I probably won't get around to reading Anti-Americanism any time soon, but I loved this lengthy review of it by John Parker in the Asian Times:

In Anti-Americanism, which is basically a sequel to Without Marx or Jesus, a more contemporary example of the same phenomenon is given: the nearly simultaneous criticism of the US for "arrogant unilateralism" and "isolationism". As Revel dryly observes, "the same spiteful bad temper inspired both indictments, though of course they were diametrically opposed".

Examples of this psychopathology are almost endless, but the Iraq crisis has certainly provided a profusion of new cases. For example, during the 12 years after 1991, the anti-American press was filled with self-righteous hand-wringing over what was billed as the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people under UN sanctions. But when the administration of President George W Bush abandoned the sanctions policy (a policy that, incidentally, had been considered the cautious, moderate course of action when it was originally adopted) in favor of a policy of regime change by military force - which was obviously the only realistic way to end the sanctions - did these dyspeptic howler monkeys praise the United States for trying to alleviate Iraqis' suffering? No, of course not - instead, without batting an eyelash, they simply began criticizing the United States for the "terrible civilian casualties" caused by bombing.

Innumerable cases like this have made it perfectly clear to Americans that they will automatically be despised no matter what policy option they select. Furthermore, the only rational reaction Americans could have to this situation is to keep their own counsel when it comes to foreign policy, and leave their fair-weather friends - or, more accurately, no-weather friends - at arm's length. Predictably, however, the anti-American cult has a third accusation pre-packaged and ready to go for this very reaction: the inexplicable reluctance of Americans to listen attentively to their perpetually peeved critics is the result of their "arrogant unilateralism"! (Naturally, the possibility that the anti-American cultists' own statements might have played a role in promoting this behavior is never even considered.)

Ivan Miesel penned a story up on newhire Coach Bill Callahan's attempts to reinvigorate the University of Nebraska's football program. Now, just to put my biases out front, Nebraska is my least favorite schools in the Big XII and one of my least favorite in the NCAA, so an objective analysis is not what you're remarkably likely to find here. I'd love to say that I wish Callahan luck, but I don't.

[Nebraska AD] Pederson, a Nebraska native, a Nebraska alum, a former recruiting coordinator under Osborne and a former associate athletic director, returned to Lincoln as athletic director in December 2002. He hadn't been back a year when he cut down the Devaney family tree.

"I returned to a vastly different place," Pederson says. "We always had some strong leadership. We all knew what was expected, what the next day held. All of a sudden I felt like we were almost going through the motions and hoping everything was going to be fine. 'If we don't change anything, maybe we will wake up and the program will be fabulous.' I just didn't see it. I just didn't see that we were on a strong path. A lot of it was gut feel."

It's worth pointing out that the opposite of "good" [outgoing coach Frank Solich was 58-19] is not "great" and that the opposite of "improvement" [Solich went from 7-7 to 9-3 in his last two years] is not "more improvement."

Pederson hurt his case when he conducted a secretive job search that stretched to six weeks. One top candidate (Miami Dolphins coach Dave Wannstedt) after another (Arkansas coach Houston Nutt) after another (Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer) said no. The Huskers have a streak of 42 consecutive winning regular seasons and 35 consecutive bowl games. Pederson decided that the path back to the elite is via the West Coast.

I'm a little hurt that they didn't mention my offer, but I'll get over it. That being said, Pederson and company got lucky with Callahan, who took an inherited team to the Superbowl and almost came out of it with a tying record (15-17) before being canned after his second season. On the other hand, anyone who makes an enemy out of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis can't be all bad, I suppose.

Callahan is already off to a booming start in Nebraska, though:

Callahan understands the parallel in installing the West Coast offense in the heartland. But he doesn't believe the on-field changes pose a big problem. The coach discovered early in his tenure, however, that he must be careful in how he makes them. When Callahan announced a few weeks after his hiring that there would no longer be an open-door policy for walk-ons, the state reacted as if he had forsworn eating meat.

Hold on, Callahan said. He is the father of a walk-on. The oldest of his four children, Brian, is a quarterback at UCLA.

"We're not trying to take away the identification of a young man and his hometown with Nebraska," he says. "All we're trying to do is be more select. We welcome walk-ons. We want them in our program. They add to our program. But I think things got misconstrued. We want the numbers to be more manageable."

Dealing with Nebraska's fans and its program is going to be Callahan's biggest problem. Nebraska has a storied history in football and they're used to winning. Lincoln isn't Austin or even Stillwater as far as attractiveness-to-recruits goes. That being said, recruitment is apparently one of Callahan's strong points. Callahan's 2004 pull ranks fifth of the Big Twelve according to Rivals.com. However, they ranked second in the Big XII North, behind only Kansas State. That should be enough, right?

When the British balked at their secondary status to the United States in the Allied effort to win World War II, American troops teased that the Brits were underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower.

In Lincoln, with the sun setting on four decades of dominance, it chafes Husker fans that their team is underpowered, undermanned and under Kansas State.

Bob Devaney built Nebraska into a national power in the 1960s, culminating in national championships in 1970 and '71. He handed the program to his top assistant, Tom Osborne, who strengthened the program and won three national championships in the 1990s. Osborne handed the program to his top assistant, Frank Solich.

His record of 58-19 (.753) was sixth among active Division I-A coaches, yet Solich won only one Big 12 championship. Still, Solich was family, and when athletic director Steve Pederson fired Solich after a 9-3 regular season, he set off a feud. Osborne, a U.S. Congressman, called a news conference to voice his displeasure, and a few weeks later relinquished his skybox at Memorial Stadium.

In any case, I wish Mr. Callahan luck.

Oh wait, no I don't...

I got a new cell phone. It seems that cell phones aren't quite the buyer's market here that they are in Houston. There are only two national competitors here (U.S. Cellular and AT&T) that I ran across. There's also a local cell phone company that has unlimited local minutes but no LD minutes. Very weird.

I went with AT&T, where I got 800 anytime minutes, 1500 off-peak minutes, and I can call nationally. It cost me about $35/mo, which beat the competition. But I had to buy a cell phone! Gasp! I can't remember the last time one didn't come free with a year contract.

In any case, now that I'm employed I can afford a cell phone, which will help me find a better job.

Ahhh, irony.

ABCNews has an interesting article on a movement within doctors to forego insurance altogether:

It's a terrible indictment of the collapsing health care system," said Arthur Caplan, chairman of the medical ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. "Insurance and managed care were supposed to streamline instead what they've done is add so much paperwork and bureaucracy they're driving some doctors out."

When O'Brien leaves the exam room, he writes a check for $50 and he's done no forms, no ID numbers, no copayments.

"This is traditional medicine. This is what America was like 30 years ago," said O'Brien, 55 and self-employed, who believes he has saved thousands of dollars by dropping his expensive insurance policy and paying cash. "It's a whole world of difference."

It's an interesting shift that has gone on where insurance companies have instead become health care providers. In yesteryear, health insurance was just that: Insurance against catastrophe. These days, however, insurance instead has their hand in every aspect of our health care. They pay for pharmaceuticals, doctor visits, routine tests, and so on. While this is ostensibly a good thing because it makes every day health expenses cost less for the average American, it has created boat-loads of paperwork and bureaucracy. Not only that, but we all pay for it in the end anyhow with the monthly payroll deductions or through lower wages because our employers are having to pay more.

For the most part, I would prefer a more insurance-based health insurance system. I'd much rather pay the insurance company less on a monthly basis and pay for more of my routine checkups, tests, and so on. That's similar to the arrangement that I have with Fortis at the moment until I can get a job with a more traditional plan. I would honestly consider sticking to Fortis except that if disaster ever does strike, after paying for it you can't get insurance through them again.

That brings to light one of the two problems with the "old way." Without some sort of regulation those that have the most health problems would be least capable of getting coverage. Under the current system (as I understand it) anyone that's employed cannot be denied health insurance indefinitely due to past ailments. The insurance companies can forego coverage for pre-existing conditions for up to a year if insurance coverage has not been constant and companies can decline paying for health insurance up to 90-120 days (maybe more) for new employees, but those with stable employment will get coverage at some point. Without some reform, that would not happen for companies like Fortis.

The second issue is those that require expensive medications on a regular basis. What immediately due to my experiences comes to mind for that are those suffering from depression or some other mental illness. I've never taken such medications, but a large number of people around me have and they need that to function. These medications can cost up to hundreds of dollars a month and it is certainly in society's best interest that they be covered.

On the other hand, medication is expensive to produce and an often simply forestall the inevitable when it comes to the elderly and terminally ill. A lot of people gripe about the big pharm companies charging and arm and a leg for medications, but the simple fact of the matter is that there are more of those medications available every day. But for every new medication that helps with this problem and that, it's going to cost money. From a practical standpoint, the government and insurance companies can run themselves completely into the ground by paying for everything for everyone. Many of the left (and too many in the center) want medical care (including medication) to be a right. If they succeed in this regard, it can be prohibitively expensive if we can't draw the line somewhere.

Additionally there is the matter of false positives. If doctor visits don't cost anything (or cost $10), a lot of people will go to the doctor at the first sign of a problem, whether they need to or not. If it doesn't cost the user anything, the user will not show any discretion before using the services available to them. This has been demonstrated time and time again with guaranteed emergency care. Since people cannot be turned away in the emergency room, then non-emergencies become emergencies very quickly. As it stands, hospitals are able to bill emergency room care recipients, but those bills can be hard to collect.

At the same time, I have difficulty advocating turning emergencies away at the door. Similarly, I am uncomfortable with people dying simply because they cannot afford simple treatments. On top of that, people will less income may forego visiting the doctors office (and will certainly forego regular checkups) as minor illnesses become major.

To the left, the answer is universal health care. In this vein, it's better to waste money on unnecessary visits and medications if it prevents problems down the road. Perhaps that's the case, but then doctors - the most educated and trained profession in the country - will become little more than public servants.

Speaking of which, Michael Williams has a disturbing post on that very subject. Due to high malpractice insurance premiums, neurosurgeons in a Florida county stopped accepting emergency patients and a woman died of a stroke while they tried to call someone out of the country to take care of her:

"If you have a stroke in this part of the country then you're in deep trouble because the doctors won't see you," Masterson said.

Some neurosurgeons (search) aren't disputing his claim, saying they can't afford malpractice insurance and are afraid of being wiped out by lawsuits, so they reduce their risks by refusing emergency patients.

"It makes me feel very bad that I can't take care of a lot of patients... That I have to send them on and I can't take care of them - can't accept that risk," said Dr. Jacques Farkas, a neurosurgeon in Palm Beach County (search).

Last month in Tallahassee, Fla., physicians blamed frivolous lawsuits for sky-high medical insurance and pushed for caps on malpractice attorney fees.

But some trial lawyers say there is no malpractice crisis and that patients are dying because doctors are playing the blame game instead of doing their job.

"I think its criminal," said trial attorney Marvin Kurzban. "I think its dereliction of duty. I think that's malpractice also."

As Michael and commenters point out, this creates a damned-either-way scenario where doctors are succeptable to lawsuits whether they do anything or not. This, in turn, makes them little more than civil servants.

Doctors-as-civil-servants is the norm in Canada. Whether or not it's working up there is subject to debate:

Quality is subjective and can only be evaluated through consumer choices, but the government won't let consumers make choices and vote with their feet if they are not satisfied. Anecdotal evidence of questionable quality is everywhere. In a recent piece in Montreal's Gazette, a Canadian related her own experience, and contrasted the "kindness, discretion and professionalism" of staff in U.S. hospitals, with the frequent rudeness of unionized personnel in the Canadian system.

Long waiting lines are a fixture of the system. The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver think tank, has calculated that in 2003, the average waiting time from referral by a general practitioner to actual treatment was more than four months. Waiting times vary among specialties (and, less wildly, among provinces), but remain high even for critical diseases: The shortest median wait is 6.1 weeks for oncology treatment; excluding radiation, which is longer. Extreme cases include more than a year's median wait for neurosurgery in New Brunswick. The median wait for an MRI is three months. Since 1993, waiting times have increased by 90%.

Waiting lines impose a real cost, which is approximated by what individuals would be willing to pay to avoid them. Waiting costs include health risk, lost time (especially for individuals whose time is most valuable), pain and anguish. Socialist systems are notoriously oblivious to anguish, discomfort, humiliation and other subjective factors which bureaucrats cannot measure or don't value the same way as the patient does.

That's from a Wall Street Journal article cited by Tom Kirkendal, where he discusses the partial solution of Health Savings Accounts:

HSAs allow individuals and their employers to make deposits each year equal to their health insurance deductible (there is currently a limit on the size of the deductible and a supplemental insurance policy is required to cover catastrophic illness or injury expense in excess of the amounts deposited in the HSA). The funds in the HSA grow tax free and the funds may be used to pay such things as health care expenses that would not otherwise be covered by third party insurance, insurance premiums while the owner of the account is changing jobs, and health expenses during retirement.

However, the new law is not perfect. For example, as noted above, the maximum amount that can be deposited into an HSA in any year is currently somewhat limited. Consequently, the combined cost of depositing funds in the HSA and paying for the supplemental insurance that is required can turn out to be more expensive than simply buying a third party policy with a relatively high deductible.

Moreover, products such as HSAs are only part of the solution to the problems in America’s health care finance system. From my vantage point, some sort of nationalized insurance or federally-backed private insurance is still going to be necessary for people who simply cannot afford to fund HSAs or buy private insurance, and for people with severe medical problems who cannot afford the costs attendant to those problems. In regard to these groups, the tough issue is how do you ration the health care? Or, stated another way, there must eventually be a political consensus on the limitations of such federally-insured health care. Otherwise, we simply have created another federal program that balloons into yet another governmental financial debacle.

Tom also links to and discusses another WSJ article on pharmaceuticals, which ties right back in to what we expect - and should expect - from insurance companies and how the current system health-care-provider-instead-of-insurance system may be presently failing us:

America's real problem is that drugs have been roped into the same perverse incentives that govern most health care spending. Consumers don't weigh cost vs. benefit; drug companies focus their development efforts on drugs aimed at large populations of price-insensitive, insured patients. At the same time, consumers who don't have drug insurance and pay out of their own pockets scream bloody murder because drugs seem like a violation of a natural order in which medical care is increasingly perceived as a costless entitlement.

Think we exaggerate? Everybody noticed when HCA, the big hospital chain, earlier this month put aside $700 million to cover the bad debts of uninsured patients, who are typically good for only seven cents on the dollar. Little noticed was the fact the company also has to cover the bad debts of insured patients, who routinely skip out on their co-payments and deductibles. Nowadays these people are good for only 45 cents on the dollar on average.

Medical bills seem to have become optional to Americans when deciding which envelopes to toss in the trash unopened at the end of the month. "Hospitals are ninth" on the payment list, HCA's Chief Jack Bovender told Reuters in February, well behind mortgages, car payments and cable-TV bills. "The only thing people pay worse is the student loan program."

It looks like I'm going to be living in the slumhole. At $7.50 an hour, I really can't afford much better than that. I took a tour of the rooms yesterday. They are a couple steps down from college dormatories, but at least two of the available rooms are cable-ready. That's very important if I'm going to get cable-modem. Cable-modem is actually cheaper than the alternative, which is to get a landline dedicated for the Internet.

Pros

Cheap

Cable-modem?

15 minute walk to work

3-4 minute drive to work

Cheap

"Furnished"

Located near downtown

Downtown not as dangerous as Houston downtown

If I should have a desire for adult entertainment, I wouldn't have to walk long

If I want to buy a gun, there's a store right down the street.

Would live, work, and go to church within 20 blocks.

Cheap

Reaks of authenticity

Cons

Eel wouldn't likely visit often.

That's just as well, because she'd have to leave at 10pm

Which doesn't matter because she won't likely visit often

Which is fine because she'd be arrested after 10pm

I don't particularly want adult entertainment or musicians.

No fridge

No protected mail (unlockable mail slots)

May not have a bathroom.

10 minute drive to Eel's place

No covered parking.

Landlord shows serious butt-crack.

Reaks of things other than authenticity

There's one other candidate. To give you an idea about this place, they call themselves "Thrifty Living." As near as I can tell, it's a hotel that's been converted into apartments. The parking situation is a bit better and I'll bet all of their rooms have bathrooms. Unfortunately, I think it costs more than the Dormatory (for lack of a better name because, oddly, the complex actually doesn't have a name. Just an address).

On Monday of this week I interviewed with Norwest. I think I did a quite good job on it and would probably have the inside track for the job if it weren't for two factors that I believe have pretty much disqualified me for the job:
1. They don't hire people whose former employers don't endorse them. If I actually included Gattaca on my resume I might have avoided this loophole altogether. Oddly enough, if they contacted Mr. Smith I think he would have positive things to say. As it stands I didn't and UFC is considered my last employer. While Theus didn't sabotage my job with Gattaca, there is no way he would endorse me.
2. Even if #1 didn't get me, this one would. They were less than impressed that I moved all the way across the country "for a girl." They were downright skeptical of my prospects with Eel. The more I explained of the situation, the less impressed they became. This is understandably an issue for them because if Eel and I were to break up next week, they'd have to start all over again. They were similarly concerned that if Eel took a job elsewhere I'd be on the next plane out of town. There wasn't much I could say to that since I will almost certainly be leaving in about two years, at latest.

My interview with Synchronus went considerably better. I bought a resume, but there really was no need. They just stuck us in a booth where we answered phones by simulation. I kept an eye on the clock since I know such things are important to companies like this and finished a good 10 minutes ahead of the woman next to me, who started five minutes before I did. After that I talked to the recruiter, who didn't even ask why I moved up and didn't really care that I would not be there long. As with Gattaca, that's part of their business model, I suspect. In any case, they made me an offer and I have accepted. I start a week from next Tuesday. The good news is that I will get the weekends off, which is a big deal since they run a 24/7 operation. The bad news is that I report in at 5:45 in the morning. I could have gotten an 8-5 shift, but I decided that this would actually allow me to continue to look for (other) work.

