Wait, they *believe* this stuff?!

Some Republicans are finding themselves surprised by the sources of opposition to their screw-the-children stance on the SCHIP funding issue -- most recent is Catholics United, who frame it in a pro-life way:

"Building a true culture of life requires public policies that promote the welfare of the most vulnerable," said Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United. "At the heart of the Christian faith is a deep and abiding concern for the need of others. Pro-life Christians who serve in Congress should honor this commitment by supporting health care for poor children."

The basis for this argument could easily be seen as being merely Biblical compassion, except that that doesn't push the political buttons that invoking the term "pro-life" activates. Still, I suspect conservatives weren't expecting a challenge from the right, because they sometimes forget that there are people for whom such arguments are more than cant, representing deep guidelines for how life is to be lived . . .

Looking backward

Found this little thought exercise meme on Medley, and it seemed worth a shot:

20 Years Ago, I... was in the middle of college, dating my now-Spouse (we went our separate ways for a decade thereafter), working hard but loving it (and playing quite a bit of bridge).

15 Years Ago, I... was in graduate school, fairly new in my eventual thesis lab, enjoying the inexpensive and varied lifestyle available for little money in St. Louis. mmmm, live music!

10 Years Ago, I... had been living in Philadelphia for a year, so was starting to find my place here. I was working as a post doc at UPenn, feeling very alienated from the grimly factionalized atmosphere there, and taking solace in some great non-science pals. Was editing and publishing a haiku journal (as well as playing bridge again).

5 Years Ago, I... had left science, decided to stay in Philadelphia, and bought a house. I was contemplating the scary prospect of suggesting to Spouse that we consider a renewed romantic involvement...

2 Years Ago, I... was married, in a new house, and enjoying the company of some spotty dotty bengal kittens.

1 Year Ago, I.... was trying pretty hard to achieve parenthood (to no avail), going to my first pre-election meetings as an elected Committeeperson, looking ahead to a wintry trip to Yellowstone.

So far this year, I've... turned 40, rented a beach house with a pile of friends, travelled around North Carolina from shore to mountains, survived a combative mayoral primary, and created the spark of a new life.

Yesterday, I... stayed up too late playing a silly game, only to find my head was too busy with house overhaul plans to get a good night's sleep. bah.

Today, I... have been something of a powerhouse at work, helped by the combination of online radio and an array of semi-mindless tasks at hand. I hope to survive a game of racquetball on so little sleep.

Tomorrow, I'll... be unbelievably glad that it's Friday! Hopefully I'll post the next-to-last batch of produce photos, get a good chunk of work done, and then collapse in a heap at home.

Thugs indeed

Hunter on dailyKos has a well-placed rant about the right-wing movement and its no-holds-barred way of tarring and feathering chosen liberals (or even hapless victims), whether it's knowingly spreading lies and distortions or publishing a family's home address so other crazies can harrass them everywhere they go.

It's long past time for people to stop treating Fox-style, Malkin-style, Limbaugh-style conservatism as merely a "political" phenomenon. It may once have been, but it isn't now. As of this millennium, it's nothing but a hate movement with neckties.

[bolding mine] How this is in any way acceptable (or even non-criminal) is inconceivable to me.

Poem of the day (for Aurora)

The graves of cats are not like
those of dogs or parakeets.
They have been slipped out of

a day or maybe two
after you packed the dark dirt
with the long-handled shovel.

Now as you play with the child
or drink a beer beside the stream
while the swallows skim the wheat,

the cats as though from under the table
stretch and slide past roots
and fallen leaves, and not a blade

of grass disturbed, not a worm,
except at the corner of your eye
there’s a small shift of direction

in the alfalfa, and for a moment
the evening preens and stares
in a way you almost call by name.

–Harry Humes

(via A Mindful Life)

Unbelievable

Are there really people who still think that the Republicans are best to look after our national security? Even in light of headlines like this one?

White House leaked classified info to FOX News, tipped off al Qaeda to secret surveillance, destroyed year-long spy effort

It makes me want to bite somebody . . .

(via kos)

Update: This summary seems about right:

What can you say? When your entire foreign policy expertise is based on leaking information to Fox News in order to keep the population in a constant state of low-level fear, sometimes you have to blow actual intelligence information in order to do it. Them's the breaks.

Sigh. We don't have any such intelligence to spare . . .

