in case you missed it

John Nichol's op-ed on O'Reilly's "thing" against San Francisco, and such...

nostalgia

I really miss optimism.

I think it's partly a factor of age; over time, you see a lot of failures. They accumulate in your mind. Now, almost nothing seems likely to succeed.

I've been attending a software conference this week, and it just seems so 90's to me. Except that, in the 90's, it really was true. We were going to solve problems, do great things for business, advance our profession, be heroes.

But that bubble burst, along with a lot of other bursting things. Now here we are, 2005, it's getting harder to muster that kind of enthusiasm. Now I just want to get the budget passed, keep my projects from self-destructing, and try to ignore the ignorance and poor decision making I see around me.

ephemera of the 40's & 50's

Cool site, Ephemera Now. Ephemera from the 40's and 50's, mostly advertising.

Is it just me or does she seem a little "twisted"?











Also from this site, I think I've found the perfect main course for the Dr-Pepper-Aspic "appetizer"!:


"Ham Shortcakes with Pea Sauce" Yummy!











What a nightmare. It's no wonder the kids started turning to drugs in the sixties.

oh and here's another.... "Peas in Potato Boats"...














Dear GOD what was up with the peas?

whatever!

<<<< American Girl Dolls --- the new face of Angry Lesbian Abortionists!

Geez what a twisted organization the American Family Association appears to be. They came to my attention because of their recent call to boycott American Girl dolls for that company's association with the 140-year old pro-girl organization Girls, Inc.

I try not to think too much about organizations such as AFA because their idiocy hurts my brain. Their characterization of Girls Inc as pro-lesbian, pro-abortion is just the kind of fascist extremism we've come to expect from the maleficent religious right. It's truly painful to think how many people who would've ended up decent, honest and righteous instead fall prey to AFA's depraved and soulless rhetoric, and end up wasting their lives in a mire of voyeuristic hate mongering and intolerance.

So as I said, I just try not to think too much about it.

But curiosity got the better of me today.

Search on "torture" at their site and OMG, they cannot TELL you enough about Yahoo. Seems, um, Yahoo allowed SM/BD groups to organize through their online community service. Seems someone at AFA found out about this ---- hmmm, I wonder how?

The real torture of real prisoners is far less of a concern for these christians. Not a single comment, article, headline, news release anywhere on their site --- save for one obscure case where an inmate in China was purportedly beaten for converting other prisoners to Christianity. At least they reported that. It seems the torture of muslims in american prisons, however, is A-OK with these kind folks, cause there was nary a word about it.

Their rabid anti-gay position can only be understood if you believe that homosexuals "choose" homosexuality --- or are somehow "forced" into it --- and the only people who could have come up with that theory are latent homosexuals who are "choosing" heterosexuality, unhappily at that.

In fact, their panicked response to anything having to do with sex belies their fundamental problem: they are just not getting any.

Each one of these fools needs to get with the partner of their choice, be it spouse, lover, or inanimate object, and treat themselves to a long and luxurious fuck. Maybe then things would seem right with the world again.

But imagine having to go home to old "Sue" here. Bet sleeping with her is a real treat.

And the whole pornography thing anyway. That's a whole 'nother thing. I wish women would just RELAX and CALM DOWN about it. For crying out loud, you know? The amount of total hysteria, of tears and ruined evenings generated by something so innocuous... sometimes I really think women have just lost their minds.

My advice on porn: It's like PMS. Men don't like PMS but they learn to live with it. When you get a woman, there's a good chance she's bringing along a little PMS. When you get a man, be prepared for a little porn to come along with him, like it or not. Best get used to it. It's really not so bad.

a frog?! c'mon!

I took the cute animal quiz, and well, let's just say I'm less than pleased with my results.

You Are A: Frog!

Independent yet still part of a large community, frogs are unique creatures known for their distinctive sound and ability to hop. As a frog, you spend your days sitting on lily pads or climbing trees, searching for delicious insects to eat. While there are some frogs that aren't exactly cute, you are certainly not one of those!