The weather here in Idaho has just gotten downright bizarre.

First, when I was driving back from a job interview, there were white drops of rain. Not all of them were white, but some of them were. I started chalking it up to pollution, but then I realized that I'm not in Houston anymore. Unfortunately, I couldn't inspect further because the whiteness of the raindrops disappeared as soon as it touched the ground.

By the time the evening rolled around, it all got even stranger. Now all of the raindrops were white. Not only that, but there was some sort of build-up forming on the ground and on objects. It was kinda like sand. I looked around for a dust storm, but I saw none. After feeling the substance, I realized that white the texture was similar to sand, it was cold and had a tendency to miraculously transform in to water.

Man, I'm never going to get used to things up here...

Lex:

A friend writes: "Because some friend of [my daughter's] backed out at the last minute, I'm stuck with a $60 ticket to Kenny Chesney. Because I'm too freakin' cheap to waste it means I'm going to Kenny Chesney tonight.

"Tell me again your evidence that God exists."

and the friend writes again in the comments section:

Actually, it turned out to be not so bad. The music was only part of the entertainment. Mostly it was buff young men, on a stage, wearing tight blue jeans that they were sewn into, swiveling their hips (I know dogs get hip displacia, can humans?), and beer, lots and lots of beer. A good time was had by most, and by most I mean the 40+ year-old women who were out for a "girls night out." I would also venture the husbands were the ultimately beneficiaries later that evening.
Anonymous | 04.26.04 - 9:54 am | #

Yeehaw.

College Football News has a great write-up on quarterback Kevin Kolb:

No true freshman quarterback has been this good since Philip Rivers was leading NC State, and we all saw how his career turned out. Like Rivers, Kolb is the signature player in the rising of a program. What was NC State before Rivers? It wasn't as bad as Houston was before Kolb and head coach Art Briles, and now there's an excitement and buzz around the program not seen since David Klingler and Andre Ware were running 'n' shooting.

"Kevin has done an outstanding job leading this program back to the postseason," said Briles. "Even though there was a lot of pressure on him, especially considering he was playing high school football
last year, Kevin stepped into a leadership role and performed as if he was a three-year starter. We
are blessed that Kevin Kolb is leading this football team."

Also, via Texas State's message board (doing some research for a future post), I ran across this history of Robertson Stadium:

In recognition of John and Julie O'Quinn's generosity and loyal support, the field at Robertson Stadium was named "John O'Quinn Field." The Cougars christened their new field with a 28-3 victory over city-rival Rice, in what was the renewal of the storied Bayou Bucket battle.

Houston "Returned to Robertson," full time in 1998, marking the first time since 1949 that UH played its entire home schedule on campus. With its five home contests a year ago, UH has now played 16 games at Robertson Stadium over the last five seasons. The Cougars have now posted a 23-21-1 record during that span, thanks in part to a 4-1 home ledger in 1999.

Last season the Cougars defeated Rice, Louisiana-Lafayette, Cincinnati and Tulane in the friendly confines of "The Mighty Quinn." At one time during the home slate, Houston kept the opposition off the scoreboard in nine consecutive quarters. The ferocious Cougar defense allowed a meager 14.6 points per game in their new digs, while the offense generated 27 points a contest while rolling up 45 points against UL Lafayette and 36 versus Tulane.

[...]

The University of Houston's inaugural football game in the stadium was against Southwestern Louisiana on September 21, 1946. The stadium was the site for every subsequent Cougar home game through 1949. In 1950, the Cougars played five home games in Public School Stadium and two others in newly constructed Rice Stadium. UH moved all of its home games to Rice Stadium beginning in 1951. The Cougars were the first college team to play its games in a domed stadium when they moved to the brand-new Astrodome in 1965. UH played all of its home games there through 1993 before splitting time in the two stadiums over the last three seasons. All-time, Houston was 112-55-3 in the Astrodome. The Cougars' record in Robertson is 23-21-1.

There were only supposed to be two parts to it, but I just discovered that I got hit by a virus. I haven't gotten hit by a virus since college.

Harrumph.

It went a little something like this:

Mom: How did your interview go?
RAW: I did as well as I could, but I don't think I'm getting the position. They don't hire people whose former employers won't endorse.
Mom: Rats
RAW: Well, the good news is that I found a place to live that's dirt cheap, so if I get a job paying $7.50 an hour, I can afford to live.
Mom: Where is the apartment?
RAW: Well that's the bad news. It's kind of in the slums. Really weird place. You can't have visitors after 10 and if any non-residents are found at that time, they'll be arrested (even if they're a guest). Some of the units don't come with bathrooms.
Mom: Sometimes cheap isn't better if you are going to be robbed. What does Camille think?
RAW: I'm under the impression that Camille is not impressed.
Mom: Go with Camille's gut reaction and keep on looking
RAW: Unfortunately, unless I can find a job that pays well, I won't be able to afford much better. On the upshot I'm getting renter's insurance in case I do get robbed.
Mom: Well you put in one claim and that goes bye-bye, and if it is a high risk neighborhood, they won't insure you.
RAW: Well, I stopped by InsuranceCo. and they gave me a quote and didn't ask where I was going to live. Oh, and I found out that Idaho has lax concealed carry laws.
Mom: The last thing you need is a gun. You would probably shoot yourself. What did InsuranceCo have to say?
RAW: $96 a month for both auto and renters insurance
Mom: Not bad. What kind of deductibles?
RAW: I can't recall offhand, but I do remember that they were reasonable. $200-500 range I think?
Mom: What about the crappy job, is that still a possibility?
RAW: Yeah, I have an interview Wednesday afternoon. That's the job that pays $7.50 an hour.
Mom: Better than nothing
RAW: Yeah, I can live off it. Particularly if I donate blood plasma weekly. That'll bring in another $140 a month...
Mom: I don't want to hear that.
RAW: Well, hopefully it won't be necessary. I've done the math and in the slummy place I should be able to live on $7.50/hr. Particularly if my apartment, job, and Camille are all in Pocatello - I'll save a ton on gas.
Mom: I'm going to put your Dad on. I have to go make banana pudding - eat your heart out.

Michael Williams puts up some thoughts as to what constitutes a "trivial sum" of money:

I know people who make less money than I do who consider larger amounts to be trivial, and I know people who make more than I do who are more frugal. If people were rational there would be some common percentage range of disposable income that would be considered trivial, but I'm not sure if that's the case.

It's certainly not the case with me. Much like Michael, my threshold is about $10, including tax. It actually remains there whether I'm making in excess of $30k a year as I did with UFC or if I'm unemployed. I'm not sure why it's at $10, other than just the feeling that if I'm giving someone a $10 bill and I'm not getting anything back, it seems like at least a modest investment to me. Obviously, I do spend more than $10 on a lot of things, but it ceases to be trivial when I do.

I actually have another threshold at about $50, when it goes from non-trivial to serious. If I'm spending money towards something that's important to me (say my computers or a gift), but it goes over $50, then I'm not only going to give it a second though, but a twentieth as well. When I went to my first anime convention, there were so many things I wanted, but very little I could afford. When I went to my last convention, I could afford it all yet I talked myself out of actually buying anything because everything I wanted (box sets, mostly) just about was over $50. Even though the money was there and I knew it would be my last chance to buy these things, I really couldn't justify doing it.

Spam's rotten partner in Internet annoyance is spyware. Owen Courreges provides a link to an InformationWeek article on the subject:

Business-technology managers are looking for all the help they can get. "We're starting to see more spyware issues," says Gene Fredriksen, VP for information security at financial-services firm Raymond James & Associates. New and better tools are needed because those available aren't able to "effectively handle the problem for a large company," he says.

Florida Cardiology P.A., which provides heart-disease diagnosis and treatment in six locations around Orlando, has 88 PCs. IT administrator Nick Butler discovered earlier this year that virtually every computer had been infected with some type of spyware. It created a serious drag on productivity, with some systems taking more than 12 minutes to start and others unable to properly connect to the Internet.

Since Florida Cardiology handles personal medical information, the presence of spyware scared Butler. "No one knows for sure what this stuff is doing," he says. "What if one of these things is keystroke logging or captures patient information? That's an unacceptable risk."

Owen surprisingly goes all big-government on the issue. The truth is that most spyware doesn't just creep on to someone's computer. Very much of the time it's part of that largely unread "terms of usage" disclaimer at the beginning of a software install. A lot of the office infections start when an employee downloads a screen-saver or some sort of freebie program. Free software is rarely free, folks; they have to get their money from somewhere. KaZaA is notorious for installing all kinds of crud you don't want on your computer unless you buy the "Plus" version. For my part, I have a freebie program that tells me the temperature and weather conditions. It has random pop-ups, but no spyware.

There are instances where such tracking is done via something viral. Those ought to be (and are, I'm pretty sure) illegal. There is also an argument to be made for a recent senate bill that legislates that users must be informed of every program being installed. Truthfully, though, I'm not sure how much good that's going to do when most of this stuff gets started after a user neglects to read (or simply consents to) a "terms of usage" contract. There isn't much the law can do about that. On the matter of notices, though, I'd imagine this is something that the private sector can handle.

My father recently cracked down on their spyware with Spybot, which has been pretty successful in that regard. A big part of all of this is just staying on top of it. So if we neglect to do so, should the government be asked to step in?

The issue at hand here is how much privacy a computer user is allowed to give up. Obviously, it's a terrible thing when a private company gets ahold of keystroke-monitoring software. Furthermore, I'm not sure what legitimate use there is for such a product. That said, I'm a believer that anyone ought to be able to sell or barter any privacy if that's there choice. It's often been said that Americans value their privacy, but would sell a splice of their DNA for a free Big Mac. In the past, I've handed over my drivers license to my friend Phil in return for some knicknacks (on a side note, I forgot to tell Phil that I moved, dangit!). People are also willing to have programs on their computer that watch the websites they go to in return for the ability to download illegal files. Well, they're willing by omission (neglecting to read the Terms) as much as anything, but it's not really the government's job to make people read a contract before they sign it (or click on it). Actually, I willingly allowed the late, great AudioGalaxy to do just that.


So what about the medical records? Well, companies with sensitive documents need to be careful about what they let employees do on their computers. Programs need to be in place to prevent employees from so much as saving an .exe file to their computer. Much of this is already done, but the private sector ought to be able to pick up the slack.

In short, I'm unconvinced that the government needs to get involved here to save the ignorant computer user from himself. A better solution would be for OS developers to come up with a rating system of intrusiveness. OS developers may then be able to prevent programs that don't subject themselves to the rating system from being installed. The ones that do submit (which is most of them, I'd wager) will also benefit because if they have a lower intrusiveness rating (if they just have pop-up ads for example), their rating will be fairly benign and people can make their decisions accordingly. Those programs that monitor keystrokes or whatnot would then have a lot more trouble making headway on most peoples' PC. Those that do so covertly could be subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution for hacking.

Update: I take back what I said about most of them being partners of free software. I apparently had security on highest, so my check came out clean. I should have noticed this, but I figured that the web sites I couldn't access were due to a slow modem's sloppy handling of the net, which has happened (to a lesser degree) in the past. In any case, I turned the security down a couple notches and I was able to start accessing all sites. Then I ran a check and sure enough, as Owen said, two peeping cookies have appeared in the last couple of hours.

I'm not an anti-spam warrior like many IT people are. There are a number of relatively easy steps that anyone can take to reduce the amount of spam and I'm not even referring to sometimes-intrusive spamblocking software:

Do not insert your email address in to any form, ever. I have a spambox that I use to insert in to fields that require an email address. You can get free email services from Yahoo and Hotmail for free that you can use. You can use that address for web sites that require sending an email to you (some quizzes work that way), comments sections that require an email address (or you can just put in a fake one), and services that get sent to your email box (for instance, my credit card payment reminders go to my spambox, though this requires knowing about when payments are due).

Do not use your email address on Usenet or message boards. You can try tricks like name-at-domain-dot-com, but more sophisticated email harvesting programs will decipher it. I personally use my spambox for what few message boards I'm apart of. I check my spambox once every few days. I look for anything worthwhile and then "delete all."

Yahoo (and possibly hotmail) have pretty good spam filters. There are a few false positives, but it does a remarkable job getting rid of a lot of spam. That said, Yahoo and Hotmail are hotbeds for spammers since they often have public registries. For all of my problems with Bigfoot, I get surprisingly few spam through them.

If someone sends you an unsolicited email and at the bottom it says "remove", be wary before actually doing that. As often as not, those are used to verify email address. When they get that, they know you've gotten the email and they can get more money for selling "verified" email addresses.

Having said all that, the recent "crackdown" of spammers does not seem to be working. My Yahoo email box holds on to suspected junk-mail for about a week before discarding it. In the average week, I used to get about 60 items, but now I get 145 or so.

Speaking of spam, InfoWorld has an interesting (if short) article on Jon Postel, one of the founders of email protocols. Apparently from the start he was concerned about the proliferation of junk mail, but his warnings went unheeded. Realistically, though, I'm not sure what all can actually be done about it that isn't already being done. What's easy for you and me (one of email's selling points) is easy for scummy businesses.

The Paris News:

Avis Lorene Whitlock

COOPER — Avis Lorene Whitlock, 91, of Cooper passed away Friday, April, 23, 2004, in a Paris hospital.

Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 25, in Delta Funeral Home chapel with the Rev. Leroy Reaves and the Rev. Gary Regan officiating. Burial will follow in Oaklawn Cemetery.

The family will receive friends from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the funeral home.

She was born in Enloe on Jan. 5, 1913, the daughter of John A. and Lillie Holman Brannon. She married Charles E. Whitlock on May 3, 1940, and he preceded her in death on April 13, 1974. She was a retired school teacher and a member of the Methodist church.

She is survived by four nephews, Cletus Bridges and wife, Maxine, of Dallas, Elton Bridges and wife, Frances, of Lubbock, Aaron Brannon and wife, Faye, of Sulphur Springs and R.D. Brannon of Corsicana; one niece, Dora Lee Patrick of Dallas; numerous great nieces and nephews; and two special friends, Betty Guffy and Rosemary Phillips.

I usually enjoy Leonard Pitts's columns, even when I disagree with him. However, his column comparing the crimes of disgraced reporters Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley misses important distinctions:

It's been nearly four months since the scandal broke. Four months since Jack Kelley, star foreign correspondent for USA Today, was found to have lied his way through his professional life for the last 13 years. He lied about where he had been, what he had seen, whom he had talked to, what they had said. He lied so much I'm only half convinced "Jack Kelley' is his real name.

Yet you, my colleagues, have not asked the most important question:

What does this mean for the future of white journalism?

Granted, you've pontificated about our damaged credibility. You've felled forests with your weighty ruminations about what this portends for the future of our profession. But, evidently cowed by political correctness, you've ignored the most vital issues.

Did USA Today advance a moderately capable journalist because he was white? Did some white editor mentor him out of racial solidarity even though Kelley was unqualified? In light of this fiasco, should we re- examine the de facto affirmative action that gives white men preferential treatment in our newsrooms?

Jayson Blair's race was not the sole issue that lead many to believe that race played a factor in his success. It was the fact that Blair was a 27 year old writing hefty pieces for the most respected newssource in the nation. How did a 27-year old get so ahead so quickly? He somehow managed to bypass the bush leagues that most reporters have to wade through. I didn't hear about any huge stories he broke with another paper to warrant being picked up by the NYT. From what I understand, his academic career was not remarkably impressive. So how did this happen? Just a lucky intern who happened to be black at a paper that was trying like the dickins to be more diverse. Coincidence, surely.

If a similar pattern can be drawn for Kelley, then Pitts's parallel is apt. USA Today is a fine paper. I actually prefer it to the NYT (I'm a sucker for pie charts), but it's stature is nowhere near that of the Times and as such it's not under the same scrutiny (nor, I imagine, would potential newhires be so screened). A better parallel with Blair would be Phillip Glass, a writer for The New Republic that similarly made stuff up and got away with it. Glass, like Blair, was a young phenom that rose to a prominant newspaper before he was ready. A defense for both Blair and Glass could be made that they were simply in over their heads. But even there lies a crucial difference: Glass was not part of an attempt at diversity the same way that Blair was, therefore Glass's race (white I believe) is not an issue.

I'm personally conflicted over the value of affirmative action and diversity programs, so I don't have an anti-affirmative action ax to grind here. That said, when someone underqualified gets a job for which he is not qualified in a paper that loudly seeks people just like him, it's not unreasonable to ask questions. No such circumstances existed for Kelley to my knowledge. Lex pondered a while back if he got away with it because he was known in the industry as being a pious Christian. That's a specific circumstance that could warrant some scrutiny. If Blair were white and the NYT were making an effort to hire more "young and edgy" writers, then Blair's age (and edginess) would be an issue. As it turns out, the Times wanted more minority writers and Blair was a minority. That's a story no matter how you cut it.

From what I understand of the planet Mercury, it rotates on an axis at approximately the same rate that it revolves around the sun. This means that one side of it is always facing the sun. The side that faces the sun is extraordinarily hot while the side that never gets sunlight is freezing cold. That's why - I presume - all the little planetary pictures I was shown as a kid had one side of it red (hot) and the other blue (cold). I vaguely remember a teacher saying that if you were to stand at the top of the planet, in between the hot and cold regions, half of your body would freeze and the other half would burn up.

Almost as much as the temperature differential, if not more, one of the cheif meteorological differences between Idaho and southeast Texas is the humidity. Up here there is very little of it. One of the interesting results of this is that the temperature swing between night and day feels a lot severe between night and day. I sweat during the day and shiver at night. I was warned about this before I moved up.

