I spent a great evening drinking beer and talking to Stoner and Snowflake. Heard a lot of interesting things about my neighbors:

There's one guy that was almost kicked out because he pushed a kindergartener off his bike and stole it. He was given a second chance.

The guy across the hall has absolutely nothing in his apartment except a bed. The bed has no sheets.

The only thing stopping everyone in the apartment complex from beating up on the guy in the room without the bed is that they are all on probation for past offenses. Except Snowflake.

The guy before the guy who live in my apartment before me was a narc who rented the place looking for drug use. He was discovered and kicked out. This has apparently happened twice.

One guy down the row from me thinks that he is a maintenance man, but he isn't. He's apparently pretty harmless, but I've been told not to let him in my room under any circumstances.

As near as I can tell, I am the only person here that is not getting food stamps.

Stoner's grandfather is an old-time country musician that I've heard of. The only thing I remember hearing about him is that he was a hard core drug addict.

Everyone here is one big happy family. The landlord apparently regularly loans out money to tenants. The managers are letting snowflake use the office computer so that she can learn how to type. Everybody owes everybody else money and no one is worried about it.
Snowflake is the only tenant she is aware of that has actually lasted more than a single six-month lease here. She's moving out in September. Stoner is moving out in August when his lease is up.

I really like my neighbors.

I was driving around and I took a wrong turn. Next thing I know I see a sign that says "Entering Virginia." Didn't say "City of" or "County of."

I must have really taken a wrong turn...

Apparently, the famous "Bill Gates will give you a zillion dollars if you email this to 10 people" hoax was accidentally started by a former University of Houston student:

Jonathon Keats at Wired Magazine decided to track down the origin of the Bill Gates e-mail tracking hoax. After a few dead ends he finally located then-student Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997 while at the University of Houston. In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand. One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.' Three minutes later, Bill Gates' email-tracing program was born. At first he just sent it to a few friends, but those friends sent it to other friends (and so on), and it didn't take long for the e-mail to transform from a joke to a full-fledged hoax."

Here's the Wired story.

That hoax never bothered me. The one that bothered me was the email tax. I swear that every week at UFC some new coworker would tell me about it. I'd tell them it was a hoax and they would look at me as if to say, "You naive, naive boy..."

Update: Or not. Bryan Mack writes to say that he was a student at Iowa State and not UH. Apparently, the UH connection was that an archivist who helped them find Mack was a UH student.

A fraternity Greek-named co-ed organization at Texas A&M has put together a really cool program:

"Beat the hell outta scalpers" is the slogan of Alpha Phi Omega's TicketMart, a free service that helps fans sell Texas A&M football tickets they can't use to interested buyers before every home game.

"The inflated prices that scalpers ask for are outrageous, and it's not fair to Aggies," said Shiloh Venable, a senior human resource development major and TicketMart chair.

TicketMart has been in operation for more than 10 years, but many students do not know that it exists.

"We are trying to spread the word across campus and the Bryan-College Station community so that as many people as possible who have the opportunity can use it," Venable said.

Anyone who wants to sell football tickets can fill out a form on or before any home game day and Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-ed service fraternity, will try to sell the tickets for face value in the Memorial Student Center during the three hours before kickoff.

If the tickets are sold, the money is mailed back to the seller within two weeks.

Alpha Phi Omega does not charge a service fee but will accept donations, Venable said.

Unsold tickets are destroyed or can be mailed back to their original owner.

Tickets with seating anywhere in Kyle Field are accepted and TicketMart serves both students and visitors to Aggieland.

"Everyone who wants to enjoy Aggie football should be able to," Venable said.

My father had season tickets to the Longhorns last year. The Nebraska game came on a bad weekend and he couldn't use the tickets. He used some online service months in advance and there was a while when it looked like the guy was going to punk out on paying Dad back. Ultimately, the guy paid up (face value). I remember thinking that there's got to be a better way of going about it. Looks like the Ags have found one.

[via Chris]

Apparently 24 is right-wing propadanga:

Yet 24 is not uncomplicated Fox Television rightwing populism; it is a little cleverer than that. All three series have had near the centre a fictional African-American US politican, David Palmer, now president, who seems wise, decent and intelligent - much more so, it has to be said, than the real US president. The counter-terrorism unit crowd are sensitive and rather liberal types, except when they're busy gunning baddies down. They are hardly natural Guardian readers. But you could imagine the hero, whose CV includes a literature course at university, logging on to the Guardian's website.

Yet the most powerful messages are indeed rightwing, even paranoid. The outside world is a great arc of danger and spite, determined to bring mayhem to the doorsteps of Middle America. Bandit Mexicans, pathological Serbs and Russians, sadistic Arabs, and icy English mass-murderers are constantly repelled at the last minute from causing the deaths of millions of Americans. President Palmer and his counter-terrorism unit heroes mean well. But foreigners are simply mean.

It is easy to laugh at the silly moustaches, dodgy accents and thin characterisation of the villains, just as one quickly comes to understand the clichés of the plot-line, such as the necessity of Jack Bauer's tedious daughter being kidnapped on a regular basis. But the "war on terror" is no joke, and 24 is addictive propaganda.

Let's see, the iconic president is both African-American and a Democrat. They spend half their time in the second season trying to avert a needless war, [spoiler in white]the Muslim double-agent is a rich white girl, a Muslim cleric uses Muslim teachings to try to convince an Islamist to give up information on his group, and the villains in the first season are all European.

Yep, sure sounds like right-wing propaganda to me.

[I can't remember where I got the link, probably Warliberal]

MSN has an interesting article on the lengths that some people will go to in order to get a date:

The process at First Impressions is simple, but has an almost cloak-and-dagger feel to it.

Clients are told they will meet their “date” at a stylish cafe in New York’s Soho area. The date will be sitting alone, reading a copy of The New York Times. If you are a boy, you are told your date's name is Susan Green. You are told she is single and lives in the area. She likes film, travel and painting. You are to assume that she's roughly your age and that you find her attractive. As the client, the onus is on you to approach her, introduce yourself and pick up the tab at the cafe.

Afterward, your date — actually a First Impressions consultant with an advanced degree in psychology — reveals her real name, describes what kind of impression was made and makes suggestions for improvements.

I was lucky to have pretty much stumbled upon Eel (with some help from Kevin and Callie, of course). The same was true for Anna. To walk up to someone I don't know and try to pick them up is something that I've never really had the gumption to do. I've tried on a couple of occasions, but most encounters have been by pure chance.

To walk up to someone knowing that I'm going to get a critique instead of a date is downright impossible for me to fathom.

Man, I'm glad not to be single.

Contrary to the title, Online Porn Excerpts, this article has no excerpts from online pornography. Instead, it has a bunch of grey old men talking about pornography in the most sterile fashion possible:

"There are a number of plausible and less restrictive alternatives to the statute. The primary alternative considered by the District Court was blocking and filtering software. Blocking and filtering software is an alternative less restrictive than COPA and, in addition, likely more effective as a means of restricting children's access to materials deemed harmful to them."
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority ruling.

[...]

"I cannot accept (the majority's) conclusion that Congress could have accomplished its statutory objective
protecting children from commercial pornography on the Internet in other, less restrictive ways."
Justice Stephen Breyer in dissent.

I'm actually kind of surprised that Breyer is dissenting. Makes me wonder who voted which way.

First they said that fats were bad. Then they said it was carbs. Now, in mice at least, it's protein:

Eating too much protein can prevent an embryo attaching to the wall of the womb or hinder its early development, the findings suggest.

Although the research was done on mice, scientists believe there are implications for humans, especially people on Atkins-style diets.

"It’s conceivable that people who have protein intakes greater than 30 per cent may have problems conceiving," said Dr David Gardner, who led the American study.

The upper limit for protein consumption under Atkins guidelines is 35 per cent of total calories, but devout disciples of the diet might consume a greater proportion.

The research stems from the observation that protein in the diet affects levels of ammonium in the female reproductive tract. In herbivorous animals such as cows this has been known to cause reproductive problems.

Previous studies have shown that ammonium harms mouse embryos grown in the laboratory, causing genetic effects and retarding development.

Dr Gardner, the scientific director of the Colorado Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Englewood, set out to discover whether the same effects occurred in living mice.

The scientists found that ammonium levels in the oviduct, where the early embryo forms, were four times higher in mice given the high protein diet.

Four-day-old embryos in these animals had fewer cell numbers and a higher rate of cell death.

This is a crucial stage in embryonic development, since it is just before the embryo attaches to the inside of the womb. Without implantation, pregnancy cannot occur.

A total of 174 young embryos were transferred from both groups of mice to surrogate mothers fed a normal diet.

Despite the switch, only 65 per cent of those taken from high protein mice developed into a foetus. In contrast, embryos from mice on the lower protein diet had an 81 per cent success rate.

As the Atkins people point out, what happens in herbivore mice and cattle may not apply to humans. I certainly hope not. I look to fiber and protein as being the almost unquestionable goods in dietary habits. While I have no intentions of ever getting pregnant, there may be different effects for men. I drink a lot of milk. Milk has a lot of protein.

What I'm curious about - and what the article doesn't say - is whether or not protein has the same nutritional effects in herbivores as it does in carnies. If so then there's reason to believe that this problem could transfer over. If not, then trying to draw a parallel seems like a pretty pointless task.

All is not well in blogland. No, I'm not going on another hiatus (though posting next week will be light). Nucleus appears to have an ongoing grudge with my current host, or is dying. I had to take my blogroll off the main page last week. This week it's making me log on between every single screen that I use, which makes short posts take longer when I don't have wbloggar handy.

With a lot of help from my good man (and frequent commenter) Mike Ahlf, I'm getting set up with a new host shortly that will be powered with Nuke Nucleus 3.0. It will hopefully be up in a week or two.

Eel has a pet peeve: Yuppy names.

It struck me as an odd pet peeve at first. Why would anyone pick that, of all things, to have a pet peeve about? But since she's been delivering babies and assisting the deliverance of babies, it makes more sense than, for instance, my catastrophic loss vulnerability to finger-nail polish. She gets a lot of weird names day in and day out. Since getting up here I am in complete agreement with her. You would not believe the names that people up here have. One of my trainer's names at OmniStar was actually named Laetwynn (not a psuedonym!) and when they were talking about their families up there, I'd say the name Kaden was far more prevalent than the name Chris. Part of the rationale for this is for originality. But an article from Health & Medical News says that they might should hold their horses in that regard:

Some parents today who invent some original name for their baby, like 'Grast', could - through simple random chance - unwittingly be determining the names of thousands of children 10 years from now," said Bentley, of the college's Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour, which uses biological ideas to understand cultural change.

Using British and U.S. government data, Bentley and Hahn tracked the popularity of the top 1,000 first names for baby girls and boys in the U.S. for every decade in the 20th century.

They found that a few names were thousands of times more popular than the majority with many uncommon names. They said the distribution followed an "elegant mathematical function," called a power law, that is maintained over 100 years, even though the population is growing.

Hahn and Bentley developed a model which closely predicts the distribution of name popularity over the last century. The model is based on the population genetics concept of 'random genetic drift', in which the frequency of genes in a population fluctuates according to chance, and where there is only a small population of breeding parents.

The most yuppy name that I ever considered was Bailey, if Anna and I had a boy. It would actually be Rayford Baylor Whitlock with Bailey shorthand (yes, I'm aware that Bailey and Baylor are both 6 letters, but Charles and Charlie are both seven with the shorthand name having more syllables than the formal one). That would have been allowed because Baylor is a family name (I'm somehow actually related to the University's founder on my mother's side of the family). The chosen girl's name was Jodine Clair Whitlock, Jodie for short, named after grandrelatives. Eel will have to tell me whether that's yuppy of not :).

One name that hadn't been born yet and that I doubt I will consider in the future is ESPN. But apparently I'm behind the curve on that:

His parents said ESPN loves baseball, basketball and football, and Rebecca said she's hoping to have his room done in sports theme before the TV ESPN comes.

And, of course, ESPN enjoys watching SportsCenter every night with his father.

However, Michael and Rebecca said they don't think the name will put pressure on him to become a superstar athlete; they're just catering to his interests at the moment.

All in all, Rebecca said, she likes unique names. She wanted to name her two younger daughters "Disney" but was shot down both times by Michael. They compromised on Sterling, now 21 months, and Kendall, now 11 months.

If the McCalls have another son, would he be "The Deuce?"

Well, if ESPN had a twin, his name would be "EXPN." However, the McCalls don't watch solely ESPN for their sports. They planned "Fox Sports McCall" for a second son.

Espen (the way it's supposed to be pronounced) would be a yuppy name. I think it would be a disservice to yuppy names to call ESPN a yuppy name.

I apparently have a new neighbor. Well actually I'm the new one and he's just been out of town until today, but you get the idea. He's way too excited about having another tech-nerd in the building. I say "too excited" because while it would be cool to talk tech with a neighbor, I'd rather it not be this guy. To give you an idea, Stoner does not strike me as the kind of guy that gets agitated too easily, but it's very apparent that this dude agitates him whenever he opens his mouth.

The new guy has a... err... thick build, but the most prominant feature is Robert Paulson-style woman-boobs. He's told me his name about five times so far and I can't for the life of me remember it, but I'll just call him Meatloaf here. He apologized in advance for what he said would be "loud orgasmic noises" coming from his room (he lives next door) for whenever his girlfriend was over.

I could live a hundred years without the imagery involved with those sounds.

Please, please pray that I do live a hundred years without hearing those sounds.

Last night while I was cleaning up my apartment, the door flung open. I was afraid it was Meatloaf, but in fact it was a huge gust of wind.

From a cold front.

In late June.

I'm all in favor of aphrodisiacs for women, but this may be taking it a bit too far:

The female rats flirted more when injected with the drug and Pfaus and his colleagues said: "Females treated with the highest dose of PT-141 also attempted to mount the males." In rats, this is considered a sign of sexual impatience.

[via Lex]

I expected a number of things when I came up here. I expected cooler summers than I was accustomed to. I expected drier weather. In most of these expectations, I have not been disappointed.

I'll tell you what I did not expect, though. I did not expect this sun tan. It did not even occur to me that I would need to invest more money on sunscreen in Idaho than in Texas. It's not a matter of spending more time outdoors, but I suppose the elevation and dry sunwaves or somesuch.

All I know is that I have a farmer's tan. Few things look worse than a farmer's tan. So yesterday I wore my tanktop and the result is odd mixtures of white and red almost in the design of a superhero costume. Oh, and a white outline of the tanktop straps. And a really, really sunburned neck.

I apparently moved all the way from Texas to Idaho to become a redneck...

I've said before that no University president ever gets appointed without some promises of taking the university to the "next level," whatever level that happens to be. Baylor University's president is apparently no different:

Baylor, which already bills itself as the largest Baptist university in the world, has even bigger ambitions. In the words of the school's president, Baylor aspires to be "the finest Christian institution of higher learning on this planet." This is Texas, after all, so nothing is quite so important as scale. And Baylor has a plan—specifically, a 42-page document that articulates a vision and outlines a strategy to achieve it by 2012. "Within the course of a decade, Baylor intends to enter the top tier of American universities while reaffirming and deepening its distinctive Christian mission," reads the plan, called Baylor 2012. It rejects the notion that "intellectual excellence" and "intense faithfulness to the Christian tradition" are mutually exclusive, although it notes that not many universities have been able to do both effectively.

Baylor 2012 calls for, among other things, an Honors College with its own dean and faculty; at least 10 new doctoral programs in the social sciences and humanities (in addition to its existing 17 doctoral programs in a variety of disciplines); and a world-class faculty, with 200 new appointments over the course of a decade.

Additionally, Baylor's administration has hopes of locating the George W. Bush presidential library on campus. A $103 million science building is under construction. Baylor has embarked on what one faculty member calls a "huge building spree" of athletic facilities, and the university plans to construct a new residence hall every two years until 2012.

Some at Baylor want the university to become a "Protestant Notre Dame." The connection is not coincidental. Although there are no official ties between Waco and South Bend, faculty at the two schools (particularly the philosophy departments) have met for a number of structured conversations. Michael Beaty, a philosopher and director of the Baylor Institute of Faith and Learning, did his doctorate at Notre Dame. Both Baylor's president and his chief faculty recruiter acknowledge their intellectual indebtedness to Notre Dame's George Marsden—who warned about the secularization of U.S. higher education—and to the Notre Dame model.

I'm all about Baylor becoming a first tier school nationally because it'll make Jay's degree more valuable. Even though Baylor is not the kind of school I would have chosen in large part because of its overly socially conservative atmosphere, I am happy that they're going to remain true to their vision. There are plenty of secular private schools with rigorous academia. In an age where Texas Christian University asks to be called simply TCU to distance itself from its founding, it's refreshing that a university doesn't lose sight of what it is.

Then again, Jay had to endure six years in that atmosphere and would probably come at it from a very different perspective.

Since UH actually has a contending baseball team year in and year out, I don't make a habit of rooting for Texas Longhorn baseball as I do with football and (to a lesser extent) basketball. I rooted for Rice during the College World Series last year. I was indifferent.

But since Texas made it to the College World Series this year, I was hoping that they would pull it out and sorry that they didn't. I was hopeful then disappointed.

Then I read about their poor sportsmanship by not taking the second place trophy, and some of my anti-UT feelings started to surface. I was not particularly pleased.

Then I read Kevin's classic Shorthorn post on the matter, and my anti-anti-UT feelings came back up, leaving me indifferent all over again.

Right back where I started...

Update: Apparently I misread the tone of Kevin's post. Much to my amazement, he was actually going to be happy for UT if they won prior to the poor sportsmanship. My bad!

Radley Balko has this thought on the Walmart sexism lawsuit:

I'm a little puzzled by the Wal-Mart sex discrimination suit. Seems to me there are three assumptions the left takes with respect to the retailer, and to the business world in general:

A) Wal-Mart is a ruthless mega-corp that will do virtually anything to cut costs.

B) Women, particularly women executives, make a fraction of the salaries men do.

C) Women are just as competent, experienced and eager to assume executive roles in retail as men.

Now, given those three assumptions, we're to conclude that:

D) Wal-Mart knowingly promotes costlier men to executive positions than less costly women who are just as eager to take those positions, and who are equally or better qualified.

I'm no labor economist. But to me, it just doesn't add up.

There are actually some interesting points made in the comments section on both sides of the issue.

Larry Eastland punches some numbers of how abortions affect the electoral landscape:

• Republicans have fewer abortions than their proportion of the population, Democrats have more than their proportion of the population. Democrats account for 30% more abortions than Republicans (49% vs. 35%).

• The more ideologically Democratic the voters are (self-identified liberals), the more abortions they have. The more ideologically Republican the voters are (self-identified conservatives), the fewer abortions they have.

This isn't particularly surprising given the core constituencies of both political parties. But translating percentages into numbers for the purpose of evaluating their impact on politics makes the importance of these numbers real. It's one thing to quote percentages and statistics, it's quite another to look at actual human beings. For example:

• There are 19,748,000 Democrats who are not with us today. (49.37 percent of 40 million).

• There are 13,900,000 Republican who are not with us today. (34.75 percent of 40 million).

• By comparison, then, the Democrats have lost 5,848,000 more voters than the Republicans have.

What I find most interesting about this is the number of Republican abortions. It's long been my belief that the public is far more pro-life than the polls suggest (at least insofar as first-term abortions are concerned) and these kinds of numbers validate my belief. That Republican parents account for 41% of the two-party divide speaks volumes.

There are a number of pro-choice female-types that I know that have said "I wouldn't have an abortion, but I think it should be legal" that, when faced with an actual pregnancy that would greatly inconvenience them (college, for instance) probably would at least strongly consider it. My usual response to that question is to ask "So if you were pregnant today, you'd put your life on hold for nine months?" and am often responded to by a very, very thoughtful look. I think the same is true for many people that give the pro-life response to a pollster. Everything changes when the abstract becomes real. Sometimes, I can attest, it changes to the pro-life position. Given the instant-gratification nature of modern American society, though, I suspect more often than not it changes the other way. I think Republicans would be very disappointed if the right to kill the unborn were no longer protected by the atrocious Roe v Wade decision.

As for the subject of aborting votes as a whole, I'm reminded of seeing a pro-life rally on C-Span who said "They'll keep aborting theirs and we'll keep aborting ours and eventually we'll outnumber them!"

That's under the assumption, of course, that Republican's kids will remain Republican as they grow older. That's probably true more often than not, but social conservatives have been reproducing in greater numbers than social liberals anyhow and many of their children will convert at least temporarily in their college years and a decade or so beyond. Some will have children and shift to the right, some will have children and stay liberal, and others will decline to have children and will be replaced with other children of conservatives.

It reminds me of the debate between the emerging Republican majority versus the emerging Democratic one. Republicans say that since conservatives have more kids and Red States are growing in population and Red States vote Republican, Republicans will perservere. Democrats say Hispanics vote Democratic and since the Hispanic population is greatly increasing and that society is growing more urban and even in Red States cities go Democratic, Democratic dominance is inevitable*.

Soothsayers on both sides of the aisle are making assumptions that may not hold up. Republicans are assuming that kids that come from conservative households will remain conservative and ignore phenomena as in Arizona where the influx is primarily liberal and the higher populations are actually pulling the state towards the center. Democrats assume that Hispanics will always be a safe Democratic vote by 2-1 margins and that's an assumption that was once made about Irish and Italian immigrants whose grandkids are starting to veer right.

I'd be interested in knowing what the fallout rate is among liberals and conservatives when it comes to their children. Anecdotally I would say that there is probably more fall-out on the right than the left to counteract the higher reproduction rates of conservatives. Of course I say that at a time when most of my friends are childless, not wealthy, and young enough to be at the "foolish young liberal" stage of their life, so I could well be mistaken. It seems to be that people that come from liberal families (a) don't see the contradiction between liberalism and family that conservatives do and (b) those that come from single-parent or atypical households are suspicious of "family values" talk because they got by with just one parent, thankyouverymuch. There are of course Alex P. Keatons out there that rebel against their liberal parents by becoming conservative, but I'd say that those (again, looking at my sample-selection-biased 20-something peers) are outnumbered by those children of conservative parents that respond by becoming liberals, libertarians, or apathetic non-voters (and out of the Republican pool).

*- I know, horrible sentence construction. Forgive me.

Update: Michael Williams posts on the subject. His first (and right now only) commenter makes the same observation about liberals from conservative households and vice-versa, though his rationale is slightly different.

The parade of interesting dreams continues. Last night Audrey was in my dream. We were hanging out after having spent some time apart, but something was wrong. I asked, at some point, "Why aren't we talking?"

"What should we be talking about?"

"What we've always talked about!"

A few years ago when Anna and I parted ways, it was difficult in more ways than one. Procedurally, the most difficult part was that we were so used to one another. Not just as a romantic partnership, but as friends and confidants. Like many parting couples do, we made a promise to remain close friends. It was as selfish as magnanimous because we each needed someone and we were both the most qualified individuals for that.

