Very rarely do I make it a point to unearth hypocrisy on the far left, but this is too much for me to bear:

Rep. Jim McDermott, who represents the coffee houses of liberal downtown Seattle, was treated like a rock star at the Democratic convention. Everywhere he went, he was recognized as the man whom filmmaker Michael Moore threw Bush Bashing softballs to in “Fahrenheit 9/11.” He was especially popular with a group college Democrats, who sobered up one morning when he told them: “Everybody in this room who is 17 years old should know that the likelihood of a draft in a second Bush administration is almost a certainty.”

If a military draft is imminent, it won't be because of George W. Bush or his administration. The only calls for a draft have come from critics of the administration and people on the left like Mr. McDermott. No, not like Mr. McDermott, but rather the congressman himself:

It's true, there is a proposal to revive the draft. Only not from Bush — from Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott.

In fact there he was on CNN last Friday, arguing that Americans aged 18 to 26 should be conscripted into two-year terms in either the military or a civilian service.

"I think every man and woman ought to be subject to service in this country, just like the Israelis or a lot of other countries," he said.

McDermott and five other Democrats first proposed a draft before the invasion of Iraq. His aim was to desanitize the coming war, to get everyone to confront that "going to war means people dying."

Contract? They don't care about no stinkin' contract:

The three-judge panel ruled Thursday that the deal between Joel McKiernan and Ivonne Ferguson -- in which McKiernan donated his sperm and would not be obligated to pay any support -- was unenforceable because of "legal, equitable and moral principles."

Despite an agreement that appeared to be a binding contract, the father is obligated to provide financial support, the court decided.

"It is the interest of the children we hold most dear,"' wrote Senior Judge Patrick Tamalia.

This is nothing new. The basic argument is that someone has to help pay for the child (since the mother can't) and since the father is around, he's nominated for the job. While it seems unfair to the child that he not be afforded the income of two parents, a contract is a contract is a contract in my view.

One ethics professor in the article suggests that this could have repercussions for anonymous donors through clinics. Many feminists don't have a problem with the complete double-standard here because sperm donors are essential to a woman's right to get pregnant without needing a father. But when the mother realizes that she made a mistake and needs some financial help, they're perfectly willing to turn around and argue that it's all about the child instead of anonymous donations, where it's all about the mother.

The article is poorly written, though. The mother suggests that there was no contract, but the article says that the contract was found to be void. So I'm not sure if the existence of the contract is the subject of the debate or whether it's legality is. It appears, if I'm reading the article correctly, that the court basically said that it didn't care if there was a contract or not because the contract would be void.

Regardless, I've read cases where live sperm donors have had their contracts nullified by the courts and I have yet to read of a case where the contract was upheld.

[via Matt Margolis]

... and here it is. The results:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. President George W. Bush - Republican (65%)
3. Michael Badnarik - Libertarian (57%)
4. Senator John Kerry (MA) - Democrat (45%)
5. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH) - Democrat (42%)
6. Rep. Dick Gephardt (MO) - Democrat (40%)
7. Gov. Howard Dean (VT) - Democrat (40%)
8. Senator Joe Lieberman (CT) - Democrat (36%)
9. Senator John Edwards (NC) - Democrat (36%)
10. Michael Peroutka - Constitution Party (35%)
11. Rev. Al Sharpton - Democrat (22%)
12. David Cobb - Green Party (22%)
13. Ralph Nader - Independent (22%)
14. Fmr. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (IL) - Democrat (18%)
15. Dr. John Hagelin - Natural Law (17%)
16. Gen. Wesley Clark - Democrat (15%)
17. Lyndon H. LaRouche - Democrat (10%)
18. Walt Brown - Socialist Party (8%)

The only real surprises here are that Kucinich is as high as he is and Clark is as low as he is.

Does anyone know of any other such quizzes?