What I wasn't expecting, however, was the Mercury Effect. Because of some of the recent rain (or maybe it's perpetually like this), we've had cloudy skies. What's interesting is even during the daylight, the difference between direct and obstructed sunlight is pretty severe in its own right. At 10 in the morning, if the clouds move and I'm exposed to the sun, I immediately need to take my jacket off. What's particularly weird is when half of my body is exposed to the sun and half of it is in the shade, I simultaneously feel hot and cold at the same time in a way that I never did in Houston.

Kinda like standing at the top of Mercury (minus the fact that half of my body would melt, the other would freeze, and I'd probably explode).

John Fund has an informative column in the Opinion Journal about Davy Crockett:

In Congress he championed the rights of squatters, poor settlers who claimed and built on undeveloped Western land but were barred from buying it if they didn't already own property. In 1830, he broke with President Andrew Jackson and opposed his Indian Removal Act because it uprooted 60,000 members of peaceful tribes and brutally forced them across the Mississippi River. "Several of my colleagues got around me, and told me how well they loved me, and that I was ruining myself," Crockett recounted in his autobiography. "I told them it was a wicked, unjust measure, and that I should go against it, let the cost to myself be what it might."

Indeed, his growing opposition to what he considered the headstrong policies of "King Andrew the First," cost him dearly. President Jackson, a fellow Tennesseean, urged Crockett's constituents to "not disgrace themselves" by re-electing him. Jackson's allies crafted a blatant gerrymander to drive Crockett from office, but he nonetheless survived. Then in 1834 he stumbled badly when he took time away from a congressional session to promote his book in a three-week tour of the Northeast. He lost his re-election bid, 51% to 49%, to a war hero with a wooden leg. He then famously told his constituents, "You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." He did just that and his death the next year at the Alamo ensured his place among America's heroes.

Unfortunately, the column goes more into positioning Crockett as a libertarian. It's a shame because I'd like to know more biographically. Maybe I'll have to pick up an authoritative biography somewhere. Anyone have any recommendations?

There was a biography of Sam Houston at my folks house. I picked it up and read portions of it. It was really quite interesting. I probably would have read the whole thing if I'd run across it sooner.

Someone gave this person a degree and a classroom:

According to an incident report by resource officer Brian Chiappetta, the incident took place in the morning during second period. The students were in class when the teacher took a photograph of some of the students, the report said. When the girl asked why the teacher had taken her picture, the teacher allegedly responded with a disparaging remark about the girl's appearance.

The girl became upset and began to use profanity and hit the office assist button on the classroom wall, the incident report said. The teacher then allegedly told two 14-year-old boys to pick up the girl and throw her out the window.

The two boys later told principal Kenneth Daniels that they threw the girl out the window because they did not want to be written up for disobeying a teacher.

The ad in the paper said that there were rooms available for $145 a month, furnished, all utilities paid.

Too good to be true? Maybe, so I checked it out.

I can see why it's $145 a month, furnished, all utilities paid.

Let's just say that it's not located in the greatest part of town. The neighborhood is such that the complex locks its front doors at 8pm (residents have a front key). They also have this thing about visitors: they're not allowed on the premises after 10pm. In fact, if found there they will be arrested for trespassing. While walking around the area, I began to wonder what Idaho's concealed handgun laws are.

The rooms are about 12"x16" or so. The furniture included: bed, dresser, nightstand, and a chair. The units have two windows and a closet. If you pay an extra $40, you get a bathroom and shower.

Oh, and I really, really, really want to live there. It is the neatest apartment complex I have seen in a very, very, very long time.

Serenity over at Serenity's Journal has an informative post about her experience in the armed services as a woman and relates it to recent proposals and fears over a draft:

One of my drill sergeants...although for a different platoon, was a female soldier and we in 2nd platoon in basic absolutely HATED her. She was such a bitch to us at every opportunity. When we gradutated, she handed us an envelope and we never saw her again. Inside that envelope was a letter she had hand written to all of us females. She explained why she had been a raging hag to us for 18 weeks. She explained what we should expect, how we would be viewed, how we can overcome this. She explained that there was no place for whining and complaining and acting like a priss in "this man's army." And she was right. The biggest reason that a female soldier needed to prove herself was because the male soldiers needed to know they could trust her to fight right alongside them when necessary. They didn't need some little girl out there who was going to cry if she broke a nail or got dirty or was tired.

So while I was working my ass off to prove myself, every action I did, every word I said was very closely scrutinized, looking for an excuse not to trust me. It was difficult to prove myself during "down time" but when we went out to the field, I got just as dirty, carried just as much as the guys, marched just as far, dug just as many foxholes, apprehended and successfully searched just as many "EPW"s, (I was an MP), and bitched no more than the guys. I did not care what my hair looked like. I did not care if my nails broke. I did not care if I was filthy. This was not the time nor the place to give a damn about my physical appearance. This was the time to protect my fellow soldiers.

We were out in the field one day and all those who were higher ranking than me were "killed" and I found myself in charge of an entire platoon for the very first time in my life. Even during a field operation, that is an enormous amount of responsibility to place on someone not even out of their teens. I will never forget that after it was realized I was next in line, all heads swiveled to me, all eyes were on me, all were waiting for me to make the next decision. I made it, and all my fellow soldiers trusted my decision. No one questioned me, no one went behind my back and did it their way, no one tried to overstep my new found authority. The trust was so instilled in all of us that they had complete faith that I was doing the right thing.

The proposals for a draft are most notably coming from opponents of Person Gulf II, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). I think that's telling as the fear and paranoia is the desired effect to bring down support for the war and draw more parallels between PG2 and Viet Nam. It's patently dishonest and I've lost a lot of respect for Hagel in the process (Rangel never had much to begin with).

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this one. I found it via John Hawkins, who found it via this guy, who found it via Karol. They all poke fun and laugh, as everyone should. Some are apparently trying to make this indicative of why Kerry would be a lousy president by pushing his "hipness" as a reason to vote for him.

I recall when I was in Colorado Springs, Kerry was doing a rally the youth vote in Pittsburg with, of all people, Bon Jovi. Trying to rally the youth vote with Bon Jovi! I personally have nothing against Bon Jovi and even like more of his music than I would like to admit, but I'm not sure Bon Jovi carries the college crowd anymore. So in that sense I understand where John et al are coming from.

At the same time, lighten up, people! First of all, this picture wasn't designed by the campaign, it was a submission! Yes, the campaign approved it, but I'm relatively certain they laughed at it, too. If someone did something similar with Bush in a cowboy hat on a horse saying "I'll be your huckleberry" I'd consider using it as my wallpaper.

Honestly, I find it uncharacteristically neat that the campaign would put it up.

Hideous and genuinely weird as it is.

The Top Ten Houston Heartbreaks in sports.

[via Coogfans]

The Omni-Touch job is out. They required sales experience.

The good news is that Norwest called me back again yesterday. This time it was the VP and another on-the-spot interview that I didn't do remarkably well on. On the first phone interview they asked if I worked better alone or in a group. Not knowing which the job I was, I said that all things being equal, I'd prefer to work alone. Five minutes later I was told that I'd be working with six other people. So yesterday when I was asked if I could handle the workload (overseeing about 250 computers), I said that I'd definitely be able to with some help. Then I found out that the six other people were IT personnel, not network administration and that I'd be working netadmin alone. That made me sound not-very-confident about being able to oversee such a large number of machines. Can't win for losing, can I? Having only worked with 20 or so at my last job (it was a small part of my job), I have no clue what overseeing 250 computers would be like. If I recall, though, that's about what Nova had when I worked there and there was one guy mostly responsible for that, so I think I can handle it. Regardless, over the course of the interview I went from feeling overqualified for the spot to underqualified. The good news about the six other people in IT is that I'd be able to focus solely on fixing stuff, so none of the task-hopping that UFC required.

On the Synchronus front, I moved the interview from Tuesday to Wednesday for personal reasons, but it's still on. I'm going to stop by a convenience store and if I can get $7.50 an hour or more there, I think I'll take a job there instead of with Synchronus. I really, really would rather not work for that company.

The New York Times has a fascinating article on the Japanese hostages that were recently released from the rebels in Iraq:

You got what you deserve!" one Japanese held up a hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. "You are Japan's shame," another wrote on the Web site of one of the hostages. They had "caused trouble" for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill them $6,000 for airfare.

Treated like criminals, the three have gone into hiding, effectively becoming prisoners inside their own homes. The kidnapped woman was last seen arriving at her parents' house, looking defeated and dazed from taking tranquilizers, flanked by relatives who helped her walk and bow deeply before the media, as a final apology to the nation.

Dr. Satoru Saito, a psychiatrist who has examined the three twice since their return, said the stress they are enduring now is "much heavier" than what they endured during their captivity in Iraq. Asked to name their three most stressful moments, the ex-hostages told him, in ascending order: the moment when they were kidnapped on their way to Baghdad; the knife-wielding incident; and the moment they watched a television show, on the morning after their return here, and realized Japan's anger with them.

"Let's say the knife incident, which lasted about 10 minutes, ranks 10 on a stress level," Dr. Saito said in an interview at his clinic today. "After they came back to Japan and saw the morning news show, their stress level ranked 12."

Whether you want to read about the war or not (or the hostage situation), this is a fascinating peak into a culture that is almost diametrically opposed to our own. With Japan and the United States exchanging technology and trade to the level that we do, it's easy to forget how amazingly different our cultures are:

As an example of the unbridgeable gap between Japan and America, consider this comment by Yasuo Fukuda, the government's spokesman: "They may have gone on their own but they must consider how many people they caused trouble to because of their action."

The criticism began almost immediately after the first three were kidnapped two weeks ago. The environment minister, Yuriko Koike, blamed them for being "reckless."

After the hostages' families asked that the government yield to the kidnappers' demand and withdraw its 550 troops from southern Iraq, they began receiving hate mail and harassing faxes and email. In the village of Japan, like the one in "The Lottery," one had to throw stones.

Even as the kidnappers were still threatening to burn alive the three hostages, Yukio Takeuchi, a top official in the foreign ministry, said of the three, "When it comes to a matter of safety and life, I would like them to be aware of the basic principle of personal responsibility."

[...]

"This is an idea that should be considered," the Yomiuri Newspaper, Japan's biggest daily, said in an editorial. "Such an act might deter other reckless, self-righteous volunteers."

When two freed hostages mentioned wanting to stay or return to Iraq to continue their work, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi angrily urged them "to have some sense."

"Many government officials made efforts to rescue them, without even eating and sleeping, and they are still saying that sort of thing?" he said.

The comment was revealing, one that would not be uttered, at least publicly, in the United States where the government is supposed to serve the people. Here, the government is now trumpeting "personal responsibility" for those going to dangerous areas — essentially saying that travelers shouldn't accept any help from the government to secure their safety or get out of trouble.

Again, no Japanese politician dared to speak out against this idea.

Compare this to the return of Private Jessica Lynch and the difference could not be more stark. On one hand, it's difficult for me - born and raised in the U.S. - to comprehend this mentality at all. It does make sense in its own way. I remember the irritation I felt when America seemed to stop everything for the three young evangelist girls from Baylor that went into a very unstable Afghanistan. I felt very strongly that they shouldn't have been there and hailing them as heroes was a bit much. So in that sense, I can very much understand where they're coming from when it comes to society digging themselves out of problems that the victims dug themselves in to.

That aside, I find the Japanese approach to the issue fundamentally disturbing. Particularly this bit:

The foreign ministry, held both in awe and resentment by the average Japanese, was the "okami" defied in this case. While foreign ministry officials are Japan's super elite, the average Japanese tends to regard them as arrogant and unhelpful, recalling how they failed to deliver in time the declaration of war against the United States in 1941 so that Japan became forever known as a sneak-attack nation.

Defying the "okami" are young Japanese, freelancers and members of non-profit organizations, a status traditionally held in low esteem in a country where the bigger one's company, the bigger is one's social rank. They also represented something more: they belong to a generation in which many have rejected traditional Japanese life. Many have gravitated instead to places like the East Village in Manhattan, looking for something undefined. Others have joined non-profit organizations to help people in Africa or Iraq, a new phenomenon here.

I guess I'm a product of my country. I cannot help but sympathize with the young Japanese trying to carve out just a bit of individuality in such an authority-based culture.

Carroll Andrew Morse makes an interesting case that all Iraqi politics ought to be local:

Here is the plan. Sovereignty will not come to Iraq all at once. On June 30, Iraq will be divided into provinces, or occupation zones -- at different times and different places, both labels will be appropriate. There will be more than three zones, there will be at least 25, maybe as many as 100. Each zone will evolve towards civil government at its own rate. Some zones will need to be overseen using the rules of outright military occupation of a hostile nation. Other zones will be able to quickly establish full home rule, complete civil government in all matters except foreign policy and military affairs. Over six months, let's see how many zones can produce a local government that can rule without slaughtering a significant percentage of its own population, or stoning women for committing adultery, or burning the foreign nationals providing electricity and water.

Zones demonstrating the ability to live peacefully will be migrated towards full home rule. When enough provinces reach complete home rule, they will have important decisions to make. If enough zones decided to band together, they can form a state of their own. (There will have to be a few basic rules about a minimum number of provinces, or a minimum total population, and/or territorial contiguousness required to form a state.) They are free to welcome into their state other provinces that reach full home rule at a future time. Multi-province successor states may even reserve the right to join with other multi-province successor states. Under this plan, the Iraqi people ultimately decide the shape of post-Hussein Iraq.

I have several reservations with this plan.

The first issue is the same problem that exists with a three-state solution: the Kurds. Going in to this war I figured that it made sense to give the Kurds their own state. The more I read in to it, though, the more I learned about how that might cause some unfortunate instability in Turkey. In fact, it's enough of a concern up there that they demanded Kurdistan be taken off the table before they would give us what little help that they did. If each pricinct were given self-determination, it seems apparent that Kurdistan would be a reality and unrest in Turkey very well might follow. At the very least, we'd probably lose an already uneven ally.

The second, and more specific, issue with this plan involved the inequalities of the Iraqi terrain and economy. Simply put, many pricincts would have tons of oil and others would have relatively little. Many areas will have cities with a sound infrastructure and some would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. This is a problem no matter how you slice it, but when you let pricincts form their own countries with other willing pricincts, you could well end up with a Petrolistan where all of the oil-rich pricincts join together and leave the other Iraqis to fend for themselves with little resources and less infrastructure. Other than self-defense, there would be very, very little incentive for the resource-rich areas to ally themselves with the poorer regions. Speaking of self-defense, it's not hard to imagine a spurned poor community with nothing to lose unleashing war on the wealthier counterparts.

Which brings me to the last issue, which is potential war. You can't draw pricincts small enough that there won't be a minority of one type or another. If you find yourself one of the few Type-Bs in a stanchly Type-A country, the notion of "religious freedom" (or "ethnic equality") could quickly become a soundbite. It's a short walk from a beleaguered minority in one state sitting next to a state where it's a majority to a civil war between the states. Without a single identity, war would become very plausible - especially when you're dealing with unequal resources.

It's possible that these problems will exist in a single-state solution as well. It's also possible that problems with a single-state solution would be alleviated with this type of partitioning. However, I'm unconvinced that the pros outweigh the cons on this particular plan.

In the recent Louisiana governor's race, Democrat Kathleen Blanco pulled an upset on Indian-American Republican Bobby Jindal. That much political geeks like me know. Fred Barnes fleshes out a convincing case as to where Blanco got some of her support from:

Both Blanco and Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, re-elected in 2002, won with 52 percent of the vote. "The geographic pattern of the Landrieu vote was very typical for a Democrat with a correlation of .98 with the average Democratic vote in the1996 and 2000 presidential elections," Skinner and Klinkner found. For Blanco, the correlation was .60, "indicating that Blanco was drawing support from a different set of voters."

Indeed, she was. In the 26 parishes where Duke won a majority, Blanco averaged 10 points better than Landrieu, who defeated a white Republican. The pattern was especially striking in northern Louisiana, Bubba country. In parishes where Duke got more than 55 percent, Blanco averaged 17 percentage points more than Landrieu.

The question I have about this is how much of the overall vote did that give Blanco? If it was greater than the margin of victory, then it's safe to conclude that Blanco was elected based on the Bubba vote.

Blanco - to her credit - did nothing to court this particular vote, so this is not a blight on her personally. Jindal may have done himself a disservice by openly courting the black vote (and winning the endorsement of New Orleans's black Democratic mayor), so if anyone is to "blame" for this it all falls back on Jindal anyway.

Whatever the case, it's tragic that Jindal's race may have cost him the election. As someone who'd like to see more minorities in higher positions (preferably Republican ones, naturally), it's disheartening. The good news is that the Bubbas are dying off and more and more of their kids see things differently in that area.

Conservative Bruce Bartlett has some harsh things to say about the administration's handling of the Iraq conflict:

In short, President Bush often seems to operate like the character from "Alice in Wonderland" who declared, "Sentence first -- verdict afterwards." Instead of figuring out why and how things should be done before acting, the White House seems to act first and then create ex post facto rationalizations for that decision in lieu of serious deliberation.

Although I claim no inside knowledge of the national security process in this administration, I do know that Suskind and O'Neill's characterization of its domestic policy operation rings true. While it is conceivable that a completely different process operates in the national security arena, I think that is highly unlikely. Presidents establish a style and tone for their White House staff operations, and it operates across the board. Therefore, I have every reason to believe that the same weaknesses that exist on the domestic side exist within the national security operation, as well.

Contrary to what conspiracy theorists imagine, I don't think President Bush ever ordered facts to be invented to justify the Iraq war. Rather, I think there was a great deal of what economists call self-selection bias. Facts that confirmed what President Bush wanted to believe tended to filter up to him, while conflicting facts tended to be sidelined.