You were almost a: Duck or a Mouse
You are least like a: Groundhog or a PuppyCute Animal Test!

dream catcher

At 2.4km long, and 270m above the river at its highest point, the Millau viaduct (Millau, France) spans a 2km valley in the Massif Central mountain range and forms the final link in the A75 highway from Paris to Barcelona. Despite its huge length, journey time over the structure is expected to be just one minute.

Surprisingly, the design for this bridge came directly from my own personal recurring nightmare.

More pics from The Guardian.

excuses excuses

Been very busy lately; not much time or energy left for posting.

For one thing, the transmission went on my 2002 Buick Regal with 40,000 miles on it, spinning off a flurry of daily-life aggravations which finally culminated in the purchase of a 2005 Pontiac Vibe:



which has so far been quite a bit of fun, but may represent my last outing with GM if I don't have better luck this time. Hovering around 30 mpg, with a mix of city and highway commuting in case you are wondering.

Then, I have been quite exhausted from skipping gleefully down hallways and dancing in the street as I contemplate the imminent unraveling of the Bushcabal and the neocon doomsday machine that appears to be unfolding at long last, before our very eyes.



If only. If only I could be happy about it. It's like being happy to be rid of a toothache, but then realizing that half your teeth are gone. Or something like that.

Hard to be happy when you consider the big stinking pile of deficit, deceit and bad karma they will be leaving behind. Sigh.

worst. recipe. ever.

There might be a more disgusting recipe out there, but this one is just a bad idea; from concept through execution.



Dr. Pepper, aspic, and green olives. A bad idea. Very Bad.

From the Gallery of Regrettable Foods.

Warning: not for the easily nauseated.

the neocon war on poverty

Are the neocons publicly sprouting a conscience? Hmm. When you listen to Bush (and the first lady) speaking about poverty, it's kind of embarrassing, really. His oblivion seems pubescent, somehow. Watching him gives me an uncomfortable feeling, like watching a kid go through puberty.

Assuming Bush is sincere about this --- a wild assumption I know --- you might be wondering what the neocon war on poverty will be like. Well probably a lot like their "war on terrorism." Ignoring common sense and any sound advice, fighting in the wrong place at the wrong time with too little resources and hopelessly mucking everything up.

Maybe they will start fighting poverty by attacking it at the source: taxes on the rich. Once they destroy the poverty cells among the wealthiest, the world will be a richer place for all of us.

Cleverly, they will ignore any tried and true methods. Just listen to this fellow, vice chairman of the American Conservative Union, as he tips their collective hand: "We all want to solve poverty," says Donald Devine. "The question is, will we do it the way we did it in 1932, or have we learned something since then?"

Hmmmm, yeah. Let's NOT do it in a way we know will work. Let's try something different that WON'T work, but won't make a single wealthy person give up a single cent because that would be AWFUL.

We've learned something all right. We've learned that when a neocon asks a question like that, he means "we're not doing anything we don't want to do. So THERE! bleah."

moba

If you haven't been here yet, gee, you just gotta see it to believe it.
Museum of Bad Art

the L word...

Libertarian: Just another word for "dick".


(Thanks to the Viscount for the inspiration.)

most distant explosion ever

Most Distant Explosion Detected, Smashes Previous Record

Scientists detected the burst using NASA's Swift satellite. Several ground-based telescopes, including the international Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR) in Chile, measured the astounding distance as the embers faded.

"This is uncharted territory," said Dr. Daniel Reichart, University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, who spearheaded the distance measurement. "This burst smashes the old distance record by 500 million light-years. We are finally starting to see the remnants of some of the oldest objects in the Universe," he added.

Plus, NASA has figured out you gotta have cool graphics or no one will pay attention, no matter what you discover.

obligatory 9/11 post

I feel obligated to do a 9/11 post, but I find I really don't have much I want to say.