Then there were physical needs. I don't mean sex, but rather openly displayed affection. Hugging instead of kissing her goodbye was one of the roughest transitions. There was also suddenly talking about our futures seperately instead of as one. It even seemed logical at the time that we could continue to act as a couple even if we weren't because, hey, we had nothing better to do.

While our final months were not particularly happy ones, they were what we understood. As with any couple, talking about us was one of the big things that we talked about. It was really difficult to get away from that comfort zone. But I needed out of the relationship and she (pre-Pierce) wanted to keep going and we would have found ourselves talking in the circles over and over again. Yet even though I was vaguely aware of it at the time, it still seemed attractive in its own way.

Like many parting couples do, we renegged on the close friendship promise. She became preoccupied with Pierce and I with Audrey and the transition actually seemed smoother with each other out of the way. There were a lot of questions left unanswered and there was the desire to continue to talk about us, but it was largely unproductive. Her strong, strong, strong disapproval of Audrey provided a much-needed schism that was probably inevitable.

A year or so later when Audrey and I parted ways, I remember her writing an email saying that she really wanted things to continue the way that they were. I remember walking out of Occupational and Environmental Safety class at U of H, thinking of nothing but her. I'd told her that I needed some time and space and that I wouldn't be seeing her again for some time. She objected vociferously and she had a good point: Why not?

The argument also held. Then I looked over at the Science building where I knew Vince also took night classes and realized that I might run in to the soon-to-be-lovers. In front of God and country I cried the last tears of that affair. Then I became angry that she'd dragged things on for so long while I'd been remarkably unhappy and then prepared to jump ship when something better came along. I don't often take pride in my angry and embittered behavior when I'm experiencing it, but I'm grateful that I felt what I did at that moment because that saved me the prolonged agony of holding on to what was no longer real.

Yet then, as now, there is the motivation to reach out to these people from my past. Anna and I have been talking a lot more recently, but no amount of communication can give us together what we once had. Things with Audrey are and probably forever will be more complicated, but the desire I sometimes have to drop her a line and talk about what we've always talked about seems reductive. I've gone my own path, she's gone hers, and the only place for us to go is into the past.

Anna, Audrey, and I would be much better served going into the future and not talking about the things we've always talked about.

The last senate election were supposed to be a bad one for Republicans, but they held the line and even gained a seat. This senate election was supposed to be good for Republicans with a few Dem retirements in conservative states, but things are looking pretty good for Democrats right now:

Seven months ago, the Democrats' quest for the Senate appeared hopeless, and Republicans, who cling to a slim 51-to-48 majority (with one independent), were confidently predicting they would widen that lead. Especially in the Republican-friendly South, Democrats were staring at a wipeout, with five of their Senators — Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, John Breaux of Louisiana, John Edwards of North Carolina, Zell Miller of Georgia and Bob Graham of Florida — all deciding to retire.

But Democrats have since recruited credible-enough candidates that the party now has a shot at holding on to three or four of the Southern seats — in South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. And in the West, Democrats are hoping to nab the open seats left by the retirement of Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and to take on the vulnerable Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. So suddenly the math has changed: Democrats can see their way to a net gain of two seats, which would give them a slim advantage in the Senate. "We're at the cusp of a victory in November," says Senator Jon Corzine, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. G.O.P. leaders insist that the Democrats' hope is a pipe dream. Most of the seats up for grabs are in G.O.P.-heavy states that Bush won handily in 2000. "They simply cannot blow away the reality," says Senator George Allen, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

What makes Democrats sound so giddy? Bush's sinking approval ratings and the poll numbers showing that voters, by 49% to 37% in a TIME poll in early June, say they plan to vote for a Democrat rather than a Republican in congressional elections. Democrats also see two favorable omens in the special-election victories for two House seats, one in South Dakota on June 1 and one four months ago in Kentucky.

If voters decide to keep Bush (because they can't stomach Kerry) but his poll numbers remain as low as they have, I believe the voters will probably take it out on the Republican congressional candidates. If Kerry wins, the Republicans may pick up his senate seat and possibly that of his vice president if it's Florida Senator Nelson (looks unlikely, though, as I've seen his name mentioned less and less in current weeks).

Since most House seats are safe, the Senate is likely to be where the action is. So far most of the press has been focusing on Illinois, where the Democrats will almost certainly pick up a seat. I've not been following the senate races in the south (where the Republicans have a chance to pick up some seats). It's worth pointing out that Democrats were really excited about taking Colorado last election (with the "endangered" Senator Allard) and it didn't happen. They have to pick up at least one more seat beyond Illinois to regain the Senate.

The Democrats seem to have done a pretty impressive job of candidate selection this time around. It was Bush's (or Rove's) recruitment of national figures (Lamar Alexander and Libby Dole) that helped keep open seats safe.

DavidMSC responds to the news that San Antonio has overtaken Dallas in population:

You see, San Antonio city limits DO contain 1,214,725 residents. Dallas city limits contain 1,208,318 residents. Therefore, S.A. has more people. But wait: if you gauge population according to Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), then the Dallas metroplex contains 5.6 million people, whereas S.A. only has 1.7 million people. The reason is that the "metro" area surrounding Dallas includes Fort Worth and many large suburbs, but San Antonio has no such adjacent/bordering suburbs and communities.

And really, when most people think of "big cities," they are thinking of Chicago, D/FW, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and others of similar size, shape, composition, etc.

So where does San Antonio rank in terms of MSA? Number 29. Behind Sacramento, Cleveland, and other technically "smaller" cities.

Dallas has more than suburbs, though, it also has Fort Worth. For anyone outside of Texas, never accuse someone in Fort Worth of being in Dallas (or even worse, a suburb). That still puts it ahead of San Antonio no matter how you calculate it, but I like to make the distinction because (a) I have roots in Fort Worth, (b) that leaves Houston as bigger than Dallas (albeit smaller than DFW), and (c) I'm petty.

Less shall soon be more again:

The nearly naked looks once favored by pop stars like Christina Aguilera and television shows like "Sex and the City" are giving way to more demure styles that feature far less skin, fashion executives say.

From the runways of Europe to the malls of America, shirts and skirts are getting longer and the waistband on jeans, which had been going south in a hurry, has begun to rise, these people said.

"People are tired of seeing so much skin," said Greg Scott, chief executive of Bebe, a 195-unit chain that is known for selling slinky tank tops and short skirts.

A year ago, Scott said, Bebe's best-selling styles were belly-baring tops and low-rise jeans. Today, he continued, Bebe stores are selling more tops that fall below the waist and knee-length skirts.

"That whole midriff-baring thing is completely over," Scott said.

Where last year's jeans may have had a 7-inch rise, today's jeans have an 8- or 9-inch rise, Scott said, referring to the length from the inseam to the waistband.

"This way," he continued, "when you sit down, you don't see everything."

Eel and I have the guilty pleasure at gaffawing at what those young folks are wearing these days. It's going to cycle back and forth (I wouldn't mind a Victorian renaissance that didn't involve all black!)... just so long as it cycles back to conservatism when my future daughter is in junior high, I'll be a happy camper.

[via Theosebes]

Steel-toed Catapillar boots are very handy when it comes to smashing cans.

Makes it way fun, too.

Idaho's web page is down right now. The whole friggin' state's web page.

Note to self: May be an IT opening for the State of Idaho in the year future involving web page maintenance.

As most of you know, Illinois senate candidate Jack Ryan has dropped out of the senate race when his divorce documents were unsealed by a judge who felt that Ryan's need for privacy was outstripped by the public's right to know all the lurid details. I didn't say much about it because I can understand both sides of the legal argument and don't know what the law on the matter actually is. It is, of course, another example of dirty politics (the requests and judgment came after reports were leaked about Ryan's sexual picadilloes).

Consider the source for what it is, but Matt Drudge says that the same could happen to John Kerry and Kerry's campaign is crying foul. Regardless of whether or not Drudge is being accurate, what's good for the goose has got to be good for the gander, legally speaking. Hasn't it? I can't imagine why it's okay to release Ryan's records but not Kerry's. If the "right to know" exists, I'd imagine that right is escalated in a presidential race. Of course, the media may suddenly decide that restraint is a good idea.

For what it's worth, I doubt that Kerry's records have near the amount of dirt that Ryan's did. I'd imagine that they're not flattering, though. Whatever the law says I'm inclined to say that divorce documents that are voluntarily sealed by both parties (as in the Ryan case and maybe or maybe not the Kerry case) ought to stay sealed, but a judge says that's wrong.

This is too cute to be true. I'll have to keep my eye on Snopes:

A Canadian man, driving a car packed with weapons and ammunition, was intent on killing as many people as possible in a Toronto neighbourhood but gave up the plan at the last minute when he encountered a friendly dog, police say.

The middle-aged man, who police say is mentally disturbed, had planned to carry out the shooting spree on Wednesday to ensure he would be put in jail permanently.

Police say he had set himself up in an east-end park to load his weapons and then planned to drive around shooting.

He told police that a dog then approached and started playing with him.

Police say the encounter melted the man's heart, and he then went in search of police to give himself up.

[via Seabrook]

A couple nights ago, I noticed Eel's peculiar way of asking for a backrub. It occured to me that with female friends and/or love interests in years past, most of them had a peculiar way of asking for backrubs and similar things.

-2004-
Eel: [innocent look] Hey, you know, if you were to give me a backrub, I would be completely okay with that. Just so you know...
RAW: Alrighty...

-2003-
Lisa: [sorrowful look] The world is nothing but an expanse of bleak, sorrowful nothingness, but I'll change the subject if you give me a backrub.
RAW: Sure...

-2002-
Scarlet: [commanding look] Hey, give me a backrub.
RAW: Okay...

-2001-
Audrey: [confused look] Hey, I'm sorry for everything wrong I've ever done and I hate to ask it of you since I've treated you so shabbily, but could I have a backrub? Being this perpetually confused about my love life is very stressful.
RAW: Sure...

-2000-
Anna: [suddenly dead silent]
RAW: [asks question to see if she's in a bad mood]
Anna: [gives terse, one-word answer]
RAW: [tries to think of what he could have possibly done to make her upset. Comes up with nothing]
Anna: [starts smoking out the ears]
RAW: What's wrong?
Anna: Why haven't you given me a backrub?
RAW: Huh?
Anna: I've been sitting on the floor in front of you for half an hour and you still haven't given me a backrub.
RAW: Oh, I didn't realize that's why you were sitting there. I didn't hear you ask for one.
Anna: I shouldn't have to ask.
RAW: Huh? Then how am I supposed to know that you want a backrub?
Anna: Why wouldn't I want a backrub?
RAW: I don't know?
Anna: EXACTLY!

Andrew Olmsted takes issue with Bigwig's arguments for a Kerry Presidency. The whole thing is worth reading, but the part I found most interesting was his analysis of how the political parties have done in wartime:

First, I have to take issue with Bigwig's assessment that Democrats are better war presidents than Republicans. Let's examine the subject in reverse chronology. Our current President has led us into two campaigns in the current war, and I think it's too early to judge him a success or a failure. Before that we had the dust-ups in Kosovo and Somalia. Kosovo was a 'victory,' in that nobody on our side got killed, although we didn't actually accomplish much other than giving the Albanian Kosovars a chance to take revenge on their Serb antagonists. Somalia, of course, was a tactical victory and a strategic defeat, one that can be laid squarely at President Clinton's feet (though there is no evidence to suggest a Republican president would have acted any differently, as we had no strategic interest in Somalia). Our last 'big' war was the first Persian Gulf war, an operational victory that ended in a strategic defeat. Before that was Panama, which was arguably successful, and Grenada, which was also arguably successful. This takes us to Vietnam, a war we decided we didn't want to fight any more and so turned into a strategic defeat, with a great deal of help from President Nixon, whose impeachment sealed South Vietnam's fate. Korea, of course, was a statemate, but it stalemated only because the U.S. forces (during Truman's presidency) agreed to a ceasefire just as they were driving the Chinese north again, giving the Chinese the time they needed to stabilize their positions and turn the war into the bloody statemate it became. World War II, of course, was a big victory for the United States, and President Roosevelt deserves credit for his part in winning it. World War I, conversely, was another operational victory that turned to a strategic defeat in large part because President Wilson was so willing to give everything else away in exchange for his ill-fated League of Nations. The Spanish-American war was a big American victory under President McKinley. That brings us to the American Civil War, which was managed brilliantly by America's first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.

So what do we have in all this? Not much, quite frankly. In the big wars (the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam), we have one Republican success (Civil War), one Democratic success (WWII), one Republican failure (Vietnam), one Democratic failure (WWI), and a mixed failure (Korea). Hardly a clear enough trend to justify voting either way in November. Not to mention the fact we don't really know how members of the opposition would have done under similar circumstances. It seems to me that success in war comes down more to the person in the White House, regardless of his party affiliation.

The only war history I've studied in-depth was in Greece, so I can't credibly comment one way or another on his analysis except to say that I'm not sure you can go back too much further than the 70's when there was a shift in foreign policy within the parties. If anyone feels more qualified, I invite you to do so in the comments section.

Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) is a traveller from eastern Europe whose country is thrown into civil war while he's in the air. He can't go home because there is no recognized government in control there. He can't enter the US because his passport was invalidated once the rebels took control of the nation's capital. So he's stuck in the international lounge until everything gets sorted out bureaucratically, diplomatically, or militarily.

I'm partial to movies where innocuous characters are put into a complicated premise and are left to get it all sorted out. It can lead to some great character development and is rarely a paint-by-numbers movie the way many plot-driven movies are. The 'foreigner' bit also added to my interest, as I like "strange person in a strange land" angle.

Unfortunately, all of these ingrediants did not add up into a movie that worked, for me. Eel likened it to those stories we had to write in elementary school incorporating various vocabulary words. That seems about right. There appeared to be a hit-list that the movie wanted to work its way through: lovable hero, capable hero, quirky cast, romantic subplot, and warm and fuzzy feelings for the viewer.

This movie is an uncomfortable conglomeration of Cast Away and Forrest Gump but without the discipline of the former or the scope of the latter. Cast Away made its mark by working through the cinematically tough terrain of watching someone stake out a life in inhospitable land. It was quite literally do-or-die, so it was at least interesting to watch. There were many scenes reminiscent of that in The Terminal, but the urgency of figuring out how to feed himself at the airport was undone when he exhausted similar energy on his love interest, flight attendant Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones). While some lucky breaks (the empty gate) were necessary, others (having all the necessary items to create a water fountain to impress Warren) were a bit much.

I'll grant that character development is difficult for a character that can barely speak English, but it took the easy way out by simply giving Navorski a quirky cast of characters that aren't particularly meant to be taken seriously. In fact, just about every time the movie came up with a modestly difficult point from which to move forward, it opted for cheap laughs.

The only non-quirky character in the supporting cast was Frank Dixon, the airport/customs security manager who isn't quite sure what to do with Navorski. Dixon doesn't come off as a particularly bad guy and I thought they could develop a really interesting relationship of two good guys in opposition purely by circumstance (much like Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford in The Fugitive). But when the going got tough, yet again nuanced and interesting characterization took a hike.

There were also some opportunities for interesting character development between Warren and Navorski, but it was far outshadowed by the paint-by-numbers nature of their interest. I would have much preferred a romantic undercurrent unexplored with two very different people who manage to touch each other against all incompatibilities rather than trying to take it to the next level with Navorski trying to win her over while she tries to get her act together.

Unfortunately, with its desire to be both cute and insightful it ended up being neither (or, at best, an uncomfortable mixture of both). I laughed at some of its jokes, but even at the time it was a hollow laughter of missed opportunities.

I almost relucantly give this movie 2 1/2 stars our of four. I'm tempted to give it a lower rating, but I'm not going to penalize the movie for what I thought it should have been. I just wish I'd known before I plopped down $14 that it wasn't the type of movie I was interested in.

The Terminal [IMDB]

Roger Ebert and his happy pills gave the movie 3.5 stars.

A girl that I dated in 2002 has Phil Pritchett lyrics on her AIM profile.

I must have done something right!

I almost can't believe that I'm saying this, but I agree with Michelle Malkin word-for-word on the first paragraph of her take regarding Dick Cheney's dropping of the F-Bomb:

I'm not going to bother linking to the story. It annoys me. I am still have nightmares about the dangling heads of Nick Berg and Paul Johnson and Kim Sun-Il, and all the mainstream media will be prattling on about today is Dick Cheney's use of the F word. He shouldn't have said it. He had a bad day. He lost his cool. Many conservatives are cheering about it--Patrick Leahy deserved it, blah x 3. But I personally don't like when public figures curse in public [strikethrough mine -RAW], whether it's Cheney or Bono or John F'n Kerry. It's fine for blogging (though the strongest you'll get from me is a damned or a hell). It's fine when you've stubbed your toe or dented the car or missed winning Powerball by 2 (or 3 or 4) numbers. Yes, it's cathartic (who wouldn't want to tell off a whiny Democrat), but I just don't like it when conservative public figures use the worst profanity. [viamanda]

Her next paragraphs are reminiscent of my third grade teacher saying (not wholly inaccurately) that cussing is demonstrative of a poor vocabulary. On one hand I agree. On the other, Eel's browser crashed three times while typing this post and I vehemently was putting my lack of vocabulary on display just a moment ago. In any case, lists some cursingless put-down and requests some from her readers. Amanda has one of the best collections quoted here.

Nic from Shoes Etc. brings up an interesting point about the media coverage of the the F-bomb flap:

I'm not shocked or offended by Dick Cheney (or John Kerry, or anyone else) swearing. I'm just amused by the way the press has to dance around the direct quotes, since there are still some words you aren't supposed to say on television or print in a "family" paper.

It made me smile this morning to hear the radio newscasters saying "the F word." (I started substituting other F-words..."Frog yourself!" "Frappe yourself!") And I was beside myself with delight to see that the Washington Post has made journalism history by printing, without dashes, the direct Cheney quote. That's accuracy in media!

Interestingly, in the same article the Post censored George Bush's quote about Adam Clymer, saying "major-league [expletive]" instead of "asshole." Does that rearrange the hierarchy of bad words, or will direct quotes of an unseemly nature only be reported from this day forward?

And lastly I shall also link to my thoughts on the media's refusal to directly quote bad words when the bad word is at the heart of the story:

Be the word either of the above, or any other four letter word in which the word used is important, newspapers do us no favors by editing it out. If someone was shot after yelling an ethnic slur, I want to know what the ethnic slur was. If he was "taunting him" with cuss words and the cuss words underscore the nature of the taunting, say the goddamn words. I know, I know, plugging the ears of the children, but come on. They know the words. They know how they're not supposed to use them and, in the case of articles like this, it's obvious that they are being used offensively. Of course, that might make them use it when they want to be offensive... but you know what? They're going to anyway.

Update: Kevin points out that the statements only became public when Senator Leahy made them so. I can't say I particularly approve of amplifying privately made comments because they use "unacceptable language." In fact, that kind of defeats the outrage of the language in the first place. It's analogous to gossiping "Can you believe Charlie is gossipping about Joe cheating on Joan?"

So of course there's a political motive, though Leahy and the Democrats aren't particularly scoring points with me on this one. I don't like the language that Cheney used, but I have a hard time getting outraged about it.

Michael Williams is less generous with Leahy and the Democrats than I am:

Civility is for opponents, not for enemies. Everyone reading this knows I'm biased against the Democrats in general, but that bias isn't "prejudice" because there's plenty of evidence available on which to base judgement. It should be clear to everyone that the political tactics the Democrats are using as the minority party are far dirtier than anything the Republicans did when they were out of power. Beyond all the "minor" issues like their attempts to block judicial appointments and to talk down the economy, the Democrats are purposefully undermining the War on Terror for their own political gain.

[...]

Many on the anti-war left actually are anti-American, can that be denied? And they uniformly support the Democrats. Can anyone then argue that Democrat politicians aren't influenced by their anti-American donors and constituents? You'd have to be naive, or think the rest of us are.

Some on the left actually are enemies of America, and when leftist politicians do their bidding to undermine the War on Terror, they become enemies of America as well. I think the Vice President's advice to them is right on target.

I agree about there being an anti-Americanism on the (far) left, though I decline to paint the entire anti-war left with that brush. The type of phrasing used here as well as the nature of the defenses made in the comments section of WorldMagBlog are part of the problem rather than the solution. It's one thing to say "It's no big deal that he cussed" (which is certainly a legimate position) and another to say "It's okay that he said that because he was talking about evil, evil Democrats."

I try not to get on my soapbox too regularly about civility in the political sphere (I never said that I succeeded, just that I do try). It's not evil civility that I disagree with Cheney on as I'd be just as inclined to object if he said "I'm fucking sleepy this morning." But the response of some that the political parties are at war with one another reminds me of Anthony Lewis's comparison of John Ashcroft with Osama bin Laden.

Last night Adam wrote the following in an AIM message:

I just got a spam e-mail from "Mohammed Whitlock". A relative of yours?

Today I got an spam email from Jim Sanford. Mr. Sanford doesn't exist, but just a couple of days ago I recieved an email from an aquaintance named Sanford Hollings. Is it possible that when spam generates names that it pulls from names on email items already in a mailbox? Sanford and Whitlock are not particularly common names.

In at least two states, conventional anti-alcohol puritanism is meeting with some resistence.

Delaware remains the only state to keep the BAC requirement at .1 and is willing to forego highway funding. Charles Hill has some great links on the subject over at Dustbury.

Colorado senate candidate Pete Coors wants to lower the Colorado drinking age from 21 down to 18. Coors - as in the Coors brewing family - is probably not the best person to make this argument, but it's an argument that needs to be made. The current drinking age is a joke.

There is nothing that intrisically takes place between 18 and 21 that makes one ready to drink. Indeed, very few actually wait until 21. The only actual effect it has on drinking is that the 18-21 set have to at least take a modicum of precaution to avoid getting caught. Some fraternities hire off-duty cops for security so they (a) get an insurance break and (b) can ward off other cops eager for some easy tickets.

In my estimation, there are only two advantages to the current laws. First, during my single days if I was at a bar and saw a female-type without an X written on her hand I knew she was at least 21. That was good to know, but I'm not sure public policy should be written around that. The second issue involves drunk driving. Having five years between being able to drink and legally drink helps kids get the driving thing down pat before alcohol legally enters the picture. Having two years is a bit more disconcerting and if you add to that how many kids are independent for the first time in their lives, too much freedom at once can be a bad thing.

So I'm not 100% in favor of lowering the age limit, but I do have nothing but admiration for whichever state bucks the federal blackmail that caused many states to bring the drinking age up to 21 in the first place. Having different laws in different states allows for us to compare and contrast and let each area determine what's right for it.