Bartlett was de facto a supporter of the war, so his criticisms carry more weight with me than do those who never thought we should be there, needed permission from the UN to go, or tentatively supported the war while waiting for the first sign of problems to occur. So do I agree with Bartlett? To be honest, I don't know one way or the other how things are handled inside the Administration. That said, I don't regret my support of the war despite the absent WMD's and the current troubles there at the present time. It would also take a lot more than this to get me to consider voting for Kerry.

I'm taking a couple days off. I'll be back over the weekend or on Monday.

(oh, and Happy Birthday Adam!!)

Dear Keith,

It's hard to believe that it's been four years. In all the confusion of my cross-country move, the date almost escaped me, but I've run out of ways to distract myself

I miss you. I'm sorry that I couldn't visit the site this year.

Best wishes,
Alex

I've been here for about four days now and I've found a handful of possible jobs. So far things are going a little better than expected.

The hottest lead is Norwest Financial Group. They put an ad in the paper on Sunday that seemed right up my alley. They require a college degree, which means that (a) it should pay decently well and (b) there should be less applicants. Ordinarily I wouldn't get excited about a single job offering, but I suspect that there are less candidates up here than there would be for a similar offering in Houston, where they would be inundated with hundreds of resumes each day. So I applied on Monday and they called me back yesterday and conducted a phone interview. Unfortunately, I wasn't entirely prepared for the interview and didn't do as well as I might have liked. I did do well enough, though, that they told me what their hiring process was from here on out. That's encouraging.

The other job that I have actively pursued is considerably less desirable. Synchronus has a big office in Houston and is constantly recruiting. Why? Extremely high turnover. Why? The job absolutely stinks. I know a handful of people I know have worked for them and every last one of them firmly believes that my recent post on a nameless tech support company is about Synchronus. In fact, when I took the job at Gattaca, I explicitly remember thinking to myself "at least it isn't Synchronus." Well, it turns out that they have an office up here, too. It's basic phone support at about $7.50 an hour, which is enough to live on up here, but only barely. But it's work and could tide me over until something better comes along. I sent an inquiry and we have an interview set up on the 27th.

And the third possibility is *gasp* sales. OmniTouch Broadband is hiring hand over fist and paying really well ($11.75 base for the first six months, $16 after that). I'm not looking forward to a sales job, but at least OmniTouch is a good company that I can get behind. Unfortunately, it's an hour away in a nearby town that I would likely need to move to. I really like this town and would hate to travel 1800 miles across the country only to still be an hour away from Eel. That said, I'm going to the job fair in a bit.

This comes as no surprise:

NDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- The six conferences tied to football's Bowl Championship Series more than doubled their operating revenues over a 10-year period, while revenues for the five other Division I-A conferences lag far behind, according to a recent NCAA study.

In 2002, the last year used in the study, the only conferences showing profits from sports were the Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern Conference and, among non-BCS conferences, the Mountain West. Only the SEC showed profits in each of the 10 years, the association reported in The NCAA News this week.

[...]

Five conferences -- the Big East, Conference USA, Mid-American, Western Athletic and Sun Belt -- reported net deficits in all 10 years of the study, and the Mountain West reported more expenses than revenues in nine of the 10 years.

The NCAA report said the six BCS conferences -- the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC -- increased operating revenues by 108 percent to 146 percent.

However, expenses increased at a faster pace than revenues for most conferences.

Appearences seem to indicate that Conference USA is going to extend an invitation to the University of Texas at El Paso or they're going to hold at 11 teams. UTEP was my third choice of four listed realistic options. I would have much preferred North Texas or Louisiana Tech, but UTEP brings with it a host of advantages. They have a fan-base that many current C*USA members don't have. They had an atrocious year last year and their attendance was roughly that of breakthrough UH's. In years where the team is doing better, they could keep the conference's attendance averages up whereas UNT's and LaTech's would have brought it down. They can also be expected to travel reasonably well with large alumni bases in Houston (UH and Rice) and DFW (SMU).

There are some significant downsides. They just lost the basketball coach that turned their program around and their football team hasn't seen success in years. On the other hand, their basketball program is history-making and there is a good chance that the new coach will be able to capitalize on that. Their football program just hired Mike Price, a very successful coach who was let go by Alabama for personal infractions. Unfortunately, Price's stop at UTEP may be temporary, but hopefully he'd be able to set something up there before he heads for greener pasteurs.

What I find most interesting about this is UTEP's interest in C*USA. They are some 800 miles closest to their nearest competitor and over 1500 away from the eastern teams. The formation of divisions should alleviate this to a degree, but from a geographical standpoint, they belong where they are. They are also losing a potential rivalry with incoming WAC team New Mexico State, which is nearby. Either the alumni base is working really hard to convince UTEP's administration to make the switch or C*USA runs the risk of embarassment. UTEP is officially denying reports at the moment. Regardless of geography, being turned down by a lackluster football program (even with good prospects) would hurt the league's stature in the same way that half the league's desperate attempts to get into the Big East did. I really hope that the conference knows what they're doing here.

Update: On further reflection, adding another eastern team does present a logistical problem (and this would be the case with LaTech and UNT as well). Tulane and Southern Miss have a rivalry due in part to their close proximity to one another. Unfortunately, that's exactly where the divisional dividing line would be so their rivalry would go the way of the Oklahoma-Nebraska one where they play in alternating bi-annual contests. There are a couple ways around this, such as playing some geographical magic and putting Memphis in the east or by having set interdivision games (for instance, Tulane plays USM, ECU, and UCF every year and Houston plays UAB, Marshall, and Memphis).

Also, if we do add UTEP, I feel really sorry for Louisiana Tech, who will be virtually alone in their conference. UTEP and NorTex have a good thing going in their present conferences, but Tech most definitely does not.

RAW: Maybe that Denny's is open.
Eel: Ugh, I can't stand Denny's.
RAW: Yeah, but it's 10:05. I'm not sure what else is going to be open.
Eel: Sigh, you're probably right.

RAW: I can't believe that IHOP is closed.
Eel: Yeah, but I guess you have to consider where we are.
RAW: True, but they're open all night in Waco and San Marcos. On the other hand, I guess those are college towns.
Eel: This is a college town!
RAW: Oh well, at least this place is open.
Eel: Kill me now.

Waitress: Can I get you anything to drink?
Eel: Could I get a water with a lemon in it?
Waitress: We're out of lemons.
Eel: [blink]
Waitress: I'm not joking, we ran out of lemons.
Eel: [explodes]

Waitress: Have you decided what you want to order yet?
Eel: No, not yet.

Waitress: Have you decided what you want to order yet?
RAW: No, we're still looking
Waitress: Okay [leaves]
RAW: For something edible.

Waitress: Have you decided what you want to order yet?
Eel: Still working on it.

Eel: So what are you going to get?
RAW: I'm looking at the nachos. It's really difficult to screw up nachos.
Eel: [doesn't say a word]

Eel: How are your nachos?
RAW: Well, they didn't screw them up, per se.
Eel: ...
RAW: I mean, it's cheese, it's meat, you really can't go wrong with that.
Eel: Should we go to Taco Bell next time?
RAW: Dear god, yes.
Eel: Uhhh huhhhhhh...
RAW: Or maybe I can just get some Velveta and Hormel and make my own.
Eel: Did I mention I don't like Denny's?
RAW: Well, you were right, of course. I'm not disagreeing with you... I didn't earlier. But...
Eel: But what?
RAW: Well, I can state factually that these nachos are twice as good as Taco Bell's. They must be.
Eel: Why?
RAW: They cost twice as much.
Eel: [explodes]

It's interesting how some people can make one of the most selfless acts that millions of Americans perform into something selfish and infuriating:

The American Red Cross tells those who are sick or have recently received tattoos or piercings not to donate blood, both to protect the health of donors and to lessen the risk of transmitting diseases to recipients.

But sorority members at the University of Missouri-Columbia -- a school that once set a world record for blood collection -- were urged by a fellow member to lie about their health.

In an e-mail sent last Tuesday to about 170 members of Gamma Phi Beta, sophomore Christie Key, the chapter's blood donation coordinator, wrote: "I dont (sic) care if you got a tattoo last week LIE. I dont (sic) care if you have a cold. Suck it up. We all do. LIE. Recent peircings (sic)? LIE."

A while back I wrote on the subject of universities renaming themselves. While looking up information on UTEP for an upcoming post, I ran across this more humorous take on the subject by Lynn Ashby:

This renaming schools is practically a cottage industry in Texas. We started early. The very first venture by the state into higher education was not, as many think, the University of Texas, but the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, which eventually became the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College—they put the ”Texas” part up front. Today, it is called Texas A&M University. But do you know what the actual, official name is? Texas A&M University. No periods after either the A or the M because they no longer stand for words.

Same for Texas Tech. It began life as “West Texas A&M” and was supposed to be in Abilene, but became Texas Technological College in Lubbock. Today, it is Texas Tech University. There is no period after Tech. So you go to the University of Texas? Which one? For generations, that was an easy question for there was only one. Now, there are UTs spread all over the place. Tyler, Permian Basin, Dallas, San Antonio and on and on.

For some reason, I always like UT-El Paso, now known as UTEP. For years, it was called Texas Western University. It began life as the State School of Mines and Metallurgy and for the first decade awarded one single degree: engineer of mining. The school has a certain appeal because its buildings were modeled after temples in Bhutan. You don’t often see that in West Texas.

There are also Texas A&Ms all over the place. One is now Texas A&M-Commerce. It started as East Texas State Teachers College, and one of its students, who made money sweeping out classrooms and ringing the campus bell every 45 minutes, was Sam Rayburn. We also have one university named after the president of another university, which is odd. Sul Ross was president of Texas A&M. Now we have Sul Ross State University, which plays lousy football but has one great rodeo team.

Incidentally, what is all this name changing from “college” to “university” as though, by scraping off one name and painting on another, the institution is upgraded? Dartmouth, one of the nation’s finer institutions of higher learning, is Dartmouth College. Since 1769, it has turned out generations of leaders for the country and seems to have no need to hype up its name. In this regard, maybe Southwest Texas should change its name to “Southwest Texas University, the Only School in the State That Produced a President.”

RAW: In all of my life, I have never (a) needed to download a codec, (b) successfully downloaded said codec, and (c) had such codec actually make compressed video actually view properly.
Brian: Well hmmm.
Brian: I really like how on Trillian (b) shows up as beer and (c) shows up as coffee.*
RAW: Yeah, but that doesn't help me with my problem.
Brian: I don't know what you're talking about. Coffee and beer help with every problem.

*- Trillian has emoticons like AIM, except that they have more and (x) will often bring up images, like coffee and beer.

Houston: It takes 40 minutes to get just about anywhere.
Idaho City: In three days, I've run a fair number of chores, but have only driven sixteen miles.

Houston: Believes in U-Turns
Idaho City: What are those?

Houston: Until Mayor White institutes his city-wide bed time, you can grab a bite to eat at any number of places 24 hours a day.
Idaho City: IHOP closes - I kid you not - at 10pm.

Texas: Cars that don't meet inspection get taken off the road.
Idaho: Cars without front license plates (which are required here, I'm told) drive around with impugnity.

Houston: Police cars are everywhere.
Idaho City: I'm still not sure what a police car here looks like.

Houston: School zone speed signs say "Go slow or we will eat your children" or something to that effect.
Idaho City: Signs with flowers on them say "Please go slowly, we love our kids!" or something to that effect.

Houston: Fast food joints are manned by immigrants, kids, single mothers, the elderly, and former alcoholics.
Idaho City: Fast food joints are manned by kids and, it seems, mothers - almost all of whom are white.

Idaho: People don't say "Howdy."
Texas: People do.

Houston: It's not uncommon for people to say curse words frequently.
Idaho City: People say "darn" a whole darn lot.

Houston: If you look out into the distance, you can see oil refineries.
Idaho City: If you look anywhere, you see mountains.

Houston: When subdivisions and neighborhoods are built, they will often create a little man-made lake or something else naturey in order to bring up property values.
Idaho City: Instead of nature being built around housing, housing is built around nature (hills and mountains, specifically).

Idaho City: The city's population of about 55,000 make it one of the largest cities in the state.
Houston: League City has a population of about 55,000. Pasadena has a population of about 150,000. These are suburbs.

Idaho: People from Boise consider it cosmopolitan and urban.
Texas: People have never heard of Boise.

Houston: There are countless megaplex movie theaters with 20+ screens, three in the Clear Lake area alone.
Idaho City: They have this thing called a "tri-plex" that has only three screens and is not (a) attached to a mall or (b) an independent movie art house.

Cromulent Pete reviews the new Punisher movie:
For starters, the decision to make the Punisher more “human” is misguided. Not to say the man has to be a murderous automaton, but take the

skull t-shirt away and “The Punisher” could be any cookie cutter revenge flick. The vengeance theme is older than comics themselves (another man who lost his family to crime, Bruce Wayne, killed bad guys in the earliest Batman books, after all). Castle’s interaction with his neighbors is taken from Ennis’ “Welcome Back, Frank” comic book storyline, but that worked because of the Punisher’s long and storied history as a vicious bastard. Using it as a baseline for developing the character makes no sense, especially [spoiler].

Second, Travolta is all wrong as Saint. The man emotes like Dr. Evil, and hasn’t played a truly frightening character since “Urban Cowboy.” This will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who’s watched any movie he’s made in the last 8 years, of course, but all of you singing hosannas to Quentin Tarantino this weekend as you leave your Kill Bill, Vol. 2 screenings just remember who we have to blame for Barbarino’s return.

Marvel has had a good record on their recent releases with Spiderman and X-Men. Follow-up Hulk and Daredevil met with more mixed reviews, but compared to DC's recent offerings, they're gems (or so I'm told, I haven't seen them). So far all the reviews I've heard for this one have been bad. I agree with Pete that efforts to make Castle "human" so early on were likely to backfire. I hear the "zen" angle of Hulk backfired similarly, but again I've never seen the movie and (unlike Punisher) I have little use for that character.

A character like the Punisher is a hard one to write. Chuck Dixon, who made a name writing the comic book version some time ago, said that the one thing he'd do differently would be to make Punisher more of an anti-hero hero with a guardian hero to provide more contrast. That's one thing that the lamentable Dolph Lundgren version of 1989 did right with Louie Gossett Jr. It let Punisher be Punisher (to the extent that Lundgren can be the Punisher, which frankly isn't much) while providing a bit of levity. On the other hand, that's the sort of thing that a lot of Punisher loyalists (including possibly Owen Courreges) wouldn't like.

Kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Speaking of Owen Courreges, he gives a surprisingly positive review of the new Alamo movie:

I suppose I am a sucker for historical dramas, but there's little doubting that this was a clean, professional production. Although the film jumps from character to character, the main protagonists -- Crockett, Travis, Houston, and Bowie -- all have sufficient depth and are played quite adequately by the actors who portray them. Special kudos go to Bill Bob Thorton and Dennis Quaid. Thorton makes Crockett appear skilled, intelligent, and brave. Although the film does its best to ensure that the viewer separates the legend from the man, there is no doubt whatsoever that Crockett is exceptional.

Quaid, on the other hand, makes Houston appear gruff and determined. He isn't willing to sacrifice Texas for the Alamo. Ultimately, Texas is his only real concern. Although he is initially portrayed as an angry drunk, he does not allow it to interfere with his command. I must also confess that I was impressed with the choice of Quaid for another reason: He's a native Houstonian. Very apt casting indeed.

I have been at odds as to whether to celebrate or lament the movie's box-office bomb. On one hand, Texas history things should be revered all across this great land! On the other, there were murmurings of rampant political correctness and I really don't want a "nuanced" view of a legend (be it Texas legend or otherwise). They apparently cleaned up the PC, which is good.

Anyhow, I'm probably going to see both of these movies at some point. In the meantime, these reviews will have to suffice.

I had my last lunch in Houston with some of Dad's coworkers. Of all days for me to leave, it was the one that his department at NASA had their monthly department lunch. My brother (who works for a contractor on NASA grounds) also stopped by, so it was a really nice send-off. I took it easy the first day and drove up to Fort Worth and spent the night with my aunt and uncle. That helped me avoid rush hour traffic and gave me a head start for a couple of grueling days of traffic. Early Thursday morning I left for the browner pasteurs of New Mexico.

North Texas - Eel makes a lot of jokes at Texas's expense, so I found it amusing that the route she had me go kept me in Texas for as long as imaginable, barely missing the Oklahoma border and driving all the way up to Texline in the northern part of the panhandle.

There's a place called Jim Bowie Beef Jerky in Montague County that I happened to notice out of the corner of my eye. Figuring that I could use something to much on for the drive that wouldn't make me fat, I plopped down $22 for some of the best beef jerky I've ever had. It also came with some smoked cheddar (or jalapeno) cheese.

Wichita Falls was smaller than I thought it would be.

The patch of road north of Amarillo made me seasick.

I kind of expected a visitor's center or something at the Texas/New Mexico border. I was counting on it for restroom-related purposes. Instead I got a decaying sign that said "Welcome to New Mexico, The Land of Enchantment."

Unfortunately, my camera was out of batteries and I packed them away so I couldn't take any pictures. There was much cursing at the discover of this at the border.

New Mexico - As near as I can tell, no one actually lives in New Mexico. After Clayton (which says it is in New Mexico, but it can't be because people live there) and before Raton (ditto), there is absolutely no one or nothing there. Quite odd.

The other odd thing was the street signs. It seems every few miles there would be one warning drivers that auto speed is monitored by aircraft. There were also a lot of signs telling you that fines in the "safety corrodor" double. The problem? Signs telling what the actual speed limit is were few and far between. I was careful to watch my speed cause of the aircraft and fines, but I didn't know what I was watching for, exactly.

Southeastern Colorado - Wooooowie! It was like a roller-coaster ride. All down-hill all the way. Not only that, but there were all kinds of twists and turns. It was fun and exciting, reminding me of a cross between an arcade game and an amusement park ride. I was kind of sad when I reached civilization (Trinidad, CO).