"I've always refrained from putting political stickers on my car with one exception (Orlando Sanchez's first run for mayor), not because I believe all Democrats are bad people and likely to do mean things, but because there are nutjobs all over the political spectrum who might key a car with a sticker they don't like if they were drunk or angry, and I love my Jeep more than I love any of the silly b@stards pursuing careers in politics." -Kevin Whited

The University of Texas is planning to institute an honor code to, among other things, tackle the growing nation-wide problem of cheating:

Established in 1842, the University of Virginia's honor code is among the nation's oldest. Under it, a student must act appropriately when they are in ''Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and elsewhere at any time when he identifies himself as a University of Virginia student in order to gain the reliance and trust of others."

But the university continues to see high levels of lying, cheating and stealing, said Meghan Sullivan, who chairs the Honor Committee.

Last year, the committee investigated 72 cases, including nine that resulted in expulsions from its 23,000-student campus.

[...]

In surveys done over the past decade of more than 14,000 students at 50 colleges, McCabe found that 75 percent of the students had cheated. He also discovered that schools with honor codes had 25 to 33 percent fewer incidents of serious cheating on exams.

''If you read as many surveys as I have, there is no way they don't have an impact," said McCabe, who worked on the surveys with Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity.

More colleges are learning that honor codes have "a very positive impact" and are introducing them under the leadership of their students, McCabe said.

''Honor codes should be made a student's responsibility — not an administrator's. Through peer pressure, they really give students appropriate ways of behavior," he said.

[...]

The University of Houston has an "academic honesty policy" that encourages professors to ask students to show identification before taking exams or have them sign a pledge that they will not cheat.

I vaguely recall them asking for ID in some of the auditorium classes in my freshman year, but I have no recollection of ever signing any such pledge. While I never cheated at UH, I sincerely doubt any such pledge would have stopped me if that's what I decided to do. Chances are I signed the pledge in between signing up for classes and getting my parking pass.

I'd imagine that such pledges could be extremely useful in smaller institutions where "peer pressure" exists, but the University of Texas has the largest student body on any single campus in the country at 52,000. While there is a vague sense of student comraderie at such institutions, they are simply too big and unwieldy to have "peer pressure" for anything. An individual college or major could probably have more success than this university-wide attempt. While a UH pledge wouldn't have had any effect on me, an Honors College or College of Technology effect might have, since I actually knew my classmates, saw them on a regular basis, and therefore might have felt "beholden" to them to one degree or another. I felt no such obligation to some random junior art history major or sophomore business major. Outside of athletic or campus events and classes with hundreds of people in them during our freshman and sophomore years, for most intents and purposes we were going to entirely different universities and had little in common.

Even Texas A&M, which has almost cult-like solidarity, hasn't had any success with their honor code.

The other aim of UT's pledge deals with student social interaction, which at this point is two vague to comment on.

An American Coup d'État? [via Lex]
If an eccentric Marine hero was to be believed, there was a very serious attempt at a coup to overthrow Roosevelt in the 1930's. This History Today article from 1995 explains the details and wonders and speculates why this story was never fully explored.

Boys "R" Us [via Dustbury]
Some graphic artist for Toys Backwards-R Us was apparently really bored and decided to have some fun. It reminds me of the whole scandal with Disney movies. Lion King in particular where the feathers spell out the word "sex" for a brief moment. I thought it was a hoax or that the righty-tighties were delirious, but we watched it over and sociology and sure enough there it was. Beware the bored animator or graphic artist!

Anti-Bush Graphiti defaces UH campus {Beware: Pop-ups}
Suspect in anti-Bush vandalism jailed {Beware: Chronicle article}
I was going to put this in a separate post about political activity and lack thereof at UH, but it turns out that the vandal apparently wasn't a student. He put up the picture to the right on various university buildings. In the Coogfans forum (with the pop-ups) they're also talking about some cameras they put on the campus parking lot. They've been adding security measures on top of security measures to combat UH's unsafe reputation. While the problem is more perception than reality, perception is important: warnings about security was one of the reasons that Eel dismissed the interest that UH expressed in her.