This joke was funnier in its previous form when it was actually using a former president (Clinton).

Jennifer Larson uses her blog as a casting call for a boyfriend:

PERSONALITY--moderately gregarious, good sense of humor (as in, "gets my jokes"), honest, faithful, affectionate, intelligent (which can be interpreted as street-smart or book-smart, and if I had to choose, I'd pick street-smart), should have a decent relationship with all family members who are not clinically insane, mature, moderately impetuous, not afraid to ask me what "impetuous" means if he's not sure, ability to take care of creepy-crawly things that I can't deal with, knows how to cook--or willing to learn, passable in other domestic arts (dishes, laundry, vacuuming), has enough going on in his own life that he won't fixate on mine, lack of snobbishness, confident, trusting, patient, and wants children.

PHYSICAL--I've dated all types. The bodybuilder and football player were nice, but so were the guys who were extra cuddly. I'm not picky, but health is a concern long-term. I prefer brown hair and brown eyes, but that's not a requirement. I love Troy Aikman and he's blond and blue. My height or taller is preferred: 5' 6". If you have a nice smile and use it a lot, you're in. Bonus points for nice eyes. I used to like the guys with long hair, but that is in the past. Short hair, please. Shower daily. And shave. Facial hair is negotiable, but I prefer none.

I never particularly thought it wise to use the blog to try to wrangle myself a date, though having used various online dating services I'm not sure exactly why I have that double-standard. It mostly comes down to an unwillingness to talk about my current romantic life on the blog. With the exception of a single post about Lisa, the only current that I've talked about has been Eel and even that was only after things settled down a bit and it became obvious that she was going to be a part of my life that I couldn't not mention.

But the part I found most interesting about Jennifer's post was her addendum:

***Addendum: Can't mind being blogged about under a nickname of sorts.

This is probably another reason that I never felt inclined to talk about this date or that (though not a reason to not use the blog to snare a femalien). If you're going to date and blog it seems that at some point you're going to have to tell your significant other that you've been talking about them with strangers. Sugarmama went through that a while back. Since I knew my relationship with Lisa was going to be temporary I had little to fear from telling her about the blog (which I did as soon as I posted about her). I was lucky with Eel because she knew of the blog before she knew of me.

Blogger's knowledge base confronts the issue.

Thrillhouse notes the following story:

BURBANK, Calif. -- A 20-year-old California man who dropped out of high school to care for his ailing father has earned the first perfect GED score the state has seen in the past decade.

State officials say Zachary Olkewicz earned the only perfect score among the 569,000 people who took the GED in California in that period.

He is one of only six people nationwide last year to answer every question on the test correctly.

Olkewicz is now attending college and hopes to someday open a computer software design business.

I'm curious, do universities care how well someone scores on the GED? If I recall, some don't allow GEDers in at all, so I assume they wouldn't. But I'm curious how they would juxtapose Mr. Olkewicz next to someone who graduated with a 3.0 GPA in high school. On one hand he's demonstrated that he is capable of learning and presumably of being a good student. On the other, he may have just had a really, really good test day.

He's free to go to a JuCo for a couple of years and generally speaking if you do well at that level you can get into most any state university. Cal-Berkeley is probably out, but UCal's populate the top 100 universities in the nation. In Texas they may not be able to transfer easily into UT and A&M, but Texas Tech or UH shouldn't be a problem. OU is also pretty generous with transfers as, I'd imagine, are most flagship universities in smaller states.

I'm not a Linux user at the moment. I have a Linux machine that is ready to go, but I haven't set it up yet. The more recent versions have been leaps-and-bounds improvements over its predecessors and soon it may get to the point where it's all I use. Time will tell. But I am one of the most pro-Microsoft people I know in that I don't believe that Linux's dominance of the OS market is inevitable. I'm relatively knowledgeable about computers and if I'm not willing to make the switch, then how can we expect people who want their computer to be as easy to operate as a microwave to take the responsibilities that come with open source software?

Slate's Clive Thompson makes an astonishingly good argument for Linux without even bringing up the open-source OS:

We prefer our software be super-easy to install and use. The computer industry began with home-brew boxes that everyone had to program for themselves, but that was a huge hassle. The computer revolution didn't explode until the first Macintosh arrived, with its point-and-click simplicity. You didn't need to know anything about software or programming to use a Mac. We asked for ignorance, and the industry responded.

And now it's biting us in the rear. Consider: Most spyware arrives on our computers with our permission. We download a free application like KaZaA, or one of the many apps that deliver local weather reports or synchronize your computer's clock (usually from WhenU or Claria). The software asks us to click and approve a ponderously long "end user license agreement." Somewhere inside that license the company explains, sotto voce, that the tool will monitor your surfing, or even control your computer remotely. Any smart computer user would never agree to such a thing.

But of course, nobody reads those agreements. Hell, I write about technology for a living, and I don't read them. Adware makers exploit our laziness. That seems kind of sneaky and underhanded, doesn't it? Except all software makers behave the same way. Above-the-board folks such as Microsoft (which owns Slate), Yahoo, RealNetworks, and Google use equally confusing click-through agreements that you don't read either. And they also sometimes install monitoring applications, again with your supposed approval. Software is now so complex—requiring so many gazillions of tiny files all over your computer—that most consumers don't want to bother to know what's really going on.

The industry's cultivation of ignorance goes beyond the use of indecipherable user agreements. The software industry has lobbied hard for laws that keep you in the dark. If you, or any public-spirited programmer, wanted to figure out what the software on your machine is really doing, tough luck. It's illegal to reverse engineer the source code of commercial software to find out how it works.

Open source software doesn't have that problem at all. If the spyware and adware get to the point that the hassle counters the advantages of using an idiot box, I wouldn't be surprised to see more people switch.

I still don't think it will happen, though. If Microsoft sees a threat in that area they'll likely start getting really serious about spyware and mitigate the problem. Unlike spam, it's actually not an insurmountable issue even with proprietary software.

I've said in the past that I oppose burdensome legislation in the area of spyware (though I don't oppose all legislation) because I think the market will provide the answers. If the existing market structure doesn't, I expect that Linux will be the beneficiary.

Last night Eel's sister Sally was in my dream. I don't know what the dream was about, but I remember that Sally was there and there was something about ice cream.

I met up with Eel's family this weekend and out of nowhere Sally insisted that we absolutely positively had to get ice cream on the way home. So we did.

I haven't eaten ice cream in four months.

Weird.

Andrew Olmsted makes the following case against voting for Kerry if one is dissatisfied with Bush:

I thought of this while reading this review of an extended argument in favor of voting for Kerry by Jeff of Caerdroia. The author of the original argument makes many good points regarding the failings of the Bush administration. I have noted many of these problems myself, and I don't think even President Bush's most ardent supporters would dispute that he has made a number of significant mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is these problems that have led me to strongly consider voting for someone other than President Bush in the upcoming election, and I suspect that the argument will be a factor in many people's votes.

But our system doesn't actually allow us to vote against anyone: in the end, we vote for a candidate. And, as the old saw goes, there is always a worse road than the one on which you are travelling. I realize that there are a significant number of people who claim to be for ABB, but I suspect that the vast majority of them would vote for President Bush if the alternative were sufficiently horrific. In any case, the problem I see is that if I'm to vote for someone other than President Bush, it needs to be based on the belief that the candidate will be a better president than Bush. As difficult as it seems to be for partisans to accept, mistakes are inevitable in any endeavor; whoever takes the oath of office in January 2005 will make plenty of mistakes during his term. Therefore, the fact President Bush has made mistakes is insufficient to demonstrate he's not fit for a second term, because his successor will undoubtedly make errors as well. So if your argument is that Bush has to go because of his mistakes, there is an implied corollary that Kerry will not make as many mistakes.

I'd be lying if I said that I was as excited about the prospect of four more years of Bush presidency as I was a couple of years ago. The war in Iraq has not gone as well as I had hoped and the administration has some responsibility over that. The economy is improving, but I no more credit Bush for that now than I did blame him when it went south. Even at my pitiful wages I'm enjoying Bush's tax cuts, but it has not been met with much of any discernable attempt to rein in spending. Most disturbingly, the administration has lost its composure.

But I'd also be lying if I said that I will oppose Bush this year or that I regret voting for him nearly four years ago because despite all of this, Al Gore has made it very clear that the right man won in 2000 and John Kerry has said and done absolutely nothing to demonstrate that he will improve things one iota. If someone else had won the nomination I might be considering voting the other day, but that probably wouldn't change the fact that they'd be running on a platform that I oppose. To alter a saying that's been making the rounds: The news has been terrible for Bush and I'm against everything Kerry wants to do... but the news could change.

So unless I lose my mind and vote Libertarian, I'm pretty safely in the Bush camp.

Dateline: 1995-96

I never really went through a "girls are icky" stage. I wasn't a horndog growing up, but there had always been an almost clinical fascination with people of the female sort. With the exception of my neighbor's sister, I really didn't have any acquaintances that were female and about my age. When I eventually did become interested in females at about the fifth grade, I hadn't the slightest clue how to interact with them.

That all changed in late junior high and high school when I picked up a couple of female friends. When I started getting on ACME I started collecting more. Even with my female friends and sorta relationships, however, there was a failure to completely comprehend how these strange people worked. As I did eventually begin to understand them, I still couldn't relate to them at all. They were alien to me.

In that sense, it's fairly natural that the first girl that I could truly understand and relate to I fell in love with. Her name was Ora Walls and we were only seventeen. I really didn't realize how important that was at the time.

We met on ACME. She'd signed on and became instantly popular with just about everyone. I was out of town when she first logged on so when I first came on she messaged me. She was interested in getting to know this person that she'd heard so much about. We hit it off instantly.

As with many femaliens on ACME, she was pursued by several guys. I became her pointman while she tried to sort it all out. I was coming off a sorta relationship where I'd perpetually have to keep competing for my girlfriend so I had little or no interest in competing for her. It was refreshing, in a way, because it meant that I could be a lot more open with her without worrying about my status or potential with her. Since I was out of the hunt, she could be similarly open with me.

That all changed when out of nowhere she developed an interest in me. At first I resisted it because it disrupted the nice equilibrium that we had. There were also a number of other problems. Mostly that she just wasn't right at all.

I was attracted to short and slender girls. She, on the other hand, was 5'8" and had quite a figure. I wanted somebody more on the cute side but she was more on the feisty side. She wasn't who I was supposed to fall in love with at all.

But yet there was something undeniably there. She understood me in ways that no one else did at the time (Jay and I were on the outs). I could be so much more open with her and felt that she was being truly open with me. Most importantly, in a world of superficial and plastic girls, she was completely genuine and there was enormous depth in the way she thought and felt and an astounding connection with the way that I thought and felt at the time.

I can say, without hesitation, that she completely changed my world. While I thought it might be better if I fell for someone that lived closer by or fit more of my pre-set criteria, there was no way I could pass up an opportunity with someone that was so there, available, and right for me.

While I was coming to these conclusions, she was coming to quite different ones. Thoughtful and deep though she was, she was a thoughtful and deep seventeen year old with a romantic history as scant as my own. She felt that her charismatic talents might be wasted on someone such as myself. For some of the same reasons that I conquered when making my determination that I wanted to be with her, she made the determination that she didn't want to be with me.

It all came to a head one night when we were supposed to see each other. She never showed and things were never the same again. All that I will say about that evening is that there was the possibility that she was pregnant with a child that wasn't mine. To give an idea of how devoted I was to her, I honestly contemplated being the stand-in father to her child. Maybe it wasn't mine, but since it was half hers I knew that I could love it all the same.

There are two reasons that this never came to pass. The first reason is that however closely I looked at the situation, she didn't want to be with me. I could be the best stepdad on the planet and it would probably have only left me babysitting the kid while she was trying to do better. There was something intrinsically wrong about that and even in my drive to be with her, I knew it. The second reason it came to pass is that it turned out that she wasn't pregnant. Part of me was sorry that she wasn't because it meant definitively that we wouldn't be together. Part of her was sorry that she wasn't because it meant definitively that she and the non-existent baby's father would never get together.

Looking back, we were pretty messed up kids. We were mature for our age, but our maturity had an isolating effect which ironically stunted our social growth and in a very different way made us considerably less mature than our peers. We didn't know how to deal with the thoughts and feelings that no one around us seemed to be thinking and feeling. We didn't know how to answer the questions that no one else thought to even ask.

Even in the many ways we hurt each other, it was only because we were so right for one another.

There's more to the story than all this. It didn't end with the non-existent child or even that heartbreak. There was a second round and, in a different way, a third and fourth one. But sometimes the story is best left incomplete.

It's a shame that I'm trying to cut down on my electronics spending, because my home entertainment system will just never be complete without this.

John Kerry is presently both a senator and a presidential candidate. Really, he's a senator in name only right now because he's been missing nearly every important vote since his presidential run. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and his associates have been calling on him to step down.

It's my general belief that the Massachusetts Republicans are being a bit insincere. If the shoe were on the other foot, I don't think they'd be saying this (the Democrats would). Kerry has made it known that he would be running for president for some time now and this type of thing is not unheard of. When Bush was running in 2000 a death row inmate was given clemency because both Bush and Perry were out of the state and the acting governor was a Democratic legislator. No fault on Bush, either, as people who elected him in 1998 knew he'd probably be running for president.

On the other hand, it's fair to point out that Bob Dole did resign in 1996 when he ran for the presidency. Of course, that Dole had a Republican governor appointing his replacement and Kerry would be replaced by the Republican governor's Republican appointee has nothing to do with anything, right? It's typical political games and while I am reluctant to side with the Republicans on the matter, I haven't felt the need to call them on it.

Until now.

Apparently Democrats are trying to set it up so that if Kerry gets elected there would be an election to replace him within six months or so instead of the traditional two years. I'm frankly not sure to what degree this is constitutional and that's something that should be looked at, but Romney's rhetoric is over the top:

Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that the Democrats' fast-paced effort to eliminate his authority to appoint a US senator if John F. Kerry wins the presidency is a ''political gimmick' that denies voters a fair campaign.

The bill would set up a special election between 145 and 160 days after an incumbent formally declares his or her intention to resign. If Kerry were to win the presidency, a special election could be held in late March or early April 2005.

The current law allows the governor to appoint a person to serve until the 2006 election if Kerry were to vacate the office early next year.

''That's not an election; that's a sweetheart deal," Romney told reporters. ''It's a political gimmick. . . . It's robbing the citizens of the right to a free election."

A shorter election campaign could benefit two congressman, Edward J. Markey of Malden and Martin T. Meehan of Lowell, who are already amassing large war chests. Markey has well over $1 million, and Meehan's account has swelled to $2.3 million. A slightly longer campaign would give other congressmen with smaller accounts, Barney Frank of Newton and Stephen Lynch of South Boston, time to catch up.

Six months should be ample time for a campaign. What Romney is really upset about is that the Republicans are hoping to gain a senate seat without winning a senate election. Current law dictates that to be the case, so the Democrats are trying to change the law. At least they're trying to do it before-hand this time instead of like their antics in New Jersey.

I can't blame Republicans for being excited about the possibility of licking their presidential wounds (if Kerry wins) with a senate seat or two (if Florida Senator Bill Nelson is the VP and his successor is picked by Governor Bush), but since the Democrats want an election and the Republicans don't, it's not particularly true that the Democrats are somehow being anti-democratic here.

Hopefully none of this will be an issue because Bush will be re-elected, but Romney's outrage that a state that hasn't had a Republican senator in decades won't have one appointed for them is more than my stomach can handle.

[links via Comedian and Safety]

Cody Clark links to a fascinating article on a research experiment to make promiscuous rodents into monogamous ones:

Could the day come when a simple bit of gene therapy might cure infidelity?

In a report out today, researchers say they were able to perform that bit of molecular magic on the meadow vole, a mouse-like rodent. The genes involved are the same in humans, they say, though the mechanism is likely to be far more complex.

By transferring a single gene to the pleasure center of the naturally promiscuous male vole, researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta were able to make it happily monogamous, they say in a letter in the journal Nature.

They're not actually suggesting gene therapy can fix human infidelity, but the research has important implications for brain disorders, such as autism, that make it difficult for people to bond with others.

''It really highlights the connections between social behavior and gene expression,'' says Gene Robinson, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the study. He calls the research ''exciting.''

The male meadow vole is promiscuous, but his cousin the prairie vole is the settle-down-and-raise-a-family kind of guy. In studying the brain chemistry of the two mammals, researchers found that when the monogamous prairie vole mates, the pleasure hormone dopamine is released in its brain. The receptors for that dopamine are located in the brain's pleasure center, which also happens to be where the receptors for the hormone vasopressin are located. And vasopressin is linked to social learning.

As Cody says, we don't know much yet about how this might effect humans, but it brings up some interesting ethical questions about rewiring human nature.

Jack Cluth links to a really interesting article on prostitution and art:

NEW YORK — What do you call it when a woman approaches a wealthy man through an intermediary and offers to have sex with him on camera and then sell him the videotape?

Art, of course.

The body-for-a-price in this case belongs to the New York-based conceptual artist Andrea Fraser. She approached the man, an unidentified art collector, through the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in Chelsea. The result is an hourlong, unedited videotape shot with a single fixed camera and showing the artist and her patron engaged in sex. (It will be on view until July 9 at the Petzel Gallery.)

So what distinguishes this piece of work from pornography or prostitution? Simple: According to the gallery's Web site, www.petzel.com, Fraser's work "raises issues regarding the ethical and consensual terms of interpersonal relationships as well as the contractual terms of economic exchange."

Oh, it's raising issues! Well, OK, then.

Back in college I tried to come up with niches in the market that existed because of petty things such as morality. I figured that people willing to exploit those niches could make a killing. I had two ideas, one very similar to this. Now they've both been done.

One of the ideas was remarkably similar to this. I won't go into the details of how exactly I came up with the idea, but it it was a fantasy camp for porn. The basic sales pitch is "How much would someone pay to be in a raw porn flick?"

The term "raw" being included because I wouldn't have wanted petty things like cinematography to ruin the mood. The point was, basically, that they would be paying for wild orgy sex with well-paid and attractive actresses (or actors, I guess). They would pay the "movie studio" and the movie studio would then pay the actresses. They'd be paying for the chance to be in a movie and not the sex and voila, legal prostitution.

The other idea involved a hookup site for unhappily married folks for no-strings-attached sex with people similarly unhappy in their marriage. The motto was "Discrete Encounters: Making unhappy marriages a little bit happier"

Anna was less than impressed with my entreprenuership. For my part, I'm not as impressed with the idea now as I was back then. The Discrete Encounters idea has been done a hundred times over and has not been as successful as I'd imagined it would be. Porn Fantasy Camp, thankfully, would probably be just as unsuccessful.

In response to Google's GMail, Yahoo has changed a number of its policies regarding its free accounts. Space is no longer an issue (yay!). Something must have happened in the conversion, though, because now their spamguard is practically useless. I don't generally get much in the way of spam except on the yahoo account because its records are so easily accessible by spammers.

They need to fix this.

Leaf by leaf and page by page
throw this book away
All the sadness all the rage
throw this book away
Rip out the binding and tear the glue
all of the grief we never even knew
we had it all along
-Ben Folds Five, "Smoke"
I must confess that I like the radio up here better than I do in Houston. There are less commercials and without the rap and R&B stations that I don't listen to (I think there is all of one up here), there's even more variety of the music that I do listen to.

For some reason, Eel and I were listening to adult contemporary on the way home yesterday. It was a variation of Houston's Zoe Bonet's "Love Thoughts" thing where people call in and tell their story and make a dedication.

One woman called in that was ending a marriage with someone that she dubbed "the love of her life." The basic problem was that they didn't get along in the slightest and it had become apparent, love of life or no, they weren't going to any time soon. She asked for a song to reflect these feelings.

While I tend to start going in analytic mode when I hear stories like this, it was obvious by her mood that she was pretty exhausted by the whole thing and just wanted to hear a love song. But, strangely, Delilah (Zoe of Gate City) went all Dr. Laura on the caller and expressed doubt that it was right at all if they couldn't get along. It was a point that I couldn't disagree with, but given the circumstances I thought it was just bizarre. The two of them went at at it for about five minutes when Eel and I started begging them to just play the danged song.

They did. It was an awful song, so we turned it.

Dawn Eden has some worthwhile thoughts on finding that special someone:

The other night, I ran into a woman I know who informed me she was so dissatisfied with the caliber of men she was meeting through her social circle that she had joined a personal-ad Web site.

Unfortunately, she added, the Web site—one of the biggest in the business—had thus far turned out to be a bust. The five responses she'd received in her ad's debut week ranged from the perverted to the inane. But what could she expect? According to a survey on the site, she was compatible with only 4 percent of its members.

Just a lonely little 4 percent. How sad. I gave her the requisite "poor baby" platitudes. It wasn't until I got home that it hit me.

Assuming that the Web site's statistics hold true for real life—which they probably do, given the large sample—and assuming what I learned in fifth-grade math still holds, Personal Ad Gal can theoretically walk into any room containing 25 men and discover one case of mutual boat-floating.

It boggles the mind.

When things ended with Audrey, there was a certain erroneous assumption on my part that I was wasting my time searching for someone immediately compatible with myself. Audrey was the pinnacle of compatibility, yet there was rarely a moment where one of us wasn't pissed off and the other hiding in an emotional cave. So, it seemed to me, the answer was simply to find a good person and smoothe over whatever personal and temperamental differences that existed.

It made sense when I thought of it. I am, as Eel is prone to say, "a bird of rare plumage." If Keirsey's estimates that only 15% of the public is compatible with myself were correct, it seemed a waste to immediately discount the majority 85%. Especially when I'm such a great guy that is very skilled at getting along with a wide variety of people. In yet another display of our innate similarity, Audrey had reached a similar conclusion in her own life.

The year 2002 is littered with remnants of mini-relationships and sorta-relationships that were destined never to work. Because I was spending so much time and effort trying to make the unworkable work, I was downright exhausted when someone that I actually was somewhat compatible with came along.

Whenever someone complains that none of their relationships seem to be working, one of my stock phrases is that "every relationship fails until one finally succeeds." The ultimate truth in that - that it only takes one - applies as much to the hunt as to the feast.

The truth is that the compatibility rate is far less than 15% or even 4%. Of that percent, you have to find someone that isn't already attached, that is emotionally ready for a relationship, and whose practical dreams are compatible with your own. There's a good chance that we're talking well below 1% when everything is considered.

But all it takes is one. It takes finding one of those people and making things work with them. It's easier said than done, of course, but you only have to succeed once.

[via Dustbury]

I finally have my desktop hooked up to the Internet. It's really nice to be able to surf the net without having to use the eraserhead or different keyboard.