Colorado Springs - Eel complained about the winding roads here, but they didn't bother me. This is where I stopped for the night. I figured that in a town the size of Colorado Springs there'd be more Internet-ready hotel rooms, but that didn't turn out to be the case. As near as I can tell from asking at various hotels, every single hotel on the planet will have high-speed access in the next six months. As it turns out, the hotel I resigned myself to had a "business center" that had a hookup so I could check my email.

Denver - I was unimpressed.

Cheyenne, Wyoming - I blinked and it was gone. Not that the town is small, it's just that I only touched a corner of it. Not a problem except that I was counting on getting gas there. I sweatted the whole way to the next down (45 miles away) as my trackometer hit 350 miles.

Eastern Wyoming - Both Audrey and Eel warned me about eastern Wyoming, but I have no idea what their problems was. It was absolutely gorgeous! I wish I would have stopped to take a whole bunch of pictures. Every bit of it from Cheyenne to Laramie was like a pastural painting. There was a certain beauty in the mountains, abandoned wooden shacks, and sporadic fencing. I swear, if I ever make it rich I want a summer home in this area!

Central Wyoming - Laramie is the strangest college town that I've ever been to. It made College Station look bustling. That said, it was a neat little down with little to nothing in the way of "neighborhoods"... all of the houses just randomly plotted here and there.

Western Wyoming - Not as pretty as the eastern part, but the towns were A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Someone really needs to use Green River as a setting for a movie or something. Rawlins was also pretty neat. There's something really nice about a town being built around nature, instead of man-made nature being built around a town.

Utah - The Nordic Valley was absolutely wonderful. It was almost as exciting as southeastern Colorado, but a whole lot more beautiful. On a side note, it's amazing how every university in Utah that I've heard of is on the northeastern side of the state. BYU is in Provo, south of Salt Lake City. The University of Utah is in SLC, Weber State is in Ogden, just north of SLC, and Utah State is by the Utah-Idaho border.

Utah & Idaho - They apparently have little to no use of those little things called "U-Turns." If you make a wrong turn, you can literally spend half-an-hour on the road before getting a chance to turn around. In the meantime you're going to see 15 emergency U-turn places for emergency vehicles. Perhaps they wouldn't have to have all those signs up talking about the kind of trouble you can get in for illegally using one of those if they would actually give us the real thing?!

Idaho - It was late, I was tired, I didn't notice a thing. Except the lack of U-turns.

Once there was a man named Jesus. He was born from the Virgin Mary in a Bethlehem stable. He was the son of God. The only perfect man to ever walk the Earth. He preached the Word of God to anyone who would listen. His ideas were unpopular and so He was put to death under Pontius Pilate. He died for crimes against the state of Rome, but He really died for the sins of manking. Three days later, His tomb was empty.

Jesus died before we got to hear His thoughts on school vouchers, SUVs, and an activist judiciary. But we did get to hear His thoughts on taxes. Jesus didn't advocate tax evasion, much less an overthrowing of the Roman state: "Render unto Caeser what is Caeser's, render unto God what is God's."

The Roman state was, by most historical accounts, not a benign one. It was rife with blood and corrupt to the bone. Yet Jesus was largely uninterested in tackling the Roman state. Rome was made of people, and Jesus kept His focus there. He befriended a rag-tag group of sinners along the way and made them believers. How He was able to do that is open to speculation, but much of His success was probably due to credibility: He was sinless.

Jesus didn't look around Him and see that the world was unsalvageable. Nor did He say that people could only be changed by changing the world. Rather, He felt that change truly begins one person at a time. He talked the talk, walked the walk, and His message forever changed mankind.

Whether or not the world that I presently live in is unsalvageable is not something that I pretend to know. I do know that it is far beyond my power to change it. What I do have control over, however, is myself. To a lesser extent, I also have influence over those that I know.

I cannot look at the world around me and say that change isn't possible. I can advocate government policies that I favor and oppose those that I don't, but my vote is one of millions. In the lives of those around me, however, my voice is more significant. In addition to that, my actions speak louder than words.

If I accept the world for what it is and behave accordingly, I am supporting the status quo at every level. If I call a sinner a sinner and leave it at that, I haven't done very much to help lead them down the right path. If I call myself a sinner and leave it at that, I haven't done anything to change myself.

I want the world to be a better place. I want the lives of those I love to be better. If I assess that I can't change Rome, I can at least try to change Romans one at a time, starting with myself. Otherwise, I'm accepting that this is a sinner's world and relegating my soul to being no better. I am accepting my sin and embracing everything that is wrong with me.

Jesus didn't fix everything that was wrong with the world. If He can't, I certainly can't either. He lead a sinless life and unfortunately I am as incapable of that as anyone else that isn't the Son of God. But He did what He could to change hearts and lives, and that's one lead I can follow.

Update: Arrived safely and soundly.

Sam Hamm (a professional film and comic book writer) apparently wrote an unused script for Batman Returns. Gary Farber says it was better than the movie they actually made.

I was getting some work done to my car on Monday. While I waited, I noticed that the HPD set up a ticket machine in the parking lot where my car place is. By a "ticket machine" I mean that there are four cops there, two jumping out into the middle of the street to point drivers into the lot where the other two would write them tickets.

The city of Bellaire is notorious for doing that sort of thing by off-ramps to drivers that haven't slowed down sufficiently for the feeder. But in the case of the HPD officers, I couldn't actually tell what they were pulling people over for. As near as I can tell it was one of two things:

1) Drivers at the intersection were taking rights on red without coming to a complete stop or

2) Drivers were stopping in front of the white line.

I think it's the former. Whatever it was, the officers were looking for something very explicit as the two officers that would jump out would do so invariably at the same time without consulting each other first. Every car they pulled over was taking a right turn.

The intersection where they were doing this was Harwin and Hillcroft, but I doubt this was the only area they set up. So if you're at that particular intersection or really any other, I'd make sure that you're coming to a complete stop behind the white lines in the near future. None of the drivers were posing a hazard, but cops don't need that justification. Just a bit of warning.

Also interesting to note: every driver they pulled over was a minority (predominantly Asian and Hispanic, though a couple blacks). The area itself is heavily populated by minorities, but there wasn't a single counterexample. I talked to my friend Andy who was working on my car and he said, "Good, someone needs to crack down on the foreigners to obey traffic laws."

Andy, it's worth noting, is a second-generation Korean-American. So it may be a problem specific to that area.

Rob Booth points to an insightful NYT article on where Bush's support of the marriage amendment has left gay Republicans:

There is no monolithic thought among gays on the issue of marriage. Not everyone wants to be married, or even necessarily agrees that the institution of marriage is something they must embrace. (''Why am I defending gay marriage? I don't want to get married; I'm just looking for a date,'' I heard Guerriero joke with a CNN producer as he walked into a studio for an interview.) There does, however, seem to be unanimous opposition to the amendment and to being specifically barred from marrying. It feels like an expression of hate. And in political terms, it feels to Log Cabin members, as committed Republicans, as if they have been thrown overboard to satisfy the party's social conservatives.

Guerriero said that he barely slept the night after Bush's remarks in February. He kept asking himself: What led to this? He couldn't make sense of it. One moment he thought he had been making some progress; the next, he was reliving Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican convention in Houston, the one in which Buchanan explicitly called for a culture war and might, at that moment, have doomed the re-election hopes of the current president's father. ''When I couldn't sleep,'' Guerriero said, ''I was thinking, 25 years from now, if someone asks, what did Patrick and Log Cabin do -- I want to know we did the right things.''

As a straight Republican that advocates gay marriage and doesn't have moral issues with homosexuality, I find myself uncomfortable in a political party that goes out of their way to alienate people that I don't believe are doing anything wrong. I'm not saying that from a moral high-horse, but just as a matter of fact. It remains the biggest divide between me and my political party.

I can barely imagine how Republicans that are actually gay feel about it. I sympathize with how they've got to be between a rock and a hard place. While many conservatives and Republicans don't approve of my views on this issue, few disapprove of me personally they way they do gay Republicans. So the choice is to remain in a party whose views mirror their own but dislikes them immensely, or a party that likes them personally but opposes just about everything else they stand for.

It can't be a comfortable place to be.

Very rarely do I cite Jeff Jacoby approvingly, butthis column about our nation's agenda prior to 9/11 is spot on:

If anything has been obvious since 9/11, it is that the government of the United States, like the foreign-policy establishment generally, was grossly derelict in its understanding and handling of Islamist terrorism. That was true during the first eight months of the Bush presidency and it was true during the preceding eight years of the Clinton presidency. For all the atmospherics of the Sept. 11 Commission, for all the partisan skirmishing of its Democrats and Republicans, there was no important difference between the two administrations prior to that terrible day. Rice's efforts to prove otherwise were largely unconvincing. So, a week earlier, were Richard Clarke's.

[...]

Imagine the backlash the administration would have faced, for example, if it had reacted aggressively to the CIA briefing in August 2001 that warned of possible terrorist hijackings -- the one ominously titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." If the Transportation Department, on the strength of that warning alone, had ordered air travelers to arrive at least two hours before their flights, banned a long list of common household objects -- knives, knitting needles, scissors -- from airplanes, and authorized pilots to eject "Middle Eastern" ticketholders they deemed suspicious, the public would have reacted with fury. And the administration would have backed down.

I never jumped on the Blame Clinton train as a number of conservatives and Republicans did after the attacks hit. It was my position then, as it is now, that Clinton set his policy agenda to mirror the public's. Al Qaeda wasn't on the public's agenda. I can tell you that it wasn't on mine.

Similarly, the notion that what happened on 9/11 was always imminent and that everyone knew it except Bush is not a tenable position. Bush's policy towards al Qaeda was, unfortunately, little different from Clinton's.

What's important to me isn't who the Cassandra was who could "see it all," but rather to look at the present candidates and ask "So what are you going to do about it now?"

Bush and Kerry have both answered that question in their own little ways. That's what I'm basing my vote on.

If a bottle of contact solution has a red tip on it, that means that you do not expose it directly to your eye.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND EVERYTHING HOLY NEVER, EVER PUT IT IN YOUR EYE!

And on a more general note, make sure that you're using the right bottle when trying to put contacts in. Even if that means that you have to put your glasses back on to take them back off.

Trust me, it's worth it.

Owen dismembers a ridiculous piece by editorial board member James Howard Gibbons.

The only thing that I would add to it is that even if we were to grant the Chronicle that their three conservative columnist represent conservatism sufficiently, there's one thing worth noting: None of them are local!

Since Jane Ely retired, the Chron's in-house writers are uniformly liberal. So even if they do represent national conservate viewpoints, on statewide and local issues there is practically no representation. Local liberalism is represented by Cragg Hines and statewide liberalism is represented by Clay Robison. Even "beat" columnists and sportswriters take regular barbs at conservatives. Whenever one of the editorial board members seems to pop in for a column, it's very rarely to say something nice about conservatives on any level. Except when it comes time to endorse specific candidates, the board's editorials almost always represent the liberal point of view.

Meanwhile Kevin lodges some pretty serious accusations at Rick Casey and they have a great deal of merit:

Of Casey's 25 paragraphs, 15 of those include variously rewritten copy of text and facts found in Morgan's article, including direct quotations (giving the impression that Casey got those quotations and facts, not Morgan) -- and at least 3 of those 15 include text that appears to be lifted directly from Morgan's sentences, with only a word changed here and there. Only 2 of Casey's paragraphs introduce any information not found in Morgan's original article, although Casey does not cite his sources for that information; interestingly, in one of those two cases, the new information is used to take a shot at a conservative. The fifth paragraph gives blanket attribution to the Washington Post article for information that is to follow, without mentioning the author's name (and after 3 paragraphs that already used information in the article referenced). The other 7 paragraphs are one-sentence paragraphs used to make transitions or editorial statements.

Unbelievable.

Just after the beginning, there was Adam and Eve. At the urging of Satan, they ate from the Tree of Knowledge against the wishes of God. They were henceforth banned from the Garden of Eden. Men were forced to subdue harsh terrain and create food from it. Women were forced to endure painful pregnancies. Men and women would forever more desire to be dressed - unexposed and hidden from nature, each other, and God. Ashamed. Their ancestors would share their fate and forever carry the burden of the Original Sin.

The older I get, the more I understand the story of Adam and Eve. It was once a story that gave me more questions than answers: if they didn't have to work, what did they do all day? Without clothes, didn't they get rashes? When I read or here the story now, it helps me understand good and evil in ways that I never did before.

Today, we are born into an imperfect world. We are born into a world where perfection and virtue often bring about nothing but suspicion and doubt. We're born into a world where perfection is impossible and virtue nearly impossible to maintain. If we show infinite love, infinite compassion, and infinite forgiveness we are used until there is nothing left to use.

So we clothe ourselves. We protect ourselves from the world and one another. We look at the evil that surrounds us with disdain, yet as we feel immersed in it, sometimes the only voice that seems to make sense is that of the snake. Of the Devil. So sometimes we listen to it. We wrap ourselves around its rationalizations to protect us like a coat from the rain.

When I first read Michael Williams's thoughts on right and wrong, I originally nodded in agreement. Perhaps the most loathed word I regularly hear these days is "nuance." My eyes squint and my brows lower. Nuance is a fine word that represents a needed explanation, but I believe that any situation can be torn apart and the threads of the tapestry are going to be light and dark.

The problem is that life rarely comes in individual threads, but rather in a complicated whole. Academically, it's easy to point out the lights and darks, but without the tapestry you can't see the entire picture. The fact of the matter is that we live in a world that has a lot wrong with it. Many of us are trying to wade our way through as best we can. We are born into an imperfect world, and sometimes imperfect is the rational response. Sometimes two wrongs really do make a right.

I wish it were as easy as blaming everyone else for the many things I've done wrong in my life, but it isn't. I wish I could say that the world is just so complicated that everything I've done can be explained in the right context, but it can't. We've lived in harsh terrain since being cast from Eden, but it was our job to cultivate it, not complain about it.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. More of my life's threads are dark than I would like to admit. The truth is that many of my transgressions have been a rational response to an imperfect world. I've failed the test over and over again, but my goal has always been to pass.

I still live in that imperfect world and I'll never always know how to respond to it. I can think, feel, and pray my way through it as best I can, but there will always be doubt and uncertainty. I don't know if I'll ever be able to trust my fellow man. I don't know if I'll ever be able to completely trust myself. We are all sinners, and it's been that way since just after the beginning.

Michael Williams has an informative post on the Morning After Pill:

Contrary to popular misconception (no pun intended), the so-called "morning-after pill" is not an "abortion pill". Generally, it works the same way standard birth-control pills do: by preventing conception, not (generally) implantation.

Conception occurs when a sperm fuses with an egg to create a zygote, and this is the stage at which most pro-lifers believe life begins. Implantation occurs when a zygote implants itself in the tissue lining of the mother's uterus. Under normal circumstances, it's fairily common for conception to occur without being followed by a successful implantation, and the zygote is subsequently lost during the woman's period.

No one who accepts common birth-control pills (which occasionally do fail to prevent conception, but then succeed in preventing implantation) can reasonably object to the "morning-after pill" on the basis that it "causes abortions". That said, some conservative groups still object to the pill, ostensibly for health reasons.

This is followed by even more informative commentary by Julie:

In the United Kingdom, the morning after pill is sold pharmacist-direct. Post-marketing surveillance there found a significant increase in the rate of ectopic pregnancies (6% as opposed to the usual rate of 2% or less). This is a serious health risk when young adolescents will have unsupervised access to the morning after pill if it is sold over-the-counter.

The most powerful arguments in favor of the morning after pill are claims that its use will prevent 50% or more of unintended pregnancies and thereby reduce the abortion rate.

This is not true as can be easily proven. In Sweden, where the morning after pill has been available over the counter since the late 1990s, teenage abortion rates have gone up from 17/1000 to 22.5/1000. In Washington State, the morning after pill has been available pharmacist-direct since 1998. Abortion rates there have not been cut in half. They are gently trending downward; however, the decrease coincides precisely with the nationwide decrease in abortion rates.

As someone morally opposed to abortion, the guiding light of a lot of my philosophies regarding pregnancy, pregnant mothers, and young mothers revolves around trying to curtail the number of abortions that occur each year. It's why I'm more liberal on economic policy than I was two years ago, why I changed my mind about a father's rights regarding adoption, why I'm supportive of teenage mothers, and why I am a big, big, big fan of preventative birth control despite some perhaps unfortunate repercussions.

I'm generally supportive of the Morning After Pill for the same reasons that Michael outlined. Julie's points, if true, put a real wrinkle in that. In the broader scope, the same could be said of preventative birth control.

If there were no way for a teenager to feel moderately confident that they were not going to get pregnant if they were to have sex, it seems likely that a greater number of teenagers would have sex than if they had no such confidence. Is it enough to compensate for the failure rate of the pill and condoms? If not, then the advent of birth control has actually increased the number of abortions.

That's not a comforting thought.

While I'm linking to Jennifer Larson, I also want to point out how much I'm getting a kick out of her Candy Dish Observations.

Part (No Roman Numeral For Zero)
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

It turns out the American toy icon has a sordid past in Germany.

Shawn Macomber has a piece in the American Spectater about how the partial-birth abortion ban is working out better than expected. The article is unlikely to change any minds outside the pro-life camp, but it contains this priceless quote:

Queried as to whether fetuses feel pain during [partial-birth abortions he performs, Dr. Timothy Johnson, answered, "I have no idea." Casey refused to let the point slip away. He asked whether the doctor ever even wondered whether fetuses felt pain during an abortion. "No, not really," he replied. After repeated questioning, Johnson finally admitted, "I am sure that the baby feels it, but I am not sure how the fetus registers it." Somewhere in hell, Descartes was surely smiling at that bit of existentialism.