Action alert

Man, I'm squozen between morning doctor appointments and after-work meetings, so blogging likely to be light until midweek. Meantime, take action on the push to overturn Bush's SCHIP veto -- Bitch, Ph.D. gives you all the links and info. here so you can pester your representatives or those nearby. We need to cover more of our kids, not cut some of them loose!

Fond associations

Sometimes you can know in your head that you like something, but forget that you really mean it until you bump across the thing again or have your associations stirred. That by way of saying that hearing just this short musical clip reminded me of how much I liked the Firefly series (and, by extension, the movie Serenity), the grittiness, the characters, the struggle. Barely enough to whet one's appetite, that CD set, but apparently enough to sink some roots deep into my unconscious.

Bunny toes!

It's been a while since I've endangered my readers with cute, but this is serious business.
eep!

We loves us some folksiness!

Fred Thompson is actually a bit embarrassing, in a Reagan joke way, and he's still trying to establish his credibility. I mean, I think somebody running for "leader of the free world" (such as it is) should know that the Soviet Union is a thing of the Way Past . . .

Poem of the day

These old days - I wonder,
did I dream them
or were they real?
In the night I listen
to the autumn rain

- Ryokan Taigu

(via whiskey river)

So clear even a child can see it...

Bitch, Ph.D. has (and shares) some really remarkable conversations with her (kindergarten-aged) son about individuality, the senselessness of strict gender expectations, and all kinds of other great stuff, in everyday terms. The latest one is here and just blew me away. I can't really find a part to excerpt, since it's a dialogue, so just go check it out. [And the video at the end is killer too.] I aspire to having such open and empathetic discussions with my child someday.

So proud...

When you look at the list of Bush's four vetoes, it's quite a line-up. A true representative of the people, this fella'...

Heartening moves in the House

Well, I'd begun to think that all of Congress was abdicating responsibility on the Iraq war, but apparently not:

1. The Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee says he won't allow war funding bills to come to a vote until they have some basic assurances that there's plan for withdrawel. Not everything one might want, but a bold start to potentially bigger things.
   
   
2. Meanwhile, two House Democrats are going to raise the issue of supplementary taxes to fund the current war appropriation -- such a thing was done during WWII and Vietnam. No chance of passage, but it gets the question of fiscal responsibility (and the scale of war wastage) into the ongoing discussion.

Go, team!

Quote of the day

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

– Jean Cocteau

(via A Mindful Life)

Well, whaddya know!

Looks like this crazy blog-tube-thing is three years old! Tinges of outrage exhaustion around the edges, perhaps, but seemingly in no danger of giving up. In fact, I'm holding out for the tide to turn, the nation to redeem itself! Party on!

We lead, you follow!

When I heard that conservatives were starting a new group as "an answer to MoveOn," I immediately thought Ah! another top-down propaganda machine! And how, exactly is that an answer to a group with millions of members, that actually takes surveys in advance of particular strategic choices, and which is guided by public sentiment? hmmm...

Well, turns out that it's more than just a New Playground for Big Spenders in the wingnut world: "Freedom's Watch" is made up of current and former Washington insiders, and particularly of Cheney's circle, agitating for action in Iran. So it's actually just a parallel mouthpiece for the establishment (government, media, pundits) that's already leading us in a set of directions we don't want to go. What innovation!!

Friday glamor shot

A little shot of Pixel basking in the bar of morning light that comes into our bedroom (and often attracts an array of flopped felines)...


Have a good weekend, y'all!

Strange product of the day

Simultaneously hilarious and creepy -- the ultimate hand soap...

(via boing boing)

Invisible money-suck

A dailyKos diarist has an interesting way of looking at the real price of gas, factoring in the amount that we spend for defense and security related to the Mideast sources, not to mention the loss of the more productive ways those dollars might have been spent. Looks like we're paying an amazingly steep tax, but it's just not applied at the pump.

The Kyl-Lieberman amendment

TPM TV has really become a great resource for keeping track of complicated stories developing on the national scene, with Josh Marshall laying out the sequence of events, summarizing documents, showing clips of testimony. Not every episode has that focus, but yesterday's was a great completion to my Tuesday rant about whether we were going to roll our way into Iran via amendments to other legislation. Turns out that the offending amendment received some substantial revisions, taking out some of the worst parts, but the final version, passed overwhelmingly, still raises some concerns. Watch the summary here.

Best of pals

BAGnewsNotes does a great job of unraveling a picture and story in the Washington Post which attempts to help establish Hillary Clinton as the inevitable Democratic nominee and recipient of George Bush's blessing. Most critical here is that the photo accompanying the (odd) piece was six years old -- totally mislead your readers much?

