stuff.

Today’s Pic: A whimsical fish sculpture that caught my eye while at a gallery outside of Tucson, AZ. As always, click for larger.

February, 2004.

Biding Our Time, Talkers, and Another Late Night

Maybe we should just wait for the mullahs to self-destruct. That’s the thrust of this Forbes article on Iran.

Oil provides more than 70% of the revenues of the government of Iran. The rise in oil prices has been a bonanza for the regime, allowing them to subsidize all sorts of welfare programs at home and mischief abroad. And one of the chief subsidies is gasoline prices.

Gasoline costs about $.34 cents a gallon in Iran, or 9 cents a liter. You can fill up your Honda Civic for $4.49. In the U.S. it costs almost $40. In neighboring Turkey it costs almost $95. Iran is spending 38% of its national budget (almost 15% of gross domestic product) on gasoline subsidies!

And this situation is likely to get worse. Let's look at a rather remarkable peer-reviewed study done for the National Academy of Sciences by Roger Stern of Johns Hopkins University late last year. Stern's analysis is somewhat political, in that he is critical of current U.S. Iranian policy, but this is just one of several studies that show the same thing:

"A more probable scenario is that, absent some change in Irani policy ... [we will see] exports declining to zero by 2014 to 2015. Energy subsidies, hostility to foreign investment and inefficiencies of its state-planned economy underlie Iran's problem, which has no relation to 'peak oil.' "

Given the reaction to the recently imposed gas rationing one can surmise the pressure cooker will blow when the subsidies go away for good, as they most certainly will. Yet that will probably be a temporary reaction and it’s anybody’s guess if higher gasoline prices will really be enough to topple the government. It’s but one issue in an economy that has been seriously mismanaged and is almost totally lacking in foreign investment and associated technical expertise.

I’m heartened by the article. But it also brings to mind the ol’ cliché… “be careful what you wish for.” In this case, however, it’s pretty hard to conceive of any alternative to the theocracy as being worse for the Iranians or ourselves.

Myth busters?

WASHINGTON, JUL 6: A team of researchers found there is not much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking when you actually count the words.

The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to ten days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669. The difference: 546 words: “Not statistically significant,” say the researchers in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

[…]

They were surprised when a magazine article asserted that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men.

If there had been that big a difference, he thought, they should have noticed it.

They found that the 20,000-7,000 figures have been used in popular books and magazines for years. But they could not find any research supporting them.

Mmmm-kay. If you say so. Me? I’m going with my gut on this one. And my gut tells me the UT researchers are wrong.

Just sayin’. (In as few words as possible.)

So. Another late night, Gentle Reader. But this time there was a reason…I got caught up in The History Channel’s broadcast of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart and didn’t get to sleep until after the movie was over at 0200 hrs this morning. I’m not generally a movie guy, but this one grabbed me. Old news for those of you who are movie people, I’m sure. Aside from enjoying the Hell out of the movie, the upshot is I poured today’s first cup shortly after 1100 hrs. Half the day was gone before it even began…

Today’s Pic: Mucking around in the depths of the archives, again. Here’s SN3 and I, and Bob-O ain’t too very pleased about being retrieved from his puddle-stomping fun during a summer rainstorm on the Fourth of July…nine years ago.

Perinton, NY. July, 1998. (As always: click for larger.)

I Said I Might. Well, I DID...

Stay with it to the end...

It Ain't Easy Being Green

In the “For What It’s Worth” Dept… London’s Daily Mail has an analysis of how green (or not) the Live Earth concerts are. I learned something by reading this… (a) Live Earth ain’t green at all (the promoters are purchasing one million Pounds Sterling worth of carbon off-sets to compensate for LE excesses) and (b) Madonna owns a Maybach, two Range Rovers (models unspecified), an Audi A8, and a Mini Cooper S. OK, she ain’t Jay Leno. But those are still some serious gas hogs. And she’s gonna tell me how to reduce my carbon footprint or otherwise Save The Planet? YaGottaBeKiddingMe.

Mark Steyn, at The Corner:

I want to bequeath the wonders of this earth to the next generation, but I worry that my grandchildren will never know the feeling that you've totally demonstrated your tremendous concern and commitment to taking action just by going to a concert and staying until halfway through the George Michael set when he started doing stuff from the new album. I worry that my grandchildren will never know the thrill of being hectored by Bono and Bob Geldof, and that many already rare species will simply vanish from the earth - Seventies supergroups who've not yet had a long-awaited charity-gala reunion, hot young acts who haven't had the chance to cover "Imagine" with the lights down and everybody in the stadium holding disposable lighters, Eighties girl groups who've not yet reunited for a Playboy shoot, the last three celebrities who haven't duetted with Elton John, bald-headed Eagles doing the 50th anniversary performance of "Hotel California"...