[via Reductio ad Absurdum]

No matter how old you are, and no matter how old they are, it's difficult to lose a parent. It's even more difficult to lose both at the same time, no matter how light and humorous your persona is:

FALLBROOK, Califorina (AP) -- -- The elderly parents of Grammy-winning recording artist "Weird Al" Yankovic were found dead in their home, apparently victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, officials said.

Nick and Mary Yankovic were found dead Friday in their suburban San Diego home by relatives who were worried because they had not seen the couple in a while, said sheriff's Sgt. Conrad Grayson.

Paramedics found Nick Yankovic, 86, in a chair in the front living room. His 81-year-old wife was on the bathroom floor.

Betty Rollings has a piece on the Chronicle's Outlook section about being blissfully unaware of pop culture and completely uninterested in what everyone around her is interested in. I'd say "good for you if that's what makes you happy," except I really can't. Reading what she has to say, I have the vague impression that she's not doing it for her own reasons, but rather social ones. Is it me, or is this piece extraordinarily condescending?

To be honest, I don't generally do many of the things that she's talking about, either. I'm out of the cultural loop in many ways. But I don't particularly feel the need to broadcast the many ways in which I am different (which I think is supposed to be read as "above") everyone else.

Maybe I'm just misreading it, but it reminds me an awful lot of a second grader who announces that he won't watch cartoons anymore because he's too mature for that cause he just turned 8.

The Chronicle's fetish with the Kickapoo tribe continues, although unlike the Chronicle's editorial board, the tribemember that wrote the opinion piece is somewhat reasonable.

Ultimately, though, I don't believe that it is worthwhile to halt a statewide program in order keep a tribe-run business and town of 600 prosperous. That's not to say that I am in favor of further legalizing gambling (in fact I lean slightly against), but of all the arguments for and against the slot machines the Kickapoo tribe (who, like most Indian casinos, operate based on a legal loophole anyway) still ranks pretty low.

You are Saint Gabriel the Archangel, Patron Saint
of Seattle and Stamp Collectors. Saint Gabriel
was an Archangel in good standing until he got
totally wasted and ruined the surprise
appearance of the Savior by spilling the beans
to Mary. Sainthood came to him as part of his
archangel severance package. He moved to
Seattle Washington shortly thereafter and
started a style of music that fused the angry
sounds of punk rock with the disaffected sneer
of Generation X. He has of late been hung up
on an endless campaign to get Kurt Cobain's
face on a stamp.


Which Catholic Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

[via Owen]

I should really stop giving my parents techie advice. Way back in 1996ish, they signed up with a company called Phoenix for monthly Internet service. It cost $25 a month, but their headquarters was right down the street. Since then, Phoenix has been bought by C-Comm, which was bought by Internet America. Despite the conglomeration and the fall in ISP prices, my parents never renegotiated their contract: 6-month contracts, 28.8kps access, and still $25/mo.

In addition to the $25 a month, they had a backup phone line that they've used exclusively for Internet since I moved out. That cost about $20 a month.

I've been telling them that they can get high-speed Internet for not much more, but the argument didn't take until last Christmas. A good thing, that, cause I was about to sign them up myself.

So they've cancelled the other phone line and when their contract with Internet America expires, they're going to let it lapse.

Or at least that was the plan.

Except that Roadrunner went down a couple days ago. They got a technician to stop by today. He got it working just long enough for him to be safely cruising I-45 when it went down again. Without the second phone line, any dial-up time eats up the phone line. Oh, and it's still 28.8, which my parents are just now realizing is kind of slow.

But Mom now swears by dial-up and doesn't want to mess with high-speed Internet anymore. Dad dutifully hooked up the phone line to the old 500MHz computer, which Mom seems to prefer over their new 2GHz one.

How exactly did I get interested in computers in this household? :)

A while back I stumbled upon a pretty nice laptop. I'll tell the story some other time, but the only problem with it is that it had no power supply and the battery is either out or defective. I didn't think the thing worked until Mike helped me out with it.

I finally went to Batteries Plus and ordered a new battery for it. I'd finally get to give it a test run! Except that when I opened up my case for Windows XP... the CD wasn't there. I looked everywhere for it. High, low, in between. I looked in my folks' things and in my boxed up belongings Nothing.

I found a copy of Windows 2000. It's a bit scratched, but I thought I would give it a try anyway. So I open up the CD bay to put it in and... voila! There's my WinXP CD.

In my life at present, this qualifies as "excitement."

I get a fair number of hits every day because I misspelled a word the same way someone who googled that word misspelled it.

Maybe I should misspell things more often?

I mean, mabye I shud mispell things moor offin?

Hey, give me a break, I'm sleep-deprived.

Dateline: 1994

Mom: Alex, I have a question for you.
RAW: Yes?
Mom: Does it really take that much effort to throw the empty cardboard toilet paper roll away?
RAW: No.
Mom: Then why do you just leave it on the floor?
RAW: So the dog will play with it.
Mom: In the eight years we've had that dog, I have never seen him play with an empty cardboard toilet paper roll.
RAW: Okay.
Mom: Have you ever seen him play with an empty cardboard toilet paper roll?
RAW: No, but we don't watch him all day.
Mom: But then why does the roll always stay in the bathroom? Why doesn't he take it out of the bathroom to play with it?
RAW: Because he's lazy?
Mom: As lazy as you?
RAW: Probably not.


Dateline: 2004

Mom: Alex, I have a question for you.
RAW: Yes?
Mom: How can it possibly save you effort to take a role of toilet paper out of the cabinet, use what you need, and put it back in than compared to oh, say, actually putting it on the toilet paper dispenser?
RAW: I don't know.
Mom: Then why don't you just put it on the dispenser?
RAW: I don't know.
Mom: How much money did we spend sending you through college?

Dateline: 2014

Wife: Have we got everything cleaned? The guests are going to be arriving at any minute.
RAW: Hold on, I'm picking up all the random toilet paper that Junior left on the floor.
Wife: I swear, how did our child end up so sloppy?
RAW: I have no idea, Dear.

I'm probably the only one here who wouldn't have minded being David Brooks, but regardless...


You are Thomas L. Friedman! You're the foreign
affairs expert. You're liberal on most issues,
except you're a leading voice in the pro-war
movement. You're probably the most popular
columnist at the Times, but probably because
you play both sides of the Iraq issue and
relish your devotion to what you call
"fanatical moderatism." You sure can
write, but you could work on your sense of
humor.


Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Along with Kevin and Callie, I went to see the Houston Cougars baseball team play against the Charlotte 49ers tonight. A few observations:

Does anyone know why a university in Charlotte chose the name '49ers'?

It reminds me of spring training in Arizona. You get to see the players up pretty close. There are some differences, though. For instance, there aren't any stars on the field... or at least they aren't stars yet. Also, instead of the drunks yelling at whoever replaced Barry Bonds in the lineup (in Spring Training the stars don't play as much because they don't have as much to prove), they just yell at the other team and the refs.

I will never get used to the sound of metal bats hitting baseballs at anything other than a little league game.

It's weird seeing the Cougars wearing a blue-and-white uniform with red trim.

It was a very fun atmosphere. I can see why Kevin's so addicted to it. If I had more time I'd go to more games.

And next time I'd invite Dad. Oops.

There were some odd and prolonged discussions between the managers and umps in the 8th inning. We were quite curious what that was about. Kevin said that it would probably be revealed on the Coogfans site. Not yet, but the question is being asked there and an answer is pending.

One of the reasons I went was to get a CD from Callie. I forgot that until I pulled my car out of the parking lot. Oops.

TheYeti and Smittengirl cross swords on the merits of being remaining single.

I'm recalling my brother saying, some five years ago, that he didn't intend to get married until he was thirty. I remember my reaction was that I hoped to God that I was married by the time that I was thirty. He got married last October and turns thirty this May. I've still got four-and-a-half years till I hit thirty and I'm learning new things about myself every day.

There are two things that I thought I would never be: a workaholic and a commitmentphobe. I proved with my job at UFC that I can be a workaholic and, much to my shock, there is a part of me that greatly fears commitment. Commitment requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is hard.

When David made that comment I had been with Anna for a couple of years and there was a reasonable expectation that she and I would someday be married. That never panned out. These days I find myself preparing to move halfway across the country and I find that fear creeping in. Fear of leaving Texas? Or fear of commitment?

Two years ago, I would have agreed with what TheYeti had to say:

We may not like that when we're full of ourselves. We can't imagine our real flaws - and are either blind to or crippled emotionally by them. But that's a large part of what successful marriages are about. Setting your pride aside, and working as a single unit. My girlfriend isn't perfect. She knows I'm not. But we accept that we work together, flaws and all.

Female machismo. That's how someone described Deb's behavior just recently. That actually sounds right. Single Urban Women seem to possess female machismo in excess - but it's the same front than the drunk male braggart at the bar. We know if he were that great, he wouldn't be sitting there drunk. Female machismo is common - but a few years and a few more failed relationships and the veneer starts to crumble.

I wouldn't direct the comment so much on women (though to be fair to TheYeti, he's responding a particular piece), but I was skeptical of those whose primary fear was "settling."

I would have taken issue with it, but I would have been a hypocrit. At the time, I was combing through every concievable way a potential marriage with every girl I went on a first date with might fail. I can think of one outstanding woman in particular that all but laid herself at my feet. For all of my talk of wanting a lasting relationship and for my failure to find anything in particular wrong with this woman, I couldn't take that next step as she wanted me to.

I could explain why, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the fear that I would have been settling.

I think of the events of the last year and I believe that fear was justified. I met and fell in love with Eel. I reconnected with Audrey and remembered all that I felt for her that I was lacking with the otherwise perfect woman. To a greater degree, I see that the foundation for a happy marriage and family is a lot more than "I guess you'll do."

At the same time, I still can't quite agree with Smittengirl:

He says that most single people lean at the bar, sighing, “waiting for somebody -- anybody -- to happen by”. Certainly not the way I remember my single life. This “someone – anyone” concept is a farce. If a single person wanted the attention of just someone/anyone, most could have gotten married many years ago. Whatever happened to being selective? Is it that hard to conceptualize that perhaps if you are single past the age of thirty it’s because you haven’t found your match?

Yes and no.

There's an old saying about sex and marriage. When a couple's sex life is good, it's 10% of the relationship. When the sex life is bad, it's 90%. I've noticed that this too applies to relationships. When someone is single, love life is 75% of their existence and when they're with someone, it's 25%.

Take a look around and you'll see how the search for love has become a multi-bajillion dollar industry. This is not because people love being single. The fact that much more of this industry is geared towards women than men is not because women are happy being single. It's because they're not.

Now, let me get my disclaimers out of the way. There are women who do indeed enjoy being single. Freakin' Jen comes to mind. I don't begrudge them that if that's what makes them happy.

On the other hand, I also see a lot of people out there who carve out a contented single existence that makes it harder to get into the compromise-requiring relationship that they desire. I include myself in this category - or at least the 2002 version of me. One of my many justifications to get out of potential relationships was how much they disrupted my pattern. I'd then look for potential pitfalls or faults and then determine that it wasn't right.

So then what is the answer?

Considering how long it's taking me to figure out what it is for me, I don't feel particularly qualified to talk about anyone else at this point in my life.

Every now and again I enjoy going back and taking political quizzes that I've already taken to see how my views might have changed. Here's the famous (and never particularly accurate, in my view) World's Smallest Political Quiz:



I've moved down on the libertarian/populist gauge and I think a little left on the left/right one.

What does that mean? Well, I guess it means that my views on an arbitrary set of issues that aren't indicative of much in the contemporary political environment have slightly changed... or maybe a couple in which I have always been conflicted on I just put down a different answer because I'm in a different mood today than I was last time I took it.

This quiz, however, I found a lot better done. I think the results were more accurate. Plus it's just downright cooler:

That looks about right. I'm surprised I didn't come out at least a little more in favor of free markets, but looking at the questions I can see why. It chose a particular one where my views are quietly liberal.

I haven't had a chance to take this 'humorous' one yet because I don't have a pen and paper handy. I look forward to it, though.

I've been meaning to comment on this post of Kevin's, though I really don't have anything to add to it.

That story is now the subject of some controversy. Before telling you why, I'm going to reprint this excerpt:

Walters said his family did not want to discuss their sentiments about the war or the political debate surrounding President Bush's failure to find weapons of mass destruction, one of the prime reasons cited for invading Iraq last year.

"Right now we strictly want to honor Leroy," he said.

Steve Walters is the young man's stepfather.

There are a number of ways to interpret that excerpt. Certainly, one fair way to interpret it is that the family was upset with the President, but didn't want to talk politics so soon after Sandoval's death.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

The family called KSEV radio earlier, and expressed great disappointment that Lucas Wall included any reference to the President. They are actually supporters of the President and the war, do not think that Sandoval died in vain, but wanted Wall to concentrate on Sandoval and not the politics of Iraq in his piece about their dead loved one.

I read Walters's comments exactly as many people did: Disapproval of the war but not wanting to make an issue of it. In fact, before I read the part where that was entirely untrue I was wondering why the article even commented on the issue if the family didn't want it to be an issue. It's similar to the way that they often use someone's refusal to talk to a reporter to put them in a bad light. In this case, it made it look like Walters was biting his tongue. But that's a small thing compared to the real issue, which is (as Kevin points out) sloppy writing at best, intentionally deceptive at worst, and mischaracterization somewhere in between.

It would be nice if Houston had a paper where I could assume that it was an innocent mistake.

Update: The story seems to keep getting bigger and bigger.

My father - who works at NASA - told me about this just the other day:

WASHINGTON -- Its sisters launched the first men to the moon. But one mighty Saturn V rocket instead has spent the past quarter-century resting on its side in the great outdoors of Houston's Johnson Space Center.

A revered relic of the moonshot era and the U.S.-Soviet space race, the aging surplus rocket has been visited and photographed by millions of tourists.

The rocket's owner, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, is hoping a $4 million preservation project and a new home indoors will save it for future generations to see.

Over the years, it also has been battered by torrential rains and seared by the relentless sun of the Texas Gulf Coast. Mold and plants grow from its surfaces; owls and rodents have taken up residence inside.

This rocket is an absolute gem. I pass by it every time I go on Nasa Road One Parkway and it always catches by eye. I'm really sorry to see it go indoors so it won't be visible from the street, but apparently it's quite necessary just to keep the thing together.

I miss some of the older aspects of the Johnson Space Center. Before the Space Center Houston tourist complex was built, there were a lot of really neat displays placed all around the center. I've been to the tourist complex once, and while it had a lot of neat toys, simulations, presentations, and whatnot, there was something stale about the place in my eyes. I guess as it increased accessibility to a bunch of stuff to tourists that's a good thing, but I guess I kinda miss the old way.

JSC itself has gone under a lot of changes in recent years. A long time ago there was a bypass that was cut off to the general public that those of us with the NASA stickers on our car got to go through, traffic-free. They opened it up to the public by moving the check-gate off to the side and now there's actually an intermediate school on that road (but not much else, so it's still relatively traffic-free). More recently, 9-11 caused some security measures and now a pass on the car isn't enough to get in anymore. I understand the precautions, but it's definitely become a hassle if Mom or I have to pick Dad up from work or something

In any case, I'm glad they're restoring the rocket. More people need to see it.

I've been very presently surprised by Mayor White thus far in his term. He brings a level of competent pragmatism that his predecessor lacked. So I'm saddened that he's exploiting firefighter Kulow's death to close after-hour clubs:

Mayor Bill White vowed Wednesday to shut down so-called after-hours nightclubs like the one where firefighter Kevin Kulow died while battling an arson blaze.

Kulow, 32, died about 6 a.m. Sunday while fighting a fast-moving fire at the El Festival Ballroom in the 7600 block of Kempwood in northwest Houston.

"If that place wasn't open (after 2 a.m.), I don't think I would be going to a funeral this afternoon," White said Wednesday morning before attending a memorial service.

He said he is seeking Gov. Rick Perry's help in getting a law approved, in a special legislative session this spring, to empower the city to close the clubs.

Kulow didn't die because there was an after-hours club. He died because the arson's estranged wife had a job at one. This isn't a matter of people getting drunk and stoked and accidentally starting a fire or anything in which the club is to blame except in giving a nigh-divorced mother a job.

This is either a crass political stunt or he's using the random death of a firefighter to garner sentiment in something he was already wanting to do. I can't approve of either.

"These places stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m. but stay open till 6 a.m.," White said. "We weren't born yesterday. Law enforcement officers tell me people who are in there aren't playing bingo."

White said such establishments promote crime and harm neighborhoods. He said he believes they often serve alcohol illegally after 2 a.m.

"If people want to party, go home," he said.

If that's White's concern, then by all means go after the clubs that are actually breaking the law! I have no problem with that and nor should any after-hours club that isn't breaking that particular law. If these businesses thrive on illegal alcohol sales, then go after a handful and the others will either clean up their act or go out of business (if they can't be profitable within the parameters of the law).

I have no bias on this particular issue. I have never even been to an after-hours club, so I wouldn't miss their passing. The point is that there's no reason to believe that the club harbors any responsibility for Kulow's death and White - being the smartest man on the entire planet - must know that. So it just makes me more disappointed that he's exploiting the tragedy.

Update: I finally made my way to the editorial page, where the editorial board agrees with White:

The tragedy focuses attention on the need for more thorough enforcement of fire code and alcoholic beverage laws. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission says it is investigating reports that the club was operating after hours. A TABC investigator said the club had been cited twice for illegally selling alcohol after hours and had been the subject of four complaints since it opened in 1994.

The fire has been ruled an arson and police have arrested a suspect. Although the fire seems unrelated to the club's being open at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the firefighters took greater risks because people were in the building when the fire started.

If there weren't people in the club, the fire wouldn't have actually happened! The dude did it to get at his wife. If she'd worked at Katz's diner, he could well have tried to burn that place down. Or gone in with guns blazing.