In the last four years, our leadership has championed the erosion of our freedom, and squandered our collective surplus so that we are again plunged deeply into deficit, so deeply that we will probably never recover in my lifetime.

This same "leadership" has found ever new and meanspirited ways to divide us one against the other, until, in families, neighborhoods, and workplaces across the country, we find fellow Americans barely able to tolerate one another, if at all.

We see our leaders in league with an ever more extreme and shrill evangelical right who seem hell bent on destroying the very foundation of this great country, a foundation built solidly on the separation of church and state. Indeed, it is ever more clear and overt that their ultimate goal is to change this country into a theocracy, where religion is mandated by the state.

We find our government agencies have become so undermined, neglected and mismanaged that we are unable to respond in an effective manner to the chaos in New Orleans, or presumably anywhere else.

We've seen thousands of our own, and a hundred thousand Iraqis, die in a war, the point of which now appears to be simple bloodlust and greed.

We've seen the richer grow a great deal richer, while more and more Americans fall into poverty everyday. All the while, there is the specter of Bush, with a miserly grin, salivating over the jackpot--- social security. Make no mistake, social security reform is about opening up this huge pot of money, saved by and for the poor and middle class, to the talons of the richest of the rich.

I mean, it's just depressing. Could Osama have done any better, in his wildest dreams?

We have this lie going on, that somehow Bush showed "great leadership" after 9/11. He did not. He looked to any objective observer like a deer in the headlights just after the attack. And all he did after that was the absolute bare minimum of making a show of going down to the site, in an already emotionally charged atmosphere, and talking through a bullhorn. He never seemed to get his act together at all. He never came up with a plan. He never fixed any of the problems. Then he proceeded to pump that tragedy for every ounce of political gain he could, repeating it like a mantra to lull (or shame?) the masses into submission.

I admit I can't stand the guy. Rightwingers like to say "You just hate Bush, that's YOUR problem". Well heck, did they ever stop to think WHY? I wouldn't hate him if he wasn't a selfish, spoiled, meanspirited, shortsighted, anti-intellectual, arrogant, avaricious, prig and life-long loser who wouldn't cross the street to save the likes of me if I were drowning. Left to his own devices, without his daddy's money, that guy would be lucky to have a job frying hashbrowns at the nearby Waffle House.

So what am I going to say that you couldn't read on a thousand other blogs out there across the country today, or last week, or last year? Nothing.

Since I don't have anything nice to say, I should probably just shut up.

terragen

Photorealistic terrain generator (via Metafilter). I created this terrain in about 10 minutes, including install time for the software. This is just the kind of thing on which I can waste a lot of time...

essay on greed and ambition

For me, the defining moment of the Reagan years came in 1986 when Ivan Boesky gave his infamous speech on the positive aspects of greed at the University of California, during which he said "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself".

When I heard that, it made me feel sick. I wasn't sure exactly why, other than the obvious lack of ethical sensibility it showed. It made me feel deeply, personally offended; and it made me vaguely fear the future.

Years later, I have a better understanding of the problem. It seems the prime legacy of the Reagan years was to confuse the definitions of "ambition" and "greed" in popular culture. And now, the neocon movement defends "greed" as if it were ambition.

GREED is not the same as AMBITION:

Ambition: a cherished desire; "his ambition is to own his own business"; a strong drive for success

Greed: excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves; avarice: reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins)

"Ambition" is healthy. You can be "ambitious" and still feel good about yourself.

Ambition is a constructive force. It is part of what defines "greatness". It builds companies, expands the economy, creates jobs, increases wealth for others as well as the ambitious. It is the pursuit of an idea, and is driven by the imagination. The success or failure of the ambitious lies mainly in their own energy, strength and ingenuity.