Oh. One more thing. Will I be watching? I’m undecided at this point. Probably not.

And now for something REALLY stupid… Will Her Face Determine His Fortune? Is this the New York Times or The National Enquirer? OK, the prose gives it away, I suppose. But, still. A newspaper with pretensions of being “serious” actually asks the question “Is America ready for a president with a trophy wife?” Must be a slow news day.

But, Hey! Mrs. Fred is a stunner. That’s about as far as I’d go, other than having an occasional private fit of jealousy. I mean...the man is two years older than me. Why am I not with a woman like that? (The question is rhetorical: snarky answers in comments will be deleted.) (OK, not really. The "delete" bit.) (Snark away, if'n it serves ya.)

Here’s some good news on the technology front… “New battery packs powerful punch.”

A new type of a room-size battery, however, may be poised to store energy for the nation's vast electric grid almost as easily as a reservoir stockpiles water, transforming the way power is delivered to homes and businesses. Compared with other utility-scale batteries plagued by limited life spans or unwieldy bulk, the sodium-sulfur battery is compact, long-lasting and efficient.

Using so-called NaS batteries, utilities could defer for years, and possibly even avoid, construction of new transmission lines, substations and power plants, says analyst Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. They make wind power — wildly popular but frustratingly intermittent — a more reliable resource. And they provide backup power in case of outages, such as the one that hit New York City last week.

We’re talking about megawatt-plus batteries here. And they ain’t cheap, yet. Mass-production is expected to bring costs down, and that’s a good thing.

Venus Williams wins Wimbeldon…the men’s final is tomorrow. Ms. Williams was the 23^rd seed; this is her fourth Wimbeldon title. Good on her!

Today’s Pic: Scraping the bottom of the archives…again. Here’s an old photo I e-mailed to SN3 back in 2004, that being YrHmblScrb and one of his best buddies, at the time. The Best Bud is Dandy, the ex-GF’s cocker spaniel. Someday I might post a video of him running around the house destroying things.

Clovis, NM. February, 2004.

Doings on The Fourth

You may have heard the U.S. military had a large re-enlistment ceremony, followed by an equally large naturalization ceremony, at Camp Victory in Baghdad Wednesday. Fox News had a brief segment on the affair yesterday. Here’s an excerpt from the CENTCOM press release:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Hundreds of troops gathered at Al Faw Palace for the Multi-National Force-Iraq Reenlistment, Naturalization and Independence Day Ceremony July 4 at Camp Victory.

During the ceremony, 588 troops reenlisted and 161 were naturalized as American citizens. Army Gen. David Petraeus, commanding general, MNF-I, gave opening remarks before administering the Oath of Enlistment.

[…]

"This morning we pay tribute to the American ideals we all hold so dear in several significant ways,” he said. “First, by conducting what surely is the largest reenlistment event ever held in Iraq and perhaps in our Armed Forces’ history, then by celebrating the granting of American citizenship to a group of troopers who have already pledged their loyalty to our nation by putting their lives on the line for it, and finally by observing the 231st birthday of our great country.”

Petraeus said the troops who reenlisted on Independence Day, most while serving on a second or third deployment to a combat zone, have made a decision based on far more than any bonus they may receive.

“No bonus, no matter the size, can adequately compensate you for the contribution each of you has made and continues to make as a custodian of our nation’s defenses,” he said. “Nor can any amount of money compensate you adequately for the sacrifices you make serving here in Iraq or the burdens your loved ones face at home in your absence. And we certainly cannot put a price on the freedoms you defend or those we are trying to help the Iraqis establish and safeguard here in the land of the two rivers.”

Petraeus then dedicated the Independence Day ceremony in honor of two Soldiers who died fighting for America before they could be sworn in as citizens.

“Sgt. Kimel Watt and Spc. Farid Elazzouzi, who would have been in your ranks here this morning, were lost in recent combat action, giving the last full measure of devotion for a country that would have become fully theirs today,” Petraeus said. “Words can not express the admiration I feel for these two men or the sadness I feel for our nation’s loss and their families’ sacrifice.”