As for the violations, four complaints and two citations over ten years doesn't strike me as a business that's out of control. For all I know, they were selling beer at 2:01.
Or maybe they just don't stop selling beer and flout the law. If so, then perhaps the TABC ought to watch these clubs more closely and shut down those that are selling alcohol illegally.

What this is not is a clear-cut case of an epidemic. There was a fire set off by an estranged husband to get at his wife over a custody dispute. Yes, there are some clubs that probably sell alcohol illegally. Adding these two things together does not mean that an entire industry ought to be shut down.

For the record, I actually do agree with White and the paper that cities ought to have the right to regulate after-hours clubs differently. That's better decided on a local level than on a statewide one. But my agreement with White ends there.

There is obviously something else going on here. My guess is that the after-hours clubs are (justifiably or not) percieved as inconducive to the "world class city" that Mayor White and folks like him want Houston to become. This is just his excuse and perhaps a motivation to move it up a bit on his agenda.

It concerns me, though, if this was a few pages in his private agenda. I like White and I would hate for him to go the route of Dallas's mayor with the smoke ban and shutting down strip joints.

Houston has already tried to regulate a number of strip clubs out of business with marginal success. Such places are not my thing and if they were completely eliminated I wouldn't personally be effected much except for the ocassional bachelor party. At the same time I greatly resent the attitude at work here.

My biggest beef with White's actions has to do with exploiting the tragedy. Next time some guy gets obsessed with a stripper, will he then move to have those banned? If he's around for six years will he ban smoking in bars? Will he move the drinking our times down an hour or two as is the case in Huntsville and New Braunfels?

What is the point of all this is that a city is not, and shouldn't be, a friggin' sandbox. What's so wrong with being a 24-hour city? What's wrong with people being out later at night? Or inversely, what's so world-class about a town that wants to tuck is in at midnight?

Yesterday I went by Batteries Plus to get a power supply for a laptop I stumbled on to. Unfortunately, by the time I got out I was knee-deep in rush hour traffic. So when I passed by the Firehouse and saw that it was open, I decided to drop in and kill some time.

It's rare that I go to the Firehouse for a reason other than seeing a show. I'm not the only one as since I've been going there, the bar has changed from a bar with live music in to a live music bar. They used to be open seven days a week, but these days they're only open Wednesday through Saturday, Wednesday being the only night there isn't live music (and they close at midnight).

So I was surprised to see the place packed when I got it. Looking around more, I realized that their was a disproportionate number of firemen there (and maybe a firewoman or two, but I didn't see any). Some were in their uniforms, but most were wearing t-shirts that had HFD on them (or, if they didn't, they just looked like firemen and were hanging out with them).

It wasn't until the news came on that it all came together. A young firefighter named Kevin Kulow died after just four months on the job. As soon as the story hit CBS-11 news the jukebox was silenced and we all gathered around to hear the report. Then we heard NBC-2's report. A couple toasts went up, though I guess firefighters are made more of action and words because none of them were more than ten or fifteen words long.

It was a moving tribute that the Firehouse helped put together. As I understand it, the bar was founded by two former firemen that converted an auto mechanic shop into the saloon. The owners have always gone out of their way for firefighters. They don't generally get political, but they had signs everywhere for (Heavy firefighter union favorite) Orlando Sanchez in 2001. They also put on a number of benefits a year for our local department.

It was a neat experience. I was very glad to be there.

I usually try to make it a point to post at least once during the day. Usually it's so that I'll get a ping out to weblogs.com and people that have the "recently updated" feature on the blogrolls will register that I've updated so that potential readers that aren't surfing at 4 in the morning would know that I am updating.

Except that it seems during the day, the pings never get through. Never any problems at night. Weird. Anyone else having this problem?

There's a discussion about education over on Warliberal. Reading over his previous point-counterpoint with another poster, I may have taken his criticism of conservatives too personally. The micro question is whether or not it's important for kids to memorize dates and whatnot.

For my part I consider rote memorization to be rather unfairly demonized. It's critics often sound to me like the kid that asks "How is this going to help me in my life?" just so he can get out of some unpleasent learning. Memorization is a necessary skill in our lives and I don't believe that it just happens. Personally I have various methods of remembering things and these are methods that I learned, among other places, in schools. Even with these methods, I find that my memorization skills - and the memorization skills of my peers - are substandard.

Somewhere along the way we've made the determination that it's more important to teach kids to think rather than making them memorize things. It's a very valid point. Except that without the ability to memorize and organize data (instead of just ideas), resulting opinions and beliefs are likely to be ill-founded. As Windrider says:

Which ties into my disagreement with your second point - I consider myself fairly conservative, but I have absolutely no problem with 'actual causes and implications' study. Such study, and more importantly the ability to make a rational appraisal of events is a very, very useful skill to acquire. I do not, however, think that is possible without a sufficient (and exactly what constitutes sufficient appears to be the moving target here) grounding in the basic factual data points.

Further - launching into the study of cause, effect, and implication without a grasp of basic factual foundation is abstract and esoteric at best, and in the hands of an instructor with an agenda, troubling. Troubling in that without the factual basis available for use in a critical comparison, when is a stuedent supposed to begin to suspect when the bullshit flag needs to be raised when someone is marketting an agenda versus knowledge?

It is a common belief on the left that the problem with education is that we make it boring and uninteresting. This unsurprisingly makes the kids bored and uninterested and they view learning as a chore instead of something fun. This argument is not without its merits, but just as a little leaguer must spend time performing rote tasks in practice in order to play their games to their fullest potential, without the appropriate backbone we're simply leaving kids knocking around scents of ideas in their unformed minds.

You can't grasp ideas firmly without knowing the facts and details. You can't understand cause-and-effect without a timeline. You don't have a timeline if you don't know dates.

Details matter. I can't count the number of jobs I've been apprehensious about applying for because they want someone 'detail-oriented', which I am not. The ability to learn and pay attention to details is formulative. It's not something that necessarily comes naturally. It's something that has to be learned.

When I was a kid I was wrong about a great many things. One of the greatest things of all that I was wrong about was my belief that the details didn't matter. It was my belief that in addition to being fun, learning facts was not something I particularly needed to do.

We need to let go of the notion that details are unimportant and that the accumulation of details doesn't actually draw a picture. Give a kid the facts and he's more likely to put together the relationships between them than he is to memorize the reasons - as told by a teacher - without the information.

We also need to let go of the notion that education must be fun. It's plainly not fun at 15 to learn mathematical formulas or people and dates. But at least at 25, it's pretty fun knowing them.

Happy birthday, Jay.

The Houston Independent School District has apparently decided that failure is not a reason to set them up for future failure:

Houston high school students who've failed core subjects such as English or math would get to move on to the next grade under a proposal HISD trustees are considering as part of the district's effort to reduce its dropout rate.

Dropping the core course requirement puts the Houston Independent School District at odds with other Harris County school systems and urban Texas districts, including one that says it is addressing its dropout problems in other ways.

Promoting students who meet HISD's minimum amount of credits will encourage them to stay in school, said district Superintendent Kaye Stripling.

"A student sitting in the ninth grade at age 17 is a kid who is going to say, `Forget this, I'm dropping out,' " Stripling said in a news release. "What we need to do is give that child a chance to earn promotion to the next grade while at the same time we give that student extra academic help to pass the class he failed."

And the same student wouldn't, of course, drop out when their coursework surpasses their existing education and capabilities. I suppose it's good that they're going to give the student's 'extra help' and whatnot, and it may be technically different from social promotion, but let's get real here.

I'm in the precarious position of being a horrible standardized test-taker and yet supporting more standardized tests. Greg Wythe has been chronicling how awful and in some cases arbitrary these tests are, but when this type of thing is the alternative, I can't find too much fault in them.

The public school system does not have a vested interest in teaching your children.

Their interest is in keeping their jobs. Their interest is in looking good so that they can get more funding. Maybe standardized tests are not the benchmark we should be using, but we absolutely, positively, cannot trust school administrators to grade themselves in pencil. I don't say this to single out teachers and administrators - many of whom are paragons of sacrifice and diligence - but because they are humans, and when humans get together you have politics, and politics has always been about protecting your own interests first.

In some smaller schools it's possible to exert more control over the school district, but the schools that are in the most trouble are almost invariably in large districts. The larger a district, the more of a political entity it becomes. The more teachers organize and the bigger said organizations become, the more of a crass political entity otherwise caring teachers become.

Does anyone here use Yahoo Messenger?

How do I port names from one computer to another? ICQ has specific files that you need to take over. Does Yahoo have that? If so, what are they? Or is it remotely listed like on AIM?

Alissa Davidson was a year younger than me, but she was already out of school. She had no job, no prospects, and little education. Her father was the campaign manager for an extreme right-wing perennial candidate in local politics who most recently ran for city council on an anti-Clinton platform that accused the former president of being a puppet for Colombian drug lords. She was a classic party girl that drank regularly, partied loudly, dressed scantily, and spread her physical affection widely. Somehow, I rationalized that because there were these contradictions, she must be interesting. Maybe deep, even. Did I mention that she was hot?

Alissa became my first girlfriend in early 1996. It was rocky from the start. Everyone was against us on account that she had emotionally destroyed a good friend of mine with behavior that can at-best be described as grossly neglegent if not malicious. I'd like to point out that shortly in the process of recovering he met the love of his life that he later married. I, of course, knew the future and knew that would be the case so I was guilt free. Yep, guilt free was I. Okay, so maybe I didn't know, but none of this mattered then because, of course, she was really hot. Oh yeah, and pretty cool to be around. Or so I thought at the time. I guess.

The first indication of a problem in the relationship occured in our first weekend together. I use the term 'together' loosely because we only spent part of the weekend together. She spent other parts of the weekend cheating on me with this kid named Kerry. But it was our first weekend in the relationship sense of 'together.'

After that original weekend, she only cheated on me with Kerry one more time. We had some good times together bowling, watching movies, and hanging out at Eddie's. I was, against all notions of common sense, self-awareness, and self-protection, happy with her. She was, after all, my first girlfriend. I could actually, for the first time in my life, say that I had a girlfriend.

There was one odd thing about the whole affair, though. Other than the cheating, the fact that we were wrong for one another, and the fact that I really didn't care because I dug her so, I mean. In the course of the month or so I'd known her, she was gaining weight. Gaining weight in only one area. The tum-tum.

The thought had occured to me that she might be pregnant. But surely, I reasoned, she would know if she was pregnant, wouldn't she? Surely she would think that something to mention to her boyfriend, wouldn't she? Then I thought about the fact that I was a boyfriend and that I was, of all people her boyfriend, and how cool that was and distracted myself for another week.

I took a trip to Fort Worth to visit some relatives. I had some absurdly romantic thoughts about being away from the one that I... very, very absurd thoughts. But I felt them.

When I got back, she said the magic four words: "We need to talk."

"Can this wait?" I asked, oblivious to the meaning of those words, "I need to get some sleep so that I can do well on the SAT tomorrow."

She said that she'd rather not wait. I thought about it, and in all honesty my academic and professional future just didn't quite match up against the fact that my really hot girlfriend that I was having absurdly romantic thoughts about wanted to talk. To me! Her boyfriend! I was a boyfriend! Future? What's that?!

When she told me that she was 'off her cycle', I asked what that meant. When she told me that she might be pregnant, I acted all surprised. I half-recall telling her something about not minding the prospect of a step-child. But then she told me about the baby's father Ron. It seems that Ron, whom she'd dumped a month or so prior to seeing me, was the only one she could ever love. She then told me that I actually looked kind of like Ron and that was really the only reason she was interested in me to begin with.

I was devestated in the way that only a chubby, introverted seventeen year old that had just lost his first girlfriend to a doppleganger ex that had gotten her pregnant could be. Somehow, I slinked off to bed in order to get some sleep for the SAT the next day.

I got up and headed down to South Houston High School. I'd been worried about the SAT, having only scored a 970 on a mock-test given at a seminar my folks had sent me to. On top of that, I'd failed the TAAS test twice and had set myself up as a poor test taker. I was doomed. After taking the test, the thought had occured to me that I had no recollection of taking the test.

That night there was another party at Eddie's house. It was going to be odd because Alissa was going to be there. I wasn't particularly hip on the prospect of seeing her or Ora, who had reminded me during the day that she always hated Alissa, thought I was a scumbag for going after her after what she did to my friend, and that - oh yeah - she told me so. Kerry was also going to be there.

If there is one thing worse than the combination of being dumped the night before taking the most important test of your life, being proven a fool in front of your first love (which was in my case Ora), losing a relationship that you had already lost friends over, and having to see said girlfriend, said first love, and the guy said ex-girlfriend cheated on you with all together at a party, it's taking all of these things into account and then seeing said ex-girlfriend making out with some other guy she just met all night long in your presense. Oh, and the guy is someone that you've always disliked and is making mocking and snide comments your way all night. Oh, and that she tells him she loves him after all of three hours into knowing him when she never uttered those words to you (after a whole three weeks!!).

Her baby magically disappeared and at some point she moved back to Louisiana. Six months later she was living with some new guy. A year after that she was in California with a different guy and a child on the way. I haven't heard from her since.

How to install Linux on a dead badger.

Pete writes not to praise Kurt Cobain, but to bury him:

Cobain's death struck me as less a generational tragedy than a self-fulfilling prophecy. Never trust a junkie, whether it's not to steal from you or not to die from an overdose. A new book is coming out alleging that Cobain's death was a murder and not a suicide, an idea which might generate some interest in me if the man hadn't been slowly killing himself for three years. Conspiracy theorists point out that Cobain had ingested a "triple lethal dose of heroin" before the suicide, suggesting he was unable to pull the trigger himself. Perhaps. Or maybe he was just thorough. This is the same guy who wrote "I Hate Myself and Want to Die," after all.

Possibly he was being ironic.

I've heard some argue that Cobain was "overrated." I know that he didn't have much of an influence on me, but that doesn't mean he didn't touch many people's lives. My problem is with those who lionize him as my generation's John Lennon....close, but no walrus. Cobain produced a limited catalog and Nirvana, unlike the Beatles, spoke seriously to a relatively narrow band of Gen X listeners (not counting the clueless backwards ballcap-wearing frat boys who never seemed to grasp that they were the ones being mocked). Cobain benefited in much the same way Morrison and Hendrix did from their premature deaths: spared the ignominy of aging badly (see also Pete Townshend). Hendrix, however, seemed content with his career choice. I'm not convinced that Cobain would've kept playing music, had he lived.

Nirvana's rise completely passed me by. I was aware of their existence, but the closest I came to hearing one of their songs was Weird Al's parody of their hit.

I've been putting together pieces of ideas involving a bunch of late-twenties and early-thirties acolytes of Cobain. It's not about Cobain, but the characters will be based in part on a handful of people that I knew that practically worshipped him. It's about growing up and moving on, with parallels from the 60's and the 90's.

Since the characters are the pinnacle of anything I write, I have a lot more development in that area before I start researching Cobain. I must say, though, that I'm actually looking forward it.

This reminds me of when that prison in New Mexico were teaching prisoners how to be locksmiths:

ONTARIO, Ore. — Rather than sending jobs to India or China, telemarketing firms are increasingly finding hired help in prisons.


There's been a national trend among the prison industry to target businesses that are moving some of their operations overseas, according to the Oregon Corrections Enterprise.

[...]

For many inmates, it's a chance to redeem their dignity, become more responsible and change their criminal ways.

But critics of the practice warn that some prisoners have abused their access to personal information. In Washington state, for example, a jailed rapist harassed a woman with calls and cards.

Supporters say most of the criminals behind bars will eventually be back in society, so it makes sense to give them job skills.

Being the lame-brain that I am, it took me a minute to figure out why it would be a really bad idea to put criminals in a position to get people's credit card numbers. Susanna is a bit more swift.

My car was embarassingly dirty a week ago, so I buckled down and cleaned it.

Looks great. But... there was something wrong with it. Seems like the paint has kind of faded.

But then a bird relieved itself on it, and it looks right again.

When I was in high school, I had a coach for a world geography teacher. The coach would periodically have gimme grades to make up for his being a complete dirtwad. We'd generally take a quiz and when we were done, we were to grade our own paper... in pencil. "I know if I were grading my own paper in pencil, I would make a 100 every time," he'd say.

At the end he would ask us our grades. It would be one 100 after another until he got to a kid named (and no, this isn't a pseudonym) Fred. Fred would say that he got a C or D, his general grade-range. Coach tried to subtly tell him that it doesn't make sense for someone who graded their own paper in pencil to get a C. Fred assured him that was the grade I got. Coach tried and tried, eventually yelling at Fred and calling him an idiot. One time Coach said that anyone who couldn't get an A on a pencil self-graded quiz didn't deserve to pass and so he gave him an F.

"I can't cheat," Fred said, "It's against my morale."

Well, after 90 days of service, METRO has demonstrated that they are in fact smarter than Fred:

METRO calls light rail's first 90 days a huge success
ABC13 Eyewitness News
(4/05/04 - HOUSTON) — A huge success, that's what METRO officials call light rail's first 90 days of operation.

That's why I want to work for a government agency. They let me grade my work in pencil.

You belong on a lazy-day beach or anywhere where
you can set up a relaxing bench or chair and
watch the world go by. You don't want to make
any changes, watching is enough to make you
content. The blue of the sky and the light of
day beat into your soul and you drift into the
world and around without harming anything or
making any ripples in the fabric of humanity.
Enjoy your peace, few have it, though few would
want it at the cost.


Where do you belong?(ANIME IMAGES)
brought to you by Quizilla

Ordinarily, I'd agree with this result 1000%, but it's rather ill-timed. I guess it's not the quiz's fault that I've been undergoing irreversable life changes and general timult.



Peace. You Truly Desire Peace. Just relaxing
somewhere calm with a light breeze against your
cheecks is our ideal of pefect. You don't like
to start fights, but instead, end them without
using violence.