Yeesh.

Adventures in produce VIII: Strange mix of seasons

Ok, I've been getting a sense of the seasonality of produce from this undertaking. That is, until this time...


Ok, we start with sweet potatoes (in the bag) and daikon radish (white). A smattering of small ("stuffing") peppers. But wait, Swiss chard? Didn't we get that in week 1?


More tomatoes (regular in bag, and heirloom out of it), redleaf lettuce, another watermelon. (Isn't it September? Well, some folks got apples...) We also got a bag of potatoes, which I guess I couldn't be bothered to photograph this week.

Oopsie

How many years into this Iraq war business are we? Four? Apparently nobody ever told military commanders how to handle contracters working with/for/against them, especially when they misbehave. Military rules? Civilian justice? Pure Wild West no-holds-barred shoot-em-up ok? (I think the answer speaks for itself.)

Democratic parade

For anybody who, like me, missed last night's Democratic candidates' debate, TPM has a pithy roundup of the highs and lows.

Wow -- just... wow

Springwater companies, not content with selling us rebottled tap water at high prices and environmental cost, take a leap into the surreal by selling pre-packaged ice cubes -- that is, their magic water in little ice trays, that you can freeze for yourself. Because that $1 ice tray is just too much to face. Capitalism at its finest, folks.

(via Alas, a blog)

Headed down that same %$#@! road . . .

That is, apparently an amendment today (co-sponsored by Lieberman, of course) is the first step in laying the groundwork for intervention in Iran. EEeeesh. Has no one the spine to say, Not again?!

Update: Well, Jim Webb stepped up. I'm not clear whether the vote has happened yet though.

Due to be kept back a year...

A little video report card on the Bush Administration's job performance with respect to "homeland" security -- after all, they've had six years to put everything right, right?

Sigh.

Another reason not to rely on cell phones

The government can now get a retroactive warrant for all of your movements, using your cellphone as a tracking device, and the standard of evidence for such a warrant is lower than usual because this is "historic" not "live" tracking. I'm sure that will make us all sleep much better at night.

(via boing boing)

Stupid kids

Well, the first big veto showdown is likely to come over the renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is widely popular in Congress (and the nation) but apparently stands in the way of Bush's larger plans to further wreck the national health system get adults to use more private insurance. There might just be enough umph to override a veto on this one, but the pressure is likely to be heavy. (Insurance-industry funders might be even more important to the Bushies than military contractors!)

Meanwhile, below the radar, the White House is up to other rape-the-nation games, this time requesting that the Everglades be removed from the endangered list of UN World Heritage sites (see also here). NPR speculated that Bushies were trying to "erase a black eye" from the nation's conservation record, but surely that's a wishful explanation. I'd guess that hungry developers or nearby farmers would like more leave to trample the wetlands for their own benefit.

These guys sure know how to look after the country's needs, eh?

Update: wow! even the health/insurance industry backs this bill! Bush is really off in the deep end on this one!

Wait, maybe things *aren't* going swell in Iraq?

Thomas Friedman, famous (and widely mocked) for saying over and over that "these next six months" (measured from any current moment) would determine the future of Iraq, now says we're out of time. Welcome to reality space-time, Thomas!!

(via Atrios)

Sure, we live in a post-racist world

Latest RNC attack is that Obama is too intellectually lazy to be President. Lazy black folk, always laying around the porch... wait, who's that current feller setting records for vacation taken in office (during a war, no less)? Oh yes, it's ok if you're (white and) a Republican!

Not a pretty sight.

In case you're wondering what it's all about

Seen the coverage of demonstrations in support of "the Jena 6"? Heard they were accused of murder, which was then lowered to battery, and unsure why this is a civil rights cause? MissLaura at dailyKos does a good job of summarizing the background to these arrests, in which white students using racial intimidation were given wrist-slaps while the reponding black students were charged with crimes...

What took place in Jena is not aberrant; it's consistent. The details are a local disgrace. The broader themes are a national scandal. Jim Crow Jr. travels well--unencumbered by historical baggage.

Worth a read just to realize that we're not all operating in the same century all the time...

Rudy iffy on First Amendment

Thinks that "there are lines that shouldn't be crossed" in speaking one's opinion of politics and political figures. And, you know, those lines are just this side of thought or criticism.

Forget the poor and tired; we don't even want the talented and harmless

This story makes me feel a bit ill -- a UK citizen, longtime US resident, and college music professor is detained after a research trip, has her visa ripped up, and is sent "home" with no explanation of why she was considered a Person of Concern.