Petraeus said the deaths are reminders that freedom comes at a very high cost, which must never be forgotten. Like these two Soldiers, who fought and died with the American flag on their shoulders, he said the troops being naturalized as U.S. citizens were most deserving.

That’s a lot of troops re-upping in a single place, and, as General Petraeus indicates, it may well be a record for a mass re-enlistment. I’m also awed by the fact that 161 troops completed the requirements for citizenship and are now naturalized citizens. Those men and women have earned their right to be called Americans.

Congratulations to all, but especially to the newly-minted United States citizens.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco… The Fourth of July celebrations took an entirely different tack. You can’t make this stuff up. Much, much more at ZombieTime’s place, from whence I took this illustration.

The mind boggles, it does. I mean, on the one hand 588 troops re-enlist in our armed forces, in Iraq. And on the other? Some "artist" creates krep like this, not to mention the other , more spectacularly offensive abominations on public display? And there's actually an audience for stuff like this?

Words fail me, they really do.

Wish I'd Have Found This Yesterday...

We’re not all of us language-people. But…for those who just might be such a person, I offer “The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence.”

The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration.(1) This essay seeks to illuminate that artistry by probing the discourse microscopically--at the level of the sentence, phrase, word, and syllable. By approaching the Declaration in this way, we can shed light both on its literary qualities and on its rhetorical power as a work designed to convince a "candid world" that the American colonies were justified in seeking to establish themselves as an independent nation.(2)

[…]

Like the introduction, the next section of the Declaration--usually referred to as the preamble--is universal in tone and scope. It contains no explicit reference to the British- American conflict, but outlines a general philosophy of government that makes revolution justifiable, even meritorious:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Like the rest of the Declaration, the preamble is "brief, free of verbiage, a model of clear, concise, simple statement."(11) It capsulizes in five sentences--202--words what it took John Locke thousands of words to explain in his Second Treatise of Government. Each word is chosen and placed to achieve maximum impact. Each clause is indispensable to the progression of thought. Each sentence is carefully constructed internally and in relation to what precedes and follows. In its ability to compress complex ideas into a brief, clear statement, the preamble is a paradigm of eighteenth-century Enlightenment prose style, in which purity, simplicity, directness, precision, and, above all, perspicuity were the highest rhetorical and literary virtues. One word follows another with complete inevitability of sound and meaning. Not one word can be moved or replaced without disrupting the balance and harmony of the entire preamble.

I don’t know just how many times I’ve read the Declaration of Independence, but it’s been more than a few. One cannot read the document without a sense of wonder at the magnificence of the words and the way they’re put together. That said, I’ve never read an analysis of the style, thought, and historical/political precedents that went into the composition of the document. This “Stylistic Artistry” essay is one of those rare things one finds on the ‘net: A Keeper. Duly saved in my “Important Stuff” directory.

A BIG hat tip to Gerard for this…it’s on his sidebar.

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So. I stole this from SJBill at The Flight Deck (the kewl adjunct to Lex’s blog) while making the rounds this morning.

I’m pretty sure the term “fusion music” is passé, and in any event, the term originally applied to jazz-rock back in the 70’s or so. But “fusion” was the first word that came to mind when I saw this vid, what with the hip-hop style singing and the Nugent-like speed metal guitar. Not generally My Cuppa, but I sorta like this, and it could grow on me. The subject matter certainly doesn’t hurt any.

Speaking of “hurt”… You know the day isn’t gonna be all that good when the first thing you do… before you even start the coffee… is pop a couple of Aleves. I woke up with intense pain in both legs this morning, reason(s) unknown. The only comfortable position I could assume was standing; I couldn’t sit nor lay down. Comfortably, anyway. And I tried, thinking I’d lie down and stretch out my legs/back until the coffee was done brewing. No dice. So I sorta stood in the kitchen and watched the coffee dribble into the pot, which, of course, brought to mind the ol’ saw about “watched pots” and “boiling,” and all that. But finally the coffee was done. Then the Aleve kicked in about half-way through my first cup. And life looks a bit better now. I’m still at a loss to explain why the pain existed.

Back in a few.

Independence Day

We’re celebrating the birth of our nation all over America today…in cities, towns, and villages…large, small and in-between. There will be parades, speeches, street dances, bar-b-ques, and flags galore. And tonight we’ll ooh and ahh over the pyrotechnic displays, as we do every year. It’s a wonderful occasion, a time to celebrate our greatness and our goodness. We’ve done wonderful and marvelous things over the past 231 years and we’ll do continue to do great things as we move into the 21^st century. We 300 million people who live in this country are uniquely privileged to call ourselves “Americans” and have every right to be proud of what we’ve built and continue to build.