Instead of using my preferred Opera, I went ahead and installed Firefox to give it another shot. I've mentioned this before and no one has commented to my recollection, but I'll go ahead and explicitly ask: Is there any way I can set it not to open up new Firefox windows when someone has their web page set to "open up in new windows"? Opera automatically sets it to open up in a tab and I find that convenient.

On a side note, I am so far very impressed with Mozilla's email app.

Tonight Eel and I went to the graduation ceremony for outgoing residents. Unfortunately we weren't able to sit by anyone that I met from the retreat. We did get to sit by a doc that Eel had been working with, but she was worried that I would be bored out of my gourd.

Turns out that the woman sitting to my left side was none other than my new state representative. Apparently despite Idaho being "the most Republican state in the nation" according to her, Gate City is one of the only two staunchly Democratic cities in the state (Moscow, the state's other college town, is the other).

I had to bite my tongue on matters of policy to remain polite. I asked her various tidbits of how Idaho state government works. It's unsurprisingly a 1-party state with over 80% of the legislators being Republican (Idaho went more for Bush than Texas did). She was pretty dumbfounded that Bush could actually be popular in Texas and, unsurprisingly, she's a big fan of Molly Ivins.

Despite our differences (which I didn't air, she probably thinks I'm a Democrat) it was a remarkably pleasant conversation. I found out some useful things for my job hunt, including that the place to look for work is... Synchronus/OmniStar.

Oh well, she tried!

Chris Elam has the skinny on a mutant sighting in Germany:

Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.

DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.

The discovery, reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.

Many scientists believe the find could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions. And athletes would almost surely want to get their hands on such a drug and use it like steroids to bulk up.

The boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff "mighty mice" by "turning off" the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.

I'm just waiting for Muscleboy to team up with the rest of the gang at a comic book store near you!

I've been living in Thrifthaven part-time for a couple of weeks now. It's a nice little apartment, though it's tragically in disarray at the moment. I say "at the moment" because it makes me believe that it could concievably change in the future at some point. We'll see.

One of the coolest aspects of this place is the neighbors. It reminds me of the supporting cast to the Nightwing series as written by Chuck Dixon and also what I've heard about the Punisher under Garth Ennis. These people are make to be a supporting cast (much more than I am made to be a lead, but I digress).

The two most prominant neighbors are Snowflake and Stoner. Snowflake (she actually goes by this name, not a pseudonym) is a black woman in her forties or fifties who spends a great deal of time with Stoner (which is a pseudonym), a 20-something 70's throwback. When I see Snowflake she swears that she's seen me roaming the bars downtown. I tell her that I haven't been to a bar downtown and she tells me that she knows she's seen me there. We have this conversation every time we see each other. Even Stoner picks up on this.

I ran in to Stoner when I got back this evening and commented that I wasn't the least bit tired. I wasn't here but maybe five minutes when he knocked on the door and invited me over to watch a movie. I figure that friends are something I definitely lack up here and despite needing sleep I took him up on the offer.

He was folding laundry during the last 20-minutes of Bad Santa and we talked about various things. Actually he talked and I mostly just listened. He told me of the couple of times he's left Gate City for Flagstaff and, it turns out, Houston. Both were short trips that are apparently most notable by heavy drug consumption. I also got a primer on the comparison and contrast of acid and shrooms.

Bad Santa ended and he put in the tape for Secret Window, a Johnny Depp movie that I've been meaning to see (though until now I'd forgotten the title). Unfortunately, about ten minutes into it he asked if I could take a raincheck because he was "way too fucked up to watch another movie" and "about to totally pass out."

Oh well. Maybe next time!

Ed Cone rallies for a boycott of companies that buy pop-up ads.

There's a time I might have agreed with him, but what's the point these days? Since installing Opera and getting the settings put down correctly, I haven't had a single pop-up ad appear. Opera isn't even alone in this regard and there's even an add-on to IE that lets you do it.

I'm sure this is somehow really important:

MCLEAN, Va., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent study conducted by Wilson Research Strategies, a marketing research and management consulting firm located in McLean, Virginia with offices in Oklahoma City and Washington, D.C., has revealed that Republicans and Democrats alike would choose a cloak of invisibility over any of Harry Potter's other magical powers.
A nationwide study of 1000 adults shows that 29% of Democrats and 21% of Republicans would choose a cloak of invisibility as their power of choice if they were able to possess one of Harry Potter's magical powers (Independents, 22%). The ability to transmogrify (to change things into other things) is the second most popular magical power for Democrats and Republicans, with 20% of Americans from both parties favoring this over any other power. However, unlike Republicans or Democrats, Independents preferred the ability to transmogrify over any of Harry Potter's other magical powers at 24%.In the recent film 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,' young Potter gains the ability to scare off Dementors (evil spirits), an ability that 12% of Democrats, 11% of Republicans and 10% of Independents would like to share with him. Eight percent of Democrats, 12% of Republicans and 11% of Independents would choose to have a flying broom and only 2% of both Democrats and Republicans (1% of Independents) would select the ability to talk to snakes as their magical power of choice.These findings are based on an n=1,000 nationwide study of American adults conducted June 4-7, 2004. A study of this size has a margin of error of +/- 3.1% at the 95% confidence level. The sample was stratified by gender, age, race, and region in order to be statistically representative of the American population.

President Bush is gearing up for some new programs to reverse some of our most underdiagnosed health problems: mental disorders. Or at least that's the report from a committee that he commissioned to study the matter a couple of years ago:

Dear Mr. President:

When you launched our Commission on April 29, 2002, you observed, "America's citizens with mental illness deserve our respect, and they deserve excellent care." We could not agree more. There are a range of effective treatments for people with mental illness, according to the landmark 1999 report, Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. It is our firm conviction that if these effective treatments were more efficiently delivered through our mental health services system, your vision of excellent care would become a reality across America. Millions of Americans would be more successful in school, at work, and in their communities. They could contribute more fully to the vibrancy of American life.

Not everyone is so keen on this idea, however. WorldNet Daily and the British Medical Journal's Jeanne Lenzer fear that this will lead to the forced medication of young people (something I've discussed before). Both point out that the drug companies have been very generous to Bush and that it could simply be a boondoggle for the drug companies. Others are suspicious of mental illness in the abstract and/or believe that overdiagnosis is a bigger problem than underdiagnosis.

While there are worse ways that the federal government could spend our money, I can't quite bring myself to be comfortable with a new program of this magnitude being instituted by the federal government.

I used to listen to right-wing commentator Jon Matthews in the car on the way home when I was working for Nova. That was back in my `78 Chevy Caprice days when the car was stocked only with an AM radio. Without any music stations to listen to, I kept it on Talk Radio 950, where Matthews show was at the time. I never cared for Mr. Matthews and it had little to do with his views. The similarly conservative Mike Richards was considerably less mean-tempered and malicious.

But it's hard not to feel any sympathy for someone whose livelihood is ripped away by the mere accusation of impropriety. Not that I believed Matthews was not guilty, but when you're accused of a crime like that, actual guilt or innocence becomes immaterial. I also know first-hand how easy those accusations are to make and how difficult they are to disprove (and how on sexual crimes the burden is often on the defense). Add to that Matthews's notoriety and controversial nature and he's an easy target.

Well, he's trying to strike a deal, so nevermind:

According to court documents, Matthews is to be placed on deferred adjudication for seven years.

Criminal defendants who successfully complete the terms of deferred adjudication avoid final conviction, but the fact that they were charged remains a part of their record.

The arrangement calls for Matthews to register as a sex offender, perform community service and move from his Sugar Land house.

Prosecutors said Matthews can no longer reside at the house on Rolling Mill because it is too close to Sugar Land Middle School. State law prohibits sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school.

Matthews also must make a $5,000 donation to Crime Stoppers.

This actually sounds about right, actually. Matthews's apparent crimes are apparently on the indecent exposure end of the court instead of the molestation end, which makes the actual damage less significant. Obviously the little girl involved saw a lot more than she wanted to and presumably it was her complaint that got the ball rolling on this, but I'm hard-pressed to say that a girl seeing a guy's privates is somehow permanently scarring. The sexual crimes against minors run a gamut and this appears on the lighter side of it.

However - and this is a big point - it's fair to assume that someone that would feel the need to show a little girl his pecker would be inclined towards more serious crimes. That's why it's very important that he be put on that sexual offenders list so parents know not to trust their kids with him.

Matthews's friend and former boss, Dan Patrick, has some words on the matter worth reading.

Update: Chris says that Matthews has indeed plead guilty to illegal contact in addition to indecent exposure. Suffice it to say, if that is indeed the accusation that negates a lot of what I said about the fairness of the outcome.

Dear Spyware People Who Hijacked My Internet Explorer,

What precisely is the point of setting your site as the homepage of Internet Explorer and then slowing down Internet explorer to such a degree that it's rendered unusable? I know that you want to turn a profit and I know that you're just evil, but sometimes those two characteristics collide and, for what it's worth, I'd much rather you try to sell me something than disable a program.

Even if it is a Microsoft program.

Best,
Author of the Blog You Do Not Read

Connecticut Governor John Rowland is apparently resigning his post amid accusations that he's taken money and gifts from companies that do business with the state:

Rowland, 47, who was easily re-elected to a third term in 2002, admitted late last year that he lied about getting gifts and favors from friends, state contractors and state employees. But he continued to insist that he did nothing in return for the gifts.

"No one has even said I've compromised this office," he said in a recent Associated Press interview. "I've not done anything inappropriate for anybody."

State and federal authorities have been investigating the allegations, and a special House committee also has been considering whether to recommend Rowland's impeachment. The committee had been scheduled to begin its third week of hearings Monday.

House Speaker Moira Lyons said in light of the reports, she did not plan to ask the committee for an impeachment recommendation. "What's the point of impeaching someone who's no longer in office?" she said.

While the governorship of Connecticut is not a job one considers high-profile, he did get some publicity in 2000 as the governor who would appoint Joseph Lieberman's replacement if Gore had won the election. Rowland likely would have appointed a fellow Republican, which was one of the reasons that Lieberman was pressured to resign. Rowland again caught some national attention when his opponents likened him to Satan leading a bizarre "Down with the Prince of Darkness" chant. At the time, this blog noticed that he does look eerily evil.

Norbizness has collected a host of poll results on America and religion. The results are quite interesting. I don't particularly believe the participants.

Apparently Milton has moved to Cypress.

Why would anyone move to Cypress?

The only thing that keeps Cypress from being the worst of every possible world is that it's not off of I-10.

Ahhh, but they must have a killer house!

Since the summer has started, it's become safe for Gate City to start some construction projects to repair the roads. It seems like every day there's a new road that is down to a single lane with traffic building as cars have to merge. Right in the middle of downtown there is a detour on N-S Main Street as well as the E-W road by the high school. It's getting more and more difficult to get where I'm trying to go.

Sniff, sniff. It reminds me of home.

If there is anything more obnoxious than an "open letter" I really don't know what it is. They are almost always condescending despite being written by someone with little influence and stature to someone of considerably more influence and stature. I don't recognize it as a particularly useful opinion writing style. And so it is with James P. Gannon and his open letter trying to convince Dick Cheney to step aside:

Dear Mr. Vice President:

I am writing to you as a long-time admirer. Ever since you rose to prominence 30 years ago -- when you became chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and I was a Wall Street Journal reporter covering economic policy in the Ford administration -- you seemed to embody the qualities needed at the right hand of the president. Your competence, calmness amid crisis and absolute devotion to duty were obvious then, as now.

For nearly four years now, you have been a loyal and hard-working partner in the presidency of George W. Bush. Your experience, steadiness and character surely have given the president strength in these difficult times. I believe you have always considered first what is best for the president, and only secondly what is best for Dick Cheney.

That question arises now in this election year. Forgive me for suggesting that self-sacrifice may be the greatest service you can render to President Bush in what promises to be a closely contested election. You must ask yourself now if your continued presence by his side will offer strength or weakness to the Republican ticket in November, and what it will mean for GOP prospects in the future.

I don't entirely disagree with Gannon's aims. When Cheney was first chosen in 2000 it seemed to me at the time, as it does now, that it might be a good idea to tap someone else for the 2004 election. Nothing against Cheney, but he's not particularly well positioned to run for president and a brutal primary in 2008 (should Bush win re-election) will likely help Democrats more than Republicans. I could be wrong, though, as Bill Frist or Jeb Bush could position themselves better and have the winning-tough-primary feather in their cap.

But Gannon loses me completely when he suggests that John McCain be the next vice president. While McCain is undoubtedly more popular than Cheney, healthwise he's not particularly in a better position to serve as president from 2009-16. McCain's chance came and went in 2000 and there's really not much point in trying to "set things right" which is what I feel Gannon is trying to do through his not-so-smooth transition from Cheney's retirement to McCain's selection. McCain may have been a great novelty pick for Kerry (though I have my doubts about even that), but even if he were to accept a second spot with Bush (which is doubtful) he would be perpetually outside the loop and the media's lament of Colin Powell's isolation would be amplified tenfold causing nothing but headaches to the administration.

If Gannon's first choice makes him difficult to take seriously, his second choice (Rudy Giuliani) makes it downright impossible. There are a number of people that would be inspired choices if Cheney were to step aside, but McCain and Giuliani are not among them (neither, blogosphere take note, is Condi Rice).

Ray Bradbury is upset at left-wing moviemaker Michael Moore's liberal use of the title of one of Bradbury's best known works, Fahrenheit 451 in his movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. While I believe Moore should have secured permission and changed the title out of artistic respect, I believe he should be perfectly within his rights to use the title for his movie. Derivation can be pretty murky waters, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that two different media (novel and "documentary") cannot draw from one another, even in the titling. If someone were to see Moore's film, they would not likely confuse it with the original work. Prior to hearing Bradbury's objection, I did not take the lifted title as an endorsement and I don't suspect many people did.

There. I've defended Michael Moore.

I need to take a shower now.

The New York Times lambasts Former President Bill Clinton's autobiography:

As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.

Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton's much awaited new autobiography "My Life" more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words "In closing . . ."

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration. This memoir underscores many strengths of Mr. Clinton's eight years in the White House and his understanding that he was governing during a transitional and highly polarized period. But the very lack of focus and order that mars these pages also prevented him from summoning his energies in a sustained manner to bring his insights about the growing terror threat and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to fruition.

Not to come to Clinton's rivetting defense, but what exactly did the viewer expect? Clinton is and always has been at war with his enemies. Who started it is immaterial but it's inevitable that Clinton's autobiography would be an extention of that. I can't even really blame him as when one reaches that high an station paranoia and a very unnuanced black-and-white view of events is almost unavoidable. If he wasn't fighting off the devils incarnate, then it would be exposed that he was fighting himself much of the time. Clinton is not prone to that sort of self-clarity. Nor, for that matter, are very many successful politicians.

Besides that, Clinton was always mind-numbingly boring when he was talking about himself and an autobiography is - by definition - doing nothing but. Clinton says things about himself that he lacks the objectivity and credibility to. He lied about what kind of man he was for so long that he could say his eyes were blue and even many Democrats would look in a little closer just to be sure. To be sure, Bill Clinton's story is a fascinating one regardless of ideology. He is just not the right person to tell it.

[image shamelessly ripped off from Bocephus]

For consideration of a job lead of a clerical sort, I had to take a typing test. It required that I be able to type 45wpm with no more than 6 errors over five minutes. My typing speed maxes out at 90, though it's been slowed down as I've been mostly using my laptop in recent months, which has gotten me accustomed to a slightly smaller keyboard. Nonetheless, 45wpm posed no threat whatsoever.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that the typing test used up here requires two spaces after a period. I was originally taught thus but when I got to high school I was trained to only put one space after the period. I've been doing so ever since and no one has ever corrected me in the academic, business, or blogging worlds. Not until the typing test. Every time I only put one space after the period it marked it a typo. Even when I would go back and correct it, it would not only penalize me for the time it took, it would penalize me again by marking one full wpm off my score and still consider it half an error. Even after going back and correcting it, I eeked out 75wpm. Until it penalized me down to 65. That's still above 45, of course, but I got marked off a total of 18 full points.

It's actually incredibly hard for me to disrupt the way I've always typed. Typing has been an unconscious thing for me for the past 10 years or so and that one change makes it a conscious process. I'm trying on this post to type two-spaces after the period and it's still working working. Unfortunately, 2/3 of all the job leads I get go through the job service and they won't even tell you the name of the company if you don't meet the requirements (including typing), which means that I'm going to have to somehow get this right.

By the time I do, two years will probably have already passed and I'll be somewhere else that will probably require one space after the period.

I first saw the jacket at the University of Houston bookstore. I felt the odd need to touch it and when I felt the softest, nicest feeling fabric I'd ever felt. The red lettering of the school stood out marvellously against the dark blue fabric. Until I saw the price tag I just knew that I had to have it. Anna and I were both UH undergrads at the time and we were shopping for books together. When she saw the pained expression I had when I saw that the jacket cost $70, I'm sure she knew she just had to get that for me. She was making barely above minimum wage working at a cutesy gift store and it must have cost her a week's worth of wages, but I'd at least like to think that my overwhelming appreciation made it worth it to her.

I was keen to wear my tattered leather jacket at the time. Part of me was suspicious that it was all a plan to make stop wearing it. She was like that, at once considerate and devious. Devious in a benign sort of way. The leather jacket was ratty and its cuffs were held together by a clothes pin. The U of H jacket, on the other hand, was gorgous and something no one would mind seeing me in public with. Not long after that I ended up cutting the leather jacket up for a costume. It was no big deal because the only jacket I wore after getting it was the blue one. I lamented that I was only able to wear it a couple months out of the year.

Three years later, on the night we broke up, I was wearing that jacket.

Time has taken its toll my beloved blue jacket. The lining that kept the woven school name on it was coming out and the lettered stitching probably not far behind. The once dark blue color had faded into a less attractive washed-out grayish blue. It was still the nicest feeling fabric on the face of the earth.

I only brought up three jackets when I moved to Idaho. I thought about bringing more, but it felt redundant when I knew that any lined jacket would never be worn. In addition to being a great jacket, it was also one of the few articles of clothing with some real memories attached to it. It was one of the only two things that Anna gave me that I brought up, the other being the parting gift when I last saw her before I left. Though she and I have gone on to lead separate lives after we parted ways, it was a constant reminder of what we had.

If you've missed it, I'm using the past tense. In a couple of hours, I'm leaving the employment of the company that I work for that contracts out to OmniStar. The timing couldn't be worse as some time between leaving work on Thursday and leaving town on Friday, the jacket disappeared. I'd love to wave my fist in the air and curse some thief or something, but all evidence indicates that I left it in the break area at work with my clipboard, which is also missing. I checked the lost and found at work and it hasn't popped up yet. It's possible that someone turned it in over the weekend or that I might get it back through a lead that I have, but it seems doubtful.

I left a lot behind when I departed Houston. I left behind great music, collegiate football, my university, my city, two-thirds of my belongings, and countless loved ones. Now, it seems, I've lost yet another tie to my past.

Either the movie industry is churning out a lot of great movies these past couple of weeks, or somebody slipped something into Roger Ebert's coffee.

Over the past month, here are his ratings:
4 Stars: 4 5
3.5 Stars: 4 7 11 13
3 Stars: 16 18 21 23 27
2.5 Stars: 0 1
2 Stars: 4 5 6
1.5 Stars: 1 2
1 Stars: 0 1 3

He gave Garfield 3 stars.

Update: His next round of reviews is out. Only one movie (White Chicks) got below three stars. Three got 3.5 stars and two got an even 3 stars.

Update II: Next two rounds tallied. The percentage of movies endorsed (which is what 3 or more stars of 4 ought to mean) is down to 82.22%, which is only a tad lower than we were when I started keeping track (82.76%) and after the first update (82.86%)

Update III: His next rounds of reviews is out. Spider-Man 2 was a full 1.5 stars better than the pre-happy pills original. The overall rating is declining, though at 82% it's still within one percentage point of where we were when we started.

Update IV: This will be the last round of reviews. The good/bad rating has fallen below 80%. More here.

Lex has been on the eVoting beat for some time over at Blog on the Run and rightly so. This is a disaster waiting to happen. I'll take dangling chads over an electronic process any day. But, as Jane Galt and her commenters point out, the idea that this whole movement (sprung, lest we forget, from Democratic complaints of ballot confusion and objections to the original vote count in Florida) is part of a Republican conspiracy to control elections is laughable. No matter how much Diebold's president supports Bush, it's more than a stretch that he can just sneak in machines that will automatically elect Bush without someone who doesn't desire that result to find out Unless every last Diebold programer supports Bush over democracy, which given what I know of computer programers is not remarkably likely.

Let's focus on unreliability of even the most reliable software programs out there. Let's focus on how one mathematical error can throw a tally off by hundreds (or hundreds of thousands) of votes. Let's focus on the lack of accountability without a proper paper trail.

If we focus on those things, it would make any supposed conspiracy impossible to orchestrate. By focusing on evil Republican conspiracy theories, you're only pissing Republicans off.

When a car is parked on the side of a freeway, the police will often tack an orange sticker on the car as a warning. This serves to both let the person know that their car may be towed and then if it's seen later it can go ahead and be towed because they were warned. Seems useful, but there's one problem with the stickers: They are nigh impossible to remove. These are not just stickers, these are super-stickers with holding-elephents-over-the-Grand-Canyon strength superglue. While driving you will often see the remains of these stickers on a window of a car. Half of it's torn off but the rest isn't. You can bet that they didn't voluntarily leave it that way.

So with this in mind, I know from experience that it costs $100-200 or so to replace a windshield and $50-100 to get back a car that's been towed.

Why don't they just go ahead and tow the sucker?

Or am I missing something about the orange stickers? I've never had one on my car. Is there a secret to getting those things off that some people just don't know about?

In Absentia: Life With a Resident
R. Alex Whitlock
I spent the weekend at a camping retreat up in Island Park with Eel, her folks, and her sister Sally. A good time was had by all despite the rain and cold. It was more than just a retreat, though, it marks the impending end of Eel's first year as a medical resident. The incoming residents were introduced and given an idea of what to expect. I didn't go to that meeting, but there was another one for spouses and significant others where they learned what they should expect.

I was fortunate enough to have read a couple articles before Eel and I became an "us" and I was unfortunate enough to have worked 80 hour weeks in the past so that I had an idea of how she would feel about it. Of course, I worked 70-80 hour weeks in spurts, which gave me time to recouperate and re-energize. Eel and her first-year colleagues were given no such luxury. It was at, near, and over 80 hours a week almost without exception.

To say that it's tough is an understatement. I can't speak for Eel so I won't really attempt to. Do know that I'm not trying to minimize what she's been through by not talking about it, I just feel it would be arrogant to suppose how it would feel and she has access to post her experiences here if she would like. Instead, I'm going to talk about what it's like being the significant other for a medical resident. This is something I've spent the last year learning about. Particularly the last 8 weeks that I've been up here.