Sometimes ambition wears an ugly, or at least unseemly, face, as the ambitious may do things that are harsh or unpopular. This seems to be where people get confused. The ambitious often must make difficult decisions, and sometimes can afford little indulgence for compassion or loyalty. Sometimes they even do things which are clearly unethical. The end result however, is sometimes great achievement.

Henry Ford was ambitious. Wendy's founder Dave Thomas was ambitious. Mary Kay Ash was ambitious, as was Martha Stewart, like her or not. All achieved their wealth through the pursuit of a vision.

But greed --- oh greed is a different thing entirely.

Greed is the prostitute of ambition.

Greed is the pursuit of wealth without vision, without imagination. Greed is a destructive force. Greed in a family can rip it apart. Greed in a corporation drives it into ruin. Greed in leadership can turn democracy into tyranny.

The success of the greedy depends on the indecencies they are willing to commit. How readily they cheat and steal, and how little they are willing to leave for others. Greed is quick and savage and does not consider the future, and therefore has little need of the ethics required to build relationships and institutions.

In fact, greed almost never builds anything, but it can fail spectacularly. Enron, of course, is the poster child of greed. But there are many lesser known corporations whose executives are well versed in the practice of greed, and they are stealing our futures, on scales large and small, by taking more than they deserve, and giving nothing back --- not vision, not leadership, not growth.

If you are an American wage earner, you have to worry that your company may be one of them. You have virtually no protection from these greedy, save for that provided by your government in laws and regulations created to favor ambition over greed.

The problem is, our current administration appears to be greedy, and not merely ambitious. With government on their side, the greedy can practice avarice overtly. Without the protection of our government, we are naked and exposed to any indecency they wish to commit.

A society led by the greedy cannot sustain itself for long.

a day in the life

Taken from the Mercury-bound Messenger spacecraft, here is one rotation of the earth, over one 24-hour period.

biloxi

One of my all-time favorite vacations was spent in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Most people wouldn't guess that about me.

I do not gamble --- at all. I don't even play the lottery. It is, to me, an unconscionable waste of both time and money. On top of that, I don't care much for the heat, or the beach, or the Southern drawl... Really, Biloxi seemed like about the last place on earth I would enjoy.

But it was summertime, and my husband was teaching a software class at one of the casinos, Isle of Capri, in Biloxi. He would be staying in the casino hotel for a week. My kids were away, and I had the vacation time, so I decided to go with him, rather on lark, as they say.

So I spent a week in Biloxi, on my own all day long, dinners and evenings with my husband. For me, just having the alone time was novel enough to begin with, and something I never can seem to get enough of.

The casinos were situated on barges lining the coastline, all along the one main road, route 90, which ran the length of the beach. There were trolley-style busses, that ran at regular intervals up and down the stretch, but I found I could also pretty much walk a good part of it, in a half hour or so.

The weather that week was warm but not brutally so; skies were clear, every day I think.

Each morning that week I got up, and started the day searching for a drinkable cup of coffee. The coffee was bad. Uniformly bad. I started with room service the first morning: Bad. Tasted like it came from an old boot. Then the next day I tried the hotel restaurant, thinking maybe it would be fresher or something. Not. Other days I wandered down the street to nearby hotels; always the same, and strangely, the same flavor of boot. One morning I even tried the French restaurant down the street at the Beau Rivage, the grandest resort on the stretch. I was certain the coffee there would be great. It was such a pretty restaurant, well decorated, yellow tablecloths and fresh flowers, nice waiters. But no, more eau de old boot. It tasted exactly the same as every other cup of coffee I’d had the whole week. Somehow, instead of being annoyed, it struck me as extremely funny.

I walked through almost every casino there, by myself. Sometimes I would take a break, and stop and look at the people gambling; the gamblers never noticed. But the casino-watchers watched me, I knew, it was kind of funny. I must have seemed out of place.