Celebrate!

Happy Birthday, USA. May there be many, many more.

Today's Pics were taken July 4, 2004 at the Eastern New Mexico University baseball field.

No Time

On Libby not doing time…here’s the President’s statement, released by the White House when the clemency decision was announced last evening.

This case has generated significant commentary and debate. Critics of the investigation have argued that a special counsel should not have been appointed, nor should the investigation have been pursued after the Justice Department learned who leaked Ms. Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak. Furthermore, the critics point out that neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation. Finally, critics say the punishment does not fit the crime: Mr. Libby was a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service and was handed a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury.

Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.

Both critics and defenders of this investigation have made important points. I have made my own evaluation. In preparing for the decision I am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.

[…]

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting. (emphasis mine)

It’s the last bit that’s important. Assuming his appeal is not successful, Mr. Libby will be disbarred and most likely will never work in government again. Even if his conviction is overturned on appeal, he will still go through life suffering the stigma of the trial and all the notoriety that trial engendered. At that IS significant. The howlers on the Left who are vociferously protesting the commutation weren’t all that concerned about Mr. Libby, they wanted someone… anyone …to serve hard time as penance for the “crimes” committed by the Bu$Hitler regime.

As for Mr. Libby’s future prospects, doubtless he’ll continue to make a good living as a consultant or principal at some place like The American Enterprise Institute. And I’m sure that will piss off the howlers, too.

Speaking of howlers…Here are The Mothers of Them All. The whole blog has been “All Plame, All the Time” for the past 18 months or so…however long this whole travesty has been going on. Hardin-Smith, Hamsher, et al, are simply livid about the commutation. I particularly like these bits, from Hardin-Smith:

I’m going to say something shocking this morning: thank you, George Bush. For months and months, I have sat here at my laptop, tap, tap, tapping away at article after article illustrating your utter disregard for the law, your disregard of the principles on which this nation was founded, and your failure to recognize that there are higher laws than what George Bush wants at the moment. With one commutation of sentence, W, you just handed us the next election — the White House, a much stronger hand in Congress, and a club to beat your party with for years to come: you think you are better than the rest of us, and that the laws don’t apply to you.

With one stroke of your pen yesterday, you managed to illustrate all of that perfectly with a single action of “my people don’t have to live with the same punishment that you little people do.”

BDS. There is no cure.

Today’s Pic: Yesterday a couple of commenters remarked upon granddaughter Stasia’s 1,000 watt smile. Well, I went looking through the archives this morning and found this quick grab-shot of Stasia in the Green Hornet’s passenger seat just as we’re about to wind our way down Lombard Street during SN2 and Family’s visit to SFO a few years back. Fetching, ain’t she?

San Francisco. July, 2001.

A Hot Summer's Day

Yesterday’s NYT magazine had a pretty good article on Wikipedia and the folks who make it “go”…its admins. Interesting stuff. I’m a BIG Wikipedia fan, in case you haven’t noticed. And while I’ll usually put in the standard “grain of salt” disclaimer whenever I cite the wiki on a controversial subject, I’ve never really seen (with my own eyes) blatant bias or anything less than an absolutely neutral point of view in any Wikipedia article.

Wikipedia may not exactly be a font of truth, but it does go against the current of what has happened to the notion of truth. The easy global dissemination of, well, everything has generated a D.I.Y. culture of proud subjectivity, a culture that has spread even to relatively traditional forms like television — as in the ascent of advocates like Lou Dobbs or Bill O’Reilly, whose appeal lies precisely in their subjectivity even as they name-check “neutrality” to cover all sorts of journalistic sins. But the Wikipedians, most of them born in the information age, have tasked themselves with weeding that subjectivity not just out of one another’s discourse but also out of their own. They may not be able to do any actual reporting from their bedrooms or dorm rooms or hotel rooms, but they can police bias, and they do it with a passion that’s no less impressive for its occasional excess of piety. Who taught them this? It’s a mystery; but they are teaching it to one another.

Well, I wouldn’t be “weeding out subjectivity out of my own discourse.” But that’s an entirely appropriate thing to do with the Wiki. Good job, Wikipedians!