To be honest, it isn't particularly hard when she's not around. I start to miss her after a couple of days, of course, but since we're easing into the relationship it's not as though we had a lot of time before. In many ways, we see each other as much as the average non-cohabitating couple does. I'm also good at amusing myself and my schedule here is itself not particularly lax as I spend time working, looking for work, getting settled down, and so forth.

Harder than the time apart is the time not knowing. How much time we get together is dictated almost entirely on how much sleep she got while on call. If she didn't get any sleep, then we won't get to see each other and that can stretch for a few days at a time. I can deal with that quite easily if I am prepared for it, but it gets frustrating when she's working overnight on Monday and Wednesday nights but half of the Tuesdays we can see each other and half we really can't and I never know which is which. As someone that likes to have a plan, I find that oddly tougher than knowing that I won't see her for a few days.

The second part of not knowing is in reference to her mood. Eel is one of the strongest individuals that I know and the fact that she made it through all of this never ceases to amaze me. That thousands of residents do it a year doesn't affect my opinion of her in the slightest. That she can do it is just amazing to me. But it takes its toll. In addition to being tired when she's home, she's often upset, cranky, short-tempered, and lamenting all the things that she can't do. That last one is by far the biggest.

Eel is an ambitious person. There is a lot that she likes to do. There is so much that she wants to do. Things that I would be able to shrug off and say "when residency's over" she doesn't want to wait that long. She can't. Whereas I can refuel just about anywhere as long as I can retreat into my own little dreamland, hers require hiking and exercising. She's had precious little time to do either and that adds tremendously to how worn out she is whenever she's even not working. There are only so many hours in a week and she spends three-quarters of it working or sleeping. What little time she has when she's not doing one of those things she has to spend doing the little things that the rest of us take for granted: laundry, shopping for necessities, etc. Shopping and eating together is the most quality time we've really gotten since I got up here.

I have been doing most of the laundry since we got here. I tried to help her clean but I was really more in the way than I was helpful. It would be one thing if she and I were living together on a permanent basis, but her place is hers and she knows where everything goes. I'd love to be able to help her by cooking, but she knows what she's doing in terms of her diet (yet another thing that can't wait until residency is over). So half of the time I stand idly by, helpless while she frantically moves from one task to another before another night of call with the accompanying 30-hour shift.

She has handled this all admirably. There are times when I feel worn out, tired, and cranky from lack of rest, but when I look at her and what's she's doing it and how she just keeps on going and it really puts it all in perspective. That said, there are limits to what anyone can take. She got twenty hours of sleep last week and after that anyone would be grouchy and disagreeable. Simple conversations about which car we're taking to the camp-site can become arguments. Questions that I ask are heard as accusations or criticisms. I've learned a lot more about tone and inflection in the past 8 weeks than I had in the past two years. Yet whenever I feel the urge to get self-righteous or upset, I really can't because I can only begin to imagine what she's going through. Sometimes I do anyway and I end up not only mad at her, but mad at myself.

The licensing board that oversees residencies recently passed a mandate requiring that no resident can work more than 80 hours in a week. The Gate City Medical Center is working around that as best they can, but there's simply too much to do in order to stick around it. Residents have an incredible amount to learn in a little bit of time. Requirements such as off-the-clock studying and dictations simply get done on top of the 80 hours. It also requires that slower months of residency require being on-call in other department (for example she's working a surgery rotation but spending nights on-call for internal medicine), which means that months where the residents used to be able to recharge they can't.

During the resident meeting at the campsite that I didn't attend, Eel reported that one of the faculty doctors said that this was the most tired class he'd ever seen and attributed it in part to that inability to recharge during lighter months. Even with the changes, the residents can't win. The GCMC is trying a new method next year and hopefully that will make it a bit easier. They're trying to move from 5 to 6 first-year residents, but there was a lack of available (and interested) candidates this past year.

The next two years won't be a piece of cake, but the worst is now over for us. Instead of being on call about 85 nights last year, she will be on call only 38 this upcoming year (with one month spent working the graveyard). Hopefully that will give her just enough space so that she can re-charge her batteries for what's going to be a brutal winter ahead. I sincerely hope so.

When Eel and I were talking abstractly about my moving up here and a relationship, we said that if we can survive her residency we can survive anything.

One year down, two to go.

Keywords: CamilleLafitte

I don't know if I posted on it or not, but I listened to the radio a few months back and was astounded by how many commercials were playing. It's not uncommon for a radio bohemith (Clear Channel, Infinity, etc.) to time commercials to go together, but even so it seemed like there was only one or two of my four or five stations actually playing music at the same time. I stopped listening to the radio some time ago so I figured that I was just forgetting how many commercials played on the radio.

Turns out not.

The article doesn't talk very much about whether listenership is up or down, which seems pretty crucial. If the commecials are driving away listeners then it seems quite possible that it backfired. If listenership is the same but companies don't feel like they're getting bang for their buck, selling less ads may not be the answer as much as revamping their marketing campaign and pointing out that more people than ever are listening to the radio (or as many are, or whatever).

Of course, if listenership is down then it may be the ads. Or it may be that radio is showing the same glut as CD sales. Then I guess all that's left to do is for radio to blame Napster for cutting in to their profits.

Eel is a medical resident at the Gate City Medical Center. I've only been there on a couple of occasions, but suffice it to say it's a hospital like most that I've been to. There is a certain decorum that comes with a hospital. So many people with so many degrees trying to work on some of life's most immediate problems. Everyone there is extremely professional even though a number of them are residents still learning the trade. Most of the people there are either doing what they've spent several years training to do or are training to do what they will do with the rest of their lives.

I am an phone monkey Entertainment Consultant for OmniStar TV services. While most of my coworkers are quite professional on the phone, it's really a hodgepodge mixture of all kinds. One guy wears approximatly thirty thousands ear rings. Half the people there have tattooes. The only real dress code is that you can't wear sandles there, but no one follows even that code. Even the higher-ups there don't even get $10 an hour. Most of the people there are looking for better work.

You would not think that these two jobs would have much in common. Well, they don't, but they do have one thing in common: bribes. I mean, wonderful gifts provided to us by those that produce or manufacture the products that are at least part of our stock and trade.

Ten minutes in Eel's apartment will tell you exactly what I'm talking about. There are kind donations from drug companies all over the place. Every pen has some drug's name on it and she will never have to buy a stationary for as long as she lives (and she's only been there a year!). But even outside the apartment, the drug companies will cater food for the doctors in order to get their attention so that theoretically the next time they need to prescribe a painkiller, they'll remember Vlaximin Dentotum because of their pens, their stationary, and some delicious cupcakes.

Five minutes in my car will tell you that I'm in the same boat. Instead of saying Vlaximin Dentotum, it'll say Premiere Ticket or Allstar Sports Channel on it. I have a pen from each company. The good people from First Run Entertainment have had catered paistry-fests during our lunch hour. The Home Improvement Network gave me a little toolkit. Titanic Studios was giving away DVDs if you could just recite their sales pitch. I actually own a XXX t-shirt even though I have no desire to see the movie. Tell Film-Flam that you're trying to sell their package and they'll put you in a drawing for a free digital camera. So theoretically when we are picking a movie or sports package to upsell, we'll darn well remember who gave us that strawberry-filled croissant.

Eel prescribes whatever's the best value to her patients and I have yet to sell a Film-Flam package, but they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work, would they?

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, this is Rayford. Could I have your home phone number with the area code first, please?
Customer: 734-555-7475
EC: And the name on that account?
Cust: Francisco Navarro.
EC: And how may I help you today?
Cust: Yes, sir, I was looking at a flier in the mail today. It said that OmniStar offers programing in Spanish. How many channels does that include?
EC: Well it depends on the package you choose, sir. There is a Spanish equivalent to each of our English packages. The Carne y Papas Plan, which is our eqivalent to your current Meat & Taters Plan includes 45 channels in Spanish, including several channels that are not available on the English equivalent.
Cust: Does it include Cartoon Highway? My kids love that channel.
EC: Well yes and no, sir. The Spanish Meat & Taters plan includes all of the channels as the English version, but not all of them are available in Spanish. I'm afraid that includes Cartoon Highway. However, sir, it will be available to you in English format.
Cust: So what channels on the English plan will I not get in any language under the Spanish plan?
EC: You will get all of the channels in one language or the other, sir. The only difference is that the Spanish plan includes 15 channels that are only available in Spanish.
Cust: How much more does this plan cost?
EC: It's actually $5 cheaper.
Cust: And I get more channels?
EC: Yes, sir.
Cust: Hot damn! I told my kids that learning Spanish would help them in life! Sign me up...

...

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, can I have your home phone number with the area code first?
Customer: 422-555-2742
EC: And the name on that account?
Cust: John Simmons.
EC: And how may I help you today?
Customer: Yes, I'm trying to cut down on some expenses and I was wondering if there was a plan cheaper than the one we have now.
EC: I'm sorry to tell you, sir, but you have the Meat & Taters Plan, which is the cheapest we offer.
Cust: So there's no way I can cut down on my bill?
EC: Habla usted Espanol?
Cust: Excuse me?
EC: No, sir, I'm afraid there isn't...

According to one quiz, I am only 34% the way to happiness. To be fair, my score is drastically lowered because of my job situation which I am working to improve.

[via Bluishorange]

Due to some technical problems, I've temporarily removed 95% of the menu to the right. I'm leaving town for the weekend (though there will be a couple posts tomorrow) and won't be able to fiddle with trying to fix it.

Relief has arrived! Gas prices have finally fallen! I am successful in never having paid more than $2 for a gallon of gas!

[ominous music] for now...

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, this is Rayford, can I get your home phone number with the area code first, please?
Customer: 654-555-5178
EC: And the name on that account?
Customer: Kelvin Schmidt.
EC: Okay, sir, this account is protected by a password, could you give that to me?
Cust: Okay, I'd like to change from the Caviar Plan down to the Filet Mignon Plan, but I'd like to keep the Premiere Ticket and Sports Mania packs...
EC: Okay, sir, but before I can change your account, this account is protected by a password.
Cust: What does that mean?
EC: It means that you need to give me the password before I can make changes on your account.
Cust: Oh, okay. On second thought, could I also keep the Ritalin Action Movie Package as well? How much would that make my monthly bill?
EC: Sir, I can't divulge any information about your account until you give me the password.
Cust: Okay then, could you at least tell me how much it would be if I left off the Ritalin?
EC: Not until you tell me the password, sir.
Cust: Password?
EC: Yes, sir, this account is protected by a password. I can't give you any information about your account or change it until you tell me the password.
Cust: So how does that work?
EC: You tell me the password, I tell you what you want to know and make the changes you want made.
Cust: So all I have to do is tell you the password?
EC: Yes sir.
Cust: That's easy enough. I also would like to know how much the Honkers Channel would add if I were to combine it with the Ritalin and Premiere packages. Would I get a discount on that?
EC: Sir, I cannot discuss your account with you until you give me the password.
Cust: That's fine. You know, my wife would probably not like me getting the Honkers Channel so you can scratch that off.
EC: I have nothing to scratch it off of, sir, as I cannot touch your account or even discuss it with you until you give me the password.
Cust: Okay.
EC: So what is the password, sir?
Cust: Oh, okay.
EC: ...
EC: ...
EC: So could you give me the password?
Cust: Oh, sure. It's GreenGoblin, both G's in caps and no space in between.
EC: Alright, sir, now let's take a look at your account.
Cust: Great. Have a nice day. [click]
EC: Sir?

Eugene Volokh, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Williams, and others have been talking about why men are so slovenly with their appearence. They each have very interesting things to say on the subject, though I have to take issue with Sullivan's attempts to place the blame on women. While he makes a good point, I can't really agree with his objective:

And that reveals the real source of male slovenliness: women. If women weren't so damn forgiving of slobbiness, if they weren't prepared to look for the diamond buried in the rough of a man's beer-belly, men might have to shape up a little. The only reason gay men are - on the whole - better turned out than straight men is because they have to appeal to other shallow, beauty-obsessed males to get laid, find a mate, etc. The corollary, of course, are lesbians. Now there are many glamorous lesbiterians, but even the most enthusiastic Sapphic-lover will have to concede that many are not exactly, shall we say, stylish. The reason? They don't have to be to attract other women; and since women find monogamy easier, they also slide into the I'm-married-so-what-the-hell-have-another-pretzel syndrome. When straight women really do insist on only dating hot guys, men will shape up. Until then, it's hopeless.

Where is it etched in stone that women have fashion right and men have it wrong? I don't even mean it in the way that men ought to behave, but also in the way that women do. Perhaps it's because make-up is an annual event for my significant other, but throughout most of my life I've found the simple and utilitarian to be enormously attractive. The only time I think I ever got edgy about a female interests failure to make herself up was when I started to forget what Anna looked like without a cap (and I do hold men who always wear caps in the same regard).

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate good makeup and there are some people that a little bit goes a long way for. I also have a great appreciation for women when they let their hair down (in the literal sense) instead of just cobbling it together in a bun or pony tail. But outside accentuating the natural (hair and face), I find efforts to be fashionably keen to be quite unattractive. Whether it's the girl who wears her tattoo-decorated ass-crack like cleavage to those that believe their fifth ear-ring in the right ear and all-black attire "define them" as a person. That's not something to be emulated by guys, it's something to be discouraged for girls.

I can agree that guys are quite often way too lax with their appearence. As with Anna, I get somewhat annoyed when a guy considers combing his hair to be such trouble that just keeps the ball cap on at all times. I've also been to enough anime/sci-fi conventions to know that some guys really take self-maintenance (or lack thereof) to an extreme that repels people of both genders. But I find the notion that men should in any way "glamorize" to justify showing their face in the world to be more than a bit insulting. I immediately distrust any woman that would put that at the top of their list of things they would change about men. I say this as a man that probably spends more time and energy on appearence upkeep (such as it is) than do most.

The answer is probably somewhere between the stereotypes, but (though I'm biased, being the guy that I am), I'd have to say that it's closer to male practicality than female glamor.

Via Right Thinking, an interesting ad campaign going on in my birth-state of Virginia:

RICHMOND, Va. -- The state is posting billboards with messages such as "Isn't she a little young?" as part of a campaign to dissuade men from having sex with underage girls.

The campaign is aimed at reducing the number of young girls who have children with older men, the Virginia Department of Health said Monday.

In 1999 and 2000 in Virginia, men over 18 were responsible for 219 births involving girls who were 13 and 14, the department said.

Messages such as "Isn't she a little young?" and "Sex with a minor, don't go there" also appear on posters, coasters and napkins in bars, restaurants and stores in five cities.

"We encourage adult men to talk to their peers and discourage them from pursuing teenagers. What they are doing is unhealthy and against the law," said Robert Franklin, a health department official.

I honestly don't even know what to begin to say about that...

I first started wearing boots when I was a senior in high school. I got a job at the Snippy's hair chain and it was the first job I'd had where I couldn't wear sneakers. It was a brown pair of Catapillar Boots much like I'm wearing now. Though the job at Snippy's is long gone, I stuck with boots because I really appreciate the sturdiness that comes with them. Since I've started wearing them, I feel exposed in even high-tops. The same thing happened when I started wearing high-tops, incidentally, when it came to tennis shoes.

I like well covered feet. I like substance down there. It's similar to my preference for long pants over short pants. Even when casual, it makes me feel at least a little more formal and dressed and less like a bum. Also, to me there will always be something immasculine about shorts. And, for that matter, with sandals. I know a lot of guys that like to wear them. Eel has suggested that I should once or twice. It will not happen. For a good glimpse as to why, I point to Yale Diva:

Two years ago, Stuart Gayle, the managing director of the design firm Pierce Allen, succumbed. A longtime anti-sandalist, he now wears them to work and to dinner all summer long. "It's like wearing cowboy boots for the first time," he said. "They feel a little weird, but once you have them on for a week, you can't believe you ever wore anything else."

That said, Mr. Gayle, 38, does not wear anything racier than a slide, which has only a broad band of leather across the top of the foot. "I am not fond of the totally open foot," he said...

This footscape is further complicated by the fact that fashion houses from Gucci and Jil Sander to Banana Republic have contrived to introduce what might be called — you had better sit down for this — the dinner sandal. This is an all-inclusive term for a sandal dressy enough to wear out to dinner (and often so impractical it can barely be worn anywhere else). You can't run, and you certainly can't hide, in a dinner sandal. Nonetheless, with a nearly flat leather sole and few or no buckles, it has a kind of devil-may-care elegance. What's a hepcat to do?

[...]

What makes choosing a sandal hard for many men, though, is not style or comfort but a visceral insecurity about exposing their feet. Jutta Neumann, who sells ready-made and custom sandals at her Lower East Side shop, said that in her experience there is surprisingly little correlation between how a man thinks his feet look and how attractive they actually are. "Some guys really have a problem exposing their feet," she said. "It has to do with sex and self-esteem. If you show your feet more, it shows more self-esteem."

Fear of exposure is not necessarily all Freudian. If more bare feet were presentable, perhaps there would be less to fear. Which raises the inevitable question of the pedicure, to which the answer, unfortunately, is yes.

No. No, it isn't.

I have seen a number of diets in my lifetime. I've seen diets go from fringe to conventional wisdom. One of the reasons I've seen so many diets is that a number of them I've been on my self. I have tried every concievable way of losing weight sans the Adkins Diet and anything where vegetables is a staple. Sometimes I've succeeded and other times I've failed. While some diets were hopelessly misguided, for the most part I can't blame the diets for their failure when it was largely myself or, more oftenly, an incompatibility between myself and the specific diet.

Contrary to what many diet pushers will tell you, I believe that there are a number of ways to lose weight and keep it off. I don't believe that there is necessarily one diet that keep you thin and the rest will make you fat. As such, I'm skeptical of many Adkinsites who blame modern obesity of wheats and grains in a world of Big Macs and Coca-colas. I feel similarly to vegetarians argue that red meat is to blame and those traditionalists that argue that some cheese will kill you. It seems to me that there are points to be made about excess of just about anything and I also can't trust any diet that says so-and-so will kill you.

In fact, I am downright suspicious of any diet that says that I cannot eat such-and-such. Obviously, if I'm going to go around eating nothing but dozens grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread a day I'm not going to lose weight, but I'd even be suspicious of a diet that said that I could eat all of everything I want just as long as I don't eat carrots and peas. Even if the diet had a proven track record. And I hate peas and carrots! My biggest problem with the traditional Adkins diet is that the induction phase is built around this. I could eat all that I want of the foods that I enjoy the most (cheese, meat, etc.), but I can't eat foods that are high in carbs. If I had to choose between fats and carbs, I'd choose carbs. But I don't trust any diet that says I have to choose, even if it's only for a while to get my body "used" to the diet.

But that's me. It's more than just not trusting the diet, because the Adkins Diet has worked for a number of people. But like Homer Simpson with the Forbidden Donut, if you tell me I can't eat something I'll start feeling an urge to. Even peas and carrots. Some people work better with those clearly drawn boundaries. Not me.

And I believe that the diet that works best is the diet that is most suited towards a particular individual. Jared whatsisname lost a whole lot of weight on subway sandwiches, despite the carbs because it's low enough in fat and overall calories to compensate for that. Others have tried to do the same but found that they needed more variety and failed. Some people lose weight on sugary milk-shakes that would make the Adkins people explode, but they manage to do it by consuming less calories overall. And some people, over the objections of the medical establishment for the last fifty years, lost weight on diets that consisted of a list of "Don'ts" on the food triangle because they managed to avoid the rotten carbs that go quickly into the blood stream. The French manage to stay relatively thin despite eating the one thing traditionalists and Adkins people agree is unhealthy (sweets) by eating it in smaller quantities throughout the day.

So with that in mind, it's extremely important for me to tailor the diet to myself. Whether the medical establishment has been right about fats, the Adkins people are right about carbs, or the South Beath people are right about getting picky about which fats and which carbs, the most important thing about dieting is to expend more calories than you consume. That means knowing what fills you up. For my part, fats do very little in the way of filling me up, carbs do better, and some carbs do even better. In fact, I found out last year that I can actually subside on 1400 calories a day without being the slightest bit hungry if I get the right kinds of foods. Good to know.

But knowing what I can't do is just as important as knowing what I can do. Health professionals can tell me all day long about how it's better to eat six meals of 400 calories a piece than it is three meals of 800 calories. But you might as well ask me to eat beats and tofu all day long. I simply can't do it. it's tenfold easier for me to avoid that first bite than it is to stop at twenty. It's the way that I am and despite many efforts in college to change it, I can't. Knowing my limitations helps me see where I've got to exert more power in my areas of strength: the ability to eat large amounts of somewhat bland food with tons and tons of fiber and a low calorie count.

It's important to accept my shortcomings and embrace my strengths not because of some lofty self-esteem goal, but because it's not worth dieting if you can't stick to it. With each diet I've attempted, I've learned something about myself. I learned about the 1/20 bite thing when I tried such a diet and failed spectacularly. I learned drinking a gallon of water a day only makes you need to pee a lot. Eel helped put one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle in last year when she introduced me to the importance of fiber in-take. That got me discovering how filling beans are without being fatty or nutritious. I also learned on the same dietary run that I keep myself from getting hungry in between meals and consume a lot less calories by drinking a lot of skim milk instead of coke.

I had a lot of success last year, taking off about 20 pounds without even feeling like I was on a diet. In fact, what brought it all down was moving back in with Mom and her home cooking (which reminds me of another key for me: if the food's around, I'll eat it, so I should guard my shopping list very closely). But I've made it up here, I've got control of my environment again, and I've gotten somewhat settled in Idaho. I'm not sure when I'm going to start the calorie counting, but the lack of dread does feel pretty good.

Since right before I started taking calls, I worried about taking calls. Not obsessively... okay, obsessively. My mind works on a time delay when communicating with other people, so I'm not particularly well-suited for the fast-paced, people-oriented world of taking phone calls. On top of that during my "training week" where I took calls with coaches present, I had to ask for a lot of help. I worried frantically about when I wouldn't have a coach there and the training wheels would be kicked off. To make matters worse, after my first week I knew my supervisor was taking a three week hiatus, meaning that not only would I not have three coaches, but I wouldn't even have a team leader to ask questions.

My first day on the actual floor I ran tallies of how many calls I took and how many times I asked for assistance cried for help. And I'd just like to say that today I became a king!