Certain times of the day, busses would roll in, bringing gamblers. Seems like a lot of them were in wheel-chairs. Seems like a lot of them smoked. Some of them I would see at the same slot machine, morning and evening. It was easy to imagine that they didn't really have the money to spend, a lot of them. I never talked to any of them.

Some afternoons I spent at the hotel pool with a margarita or two. I found the other hotel guests quite amusing. I remember there was a big cigar-smoking mom. And a young couple that I can only describe as hillbilly-esque, and I don't necessarily mean that in a nice way. They probably didn't think much of me either. But I got a tan, one of the few times in my life.

But beyond the casinos, there was more to Biloxi. There was a walkway between the beach and the main road, which I walked every day. They had a small aquarium, in which I spent an afternoon. I love aquariums, and enjoyed this one a lot, partly because I hadn’t expected it to be there. It seemed out of place next to the neon casino signs and hotels. It seemed like an earnest albeit less-than-successful attempt to bring a little science to the shoreline there.

One evening we took a dinner cruise. At 6 pm we boarded a paddle boat, which rode about 30 guests out a short distance from shore, where we enjoyed a very nice dinner, well prepared and presented. I remember the dining room had polished hardwood floors, and there was a jazz ensemble playing, and it was a beautiful evening. At dusk, we walked to the outside deck and watched the lights appear on the shore line.

One of the highlights for me was visiting Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis's home in Biloxi. I spent a whole day there. It was such an interesting historical site; the southern "bayou" architecture, a single story but raised up from the ground. There were historic maps and paintings, furniture, outbuildings, gardens, a little museum where I learned a lot about Jefferson Davis that I'd have never known.

(His first wife, Sarah Knox, was the daughter of President Zachary Taylor. They were evidently quite madly in love --- they eloped; but tragically, after three months of marriage, they both contracted malaria; when he came out of his fever, she was dead. Also, I learned that he was accused of posing as a woman to evade Yankee capture --- an accusation that was disputed. Davis's story was that in the heat of the moment, he'd mistakenly taken his wife's cloak instead of his own.)

On the last day, we checked out of the hotel and walked through the shopping section of the casino next door, and lo and behold, there was a Cinnabon, which somehow I'd missed previously. We got our last cup of coffee in Biloxi, and finally hit the java jackpot. It actually tasted like coffee.

I came away with a real fondness for the place. It wasn’t meant for people like me, so I saw it from a different angle. It seemed endearing in its fond desire to become a gambling city. It didn’t seem like it could ever quite pull it off. The rule of having to put all casinos on barges seemed an absurd limitation to me. But nevertheless, they did it. I don’t think I would have tried, personally.

After Katrina, I checked the web sites of Mississippi news stations to find out how the place fared. It was horrible to see the pictures; the casinos washed up on the shore, what awful devastation. People’s lives and livelihoods wrecked, some beyond repair. I was immensely saddened.

I searched for news on Beauvoir, but didn’t find much, until finally last night I found this:

Beauvoir was protected from high waters from its position on top of an incline, and about 65 percent of the main house still stands. The building has lost its front porch and columns, along with part of the first-floor library.

"We haven't lost it. The fact it's still standing is great news," said Waite Rawls, executive director of the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va. "It will be rebuilt. It's just a question of money."

I expect they’ll get the money. Whatever else about the South I might not like, they do love their history.

anyway

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable.
Be honest and transparent anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People who really want help may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt.
Give the world your best anyway.

Meditations From A Simple Path
~ by Mother Teresa~

Just thought a few words of tolerence might sound good right now.

monotheism: maybe not such a good idea

I remember late in elementary school, we learned about Greek and Roman mythology. One boy in the class asked if people "really believed" in Zeus and Apollo. When the teacher answered "Some did," the class giggled about "how stupid" people were.

Well, the kids I went to school with were mostly catholics and methodists, I knew. Good little atheist that I was, I remember thinking to myself, "how is this that much different than what you believe?"

But now I think, maybe the Greeks and Romans were on to something.