"They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights," she said. "For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means."

The passage of over a year, the intervention of the British consulate, and the pleas of her professional society (and her fiance) have all done nothing to advance her case. America, the walled fortress; makes one so proud...

(via boing boing)

Today's pithy quote

Interviewer: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?

Gloria Steinem: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.

(via Echidne of the Snakes)

Getting to the heart of books?

A wonderful take on books, via artistic defacement: Brian Dettmer's Book Autopsies. Fantastic, both those that reveal illustrations and those showcasing mostly text -- I want one! wow.

(via boing boing)

Ohmygoodness -- addictive and educational!

I am almost speechless in the face of this brilliance: Statetris, a variant of Tetris that involves dropping the states into their correct locations (more difficult = having to rotate them too, or having no labels). Inspired, inspired. Need more torment? try other parts of the world . . .

(via kottke)

Sometimes the nicest people surprise you

That is, who knew there was deep civil strife in Belgium?? Enough that there's serious talk about partition, which might already be underway except for the difficult question of who gets Brussels. No, really.

Shiny new leaves

For anyone who's nervously contemplating a career change, Bob Harris has some reassurance...

Cat kabuki

Our cats have all kinds of ritualized interactions, which often involve full minutes of gradual paw raising, sometimes ending with that (and a back-down) and other times proceeding into a mutual head-whap fest (the last recourse of fierce but clawless cats). It looks like dominance behavior, although there's little question anymore about who rules the roost, so there must be more to it. I wish I could get video to show how slowly the early steps go by . . .



Here Pixel approaches with *slowly* raising paw.
Yogi waits to see whether that's the end of it.



As you can see, Pixel proceeded to put a foot on the tree, and Yogi responds with some whapping from her superior position.



Now we're past kabuki into mutual whapping. Yogi is a premium hisser, but she's liable to back down when it's no longer worth the hassle . . .

Ouch!!

There have been some awkward political self-revelations this summer, but the most painful thing I've seen is this video of John McCain denying reality, contradicting testimony he elicited, and generally showing either a huge detachment from the real world or an immersion in spin so deep that he no longer knows where he stands. Either way, I hope he gets out of this race -- I, for one, can't take anymore...

Fighting back

This sort of story gives me hope: after bullies beat up a kid for wearing a pink shirt, two classmates initiated a counter-campaign in which some half of the student body showed up in pink tank tops. The bullies were furious, but the message got through. Pretty impressive for highschool students; I hope their parents are proud as heck.

The next front

This writer speaks a lot for me, and how I hope that our children (mine and those of my peers) can be raised to be thoughtful and creative individuals, unconstrained by the narrow expectations of their (or my) grandparents' era. I anticipate that my having such a goal will lead to a nontrivial degree of conflict with the expectations of family, school, and the broader society, but change can only happen where one lives . . .

Quote of the day

If you are going through hell, keep going.

Winston Churchill

(on the back of the label of my bottle of Honest Tea)

Edwards interview(s)

For those still weighing their options among the Democratic Presidential candidates (and I count myself as one), I recommend this two-part interview with John Edwards conducted over at Talking Points Memo. It is largely focused on foreign policy and Iraq, and Edwards says some good things about the need for long-term international cooperation in controlling terrorism, about how the Senate should be handling Bush's funding requests ("no timetable, no funding"), and about his analysis of the situation on the ground in Iraq (present and looking ahead). The interview is interspersed with some clips from Edwards' speech given the same day, to flesh out his views on some of these points, and he also ruminates a bit on how his candidacy is different from the other candidates' and from his own in 2004. Good information; I hope that the TPM folks will try to track down Obama and Clinton as well.

Update: it's also worth reading this post at dailyKos, which compares some foreign policy white papers written by Edwards and Obama (and also, so far, by Guiliani and Romney). Heartening flashes of reality there, and even some inspiration. Some of my favorite quotes:

In the Islamic world and beyond, combating the terrorists' prophets of fear will require more than lectures on democracy. We need to deepen our knowledge of the circumstances and beliefs that underpin extremism. (Obama)

Rather than alienating the rest of the world through assertions of infallibility and demands of obedience, as the current administration has done, U.S. foreign policy must be driven by a strategy of reengagement.(Edwards)

Again, will be interesting to see Hillary's contribution to this discussion.