Monday, March 31:
Calls Taken: 38
Cries for Help: 12
Percent Cry: 31.5%

Tuesday, June 1:
Calls Taken: 40
Cries for Help: 8
Percent Cry: 20.0%

Wednesday, June 2:
Calls Taken: 65
Cries for Help: 12
Percent Cry: 18.5%

Thursday, June 3:
Calls Taken: 67
Cries for Help: 7
Percent Cry: 10.4%

Friday, June 4:
Calls Taken: 58
Cries for Help: 10
Percent Cry: 17.2%

Monday, June 7:
Calls Taken: 50
Cries for Help: 6
Percent Cry: 12.0%

Tuesday, June 8:
Calls Taken: 76
Cries for Help: 5
Percent Cry: 6.5%

Wednesday, June 9:
Calls Taken: 62
Cries for Help: 3
Percent Cry: 4.8%

Thursday, June 10:
Calls Taken: 77
Cries for Help: 4
Percent Cry: 5.2%

Monday, June 14:
Calls Taken: 75
Cries for Help: 0
Percent Cry: 0.0%

Amanda Strassner watched the remake so you don't have to.

From a job posting in the area:

Assit in analyzing and evaluating exsisting or proposed systems and devising computer programs, sytems and related procedures to process data. Prepare charts, diagrams and reports to assist in problem analysis. Instructions and software fuctiunality. Encode, test debugg, and install operating programs and procdeures. Ability to assist with design, testing and implementation of aplications required to support project systems. Assist with the administration of software packges as requried.

I want to get a job with these people as a spell-checker. It'd probably require a lot of overtime, though.

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, this is Rayford speaking. May I have your home phone number with the area code first, please?
Customer: 818-555-4963
EC: And the name on the account?
Cust: Achmed Kezef
EC: And how may I help you today?
Cust: My bill is too high! Why is my bill so high? I want my bill to be lower!
EC: Hold on one moment while I look into your account. Alright, sir, according to your records you are on the Caviar Plan. That plan includes every movie ever made shown on alternate days as well as every channel in the history of mankind. The Caviar Plan costs a $99.99 a month with an additional $29.95 for the additional five recievers in your household. That makes for a total of $129.94 a month.
Cust: I do not want to pay $130 a month! I want to pay less than $130 a month! How can I bring the bill down?
EC: Well sir, you could go down to our next package, the Escargot Plan and we can add the movie packages that you want to that. How does that sound?
Cust: Do not touch my movies! I want my movies!
EC: Alright, sir, if you were to keep the movie channels and go down to the Meat & Taters Plan, you could save as much as $25 a month.
Cust: Okay, what does the Meat & Potatoes Plan have?
EC: It has most of the channels you're recieving now.
Cust: Does it have the Fuzzy Wuzzy Channel?
EC: I'm afraid not, sir. That's only available with our Escargot Plan.
Cust: What about the Toony Loony Channel?
EC: I'm afraid not, sir. It does have the similar Toon Highway channel, though.
Cust: Could you tell me all of the channels that it does not have?
EC: [lists off thirty channels out of 250]
Cust: Why would you take all of those away from me?! Why does OmniStar hate me to want to take away my cartoons and furry animals! I do not want to be with OmniStar if they take those things away from me! Why do you hate me so?!?!?!?!
EC: Well, sir, it sounds like the channels you most want are only available with your current package. If you want to lower your bill you would need to lose some of the movie channels...
Cust: And now you want to take my movies! You are supposed to give me channels, not take them away! Why do I pay people who want to take my channels away!
EC: Well, sir, if you stay on your current plan we won't take any channels away.
Cust: You mean I get to keep the Fuzzy Wuzzy Channel?
EC: Yes, sir.
Cust: And the Toony Loony Channel?
EC: Absolutely sir.
Cust: Thank you so much for all of your great programing!
EC: Any time, sir.
Cust: What was your name, sir?
EC: Rayford.
Cust: Next time I call, I will ask for you. You give me such wonderful channels.
EC: I look forward to it, sir. Have a great day.
Cust: You too!

Well, not a movie so much as a trailer analogous to the Batman short that made the rounds a while back. This is probably the closest we'll ever come to actually getting a Green Arrow movie, so I definitely appreciate it. Pretty well done, though like Ginger I really have a problem with Dinah Lance playing Lois Lane slash April O'Neill slash Vicki Vale.

Warner Bros. is presently resurrecting the Batman franchise. With the relative success of the spate of Marvel movies, it'd be nice of they would capitalize on it and make some movies with recognizable characters that aren't Batman or Superman. Green Arrow isn't a household name, but then neither is Daredevil and the Robin Hood nature of the character could make him a draw.

One of the characters that I always thought would make for a good movie would be Hal Jordan/Green Lantern. There is a lot of room for some great special effects and some of the earliest HJGL produced make for a good baseline to start a movie from. Of course, Hal Jordan isn't Green Lantern anymore and Kyle Rayner doesn't make nearly as interesting a character, so I wouldn't bet on that happening any time soon. If it did they would probably reinstate Jordan as Green Lantern in the comics, and they best not go there. Flash is another good property, though they have the same problem with Barry Allen versus Wally West. Wonder Woman is available, but is one of the least compelling characters in existence. Aquaman would be pretty hard to put to film. Martian Manhunter could make for a great TV series, but no one outside comics has the slightest clue who he is.

I don't generally make an issue by pointing out how stupid and/or hypocritical people on the left are. I have a sincere liberal segment of my readership and, besides that, most of them would agree that Ted Rall and Michael Moore are "daring truthsayers" that are "telling it like it is." I feel a mild obligation to because I have recently been reminded that some otherwise intelligent people actually do take these guys seriously. So, for the record, a great write-up on Michael Moore:

And there are the lies of exaggeration—details that after marinating in Moore’s brain swell into squishy conspiracy tales, like one of those dried sponges that swell prodigiously in water. Take what happened during a March 2002 book-tour appearance for Stupid White Men, his 2001 screed against the Bush administration, corrupt corporate power, and (as one chapter title puts it) this “idiot nation.” At 11 PM, Moore was still signing books for a line of fans at a San Diego school, when event organizers announced that the janitors wanted to close up and go home, since the use permit was up. Moore paid little attention and went on signing books, until someone—apparently the janitors—called the police about half an hour later. At this point, according to Kynn Bartlett, a disappointed fan who wrote about the event on his website, two cops walked in with flashlights—Bartlett points out that it was dark in the parking lot outside—and calmly announced: “May I have your attention. The use permit for this event expired at eleven. You have to leave now.” After some grumbling, everyone did.

End of story—until Moore breathlessly posted his version on his website the next day. POLICE RAID, SHUT DOWN MY BOOK SIGNING IN SAN DIEGO. “I am told that we are getting close to the time when we will have to leave the school,” Moore’s fiction begins. “That is not good. Hundreds are still in line.” (Bartlett estimates there were 75.) Moore continues: “The San Diego police [all two of them, Bartlett says] are coming down the aisle, their large flashlights out (the auditorium lights are still on, so we all understand the implied ‘other’ use of the instruments).” People are “visibly frightened,” “bolt[ing]” toward the doors. “I remark that it feels like we’re in some sort of banana republic or East Berlin, secretly meeting so we can have our little book gathering. Sign quick, Mike, here come the police.” There’s not a word about janitors forced to work overtime to please celebrity authors.

Company A is a fast-paced work environment that requires long hours for their employees. They have stringent attendence policies that don't allow for much of any missed time between 8-5. The average workweek is 70 hours a week and employees are expected to stay after and work on weekends. The pay is extraordinarily good, but the hours are simply not negotiable.

Company B is a small business that can't afford to pay people overtime. They are eager to train employees that they feel will be around for a while. The pay is not great, but it's enough to support a small family if money is managed wisely or it's a two-income household.

Both Company A and Company B study their human resource policies and take a look at the attendence policies and duration of both past and present employees' tenure. They come to opposite conclusions about which employees suit their work environment better.

Company A determines that young and ambitious employees that are able to throw themselves into their work entirely contribute greatly to the bottom line. However, employees that have to juggle work with kid transportation, kid illnesses, and other kid-related chores are missing a lot of time. Even when there's not an emergency at home, they're simply unable to overtime necessary to help the company's bottom line. They notice that the employees that are young and unmarried devote considerably more energy towards their jobs and the company.

Company A makes a new policy that they will make HR decisions based, in part, on whether they feel that the employee will be able to devote the necessary energy to the job and company and they will start hiring less people with families to support and more young professionals that will work harder for advancement.

Company B, on the other hand, notices a very high turnover rate among younger and unmarried employees. The employees that have families may miss time, but it's sufficient that they're able to make it up when it's more convenient for them. Because they have a family to support, they are much less likely to leave, most likely because they can't take a job in another city and changing jobs would disrupt their household in a way that it would not be advantageous. Company B's HR policy to allow for a more flexible schedule is also a godsend for employees that are having to juggle both professional and family lives.

Company B makes a new policy that they will make HR decisions based, in part, on whether the potential employee will be likely to stick around long enough for the company to recoup its training costs. As such, they will start making an effort to hire people that have families to support.

Personally, I don't know to what extent either company's policies are legal. I took an HR class and it didn't broad on family-status-discrimination, so I assume that it's somewhat legal. I could be wrong, though. My question to you is whether or not you consider the discrimination that these companies are employers (based, we should remember, on life choices and not skin color or gender) are using is ethical and whether or not it should be legal. If these companies know who they need to hire in order to protect their profits (or minimize their losses), should they be able to act on them?

What do you think?

I don't generally take time out of my day to attack Nashville country music, and as far as Nashville country music goes I don't have much of a bone to pick with CMT, which showcases some of the best music videos made (not a particularly difficult feat, but credit where credit due...) and helped get me in to Nashville country music some years ago which later helped me get into Texas Country Music.

Having said all that, this list of Top 100 Love Songs sucks. Now granted, it doesn't say it's a list of country songs. That's a very goot thing for a list that includes Olivia Newton-John's "I Honestly Love You" (#62). I don't have a problem with Faith Hill being on a country music lists, but "Breathe" (#21) and "This Kiss" (#41) actually marked the end of her country music career and begining of her pop success. I actually like both songs, but I wasn't even aware they were by a "country" musician for some time after they came out. Now let's also talk about Kenny Chesney's sole inclusion, "How Forever Feels." It's a catchy enough tune, but I hesitate to call it a love song because it's all about Chesney's love for the live he's lead (or, more likely, the life his songwriter lead). Yes, yes, it's sweet that he proposes to the girl in the song, but it takes a special kind of vanity to make a proposal all about the proposer. Lastly, I find it tragic that the #1 song, "I Will Always Love You" is a nigh-insufferable song that was only salvageable in its non-country Whitney Houston version by Houston's astounding voice.

I would like to congratulate them on a few inclusions, however. "If You See Him, If You See Her" (#94) is probably near the top of both Reba and Brooks & Dunn's respective greatest hits. It's more a lamenting song than a loving one, but oh well. Deanna Carter's "Strawberry Wine" (#29) is also a fantastic tune.

And thank you from the bottom of my heart for leaving off Alan Jackson's "www.memory.com".

[via Warliberal]

The New York Times has an article about possible abuses in the Women, Infants, and Children (W.I.C.) Supplemental Nutrition Program, which is in place to make sure that women, infants, and children have access to nutritious foods and whatnot. Some WIC-only stores have popped up that take advantage of the fact that there is no incentive for WIC households to be cost-conscious:

Healthy Kids, a "one-stop W.I.C. shop" in Virginia Beach, is tucked into a small shopping center, next to a state health clinic that issues W.I.C. vouchers. Every item in the store meets the specification of the program, said the manager, Tracy Wynne. By contrast, Ms. Wynne said, at supermarkets, "it's often a hassle finding the right products and dealing with cashiers."

"I wish they had these stores 10 years ago when I was on W.I.C.," she said.

The W.I.C. families are not particularly sensitive to shelf prices because their vouchers buy a specific food package, regardless of the amount charged to state agencies, which administer the program with federal money.

State officials say the prices at W.I.C. specialty stores are typically 10 percent to 20 percent higher than those at supermarkets and other retail grocers.

Linnea E. Sallack, director of the W.I.C. program in the California Department of Health Services, said: "We consistently find that prices charged in W.I.C.-only stores are higher, on average, than in other stores. If food prices are high, for whatever reason, it means that our federal grant cannot go as far and cannot serve as many people."

It's an interesting dilemma as these stores apparently are providing a service for their higher costs. I can only imagine how much simpler it would be if everything that they can get would be in one place. On the other hand, it's a bit disingenuous to talk about free markets when the purchaser is insulated from the costs of what they are purchasing.

[via Arkanssouri]

Eel: Oooh, oooh, come over and smell this!
RAW: Smell what? The flowers?
Eel: Not just flowers. Roses! Smell!
RAW: [sniff sniff] Hey, you're right!
Eel: See?
RAW: These smell exactly like those things you plug into the wall to make a room smell good.

I surrendered in my Texas Driver's license.

I took a test.

I paid the state of Idaho $27.50.

I was given a new driver's license.

I am now officially an Idahan... Idahoan... Idahomite... a resident of Idaho.

According to this article kindly linked by Jack Cluth, dogs may be smarter than previously thought:

A series of careful studies concluded that the energetic German house dog has a stunningly large vocabulary and apparently can even do something scientists thought only humans could do -- figure out by the process of elimination that a sound he's never heard before must be the name of a toy he's never seen before.

That feat, described in today's issue of the journal Science, suggests that dog owners who claim their pets understand what they're saying and are trying to respond may have been right all along.

"Maybe this is the Albert Einstein of dogs. Or maybe this is something that other dogs can do too," said Julia Fischer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who helped test Rico. "We just don't know. We need to find out."

While many species can be trained to recognize the names of objects, what makes Rico unique is that he recognizes so many words, can puzzle out the names of new objects on the first try and weeks later is surprisingly good at remembering what he learned, the researchers said.

The findings are the latest evidence that animals are capable of more complex communication than had been thought and that dogs, in particular, are especially astute at comprehending their human companions.

Though it doesn't have anything to do with audible language comprehension overall, it reminds me a bit of this quote from Gerry Spence:

"Wisdom usually does not fall from high places. The mighty and the splendid have taught me little. I have learned more from my dog than from all the great books I have read. The wisdom of my dog is the product of his inability to conceal his wants. When he yearns to be loved, there is no pouting in the corner. There are no games entitled "Guess what is the matter with me." He puts his head on my lap, wags his tail and looks up at me with kind eyes, waiting to be petted. No professor or sage ever told me I might live a more successful life if I simply asked for love when I needed it."

When I was nineteen or so, I was driving down Wheeler in the pouring rain. Out of nowhere there was this black SUV parked on the side of the road. I slammed on the breaks and turned left, hitting the SUV and punching out my right headlight. The other car was left undamaged. It's amazing how crystal clear this memory is.

It's amazing not because it was six years ago, but because it never happened.

It's a story I made up to explain the punched out right headlight of my car. What really happened is a bit hazier. It involved a crimson SUV in the University parking lot. I hit it when I turned in too wide to park. The other car wasn't really damaged, but it was not as unscratched as the fictional SUV that I hit in the rain. What's funny is that I can't remember what the weather was like in what actually happened, only in my dishonest reporting of it. I think I made the story up to forget about my little hit-and-run. If I changed the story up in more ways than the damage to the other car, then the cardinal sin actually becomes insignificant, doesn't it?

My motivations, however, aren't really at issue here. What I find most revealing about myself is that I remember what didn't happen a lot more clearly than I remember what did. That's not an isolated incident, either. I remember very clearly a lot of things that never happened. Some of the things that define me didn't happen the way that I now remember them.

To a degree, I think we all convince ourselves of certain things because we need to believe them or so that they just make sense. I may just be projecting, but I believe that a desire to make sense of things runs strongly within us all. I have doubts, however, that they run as strongly in other people as they do in me. Gifted with an extremely powerful imagination and an even more powerful desire to have the world make perfect sense, I am struck with an incredible ability to convince myself of just about anything so long as it smooths the narrative and explains the missing link, be it a matter of a punched out headlight or why I left her (or she left me).

I don't know many people that view the world quite the way that I do. In some ways my mind runs like the streaming binary in The Matrix: a collection of data just asking to be interpreted in a way palitable to the part of me that is experiencing it. If I feel something intensely enough - if I experience it intensely enough - it becomes more important and more real to me than the pesky details that diverge from the narrative in my mind. Simply put, it becomes more real to me than reality. It becomes hypereality.

It's funny and disturbing whenever new details or facts come forth that completely contradict the events before as I experienced them. Sometimes I can simply go back and correct my recollections. Sometimes I'm so deep in believing what I always have that I am incapable of correction. Just like facts that run contrary to an ideologues ideology, they simply get discarded. That I percieved something incorrectly becomes less important than the fact that I've been behaving based on my mispercetions for so long that they've defined me more than some anachronistic, irrelevent facts that have been missed along the way.

Audrey once told me that self-knowledge and self-understanding are two of the most important things in life. Our common belief in the desire to understand ourselves and be understood by others was one of the greatest sparks of our kindred flame. For her part, Audrey has fallen short in her quest for these things many times. For my part, I find myself wrapped in my own hypereality sometimes that my image of myself can be so different from my actual self that it can become nearly impossible to detangle.

Eel and I have been together for a year now. For the first ten months or so, we seemingly learned everything there is to know about one another. Over the past two months, we've managed to learn a lot more. It's interesting how some of the perceptions of who I am have come crumbling down as we've spent so much time together. The best sides of me that I could always put forth on the phone and the rare meetings can sometimes be crowded out by my ugly sides. Without the room to retreat, she's learned things about me that part of me would just assume keep hidden forever because they don't fit my hypereality. I am reminded over and over again that I am not who I think I am.

Yet there are parts of me that I can still keep wrapped under the illusions that I've created. There are parts of me that she may never know. In the four years I was with Anna, she discovered an avalanche of parts of me that she never saw. In some ways I wonder if she ever really knew me at all. How could she when I wouldn't let her? My hypereality is that she was never in a place to understand me. She and I were so different that she was incapable. Yet the same was true of Audrey throughout 2001 and the reason that she and I endured so much together was that we understood each other like few did. Meeting and talking with her again in 2003 and 2004 showed me all that we were missing. How could she understand me when so much of me was hidden in the hypereality?

When the masks were supposed to come off a little more than a year ago, the hypereality (though I didn't call it that then) was supposed to come to an end. When Eel came along, it was supposed to be the opening of a new chapter in my life where I would manage to deal with things more openly and I'd start taking a harder look at who I am, who I've been, and what I've done both good and bad. Yet as I've found myself peeling away layers of understanding the greater truths rather than the actual ones, I've nonetheless found myself slipping back to form here and there. I find myself in the same traps.

I am empowered with an elaborate imagination. The way I've seen things has enabled me to notice and discover things in ways that few others do. It's not just lies I tell myself to feel better. In fact, some of my hypereal interpretations present me in a more negative light than their true-to-life counterparts. It's all ingrained in who I am and who I've always been. The greater stories that I've written and the ones I haven't are, in their own unique way, one of the greater contributions I have to make to the world. If I strip myself of that I wonder what there is left of me. If I saw everything only as it is, what happens to all the great inspirations of the way the world ought to be and hyperbolic parables of how it remains?

Can one really see and correctly see the forest and catalogue the trees at once?

Three stories come to mind:

In an episode of Highlander, Duncan befriends a young immortal boy that died at a young age and so forevery remains ten years old or so. Duncan acts as a guardian and father figure. It turns out that the boy is actually older than Duncan is and has been using his age to disarm other immortals so that he can behead them when they let their guard down.

In an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, a young girl named Baby Doll is introduced. Baby Doll has a rare genetic disorder that keeps her at a todler's age for the rest of her life. She cashes in on this as the cute little girl on a sitcom, but eventually her fifteen minutes of fame pass. Many years later, many of her costars are attacked and it turns out that the cute little thing became a homocidal killer.

In the anime feature Mermaid's Scar, Yuta and Mana befriend a young little immortal boy named Masato. They are all three immortal because they ate the mermaid's flesh. Eating the flesh of a mermaid makes most people turn to grotesque monsters, but every so often it makes them immortal instead. It turns out that the young little boy is older than boytype and girltype and has been poisoning people with the flesh of the mermaid hoping that they can become immortal companions like he is. He too, is evil.

At work, I have a coworker I'll name Amy Miranda. Amy Miranda is about 5'2" or so and skinny as a post. Though she's probably about twenty or so, she looks like she's about eleven. She's a sweet girl and a pretty little thing. Yet she completely freaks me out! There is something inherently creepy about her that's immensely disturbing to me. It's nothing she's doing. I think it has to do with her girlish appearence and pre-adolescent voice.

I'm thinking it has something to do with Duncan's young friend, Baby Doll, and Masato.

Apparently some artist named Morrissey that I probably should know of but don't said some not very nice things about President Bush:

Morrissey has caused outrage in America with his controversial remarks to a concert audience about the death of Ronald Reagan.

The ex-frontman of Manchester band The Smiths announced the death of the former US president at a concert in Dublin - then said he wished it had been President George W Bush who had died instead.

Yawn. Here's the real meat of the story, though:

Record numbers of internet users in America contacted our website to complain about the 45-year-old singer's comments.

Oh wait, did I say that there was "meat" to this story? My bad.

Record number of internet users, huh? I'm sure Morrissey is quaking in his boots.

Amanda calls this joke bad, but I consider it quite funny!

Things that worked before the automatic Media Player Update:

Everything

Things that don't work after the automatic Media Player Update:

InterVideo WinDVD

WinAmp

Opera

InterActual Player

RealPlayer

Entertianment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, this is Rayford, may I get your home phone number with the area code first?
Customer: Yes, sir. 888-555-4219
EC: And the name on the account?
Cust: James Ebbit
EC: And how may I help you today, sir?
Cust: There were some pay-per-views ordered on my account that I would like removed. I never order PPVs and why would I order them when my wife reads over our statements?
EC: One moment, sir. Could you give me the day and time that the PPV was billed for?
Cust: Yes, sir. March 23, 2004. Look, I'm in a lot of trouble with my wife, here. Can you please help me out?
EC: Okay, sir. I am authorized to refund the money of a PPV. Please note that this is a one-time credit and if you dispute PPVs in the future, the EC will not be able to help you. Would you like to go over our locks and safeguards programs?
Cust: No, that's alright. Hey, can you put some sort of note on my account so that the next bill will say that I didn't watch these PPVs? It would really, really, really, really help me out a lot here. I need her to know that you guys believe me.
EC: I'm afraid that I can't put anything that might appear on your bill. I can put a comment on your account, though, so your wife can call in and another EC can read it to her that we believe you.
Cust: Great! Bye!
EC: Have a great day, sir.

...