I can’t believe I let the publication of a report by the BBC (PDF alert!) on its internal investigation into bias slip right by without comment. I know I read it and I know I read a lot of the comment surrounding the report by pundits in the British media and elsewhere. My lack of a post about the report is sort of mysterious (to me, anyway), given the Beeb’s bias has been the subject of a lot of ranting on my part. The BBC and its “unique” viewpoint has long been a hot button of mine.

So, anyway… along comes Robin Aitken, a veteran of 25 years of reporting for the BBC and author of a book titled “Can We trust the BBC?”, writing in yesterday’s WSJ on this subject.

I experienced a sense of vindication recently when I read that the BBC was about to publish a document admitting a pervasive liberal-left bias in its output. As this was the theme of my recent book, "Can We Trust the BBC?," it seemed I would be able to indulge in a spectacular bout of I-told-you-so-ing. Alas, that brief, heady moment proved premature. For while the report is a careful piece of research, it pulls its punches when it comes to bias within its own News and Current Affairs department--where it matters most. Richard Tait, chairman of the BBC's "Impartiality Steering Group," point-blank denied that there is any bias in its news output. The Beeb has never been distinguished by a culture of robust self-criticism.

[…]

And there has been wide-scale failure. On every issue of public policy and political controversy, the BBC's instincts are to side with the progressive, liberal wing of politics.

The war in Iraq? Opinion within the London newsrooms was overwhelmingly opposed to military action from the start and has never wavered since. Man-made climate change? The BBC has jettisoned all semblance of impartiality on the issue; it now openly campaigns with a constant stream of scare stories. The Arab-Israeli conflict? The BBC's sympathies are firmly on the side of the Palestinians, who, having achieved the status of permanent victims, escape skeptical examination of their actions and motives.

“OK,” sez you, “What’s the difference between the Beeb, and say, NBC or CNN? Isn’t the entire media biased, by definition?” Well, yes, that’s true insofar as it goes. The difference is reach and reputation. With the exception of CNN, the American print and electronic media are remarkably insular. Their audience(s) isn’t in Syria, Gambia, or Kazakhstan, it’s in the US of A. The Beeb, on the other hand, has a truly global reach and a reputation (however tarnished, of late) for impartiality and fairness in their reporting. Multiple generations in the former Soviet bloc grew up thinking “The News” and the BBC World Service was synonymous; the Beeb was one of best weapons the West had in winning the Cold War. Today’s listeners/viewers get a radically different slant on their news…what the West (read: The UK and the USA) does, is, and stands for is nearly always suspect if not outright wrong. It’s arguable as to whose side the Beeb is on in today’s Information War. A neutral person would suspect their sympathies lie with our enemies, based upon the Beeb’s day-to-day reporting. And I’m not the only one who notices. The trick is doing something about the problem.

For those of you who blog and use Site Meter…are you having issues with Site Meter today? As of 1155 hrs, SM sez I’ve had zero visitors today, now that I’ve finally managed to get SM to actually, ya know…load. Up until about 20 minutes ago all I got was a cryptic MS/IIS system message about scripts failing to run properly and timing out before completion (“The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeout or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.”). It appears that the only thing that’s actually working in Site Meter right now is the Summary Page (with no current data); all other reports and functions are “currently unavailable” and I should “Please wait a few minutes and try again.” All in all, this doesn’t look good.

Summer is well and truly here and the AC is quietly humming loudly droning away. Those of you familiar with RVs know that the AC units are roof-mounted; mine sits just about three feet behind and to the left of me as I sit at the desk. I’m only about 18 inches shy of being able to reach out to touch the thing from where I sit. The noise and vibration, which are considerable, tends to get to you after a while, but it’s certainly better than the heat…which is already present. It’s 85 degrees as I write, on it’s way to somewhere north of 90 today. I love it. Except for the noise. It’s always sum’thin, ya know.

Today’s Pics: That little girl outlined in the top photo, who is the graduate in the photo taken just last year, is getting married this coming Thursday. My granddaughter, married. I don’t have any serious issues with the concept, Gentle Reader, aside from not being able to attend the wedding (poor planning on my part, let’s leave it at that). But the intellectual concept, as in “they DO grow up,” is much, much different than reality smacking you in the face: You’re old and getting a whole helluva lot older, with each passing day. Aiiieeee.

Family photo: Rochester, NY. Spring, 1997.

Graduation photo: Brunswick, Maine. June, 2006.