Intriguing mystery

The "reference kilogram" kept in Paris for standardization of weights and measures is gradually losing mass when compared with other copies:

"The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart," he said. "We don't really have a good hypothesis for it."

I can't imagine a chemical explanation -- perhaps we're not meant to have a perfect representation of mass . . .

Exposing the absurdity of The Surge

An odd advertising-like campaign makes fun of the surge as an answer to all your prayers:

First installment

Second installment

Clever stuff, in that familiar frustrating way...

Line of the week

Goes to Barak Obama, as part of his strong new speech on Iraq:

The bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand.

Indeed. Am impressed that he's coming out with a not-later-but-now position on this; had feared that all the Top Candidates would shy away from such leadership (Edwards is being treated as almost second tier, and thus a bit of a lonely voice). If nothing else, perhaps this will push Clinton to notice that the American public is developing a high degree of unanimity behind rational action . . .

Some thoughts for quailing Democrats

Why they're so focused on "compromise" when the American people want us out of Iraq now I cannot say, but if they need some infusion of spine, perhaps these analogous quotes will help them think again. We're not fooled by the Dance of the September Reports, and if you can't act with the nation behind you, why are we still paying you guys?

Poem of the day

the death of a soldier

life contracts and death is expected,
as in a season of autumn.
the soldier falls.

he does not become a three-days personage,
imposing his separation,
calling for pomp.

death is absolute and without memorial,
as in a season of autumn,
when the wind stops,

when the wind stops and, over the heavens,
the clouds go, nevertheless,
in their direction.

wallace stevens
(from collected poetry & prose, p. 81)

(via The Dao of Wallace Stevens)

Adventures in produce VII: Some fall bounty

Actually a couple weeks behind here, but here's the last heap of veggies from our farm-share:


Red bell peppers, a small watermelon, two delicata squash, and a spaghetti squash.
(Unfortunately, I don't really love squash. Luckily, the delicatas made some great curried soup!)


Those pale things on the left are eggplants; the rest are tomatoes (heirloom in the bowl).


Probably the last of the corn, along with a bag each of onions and potatoes.

We get some more veggies this week; not sure how many more weeks there will be. This healthy stuff has been well timed for our little cloning project . . .

Two birds with one . . .

Get Your War On has another great recent strip, pulling together the high points of our recent foreign and domestic policies.
Sigh.

Update: a little older, but still funny (both topically and for injections of randomness) here.

Role model

What Bush is teaching our youth . . .

(via Follow Me Here)

Bending reality

I like to consider myself a master image-tweaker -- I've Photoshopped people out of photos, fixed blemishes and creases, and recast images for use as logo-like art. But this video just blew my mind -- they've found a way to encode which parts of an image include content (say, the mountains and trees, as opposed to the open sky), so that you can scale the image without distorting the main features. Essentially, instead of removing uniform bands of the image, as cropping would, it removes "seams" of low-content pixels one at a time (or adds them, when you're scaling up) so that you have the effect of less change to the main features of the image. Their software also allows certain features to be tagged for either protection (i.e., faces, where a little distortion can be hugely disruptive) or removal (time for that embarassing uncle to disappear from the beach!). I can't convey the degree to which this feels like a revolution in image... sanctity, I guess. You gotta watch it.

(via Follow Me Here)

The passing of a great soul

Caught off-guard by the news that Madeleine L’Engle passed away yesterday. She was an amazing writer, of fiction (and not just for children; the broken characters in A Severed Wasp still haunt me), of nonfiction, of spiritual explorations -- I feel very lucky to have had the chance to meet her at a "Master's tea" while in college, and to have found her just as thoughtful and gracious in person as in her writing.

"Why does anybody tell a story?" Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

"It does indeed have something to do with faith," she said, "faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."

I think your words mattered to a lot of people, Ms. L'Engle. Thanks for sharing all great stories, and all the searches for meaning, high and low. We only wish there could have been more.

(via boing boing)

"Incomplete" by my standards

Apparently General Petraeus will testify before Congress, but no written report will be presented by him to either Congress or the White House. Will the White House present nothing, then? Perhaps the GAO report already said it all, and they're hoping to say a lot less . . .

How exactly to measure progress on benchmarks in the absence of both a report and any agreed-upon facts? Or are we giving up that pretense too? Sigh.

(via Talking Points Memo)

Daily snark

TPM brings it to Fred Thompson . . .

The fear and torture brigade

For anybody who didn't watch the GOP debate in NH last night, TPM has a 12-minute highlight reel that captures the sense of it, some great (and painful) quotes, and personal and policy statements of various sorts whose veracity you can probably judge for yourself. No commentary added.