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, Rayford speaking. May I get your home phone number with your area code first?
Customer: 914-555-6334
EC: And could I have the name on that account?
Cust: Byron T. Hollis, Jr.
EC: Great, and what may I do for you today?
Cust: Yes sir, there is a pay-per-view that I did not order that's done shone up on my bill!
EC: Alright, sir, one moment while I bring up your records. Okay, sir, there are about ten PPVs over the month covered by your last bill. Could you give me the day that you ordered the PPV?
Cust: Yes sir, May 3rd.
EC: Okay, sir, I see "Hot Black Mommas" on channel 184 and "Debbie Does Utah" on channel 155. Which of these are you contesting?
Cust: That one about black people. I didn't order no porn starring black people!
EC: Alright, sir. We have locks and safeguards to prevent the unauthorized ordering of adult pay-per-views. Would you like me to go over those with you?
Cust: No. I want that taken off my damn bill!
EC: Well, sir, unfortunately you were given a credit for a PPV ordered in January and we only refund PPVs once. I am not authorized to give you your money back.
Cust: Well, alright then. But could you at least take it off or make it look like I watched something else?
EC: I'm afraid not, sir. Even if I were able to refund your money, the feature would still appear in your record, there would just be a separate line taking the charges off.
Cust: Well I don't want anyone thinkin' I watch porn with black people in it!
EC: I'm sorry, sir. The best I can do for you is to make a note on your account.
Cust: Okay then, can I tell you the exact words for you to put on the comment?
EC: Absolutely.
Cust: I want it to say "I didn't watch no porn with black people in it."
EC: Okay, sir, I've added the comment.
Cust: Thank you. Have a blessed day.
EC: You too, sir.

Amygala's has some priceless quotes from a Marxist group (Maoist International Movement, to be exact) that reviews American movies:

But MIM rejects the universal moralizing of [Star Trek] Insurrection. Forced relocations can be to the benefit of the people being moved, as when Stalin internally deported Jews in the Soviet Union to move them away from the advancing German troops. MIM would rather see Jews moved to undesirable locations within the USSR than worked into disease in concentration camps and then gassed or shot. We also generally oppose the fiction that liberation will come from a segment of the conquering army.

While it is true that occupying troops are often won over by the
strength and correctness of an Indigenous liberation struggle, the
officers of an occupying force tend not to be the leaders of any liberation struggle. In truth, the strength of the people's will can win over segments of the opposition, but this will must originate with the people who liberate themselves.

He's got a lot more!

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, may I have your home phone number with the area code first?
Customer: 242-555-7832
EC: And the name on the account?
Cust: Debra Gowen
EC: And what may I do for you today?
Cust: I sent in a check. Can you give me service back now?
EC: I'm afraid that it takes three to five days for us to get a check. Your account is still $158.23 past due and as long as it is past due, there is nothing I can do about your service.
Cust: Mother f*er! [click]
EC: Yes, man, I very much appreciate the call. This will help my call times greatly. Have a wonderful day.

I realize that the next release of Doom is supposed to be pretty bad-ass and all, but shouldn't this have been done about ten years ago?!

Universal Pictures has optioned the film rights to the Doom SF video-game franchise for producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and John Wells, Variety reported. Enda McCallion is attached to make his directorial debut, the trade paper reported.

Dave Callaham wrote the script, based on the id Software and Activision game, set at a Mars space station, where an aerospace conglomerate is conducting secret experiments when something unleashes a demonic force that threatens to overtake the facility, the trade paper reported.

The third installment in the hit game, Doom 3, is slated for release July 15, the trade paper reported.

Universal Pictures is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.

Once upon a time, Doom was the only game out there. I mean, obviously it wasn't the only only game out there, but it was even more well known than its Castle Wolfenstein groundbreaking predecessor. It was an invitation for a special effects bonanza and something meant to actually be a brainless action movie. There was a quick-write book or two that even did pretty well among the faithful.

[via Warliberal]

This is more than a bit disturbing:

When Chad Taylor noticed his son was apparently experiencing serious side effects from Ritalin prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he decided to take the boy off the medication. Now, he says he may be accused of child abuse.

In February, 12-year-old Daniel began displaying some symptoms that his father suspected were related to the use of Ritalin.

"He was losing weight, wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating," Taylor told ABC News affiliate KOAT-TV in New Mexico. "[He] just wasn't Daniel."

So Taylor took Daniel off Ritalin, against his doctor's wishes. And though Taylor noticed Daniel was sleeping better and his appetite had returned, his teachers complained about the return of his disruptive behavior. Daniel seemed unable to sit still and was inattentive. His teachers ultimately learned that he was no longer taking Ritalin.

School officials reported Daniel's parents to New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth and Families.Then a detective and social worker made a home visit.

"The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect," Taylor said.

For my part, I don't know if Daniel Taylor is better off on or off ritalin.

But neither does New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth, and Families.

I'm not a remarkably methodical writer. I like to have my broad outline complete before starting a story and a vague idea of the theme, but I find that once I get going the story often takes itself in its own direction. It's a product of the fact that my stories are character exploration more than plot-driven genre stories. Regardless, I find this methodical approach to writing to be interesting.

If I ever get to the point that I am published (and therefore my opinion on "how to write") counts, I have various ideas for character and story development I'll probably put into... well... something.

[via Down the Writer's Path]

I spent a couple of hours today filling out job applications and similar forms. Some weird things:

A nameless government agency requires that I have an Idaho driver's license. The only time I've ever run in to a job that requires an in-state license.

Another government agency has a very elaborate website. You have to fully register before you can even apply for a custodial position. Yet the site makes you fill out all of your information over and over again for each job that you apply to, even though it's on the profile you filled out to register.

One job asked for three personal references' names, addresses, businesses, and how long I've known them. They did not ask, however, for a phone number.

To get a clerical job with the Sheriff's Department, they want me to have current Registered Nurse licensing.

This is a bit tacky, since I was just talking about how nice I generally am to servers of all stripes. That said, this is an idea whose time has come.

When kids get their learners permit and are at the wheel with a professional instructor, the car will usually have very obvious markings that the driver is a student driver. That serves as a useful warning to all of us to be careful around the driver for his own good as well as ours because they may not be accustomed to all of the rules of the road. It's really a win/win deal.

I suggest that lines at Walmart have a similar warning when there is an "associate trainee" working the check-out. As customers, that would allow us to more easily gauge wait times so that we can either go to another line or at the very least know that it's going to be a while. This would be advantageous to the associate trainee as well, who could avoid being bagged down for no less than a half-an-hour with a woman that had about fifty-thousand items. Most likely, with the appropriate warning, she would have gone elsewhere.

Win/win.

"So what are we going to do?"

"Well... I could move to Idaho."

Dean and Nathan debate on how much of obesity is treatable through diet and exercise. With unusual passion (even for him), Dean argues that the obese are no more to blame for their obesity than a cancer victim is for having cancer:

This will probably, on some visceral level, disappoint some conservatives, who seem to believe that chronically fat people could fix their problem with a little diet and exercise disipline. But a solid review of the scientific literature on chronic obesity indicates that to be a dubious proposition. About 1% of the chronically obese manage to get down to non-overweight status and stay there for five years or more. The other 99% remain fat, most of them struggling with weight their whole lives.

Meanwhile, psychological research has shown that obese people genrally do not have less discipline than normalweight people, nor do they typically suffer from psychological aberrations. Other research has shown that the chronically obese can actually eat less than healthy, normalweight people and still not lose their obesity.

Yes, it's certainly true that overeating and a sedentary lifestyle can cause or aggravate obesity. But there's a stunning dearth of evidence that it can be reversed by simply eating less and exercising more. And why should we believe it? Would you tell a patient with lung cancer that smoking caused his cancer, and therefore if he'd just stop smoking his cancer will go away?

He provides a lot of interesting links. Nathan, who posted on it and then read through the links that Dean provided, remains unconvinced:

Look, I never said it was easy. But it is simple. I have problems with my weight. I am constantly at the limit of what is permissable with the military (although I've recently had significant success with Atkins). My limit goes up due to age, and my weight goes up with it. I have felt the same frustration. I have yoyo-d over a span of 10 pounds. I know it is hard. But I know the problem starts with me and the stuff going on in my head. Maybe that's not true for everyone, but there is nothing in the studies that indicates it isn't the exact same situation for the bulk of that 99% that cannot lose weight permanently. In fact, the study really doesn't make it clear why the people regain the weight, it merely makes the clear point (one I never once argued with) that impermanent weight loss is worse than never losing weight at all, and that dieting alone is the worst way to lose weight.

Behavioral scientists have done study after study that show that people forget a significant portion of the food they eat each day....some people up to 25% of their calories is forgotten when telling their doctor/weight loss aide what they ate. The inaccuracy drops down to less than 5% when they carry a pencil and paper with them...but they still cheat, because they've had people with videocameras follow people around to prove to them they aren't recording everything in the notebook. I wish I had the study available, but googling can't seem to find it and it was in my Behavior Modification Textbook from 15 years ago. I think the title was "Behavior Modification", if that helps.

I'm personally somewhat torn on the subject. On one hand, I've seen a lot of people who drink 10 cokes a day complain about their "thyroid problem," but on the other I've really seen people who don't eat more than the next person fail to lose weight.

It seems to me if suddenly a third of the country (particularly it's youth) is struck with a glandular disorder, either (a) they don't actually have a glandular disorder or (b) there's something we're doing when we're young that's blowing our thyroid systems to smithereens. Both seem quite plausible. For the latter reason, though, I'm reluctant to give the obese the same leeway that we give ethnic minorities in terms of legal protections. It doesn't strike me as morally wrong that there be a social stigma to being drastically unhealthy in order to prevent people from thinking that it would be a-ok for them to be as heavy as they want and complain when the laws of physics start working against them.

On the other hand, we live in a weight-obsessed pop culture that endorses weights that are unhealthily low. There's nothing wrong with having a fuller figure. As I've gotten older, I've actually found it rather attractive. With this in mind, I know some people that seem desperate to lose weight that really oughtn't be so self-conscious about it. I've also seen such people diet to the degree that they should lose weight and fail too. When they exercise, it firms up what they have instead of losing it. It distresses me that some people put so much emphasis on weight that some of the naturally bigger people are inclined to drop to unhealthy weights to avoid the stigma of being thick.

As for the science involved, I've really seen it both ways. When people gain weight, it can be very, very hard to lose because, as Nathan points out, people often have a set-weight. Not to mention the added fat cells that never go away sans surgery. But there is no doubt that social stigma aside, morbid obesity is, well, morbid. It's unhealthy. That's not Cosmopolitan magazine's fault. Also, a brief look around the world will tell us that it's not 'normal' and must be, to some degree, preventable.

Pete writes about appreciating the waitstaff:

I did my time in the food service biz for several years after college and in grad school, both as a waiter and as a bartender, and I found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of her items.

Even now, all these years later, I'm still struck by how depressingly obnoxious some people can be. Not only to servers, who have to stick around for - sometimes - hours and keep customers in a restaurant happy, but also to flight attendants, store cashiers, and pretty much anyone in a service-type position. Sure, sometimes the McDonald's register jockey forgets to specify to the grill master that you didn't want onions, but for the most part these people are busting their humps to make sure you have a decent dining/flying/shopping experience. There are exceptions, but just because the bartender only put two pearl onions in your vodka Gibson instead of three doesn't give you a license to act like a scumbag.

In my experience (here comes the sweeping generalization), people who treat their servers/cashiers like crap are usually those who have never had to handle 20 lunch tables, or work the Houston to Kansas City flight one person short, or wait on a table of 5 that squats in your area for two hours and runs up a $300 bill then leaves you $10 because everyone paid separately and nobody made sure everyone kicked in enough for tax and tip. I guess you can consider yourself lucky you didn't have to perform some menial minimum wage job in high school, but I also think - quite frankly - that you might be lacking that certain something in your character that allows you to cut your server a little slack when your drink order is a few minutes late.

I've never waited tables, but I did work a brief stint at McDonald's. Ever since working there, I've never special ordered a hamburger. With all the trouble that special ordering causes, I figure the least I can do is take the tomatoes off for my own darn self.

I'm a bit believer in being respectful to anyone that's serving me. It's more than tipping well, but also being friendly and polite. That's true whether I'm eating at a high-priced restaurant or just buying something from the convenience store (though obviously I don't tip the latter). Most of the time they'd much rather be doing something else, so I appreciate it when they're putting what they can into a less-than-desirable job. Attitude is paramount with me and a smile earns extra points and apologies if they're backlogged will keep the tip from depreciating too much.

It's interestingly one of the things that Eel and I have in common. In fact, our tipping procedures are eerily similar from starting at 20% to taking note of all of the little things.

It's a good thing, too. I remember reading once the advice that one should never marry someone that isn't courteous to their parents and waitstaff. To an extent, I'm a believer in that. I actually have a couple of friends that I started making an effort to stop eating with because they were rude and obnoxious to people that were doing the best that they could.

Entertainment Consultant: Thank you for calling OmniStar, this is Rayford speaking. May I have your phone number with the area code first, please?
Customer: 984-555-1963
ER: And could I have the name on that account?
Cust: John Martin
ER: Thank you, sir. This account is protected by a password. Could you give that to me please?
Cust: Tweety Bird
EC: Wonderful, and what may I do for you today?
Cust: Watching the Zoom channel and Science and Technogy!
EC: You're trying to watch Zoom and S&T? Is it not coming in, sir?
Cust: No, I'm watching it right now! Zoom! Zooooooom!!
EC: So are you having trouble with S&T?
Cust: No, now I'm watching Science & Technogy! They're doing a live autopsy. Cut! Cuuuuuuuuuuutttt!!!!
EC: Alright, sir, so what can I do for you again!
Cust: I watching Zoom channel and Science Technogy!
EC: And they're coming in fine?
Cust: Zoom! Zooooooooom!!! Car race on right now!
EC: That's great, sir.
Cust: I so proud of OmniStar for getting the S&T! You just added it! I so proud to be your customer. Cut! Cuuuuuuutt!!! Been waiting long time for this! Cuuuuuut!!
EC: Well, I'm happy that we're doing a good job of serving you, sir.
Cust: So proud to be with OmniStar! Does DishTel have these channels?
EC: Well, sir, I don't really kn-
Cust: Nooooooooooo! They don't! Only OmniStar! So happy to be OmniStar customer!
EC: So you're calling to thank us, sir?
Cust: Yes! Thank yoooou! Zooooooooom!!!
EC: We're happy to be there for you, sir.
Cust: Okay, I go watch car racing now. Bye!!!
EC: Have a great day, sir.

I managed to find myself low on gas while going to Rosalinda's wedding. That worked out well because gas up there is about three cents cheaper and I was still able to get in under $2/gal.

I'm headed back up to the area tomorrow. I'll still have at least 1/3 of a tank left, but I'll have to fill up again.

The walls of $2 gas are closing in. I'm getting more and more desperate. Even to the point of planning my trips out of town around needing gas.

Victory will not belong to me, though I will hold out for as long as I can.

"If I were to say at a dinner party that England is a great country and that we have shaped the modern world for the better, from ending the international slave trade to holding the line against Hitler, people would mock me unmercifully. I can say such things in a public speech because the same people assume I am playing to the gallery. In fact, those are the things I really believe; it is my cynical remarks over the dinner table that are insincere." -An English Tory friend of John O'Sullivan's.

Well, in the dog's defense, his owner had died and he did need some food:

George Burhart, 75, apparently died of natural causes earlier this week, authorities said.

Police who entered the house Thursday found body parts scattered in three rooms, along with an 8-month-old Labrador named Shadow.

Burhart lived in a rowhouse in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia. Police believe Shadow ate some of his remains out of hunger.

Burhart's family said he got the dog about six months ago for companionship. Despite what happened, nobody seems to blame the dog. Burhart's brothers are now taking care of the dog and said they are sure that the dog did not kill him.

Very cute dog.

[via ClownCarBlog]

Kuff points out an intriguing article in the Chron about talks of city-wide WiFi availability:

The network would be built first in the parts of town with the densest populations, such as downtown or the Galleria area, then expanded, even into residential areas. It would give residential users another choice for high-speed broadband access in the home.

The cost for setting up the network would be borne by private companies that would get a part of the fees paid by subscribers to use the network. The service providers would also get a cut.

Billing issues still have to be worked out, but the service would not be free. Lewis said the city is looking at using the same type of billing arrangement planned for WiFi access now being set up at Houston's two big airports. There, users will be billed through their existing Internet service providers, thanks to a consortium of providers, Lewis said. Airport WiFi access should be available by the end of this year.

The devil is in the details of a plan like this, but overall it's an exciting prospect. It would make life for young Houstonians to know that high speed Internet would be available regardless of where they choose to reside. The problem with the current prominant providers of high speed Internet (cable co and telco) is that it all depends on where you live. This is particularly true for apartment complexes that often have contracts with off-brand cable companies like TVMAX (formerly Optel). That's even leaving aside the benefits of being able to wire up sans wires from just about anywhere, and there is tremendous benefit to that. The losers in this plan would be those coffee bars that paid for their own wifi networking to attract customers.

It has occured to me that I have an increasing number of people and characters on the blog. To help people keep track of who is who (particularly considering a couple of the name changes), I'm going to create an index.

You can find the person you're looking for by checking through the two following lists. To make it easier, I took the ones I mention regularly and put them in a smaller list up top. If you're not sure what list they belong on, you can use your browser's Search function.

REGULARS
Adam
Anna*
Audrey*
Brian
Dad
Danforth
David
Eel
Jay* (Jason)
Linus*
Lisa
Mike (Ahlf)
Mom
Ora
Pierce


THRIFTHAVEN
The Cordovas
Dundee
Landis
Meatloaf
Quan
Saul the Mumbler
Snowflake
Stoner
Strang
Yale

OFFICE SPACE
Barton
Jarvis
Jenna
Lozey
Lucus
Marcel
Roscoe
Sam Raines

THE PERIODICALS
Angel
Andrie
Brian
Callie***
Camille**
Camden
Cathy
Chip
Dad
Danforth
David
Ed
Eddie
Elciem**
Frank
Gia
Hutch
Jamie
Jessica*
JD**
Keith
Kevin***
Meatloaf
Michael
Mike Zito
Oz
Pike**
Poe
Polly
Red*
Reno
Rosalinda*
Sally
Sama
Sarah Goddess
Saul The Mumbler
Scarlett
Scott
Selene
Theus
Tigger
Vaclav
Vince
Warren


* - Person has their own profile and the hyperlink will take you there.
** - I no longer use that pseudonym, but the hyperlink will take you to the person that was under that pseudonym.
*** - Person has a website of their own or other information off-site. The hyperlink will take you there.

[Read More!]

One of the nice things about the move up here is that it gave me a chance to attend the wedding of my good friend Rosalinda. If I get married in Idaho (not particularly likely), I absolutely know where I want it to be. There is a wedding chapel an hour north of hear that is absolutely gorgeous. I'm not inclined to get married in a rent-a-chapel, but this place has to be seen to be believed. Very quaint, very beautiful.

The wedding itself was in the yard and I couldn't have asked for better weather. It was probably 90 degrees or so, but the dry heat up here isn't anything like the heat down in Houston. The breeze was amazingly still cool and I was comfortable in my long-sleeve dress shirt. It might just be that I'm calloused to warm weather, though, because I did hear a couple of complaints about the heat and the poor flower girl fainted during the ceremony (she was alright after they got her in the air conditioned building and gave her some water).

It was really a wonderful ceremony and I wish Rosalinda and Vaclav all the best.

Name: Rosalinda Olafsdotter Polansky
Alias: Yes
AKA: Rosa, Rose
Type: ESFP
Born: 1981
Base of Operations: Idaho
Occupation: Unemployed
Superpower: Killer smile
Loss Vulnerability: None, formerly luck with men
Short Version: Friend (2001- ), former romantic interest (2001-02)
Long Version:
I first met Rosalinda Olafsdotter at the University of Houston. She was actually my first smoking buddy. When I first picked up the habit I would generally go to the balcony at Oberholzer because it provided a good place that I could sit down out of the sunlight and people-watch. Rosalinda and a couple of others would generally hang out there and talk. I joined their group pretty quickly, but the only real friend that I made was Rosalinda. Our friendship was bolstered by mutual attraction and interest.

I was on the rebound from Audrey Round One at the time, which meant that I both needed to be in a relationship and needed not to be in a relationship. Rosalinda was a bit round around the waste, but she had a wonderful smile and I actually fit the major three criteria she had for a man: tall, blond, Christian. As for her, well she had the great smile that she used often, was very nice, and knew the lyrics to Bare Naked Ladies's Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel. What more could anyone possibly ask for?

It didn't take long before we were talking for hours on end outside and watching tons of movies together inside. It's difficult to say exactly what happened next. Actually, it's not. Nothing happened next. It's difficult to say why nothing happened. Well no, it's not: I freaked out. Not very long after that I orchestrated a "drifting apart" and started dating Angel instead before ultimately ending up in Audrey Round Two.

Rosalinda and I stayed casually in contact over the next year. Several months after Audrey Round Two came to an end she and I started hanging out again. I'd thought she was attractive before, but she'd dropped the excess poundage and picked up a hairstyle that made her absolutely gorgeous. I was working at UFC at the time and living off campus while she'd run out of college money and was working. We were good at finding time for one another, though. We had a lot of help from her meddling friend Lori who was bound and determined to get us together because she knew that we knew that we were both interested in one another and not getting into a relationship seemed downright silly.

But that's exactly what happened. I muddled in uncertainty and doubt. She was remarkably patient with me, though she wisely wasn't going to wait for me to stop freaking out. Before long, she got involved with another fellow. I was both disappointed and breathing a sigh of relief. Mostly I was disappointed because I simply couldn't figure out what was holding me back. It just seemed that at every opportune moment to bring it up, a voice in the back of my head would tell me that it wasn't in the cards. It would have been awfully nice if that voice had told me why, but it didn't.

Her relationship with the other fellow didn't last long. Rosalinda Round Three was cut short by an abrupt announcement: she was moving. To Idaho. If I didn't ask "Why the hell would anyone move to Idaho," I meant to. I was pretty disappointed because it was obvious at that point that I had frittered away any chance that I had with this girl that was absolutely, positively, perfect on paper. She held a going away party that was an incredibly long one because I spent whatever moments I wasn't talking to her kicking myself for letting such a wonderful and attractive person slip away.

I wanted to at least come clean with her about my feelings before she left. I helped her load the van, but I said nothing as she drove off.

We talked online once she got up there. We traded barbs about the virtues of Texas and "Taterland," as I'd grown fond of calling Idaho. We finally both came clean and told each other what we already knew. Not that it mattered, of course, because she was in Idaho. Not long after that she met a boy and things between them took off. I was quite happy for her.

When Idaho suddenly entered into my own plans, she was the first person that I contacted. It turned out that not only was she was living in the state I was moving to, but she was located in the Shelbyville to my Springfield. Her boyfriend-turn-fiance Vaclav became an invaluable resource in my job hunt and a regular chatmate. A fellow computer nerd, we had quite a bit to talk about. On June 5, 2004, I was privileged to witness the marriage of Vaclav and Rosalinda

As you probably already know, Ronald Reagan has passed away. I was ten when he left office, so he falls in before being able to remember what he was like as president and after the history textbooks end.