PLEASE RATE


What Do You Truly Desire? *PICS*
brought to you by Quizilla

Heck f*in yeah!

[via Owen]

RAW360 has obviously been experiencing some technical difficulties. It's been up for a few hours solid now, so it's looking better. Thanks to those of you that are still checking up around here.

I know I've been unemployed too long when I realize that the spring-forward time change means that there is one less hour in which I have to be awake!

The University of Houston Law Center was ranked #59 in the nation according to US News & World Report. It ranked fourth in Texas, below UT (15), SMU (47), and Baylor (50) but above South Texas (NR), Texas Tech (NR), and Texas Southern (NR). Comparing to nearby states, it ranked ahead of Oklahoma (67), LSU (89), New Mexico (99), Arkansas (99) and Tulsa (NR), but barely below Tulane (56). It tied with fellow urban schools Temple, Loyola (CA), and Cincinnati.

When I was looking at law schools UH was my first choice. They have an excellent program for Intellectual Properties law, which is likely the area I would have gotten in to. The requirements to get in have been practically going up exponentially over the last couple of years. Bad for non-overachievers like me, but great for the University!

Phil Pritchett has just released his seventh CD is about as many years, Cool & Unusual Punishment. It's his third live CD if you count the "October Stages" bootleg one.

Unfortunately there aren't any new songs on this one, though it's a solid collection of previously recorded stuff as well as a few good covers. It'll be good to have live versions of "Colorado on Trial" and "Bruising Sheetrock."

The covers look to be inspired selections. They're songs he's frequently played live, such as Cross Canadian Ragweed's "Suicide Blues" and Sublime's "What I Got."

Now if we could just get him to put "Texas Ain't As Big As It Used To Be" or "My Girlfriend's Getting Married (But Not To Me)", then we'd have it all set.

(on a side note, Phil's web coder really needs to make the site Netscape/Mozilla/Opera-friendly, which it used to be but hasn't been since the redesign)

This reminds me of my days as an alter boy.

When I first became an acolyte, we were in the old church hall which has us off to the side. This was bad insofar as it gave us freedom to do some goofing off we shouldn't have been doing. When the new sanctuary was build we sat behind the pastor. Much less conducive to goofing off, and much much much more conducive to making sure you got enough sleep the night before.

Luckily, though, I was not on television.

Before attending the University of Texas, my father went to East Texas State for a year. Since my father's days, ETSU was absorbed into the Texas A&M system and rebranded Texas A&M University at Commerce. While ideologically I don't care much for university franchising, the junior A&M's present a particular problem: What should they be called shorthand? Texas A&M-Commerce is a big long-winded.

When I randomly found myself at the university's website, I thought I might have run across the answer. The initials spell out something that phonetically could be a word: TAMUC. Tamuc.

You could actually put any letter at the end of that and it would fit. Texas A&M-Galveston could be Tamug.

The problem? Nearly every other junior A&M has the same phonetic "K" sound that Commerce does. Kingsville would be TAMUK and Corpus Christi would be TAMUCC.

So I think I'll just say that Dad went to "East Texas State" instead.

As of this second, comments appear to be working. No guarantee on five minutes from now. My offer to delete any test posts still stands.

[Full Image]

After the prelude, the plot sets in. Our hero finds himself having to wash his car on a near-daily basis or face the wrath of the embarassment demons!

Then the bugs came came out from hiding. First it was little green wormie thingies standing in our heroes way as he walks to the car. Then there are the moths. Three have attacked him by entering his mouth as he walked by. As if our hero were not in enough peril, he has various itches from bug bites that he must refrain from scratching to avoid further itch.

Then there are the bugs themselves. These are no ordinary bugs. They are super bugs! When our hero clutches one in hand and then opens it to throw it to the ground, it just gets up and flies away!

"Damn spring!" our hero yells, "Damn spring all to Hell!"

I ran across this clock in San Marcos. It ran across my interest because it was unusual. There is something about this clock and its style (Analog Roman Numeral) that is unlike most clocks of similar style. I am not referring to its shape or wooden surface, I am referring to the face of the clock itself. Unfortunately, the picture is a bit blurry, but the distinction is still noticeable if you're familiar with the faces of most analog Roman Numeral clocks.

Can anyone determine what precisely is unusual about the clock? Extra points if you can do so without reading the two hints below.

The answer is in the "Read More" section.

[Read More!]

Audrey and I both felt an immense need to get out of our respective houses tonight, so we got together somewhat hastily without a clear idea of what we were going to do. We ate at an expensive Italian restaurant that seemed to believe that four little pieces of ravioli somehow constituted a $10 meal. While there, we through around entertainment ideas.

Suddenly she hit the jackpot: We'd go ride the new METRORAIL. Both of us consider light rail (or at least its current incarnation) to be a joke, but there was at least a curiousity. Perhaps we'd get to be on board during yet another collision!

We drove over to the University of Houston Downtown building (can't quite call it a campus), which is at one end of the rail. We knew it was around UHD campus somewhere, so we parked in their parking lot. We were a little concerned, though, because there was no one managing the ticket booth. How would we get out? Would we get stranded? Apparently they have a token booth where you can pay $3 for a token to get out. Whew. No way were we going to get stranded!

There is a little ticket-producing computer that we each secured ourselves three hour southbound passes. As we hopped on the trail, Audrey remarked that it looked a little nicer than some of the rides at Astroworld.

We had a ball. We looked outside as the city passed us by. We laughed as the train had to stop for cars driving over the tracks (no accidents, though). We rode all the way from UHD to the final stop on Fannin, purchased three hour northbound passes and then hopped back on.

On the way back up, we decided to get out at various stops and explore the Medical Center and generally waste time. A great time was had by both until we noticed that the train was running with less frequency than it had been an hour ago. We were a bit worried, but (a) there were no signs posted denoting the hours of operation and (b) our passes were good through 1:45am. We looked at our watches and it was 12:30. No problem.

We waited about fifteen minutes for the next train, but since it was going the wrong way (towards Fannin), we didn't get on. We took a trip to the convenience store to get some snacks and came back and waited more. We didn't think we'd missed a train, but when we saw the next one going southbound to Fannin we figured we were mistaken. We decided to err on the side of caution and get on the train and either ride it all the way to Fannin and back to UHD or hop on to another train headed towards UHD.

We got to Fannin and got off to wait. Another train came southbound. We toyed around with the ticket machine to let it know that there were some people that were planning to head back north, but unlike previous times it seemed to do no good. We briefly considered buying another ticket, but since the passes in our hand were good for another 45 minutes or so we decided against it.

When the next train came down southbound, the conductor told us that the trains were all coming in for the night. There were going to be no more trains northbound. We asked about taking the bus, but they too were closing down for the night. The conductor of the next train (also southbound, of course) suggested that we call a taxi. Fare from Fannin to UHD would likely be insane and we had no cash on us. If it hadn't been for the goodwill of Audrey's friend, we could have been stranded there until... well until the lines opened back up again. Since there were no signs posted, we had no idea when that would be.

All in all we were lucky. We were able to secure a ride home. The Fannin station is across the way from Astroworld so Audrey and I bopped to the music blaring out of there (which was kinda odd since Astroworld had been closed for three hours at least).

I also should point out that Audrey and I went in to this without much knowledge of how public transportation in Houston works. We didn't know that METRO stopped running routes at one in the morning. Our bad. I also would assume that most people aren't looking for transportation at 1 in the morning.

That said, it seems to me that this could have been prevented with an iota of foresight from METRO. We had tickets in our hand that were supposedly good for another 45 minutes. It might be a good idea to add an If-Then statement to the ticket machine where it would cap when the tickets are supposedly good for at whatever time they actually stop running northbound routes.

Since there were no hours posted (another way this mess could have been avoided), we still don't know when the routes stop. Right now I can check the METRO web site, but that doesn't do a whole lot of good in an empty parking lot at 1 in the morning. According to the site, the hours of operation depend on which day of the week you're using it (one for Mon-Fri, one for Sat, and one for Sun) and all of the times given are random (for instance it starts at 5:24 Sat mornings, ends at 12:42, with different times going different directions).

It's easy enough to learn and now I know, but how hard would it be to help the spontaneous traveller by putting up signs or at least quit selling tickets after its closed?The ticket machine was still willing to sell three-hour tickets even when the trains aren't running! If it had said something back at the med center, we would have at least had more lead-time and not had to wake Audrey's friend up.

Also, on perhaps a more anal-retentive note of some importance to me, if a train isn't running for 24 hours, do not call it a 24-hour pass!

And on a last note, the UHD token machine is locked up at midnight and if you don't have a token before then, you can't get out of the parking lot.

My parents have finally jumped out of the dark ages. Six months ago, they were paying $25 a month for 28.8k dial-up on their 500MHz Celeron that game with a whopping 64 megs of RAM (that I upgraded to 192) with Windows 98.

Today, they have cable modem and I am typing this series of posts on a brand-spankin-new Dell Dimension 2400. I was actually getting used to turning the computer on, going out to the living room, catching an episode of the Law & Order, and getting back just in time for it to ask for our password, but no more!

Computer prices are insanely low these days. I honestly couldn't have build my own computer for what Dad paid for this. It undershot the amount of RAM needed (128MB standard but I convinced Dad to upgrade to 256MB), but it's more speed than they could possibly know what to do with.

But the most interesting development in desktop sales is that bargain prices are starting to include a 17" monitor. It used to be that they left the monitor out to keep the price down (figuring that you might already have one or hoping that you wouldn't notice). My guess is that the manufacturers are trying to unload the CRT monitors in favor of more expensive flat-screens.

A strong market push of flatscreens will ultimately be a great thing because as more people buy it, the price will be driven down. I'm perfectly fine with a CRT monitor, but then again once upon a time I thought a 15" monitor was more than sufficient.

The New York Times has a worthwhile article on conservative punk rockers. I don't generally take the political views of artists and performers too seriously, but it was an interesting read. It reminds me a lot of what I hate about the punk movement:

Some left-leaning punk fans have been dismayed to learn their punk heroes are conservatives. Thorsten Wilms, 32, a punk who lives outside Cologne, Germany, and who runs the punk Web site www.FiendClub.de, said he was a fan of Mr. Graves until he learned through Punkvoter that Mr. Graves was writing pro-Bush columns for Conservative Punk. In response, Mr. Wilms added a page to his site depicting Mr. Graves beneath an appropriately punk screed of profanity. One of the few printable lines on the page is "Conservative Punk! How sick is that?"

"We wanted to polarize as well," Mr. Wilms said of his site. "You can't be a punk rocker and be right wing." He said conservative punks "could be the death of punk rock."

Ian MacKaye, a founding member of the influential punk bands Minor Threat and Fugazi, suggested that such fears might be overstated. As an outspoken "straight edge" punk — one who does not drink or do drugs — Mr. MacKaye was sometimes mistaken for a conservative (he's not) and saw his message of sobriety seized on in the early 1990's by conservative Christian punk bands. Mr. MacKaye likened the punk aesthetic to furniture. "Once it's built you can put it into any house," he said. "You can be a lefty and go to Ikea or you can be a right-winger and go to Ikea." Punk, he said, "is a free space where anything can go — a series of actions and reactions, and people rebelling and then rebelling against rebelling."

Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone agreed. "Broadly speaking," he said, "the idea of disruption was a punk aesthetic strategy. Tear apart your shirt, wear it that way. If you want to have an ugly guitar sound in the middle of your song, go ahead. And certainly spitting wasn't frowned upon."

Mr. Levy suggested that posting conservative views online while much of the punk movement is engaged in earnest liberal political organizing might be the cyberequivalent of an audience member spitting on a band's lead singer during a show, "although it's a lot more hygienic," he said.

Kinda like being a country musician, expressing shame with America's southern president, and then being all bewildered when your fans don't respond favorably.

Next time my windshield wipers cease actually wiping the windshield, I'm going to get them replaced!

I took the car in to get fixed up today for inspection. They took care of a bunch of measley things that I don't care about (if a worn belt is good enough for me, how come it's not for my car?), but most importantly they replaced the windshield wipers and now when I turn them on, they clean the windshield.

It's truly amazing!

Kevin and Scott have both taken notice of an amateur Flash promo for the Bush re-election effort.

I'm impressed!

The long talked-about liberal radio station has finally taken the air.

I don't have a particularly positive expectations of how well it will turn out for the investors. It's not that liberal radio talk can't work. Nor is it - as some conservatives suggest - that the left is too ideologically bankrupt to get the listenership.

Rather, to me it just seems that their attitude is setting themselves up for failure. Instead of pursuing this as a business venture exploiting an unexplored niche in the market, they're doing this simply to spite the opposition. They seem to have that attitude that if stupid-head Republicans can do it, then brainybrain liberals can do it better.

The adolescent tone is exhibited in the title of Al Franken's show, The O'Franken Factor. It's meant as a tweak against Bill O'Reilly's "O'Reilly Factor", except that it's not clever, not funny, and not particularly disparaging of its target. Rather it undeservedly exalts O'Reilly into some kind of icon.

As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But it's still imitation.

Ironically, if the station were to succeed then it would prove that liberals and Democrats are just as base as they've acused conservatives of being for listening to Rush Limbaugh. They will lose any claim to the intellectual high ground (though I would maintain that they've never particularly had it) that they claim existing liberal outlets such as NPR and Pacifica prove.

I suspect that the station will start off doing well and then tail off pretty quickly. The likes of Limbaugh and O'Reilly culminated over time and with a lot of experimentation on television and radio. For O'Reilly, Fox News threw a lot of different options and see what stuck. Air America seems to be going into it with the attitude that they completely know what's going to work because they're just that clever and smart.

I could be wrong, though. Liberal animosity towards Bush is palpable and could keep the station flying high for longer than I am presently thinking it will. It'll be interesting to see.

The girl from Wisconsin that had allegedly been abducted has been found. When I heard about it on the radio it sounded a bit fishy to me. Apparently I'm not the only one. Susanna Cornett brings up some peculiarities of the story:

Police are saying she was abducted at knifepoint, but she had left her building in the middle of the night without a coat or purse before the abduction. So is the abduction connected to her leaving the building? It's odd behavior itself, and it would be bizarre (although not impossible) for them not to be connected. Then there's the attack and abduction she suffered in early February. That surely can't be a third unconnected situation. What are the chances that the same nice, average college girl, not a party girl, is attacked and abducted, then two months later, after prowling around her apartment building lobby for a while in the middle of the night, she leaves the building for some reason then is attacked again in an unconnected event? It strains the credulity.

She also lists what she sees as the likely scenarios. Not all of them paint Miss Sieler in a negative light, but one of the two most likely does.

Michael Williams points to some really fascinating statistics about depression rates and marital status:

Divorce and Depression

The National Institute of Mental Health found that women in cohabiting relationships had much greater rates of depression than women in married relationships (second only to those twice divorced). The numbers fall as follows (annual rate of incident of depression per 100):

Married (never divorced) 1.5
Never married 2.4
Divorced once 4.1
Divorced twice 5.8
Cohabiting 5.1

Lee Robins and Darrel Regier, Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 64.

I'll get to the subject of premarital cohabitation in a bit and start with the divorce statistics.

There are basically two ways this data can be interpreted:
1) Divorce makes one more likely to experience depression.
2) Someone suffering from depression is more likely to become divorced.

While the web site is pushing for the first possibility, I think it's too easy to overlook the second. The fact is that depression makes a woman considerably more difficult to live with and, as such, it's not surprising in the slightest that there is a 70% increase in depression among those women that have been divorced than those that have not married (and 142% for those that divorce twice). Also, people that are suffering from depression are more likely to go into marriage ill-advisedly because they absolutely must have someone by 25 or they will wither away the rest of their lives completely and utterly alone.

On the other hand, to some extent that would have to be negated by those whose depression prevents them from getting married in the first place. Depressed people are often (though not always) withdrawn from society and less likely to meet people. Additionally, they often have "red flags" that warn potential suiters away. So a fair number of the socially dabilitated depressed should fall into the "never married" category as well.

The same, to an extent, can be said of those cohabitating. There is the possibility that those suffering from depression are less likely to get married. For instance the depression could have resulted in a loss of religious faith and without that faith there is less of an impetus to get married. Depression also leads one to doubt their own judgment and, as such, they don't have enough faith in themselves to stay married permanently. There is also the matter of social alienation which follows (or is caused by) depression. Once one is alienated from society, they don't tend to take its legal institutions seriously. There also may be a reluctance on the part of male partners to marry someone that exhibits the symptoms of depression so that even if they wanted to marry, their partners don't.

The other possibility is that cohabitation causes depression in people. It's not obvious why this would be the case unless one holds traditional or socially conservative views on marriage or has retro views on gender roles. Those that hold such positions would likely conclude that they are unhappy because they are rejecting the Lord, she is unhappy because she wants to be married and he doesn't want to because he's already getting what he wants (sex), or without the official documentation the nature of the relationship is more tentative than one party or the other might otherwise prefer and stability is required for happiness. On a more practical and less ideological (or theological) level, women suffering from depression also run the risk of moving in with a boyfriend too soon. I've known some possibly-depressed people that have moved in with their beaus in under a month.

While the reasons for higher depression numbers in those divorced seem pretty straightforward, it's a bit more difficult on the subject of cohabitation. I honestly wouldn't have expected the depression rate to increase by over 100%. I get the feeling there may be a possibility that I am missing altogether, but I'm not sure what it might be. If I was, then I wouldn't be missing it, would I?

It's pretty apparent that non-marital cohabitation and/or divorce does not result in depression for most people, so even if we were to place their marital status as the "cause" instead of the "effect", it's important to note that we're maxing out at under 6% as having depression. The question is about those that may be on the borderline of depression and weather or not such people are making themselves succeptable to depression with their life choices.

It's difficult to tell definitively with the information given. I'd find the statistics a lot more useful if they had "before and after" results in a longitudinal study. If anyone has numbers on that, I'd love to see them.