Yeow!

The DCCC gets all catty about its opponents...

I picked the wrong day to give up sniffing glue...

Things you don't really want to hear from your airline crew: your plane had some technical problems, but they were fixed by our sacrificing a goat. Enjoy your trip!

(via boing boing)

Today's cool science finding

Two things are cool about this story: first, that an animal that we've been familiar with for ages (the moray eel) turns out to have a whole anatomical feature/function we previously knew nothing about, and second, that any creature would have this particular feature -- a second set of jaws that hang out in the throat region until they are needed to leap forward and drag large prey down into the gullet. The abstract for the paper makes it sound like throat-jaws, in and of themselves, are something common in fish, which is also something I never knew, and leads to fascinating ruminations about the evolutionary duplication that could have generated such an arrangement. Spiff!

Idiots claiming seriousness

This is a bit of a meta piece, since it's about skewering the pundits. But really, it's about how the groundwork is being laid for military action in Iran, the early steps being to define those who support such lunacy as Right-Minded Serious Folks.

Thus, Hiatt's attack on [IAEA Head] EdBaredei begins with the complaint that he "was lionized by opponents of the Iraq war" for being right. That's because in Hiatt's world, having been right on Iraq -- and being "lionized" by war opponents -- are actually hallmarks of unseriousness.

Really, the loops of logic documented here (not only denying the facts but reversing their own positions and actions over decades) are enough to make your brain quiver. Also clear, the script that's being peddled is depressingly identical to that used to justify the Iraq war. Will our media (and Congress!) be so credulous as to allow us to instigate another disaster in the name of, um, Seriousness?

(via Atrios)

Make the most of the last hot summery days!

Inspired: a method for baking cookies in your hot car in the sun -- requires some patience, and doesn't brown the cookies, but still, cookies baked in your car! (plus, imagine the great smell!)

(via boing boing)

Thoughtful feller, our President

I don't know the tenor of this forthcoming Bush biography (although a title like "Dead Certain" leaves room for quite a bit of color), but the excerpts say it all pretty well... Yeesh.

Grim humor is all we have left to us

Bush Refuses to Set Timetable for Withdrawal from Crawford:

President George W. Bush said today that he understands and respects the views of those who are calling for him to cut short his summer vacation, but warned that an immediate withdrawal from Crawford, Texas would "send a terrible signal to the enemy."

And so forth . . .

(via Follow Me Here)

Quote of the day

How many minutes of the war do you think you'd have to divert funds from to rebuild New Orleans as a fucking stately pleasure dome? ... Five minutes?

- Jick (Zach Johnson) on KoL radio, 8/30/2007

Friday Sid-blogging

We are long overdue for an installment of Sid, having to elbow his way in among the veggies and cat photos. No longer!!



Here's an excellent specimen, showing Sid celebrating the debut of the final Harry Potter book (yes, it was some 2 months ago) with a stylish wizard hat. The rest of the shore gang will have to wait for another day to have their moment...

More grim news from Iraq

That their police forces are merely becoming arms of the militia groups battling one another... Wrapping up, Drum writes:

In other words, except for the fact that Iraq has a disfunctional government, a disfunctional police force, and a barely functional army, things are going great. I can't wait to see how Crocker and Petraeus spin this into an argument for staying another four years.

Indeed, with the White House manning the pen, this will somehow be made to look like progress and sunshine. Or, at least to some of the most brainwashed...

(via Atrios)

Nothing's worse than not being taken seriously

Some Knoxville activists have found the perfect answer to a Nazi/KKK rally: a demonstration of clowns, complete with staged misunderstandings -- "White flour?" "Wife Power!" It left the klan-meisters apoplectic, totally upstaged and undermined their message (and attempt at recruitment), and led to a pleasant celebratory day for the police, clowns, and spectators. Well done, all!

(via Alas, a blog)

That hot potato is sure improving!

Yes, indeedy, things looking better all the time over in Iraq. The GAO (that's Government Accountability Office, a group whose services are greatly needed, and who has taken to leaking its reports early to avoid censorship) reports dismal progress on any benchmarks for the Iraqi government and our troops there. Meanwhile, the folks whose feet are on the ground refuse to take responsibility for the Administration's choices going forward, offering a range of (widely differing) opinions from military leaders, rather than trying to agree on a set of recommendations.