Because monotheism just doesn't work all that well. Not as an explanation for why the world is the way it is, anyway. It would be much easier to explain if there were, like, TWO gods at least.

Then we could have one god creating homosexuals to piss the other one off. The second god could then retaliate by sending hurricanes to the first god's favorite cities. One god could lure the other's high priests into molesting children, then for vengeance the second could could stir up some of his followers to fly planes into god one's big buildings...

Of course we have the notion of "satan", but that's not very satisfying, logically. Because if god is supposed to be all powerful, there's just no way he would let that s.o.b. loose around the planet. A child of six could figure that out! No, the more logical way to make the idea of god "work" is to have a couple of gods, equally powerful, that don't get along all that well.

After all, we have more than one religion, whose followers don't get along that well, all of whom insist that their god is REAL. Heck, if one could be real, why couldn't they ALL be real? If we could just accept that, maybe we could find peace.

objective proof that the news is less funny than it used to be

NewZoid cleverly cuts up headlines, then reassembles them in random, sometimes interesting, and occasionally intelligible ways. Here are some ripped --- and sewn back up again --- from today's headlines:

----- LATEST HEADLINES -----

1-Stones Killed Near Kandahar
2-Domino 'Shaken' By File-sharing Ruling
3-Kazaa 'Want Clarke To Lead Tories'
4-Kenya Constitution Return To New Orlean
5-Nepal Government Expected In Debate
6-UPDATE - Putin Frees Gig Thrills Rome
7-Afghan Rebels Killed In Iraq
8-Alps Cable Car Crash Assaults On CDs'
9-Criminal Soldiers 'Must Crash On Baghdad Ministry
10-Bush Halts Paltrow Venice Date
11-Countries Defend UK Katrina Response
12-Bjork Unites For Hurricane Relief
13-Three Held Over Truce
14-Indonesia Jet Leaves Army'
15-Trial For Saddam Hussein Meeting Today On Take-off
16-Yen Advances; Polls Hang In Balance As Italy Government Bickers
17-Has Katrina Shaking Gaza City
18-Bush Returns To See City Damage
19-Blake Has Lung Cancer
20-Indonesian Plane Accused Over Anthony Axe Murder

I've been visiting this site now and again since '02. It's always particuarly good when a couple of scandals hit the headlines.

You can go back in time and run the thing for some past date. I ran it for Feb 4. 02, picking a date at random, and it came up with some gems; I can't remember what news stories going at the time would have generated these, though.

1- U.S. Officials Filing Suit Over Wild Carnival Urination
2- Israel Dismisses Reports Linking It to Al Qaeda
3- Panty Thief Wowing Bigwigs at War Crimes Trial
4- Angry Hippo Shakes Southern Spain
5- Nigeria on Alert for Reprisal Killings After Jellyfish Sting
6- Angry Hippo Slams Schwarzenegger Film
7- Detained Militant Putting 1,200 Snow Shovelers on Freedom Day
8- Hong Kongers Show Signs of Gay Parents
9- Backstreet Boy Wins Super Bowl on Treatment
10- Kangaroo to Have Risky Sex
11- Germans Skipped From Toronto Fire
12- Deadly Dengue Epidemic Says She's Ready for 3rd Weekend
13- Kangaroo Paying on Dates: Women Love It, Men Less Sure
14- Kangaroo to Attend Academy Awards
15- Rudy Giuliani Can Reduce Post-Natal Depression
16- Afghan Factions Overshadow Super Bowl Ads
17- MTV Asia Causes Storm by Attacking Left
18- Coroner Unveils Budget; Democrats Go on Terror Fear
19- Gates Cropping Could Create Superweed
20- Anthrax at FCC Kill Five Palestinian Militants in Once-A-Day Tablet

Hmmm. I think anyone would agree that the '02 headlines were much funnier when spliced together randomly. It seems maybe the news just isn't as funny now as it was in '02.

It seemed bad at the time, I think.