In March, I related a story about President Reagan and one of my earliest memories:

In 1984, I remember seeing a flier on top of the television set that had the word "President" and someone other than Ronald Reagan's name on it. Being an inquisitive kid, I asked Dad what it was. He told me that it was a brochure for Walter Mondale, who wanted to be president. I still remember the brochure and subsequent conversation because it was very unsettling to my six year old self.

From the time I was two until I was ten, Ronald Reagan was the president. Until the junk mail I assumed that he would always be president, though I was vaguely aware that there had been presidents before Reagan. After 1984 I became aware that there were people other than Reagan who wanted to be president and there were these things called elections that determined who would get to be president.

My view of Reagan was abstractly positive. America was a good country, I was taught, and if Reagan was leading America than he too must be good. When Reagan stepped down in 1989, his vice president became president and I was first introduced to the notion of presidential succession.

Reagan was physically shorter than two of his three successors, but he always stood very tall. He had the best posture of any president that I've seen. Regardless of the merits of his administration, Reagan was my first president. In ways that have nothing to do with policy, he will probably always be the standard by which I judge other presidents.

It may have something to do with growing older, but no president since has stood as tall as Ronald Reagan.

There is apparently a scandal at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

Southern University, the nation’s largest historically black university, began investigating allegations of grade buying in March 2003. Allegations point to a former worker in the school’s registrar’s office who had access to transcripts. That same worker also served as an assistant registrar at the school’s New Orleans campus from October 1997 to August 1999.

Southern University has named 514 students who received diplomas or attended the school from 1995 to 2003 as possibly purchasing their grades without attending the required classes.

Cynthia Richard’s transcript shows the completion of 16 classes and a GPA of 3.571.

According to court records, Southern University found that in spring 2000, she “only enrolled in two classes, failed both and never enrolled for other classes listed on the transcript.”

The leadership at Texas Southern University (Texas's most prominant historically black university) in Houston was an absolute mess several years ago. It was bad enough that Jesse Jackson came down and (very unproductively) got involved. Then-governor George W. Bush arranged the release of the university's president. I don't know if things have gotten better or not, but I haven't been hearing the sheer multitude of problems since.

All indicators in Louisiana are that this was done by a select few employees and was not done with the approval or knowledge of the administration. Unfortunately historically black universities already have a pretty negative reputation education-wise. Both Southern and Texas Southern law schools are just about dead last in every category and I've heard more than once (about each university) that a degree there represents an education not very much better than a high school diploma. This will certainly not help.

At Adam's wedding, I got to talk to an old friend about Canadian politics. He and I talked about it a few years back when I went up there for a different wedding, so it was neat to get an update. The Liberal Party has been in control up there for a while now with the conservatives fractured between the Alliance and Progressive Conservative (Tory) parties. Apparently the Alliance and Tories finally mended their fences and are posing a real challenge to the Government up there:

That's the result in tonight's IPSOS/Globe/CTV poll. But the real story is: the Tories are now ahead of the Grits in Ontario, the heart of the Liberal majorities. This is the first time in nearly 20 years that the Liberals have not led in Ontario.

The detailed breakdown won't be available until tomorrow, but it's clear this is simply a calamitous result for the Grits. The Tories now lead the Liberals everywhere west of Quebec. It would not be right to say they are the choice of English Canada; they still lag well behind in Atlantic Canada. Rather, they may be on their way to becoming the choice of what Michael Bliss has perceptively called "New Canada" -- Ontario and Western Canada, the dynamic, growth-oriented parts of the country. This is a historic development, years in the making but perhaps now coming to fruition: Ontario is joining the West. The line dividing West and East in Canada is no longer at the lakehead. It's at the Rideau.

That Ontario and the West have fundamentally divergent values has been a staple of analysis for decades, the source as much of western alienation as of Ontario smugness. As late as 2001, no less an authority than Stephen Harper was pronouncing on the invevitable hostility of central Canadians to the interests of the west and of western-based parties.

Andrew Coyne is on top of the situation.

The National Review's Adam Thierer pens a great column about censorship and pay television:

Building on the momentum of the new indecency witch hunt that is driving many talk shows hosts off broadcast radio, and has television shows like E.R. altering their content to keep censors happy, lawmakers are now putting cable and satellite programming in their crosshairs. There are discussions taking place in Congress today about "codes of conduct" for cable TV, and even a government-approved "family-friendly" tier on cable systems. Joe Barton (R., Tex.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, which oversees media industry regulation, recently told a crowd of cable-industry officials that censorship of pay TV is "an issue whose time is coming. I think we're approaching the time when whatever we apply to the broadcasters, in some way, voluntarily or involuntarily, is going to be applied to cable."

Step back for a moment and think about what this means for popular cable programs such as FX's The Shield, Comedy Central's South Park or The Daily Show, Showtime's Queer as Folk or The L Word, or any of the amazing programs that have aired Sundays on HBO in addition to The Sopranos (Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and Deadwood.) Are we worse off for having these shows in this world? Some policymakers apparently think so and have — in the name of "protecting the children" — put the creative community on notice that they no longer have the artistic freedom to make such programs on their own terms. And Americans who have grown to love such shows will be forced to live with sanitized version of these programs. (Would a bleeped, "kiddie-approved" version of The Sopranos even be worth watching?)

I believe in both the Constitutionality and the prudence of censoring network television and radio. I agree with the basic "public airwaves" argument when it comes to both liberal causes (regulation of media ownership) and conservative ones (censorship). I don't believe censorship is an inherently good thing and that all of public television and radio ought to be G-rated, but there are things that ought to be out-of-bounds when it comes to something as essential, easily accessible, and difficult to monitor for even active parents as basic television and radio.

That being said, pay TV (cable and satellite) and pay radio (XM, Sirius) are different birds altogether. Satellite TV has various locks that can be applied to things given a certain rating so that even if a parent feels that they must have CSPAN, CNN, and the Do-It-Yourself network they can do so without worrying about their kids finding The Shield. There is also more diversity on public radio than public television, so the "need" of a family to have pay radio simply isn't there. And besides from a practical standpoint I have an ideological problem with making all public entertainment a sandbox for kids. I don't have a problem with Howard Stern being relegated to XM, but I do have a serious problem with the government telling him that he can't broadcast anywhere.

According to CNN.com, Bill Clinton is under consideration to be John Kerry's vice presidential candidate:

Bill Clinton
Few vice-presidential possibilities boast the accomplished resume -- or political baggage -- of former President Bill Clinton. Clinton studied at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar) before returning to his home state of Arkansas. He taught at the University of Arkansas' law school for three years before, at 30, being elected the state's attorney general. Clinton later served six terms as Arkansas' governor (he won in 1978, lost a 1980 race, then was re-elected two years later), before defeating incumbent George H.W. Bush to become U.S. president, starting in January 1993. While federal law prohibits a person from seeking a third presidential term, the Constitution does not specify whether or not a former commander in chief can become vice president.

Matt Drudge points out that Amendment XII to the Constitution states "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

Amendment XXII of the Constitution states:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

That seems clear enough, doesn't it? Well, it depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Bill Clinton clearly cannot be elected President again. It doesn't say, however, that Bill Clinton can't actually become president, it just says that he can't be elected so. It doesn't say anything explicit about whether or not he could ascend to the Presidency. Therefore the Constitutional requirement that a VP candidate must be eligible to become president does not necessarily apply to Former President Clinton. In fact, John Kerry could resign the day after becoming elected president and then hand the reigns over to Bill Clinton to serve for a day short of four more years as there is no limitation on the actual number of years someone can serve as President.

This would most likely not jibe with the public, however, despite how popular many Democrats feel Clinton is.

SomeCallMeTim says the following over at Jane Galt's place:

Absent any facts at all, I would be willing to wager a large (for me) amount on the proposition that alchohol is implictated in more serious crimes against others, by at least an order of magnitude, than heroin, cocaine, and crack combined. (I am excluding crimes that result from the illegality of the latter group - shooting rival dealers, assaults while escaping cops, etc.). If people were really looking to enact laws that limited harms to others, then we'd probably restrict alchohol more and other drugs significantly less.

I wonder if it's ever occured to Tim that perhaps the reason that alcoholism (and the behavior of alcoholics) is such a large problem precisely because it's legal and so readily available to anyone who wants it?

I'm hardly a drug warrior, but he has touched on the best argument in favor of the drug war that I've found.

A lot of companies give lip service to their devotion to diversity. My current employer is no different.

I will say, however, that my first month here I saw all of four African-Americans in Idaho.

All four of them are employees of my new company.

That's what I call results :).

Jack Cluth:

Here's a good argument for why states should not be in the execution business. An inmate decides that he cannot handle his life in prison, but he doesn't have the balls to commit suicide on his own. So, he murders an innocent inmate, thereby forcing the state of Florida into the position of having to grant the inmate's wish. The executioner throws the switch on what is essentially a very public and state-funded suicide.

Not really. Even if one doesn't want to live anymore, it seems to me that there are better ways to go about ending one's life than putting yourself in a four-to-ten year death row queue to wait to die. To use that as a reason to abolish the death penalty (which, need I remind you all, I am opposed to) is like saying we should outlaw cigarettes because someone suicidal might use cigarettes to prematurely end their life.

Owen links to this interesting article on cell phones:

Chris Patti, for one, would be happy to give up that privacy for a directory. "It's impossible to find anybody's cellphone number," he says as he sits outside an Oakland ice-cream parlor on a blustery day. Then again, he doesn't see his cellphone as his private line to the world. It's his funnel for all that the world wants to tell him.

He says he receives more than 100 e-mails a day on his cellphone. "Most of them are junk," he laughs, but that's fine, he wants to be connected. E-mails are just the beginning of cellphone wonder.

One San Diego garage band recorded and distributed its video entirely with cellphones. Some online Weblogs have evolved into Moblogs - mobile phone diaries. And the new trend in politics is to get young voters' cellphone numbers in the hopes that calls and text messages will improve voter turnout.

Elsewhere in the world, text messages have spawned modern-day Paul Reveres, who ride across the wireless world in pursuit of democracy. In 2001, Philippine youths used text messages to organize the protest that toppled a corrupt president. "It gives the ability to self-organize collective action," says Howard Rheingold, whose book, "Smart Mobs," examines the phenomenon.

Nothing new in the article, but a good collection of recent innovations and trends.

Ben Stein pens a column on why he thinks Bush might still pull it out using, interestingly, my temporarily-adopted state:

No matter how much the media puts it out there, a lot of America is not buying it. You get some idea of how much of America is not buying it in the truth that at least as of this writing, with torrents of hysteria about mistreatment of suspected terrorist prisoners in Iraq, with endless efforts to connect this abuse directly with George W. Bush, Mr. Bush still holds a lead in many polls. The lead is slender, but with the gigantic propaganda war being waged against him night and day by the major media, it is deeply revealing that he is in the lead at all.

Why is that? Why is Mr. Bush still fairly popular, especially in the interior of the nation, the parts where the beautiful people do not live? Possibly it is because those friendly folks at Hill's Resort and Bottle Bay and in Ripon, Wisconsin, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Dennison, Ohio, know that Mr. Bush is one of them. Despite his patrician upbringing and his wealth -- modest indeed by John Kerry's wife's standards -- Mr. Bush connects with America. In his optimism and outgoing boyish cheer he resonates with the ordinary citizen in this country far, far better than his opponents. He is the happy, outgoing kid in the high school class whom everyone wants to be friends with. Not because he's the smartest or the richest or the handsomest. But because he's in the best mood.

This is a nation built on optimism. It is an idealistic nation. We have one candidate, Mr. Bush, who says to Americans, "We are all members of the great, happy club called America. We are the city on the hill, the light of the world. Let's be proud of ourselves and be happy. We make mistakes, but we try to correct them and go on to better days."

Supplied quote aside, is that even the perception of President Bush anymore? That's not a rhetorical question. It's something that I'm curious about. Bush was certainly elected on a campaign of optimism and in large part due to his agreeable personality. But since 9/11 there seems to be a tone in his voice that doesn't strike me as very laid back at all. This is neither a bad thing nor a good one in and of itself, just an observation - and one that could be wrong, at that. On one hand, if Bush isn't likable that's not going to help his chances. On the other, the fact that Bush is very serious about the War on Terror is likely to measure up well against an opponent whose ideas on foreign policy are neither specific nor firm.

I'm not making a substantive point about Bush up or down, but where I would have agreed with Stein a couple of years ago on those paragraphs I'm a lot less inclined to today.

Update: Owen agrees with Stein:

Part of it may be my own insurmountable optimism, but I do think that Stein makes a good point. Bush, despite being a poor communicator, still has a very positive message about America. He's no Reagan, mind you, but he still evokes patriotism. And then again, Kerry does seem to be a bit like Mondale. There's nothing inspiring about the man, or his vision of America. He's a lousy candidate who spends more of his time making people feel bad about this country than raising it up as an icon to be admired.

He makes a pretty good point in the next couple paragraphs about Kerry's problem with optimistic Americans. I could be wrong about the lack of optimism coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as I haven't been paying as much attention to the news since relocating. It's just the impression of what news I have been getting. It does seem to me that Bush's communication level has never been more important. However positive Bush is on what comes next, he has to get that through an unfriendly media.

In the comments section below, my friend Mike had the following to say:

"Low Income" housing, unfortunately Alex, is also known as "Asking for Trouble."

Remember the complex you used to live in, with the two J's, and with Adam nearby? The one that apparently went completely to pot, and had shootings and all, shortly after you left?

How about all the "low income housing projects" right on the northern border of UH - have they done any good?

Sorry, no, I can see why people wouldn't want a "low income housing project" or something similar moving in nearby - it's almost guaranteed to tank property values and lower the quality of the school system, just for starters.

I started off writing this in the comments section, but decided that it warranted its own post.

These people have to live somewhere. How is it that often the same people that argue that it's unwise to place a bunch of poor people together in HUD locales then turn around and try to keep them out of everywhere else? If sticking a bunch of poor people together in HUD locales is such a bad idea, then why is this mitigated by sticking all of the HUD locales together? Why is it such a great idea that the working poor be kept as far away from the mainstream as possible? Not everyone who lives in HUD-subsidized housing is a welfare queen or drug dealer and by relegating those that aren't with those that are isn't a particularly good way to try to help them get out of their current situation.

Of course, this isn't about the poor. This is about making the poor go away. Except when it comes to mowing our lawns, serving us where we eat, collecting our money for gas, and all of those other jobs that we don't want to do. They can be around for that, but after they're done with work they absolutely positively must go away! We are just too damn good for the likes of them. Largely because we went to the schools we're trying to keep them out of and had the positive influences we're trying to keep them away from, but oh well because that's not our problem.

Yet the people that are trying to keep these people out are the first to start lecturing about what they need to do to get out.

I, of course, remember my old apartment quite well. One of the shootings was when I was there and one of them was after I left. That's obviously not a good thing. But the evildoers were far outnumbered by people who are just trying to get by. Unlike HUD folks, they weren't depending on the government for housing subsidization. But of course a lot of people want to keep them "somewhere else" too. Then of course there are towns that don't want any multi-family housing (which means that people like Mike and myself are not welcome) and others that won't even allow non-families to share a house (meaning that Tigger and pre-married Adam wouldn't be welcome). All in the name of "property values" and keeping "undesirables" out. Luckily for people like Mike and I, we'll be able to afford houses by the time we have kids. Not everyone's that lucky, but hey, screw them.

And ss far as "lower quality schools go," I went to Seabrook, a working-class junior high school. Clear Lake City and their ilk spent a good deal of time trying to get them rerouted out of Clear Lake High School because they were "trouble." Truth be told, a lot of my Seabrook Intermediate classmates didn't make it through high school. Some failed out, some dropped out, and a few ended up in prison.

But I went to Seabrook and so did a lot of my friends. While I don't come from a working class household, a lot of of my classmates did. Living in unremarkable Seabrook provided them an opportunity to go to a good school even if they did live in multi-family housing or houses with neighbors that had cars on cinder blocks in the front yard. They deserve an education, too.

When my folks chose what became our house, they were a bit concerned about our going to Seabrook Intermediate. They ultimately decided that it might be a good thing for me to realize that not everyone gets access to a car at 16 or gets to have their own room in their own house with a big back yard.

Of course, that's a lesson a lot of people seem to vigorously want to deny.

Except when they need a Big Mac or their lawn mowed.

Jennifer Larson has a superb piece on college education. I have more to say on the general subject, but in the meantime I will relate a cruel irony.

Down in Taylor Lake Village way back in 1996ish, I had to set a course for what I would do for the rest of my life. Then, as now, being a writer was at the top of my list. But college has always been a means to an end in my house growing up and the end was to get a job, so being a creative writing major was out. It was the 90's and tech jobs were everywhere so I went the safe route and decided to major in IT.

Up in Kingwood (or maybe she was at UH at this time, I'm not sure), Audrey Elciem was deciding what to do with her life. Her grandparents suggested that there was good money in a communications degree for advertising and public relations. Though Audrey didn't write much more than poetry, she was a gifted communicator so it seemed like a good fit. Just as importantly, it was a means to the career ends.

Out in Pasadena, Anna McLoed commuted to the University of Houston. She was originally going to major in psychology as a lead-in to be an animal trainer. She later changed her major to go in to accounting when she realized she would be in business for herself. After stints at UH, San Jac, and UHD she ultimately dropped out of college. Anna and I, of course, dated for just over four years.

Somewhere in the fiery pits of Hell from where he was spawned (not that I'm bitter), a boy named Michael came from and went to college for some reason or another. I don't really know what he was going to major in, but he eventually dropped out. Michael and Audrey dated off-and-on for about three-and-a-half years.

But both Audrey and I did what we were supposed to do. We went to college to get a marketable degree in our respective fields so that we wouldn't have to worry so much about finding work. Anna and Michael floundered in college and took what might be considered the easy way out.

Yet today, Anna has a job in the IT sector while I'm working customer support where no college education is required. Michael has an advertising job while Audrey in working as a personal assistent in a job where no college education is required.

It's funny how life works, isn't it?

Hilarious:

From: [REDACTED]
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 1:11 PM
Subject: FW: Goodbye...


As many of you are aware, today is my last day at the firm. It is time for me to move on and I want you to know that I have accepted a position as "Trophy Husband". This decision was quite easy and took little consideration. However, I am confident this new role represents a welcome change in my life and a step up from my current situation. While I have a high degree of personal respect for PHJW as a law firm, and I have made wonderful friendships during my time here, I am no longer comfortable working for a group largely populated by gossips, backstabbers and Napoleonic personalities. In fact, I dare say that I would rather be dressed up like a pinata and beaten than remain with this group any longer. I wish you continued success in your goals to turn vibrant, productive, dedicated associates into an aimless, shambling group of dry, lifeless husks.

May the smoke from any bridges I burn today be seen far and wide.

Respectfully submitted,

[SIGNED]

ps. Achilles absent, was Achilles still. (Homer)

[via Houston's Clear Thinkers]

I've never had that much of an opinion of Sugar Land. I've passed through a couple of times on my way to Wharton. It shares a lot of bad qualities with my own Clear Lake, but without the saving grace of having lots of water. I knew some people that lived out there when I was in high school and they were more or less interchangeable with those around me (not meant in much of a good way). But thanks to a heads up Chris Elam, I have a really good reason to despise Sugar Land.

At a candidate forum for Sugar Land City Council held at the Marriott, candidate Mike Casey asked the crowd, "How many of you know there is going to be low income housing here?" Casey's question has sparked uproar among many residents of Sugar Land. City Hall was inundated with calls last week over the issue say insiders. The rumor circulating around town was property on Oilfield Road, just outside the current city limits, owned by Sugar Land resident State Representative Charlie Howard would be designated as low income, multifamily housing.

Casey told the Star it was his understanding that Planning & Zoning had received a preliminary application for consideration of HUD Section 8 housing, and it was believed to be on Oil Field Road.

In one paragraph, one Sugar Land politician outlines clearly what I disdain about many (though not all) suburbanites. Interestingly, I posted a while back about another thing I disdain about many suburbanites, and it was also about Sugar Land.

Update: Link added.

Chris Elam somewhat notes a Chron article about pop culture references in the new movie "Shrek 2" and disapprovingly says the following:

This time, the filmmakers solved that problem with all the pop culture allusions. These days, they are shamelessly trotted out in rapid-fire succession, but they are also a huge key to success with any TV sitcom or feature film. They make the audience feel "hip". It makes the viewer run out into the lobby and chatter excitedly, "Did you get the scene where... Did you see where... Remember when he started to sing..." It gives the audience a chance to brag to their friends about how culturally-literate they are. What a great marketing technique!

I'll have to make sure that he doesn't waste his time with No-Lyfe Productions, which spares no expense at quirky, obscure, and downright tired references to nerd culture.

Subject: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE

[...]

*Bob Dole - divorced the mother of his child, who had nursed him through the
long recovery from his war wounds.
*Newt Gingrich - divorced his wife who was dying of cancer.
*Dick Armey - House Majority Leader - divorced
*Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas -divorced
*Gov. John Engler of Michigan -divorced
*Gov. Pete Wilson of California -divorced
*George Will -divorced
*Sen. Lauch Faircloth - divorced
*Rush Limbaugh - Rush and his current wife Marta have six marriages and four
divorces between them.
*Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia - Barr, not yet 50 years old, has been married
three times.

I'm not making this point to pick on Republicans. I'm not even goin to use the H-word that this item was clearly meant to bring to mind. Rather, I'm just going to point out that it's hard for conservatives to credibly lament the decline of family values when many of said politicians and commentators have done their part to further mainstream said decline.

Friday there was a great job on the IdahoWorks web page. It was so good that I got on to WSFTP to upload my resume to my website, went to Kinko's to download it on to disk, and went to the Job Center to upload it again to my account there (I had to apply through them).

But the job was gone.

It was posted on Friday. It was somehow gone by Tuesday even with Monday being a federal holiday where the Job Center was closed.

This is not providing me very good motivation to get me off my kiester.

Callie is apparently the scribe of the Oklahoma Float Trip this year. Sounds like a good time was had by all!

Eel has been to Thrifthaven three times so far.

The first time I just showed it to her. She said that it didn't smell quite as bad as I had said.

The second time it was hot and she said it smelled worse than I had said it did.

A full bottle of Fabreze and one day later, it smells a mixture of unfortunate and nice.

Now, who's taking bets as to whether the pet/smoke/mold smell or Febreze smell will outlast the other?

When driving back from dinner, Eel realized that her gas tank needed to be refilled. Of course, most of the City in Idaho's northern territories are covered with gas stations that cost more than $2.00, so we went about 10 minutes south of town and probably used up more gas to eat away any of our savings by finding a 66 Station that was still under $2.00.

It was still worth it.

Even if we have to drive 30 miles to the next town north, it'll still be woth it.