White said it suggests that the military commanders want to be able to distance themselves from Iraq strategy by making it clear that whatever course is followed is the president's decision, not what commanders agreed on.

Yeowch! The Bushies are already scrambling to get the grading scale adjusted so that they can tout their incremental progress toward a handful of the goals, somehow missing the point that all of these benchmarks were to be met by September . . .

Through the looking glass...

Cool thing of the day: a review (with pics) of the original Macintosh users' manual. Not just retro fun, but, as the author writes, an early look at how somebody explains what was at the time a huge paradigm shift in how people interacted with computers -- things that seem obvious now (or that you might explain with rather different metaphors) had to be spelled out in earnestly helpful prose. What's a desktop? What's scrolling? a mouse? Hard to remember we ever didn't know . . .

(via rc3.org)

Latest edition of schadenfreude

TPM Muckraker provides a handy summary of Republican crooks, from the Abramoff allies to the recent sexual miscreants. An impressive list at this point, just from the last few years!

Update: a pithy bit of truth/snark summarizes things at the GOP quite well.

Unexpectedly expected behaviors

Can't decide whether I'm surprised to read this recent study finding: that couples who are living together do a better job of dividing housework than those who are married.

"Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples--even couples who see men and women as equal," says Davis.

Would like to know more about the comparability of the two pools -- i.e., perhaps those who choose to marry already have more "traditional" views that lead them in that direction than do the cohabiting couples, rather than being changed after the fact. It would take a prospective study (one that started with, say, serious dating couples, without knowing which would end up married) to tease that out, which means we're unlikely to know the answer any time soon...

My little poly

Chinese launch new adorable online police to keep an eye on websurfers and warn them off of forbidden activities. Eesh, less and less room for parody anymore!

(via Sid!)

The more things change...

...the more familiar they can seem. Pretty neat pixelated stained glass windows in a German cathedral look like the effect of many abstract glass patterns through time (and even some that try to tell stories but are too far away to make out). Seeing the high-res version of the photo, however, makes me think that it might look quite striking (in a familiar yet different kind of way) in person.

Outing your inner child

More and more people are building themselves adult tree houses as offices, studios, or other escapes. This spherical model is slick to look at, but seems less satisfying than a simpler angular sort. I had a pretty spiff treehouse as a kid, complete with screen door, but I think I'd appreciate it even more now (if I had a huge tree and some bucks to burn)...

(via Girl Hacker and Boing Boing, respectively)

Listening to the men on the ground

Well, that is, except when it comes time to write up an official report. Remember that Petraeus report due in September that everybody's waiting for, upon which all future Iraq decisions will be based? It will be written by the White House -- is there any suspense remaining?

(via XOverboard)

Looking forward to that September report!

Can't imagine why anybody's still surprised to hear that leaders on the ground foresee a ten-year effort to get things to a steady state in Iraq. With news that the country is splintering, did you really think "another six months" would do it? Hello, Democrats???

The cats are in for a big surprise . . .

Let's just say it looks like things are going to be changing around here, in a major way!



(updates available graphically in the footer bar of this blog)

Big doings

I swear, every time I go on a major vacation, the earth realigns in my absence. One time, O'Conner resigned; another time, crazy things happened in the PA state House. Now Rove is out and Gonzales close behind him, all with no explanation given (or, I suppose, needed). One would like to be optimistic about lessons learned and all that, but there's absolutely no evidence that this Administration will allow anything new or good to happen in their remaining time . . .

Quote of the day

To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous.

- Chinese Proverb

(via whiskey river)

Countering the fear-mongers

A good post at Orcinus about how to counter the stream of Fox froth that turns many of our parents and grandparents into ever more terrified conservatives, most painful when they begin to view us as The Enemy.

Most of us are very cautious and circumspect about leaving our children's developing minds to the tender mercies of the media. Those of us who care about the elders in our families might be equally vigilant about their media diets as well. We do not have to take the political hijacking of our seniors lying down, or assume that's just the way it is. We just have to do what we do with our kids: make sure they've got consistent access to appealing, age-appropriate media that gives them hope, confidence, and truly balanced ways of seeing the world.

A good point, as well as the need to intervene early, before the damage is done -- brainwashing is hard to undo, and the Rush and O'Reilly folks know how to wash with the best of 'em.

(via Medley)

This has ruined my brain

One humorous meme crushing another . . .
sigh.

Adventures in produce VI: Pre-vacation edition

Somehow I manged to get everything into two shots this time...


Peppers, potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, cukes, sweet onions.


More UFO-shaped yellow squash, a canteloupe-sized watermelon, grape tomatoes,
and some peaches that come as our fruit share.

The next batch of produce will go to some friends, while we take off for a couple weeks of actual (computer-free!) vacation. See you toward the end of the month!

There are few things I love as much as randomness

And here is is used well . . .
(But be warned: the site is meandering and addictive!)

Funny of the day

A trailer for Minesweeper: The Movie. A good send-up of both war movies and, you know, desktop time-killers . . .

(via XOverboard/Some Guy with a Website)

Quote of the day

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

- Robert Benchley

(via A.W.A.D.)

Just trussssssst ussssss

Big Telecom keeps arguing that Net Neutrality is unnecessary because they can be trusted to be honest brokers. (a) If they're not intending to be sleazebags, why do the regulations worry them? (b) Surprising no one, they prove themselves to be sleazebags.

Can we get some rational rules in here already?

Boy, we really know how to run a war!

You know things are looking up when the Iraqi president thinks his best approach to the ongoing civil war in his country is to consult with Iran about solutions. Didn't we want to help unify the region?

Inspired (in that sorrowfully amusing way)

What if FDR had run WWII like W has run the last six years? See the brief newsreel coverage.

(referral lost!)

Newt sees the light?

It's striking to hear Gingrich speaking lines from the reality-based community, but all it makes me do is wait for the other shoe to drop. Maybe he's placing himself as the one Republican who sees the emperor's lack of clothes; maybe this is a sign of the end-times. Either way, there's more to it.

The more things change...

How many wars are we going to fight in which most of the opposing weapons (not to mention training) were supplied by us? You'd think once or twice and we'd raise our standards for national stability before selling big heaps of arms, etc. But nah (profits, man! profits!). Heck, now we just ignore our missing weapons and blame Iran for arming the insurgents...

History will judge them harshly

Enough Democrats caved to allow Bush's overhaul of FISA, in effect giving him the wiretapping powers he'd already been stealing, and then some. We're well down the slippery slope to totalitarianism, or at least to the point where no one will understand the horror value of Minority Report...

(via Medley)

Update: for the record, here are the Senate traitors too. Some help, the majority has been...

I think I'm in leef!

The cuteness of the puppy, it burns!

Adventures in produce V: Something new every time

We were headed to the shore with some friends when this batch arrived, so they went right into the back of the car and were much appreciated by the group:


More lettuce (only partially shown), snap beans, a bag of potatoes,
and lemon cucumbers (old hat now).


Whole beets (eaten grilled with goat cheese crumbles), the best green peppers ever, and some sweeter peppers whose name I don't know (and which we haven't tried yet).


Lots more corn (grilled in the husk, mmmm), a few onions, and our fruit share
was a heap of wonderful peaches, almost too ripe to travel . . .

We've already gotten the next load (I'm a bit behind with uploading), so maybe I'll post them next week. But first, the eating!!

Poem of the day

On my old street, a neighbor down the block had planted a young redwood tree out front, in the tiny strip of sidewalk on the narrow, narrow street of century-old houses. The neighbors who lived there long before me shook their heads at his folly, the tree already well beyond the top of the house, top out of sight above any of its neighbors. Thus, this poem captures a personal musing of my own, although much more lyrically than I (or any of the worried neighbors) would have managed...

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books -

Already the branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

- Jane Hirshfield

(via whiskey river)

Credit where credit is due

I find it nearly impossible to watch Bill O'Reilly's show because the out-shouting and ridiculousness gets my blood pressure up so high I can barely tease out the actual content. But I must give kudos to Senator (and Presidential wanna-be) Chris Dodd for not backing down from the heckling and holding O'Reilly accountable for his misleading attacks on the dailyKos website, as well as for his own history of outrageous and derogatory remarks. I wouldn't have had the stomach to do it myself.

Topical quote of the day

A country that can’t keep its bridges from collapsing is not going to be running the world very much longer.

Jonathan Schwarz @ This Modern World

(via Medley)

Our nation is run by simpletons

The departure of half of the Iraqi government called "discouraging" by Secretary of Defense...

...the Bush administration may have misjudged the difficulty of achieving reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian factions.

Ya' think??

Privacy is just one perk

Perhaps it's because I'm engrossed in a Robert Ludlum book, but this retractable hotel doorknob seems like a pretty good idea to me. Make your position clear to housekeeping, make the lives of assassins more difficult -- what could possibly go wrong?

(via boing boing)