Kansas group monitors sermons
Preach it, my (Big) Brother!
On one hand, I do understand that legally tax-exempt religious organizations are barred from making political endorsements. On the other hand, religious organizations inherently have core beliefs on social morality (conservative churches) and economic justice (liberal churches) and the idea of figuratively taping the mouth or snitching on religious organizations whose ideas you disagree with is troubling. I believe this as firmly with religious leaders that support Democrats as I do those that support Republicans.

U-M Detroit Arab American Study portrays a complex population [via Judd]
As one might surmise from the title, the University of Michigan (at Detroit?) did a survey of Arab Americans in the Detroit area and found some interesting results and some expected ones. Relatively few (15%) have personally had a "bad experience" post-9/11 relating to their ethnicity despite the broad definition (included name-calling) and over twice as many (33%) have recieved explicit support. Lower numbers of in the ethnic community support our adventures in the Middle East, but higher numbers have faith in law enforcement. One thing to keep in mind is that a minority of those polled (42%) were Muslims, so the controls could vary pretty wildly between Christian and Muslim Arabs (and Childeans). You can read the PDF file here.

Virtual Social Climbing
Psychology Today takes a look at invitation-only websites like Friendster and Orkut and finds it lacking. The only way you can really "validate" people in an online networking service is to interview them personally. Except that such things cost money, which create barriers, which make the pool of applicants smaller, which makes it less useful.

Every day I try to make time to go up and down Red Hill twice. Believe it or not, it's kind of a workout. So anyway, during one trip I decided to take some pictures and post them on the blog. You can click on any picture to see a 1024/768 copy.

[Read More!]

I'm working on a new feature with the blog. The bad news is that it requires me to go over all of my old posts and find references to various people I've mentioned.

The person I've mentioned most on this blog is Kevin, through various linking and talking about going to shows and hanging out with him and Callie. There are over 150 posts that mention him.

Next is Audrey, who has about 75.

But the worst so far has been Eel. Since I've only known her for half of the life of this blog, it shouldn't be a problem. But Nucleus's search feature doesn't go by "whole word only"... which means that any time I say a word with an e-e-l in there, it shows up.

I'd just like to say that I talk about my fEELings way too dang much on this blog.

In about 250 posts or so.

Update: Okay, Ora was hell also. I mention the burntORAngereport, talk about corpORAtions and such things a lot. 400 times to be precise. That's over 1-in-5 posts.

"Me, I knew my dad for about six years, but I don’t remember anything. My dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years. This isn’t so much like a new family as it’s like he sets up a franchise…What you see at Fight Club is a generation of men raised by women…My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what? My dad didn’t know. When I got a job and turned twenty- five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn’t know so he said, get married. I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."
Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

My neighbor Landis is a very fertile guy. As near as I can pick up from what he's told me, this is his story:

Born was born and raised in Gate City. By sixteen he dropped out of school, got a GED, and moved out of his parents house and in with his pregnant girlfriend, also estranged from her family. He decided to be all that he could be and joined the army. While in the service, he picked up another girlfriend and a son. He later reconciled with his first girlfriend, but not before getting into a fight with her then-boyfriend, getting arrested for battery, and being discharged from the Army. Before his second daughter was born, they broke up. He shacked up with a new girlfriend and shortly after his second daughter was born, his new girlfriend concieved another. He just turned 22 and has four children by three different mothers.

One of the more interesting things about his story is how non-chalantly he told me about it. To him, it seems practically normal. He only explained it to me when talking about the two mothers of his children, how one was dead-set on reuniting and the other was busy trying to fix him up with someone. Neither request child support and in fact the latter picks up his grocery bill. I met her this week and she seems like a great girl. I also met two of his daughters, both of whom are absolutely beyond precious.

What's funny is that seeing him play with his daughters while his ex-girlfriend looks on looks as positively normal as he describes it. If I didn't know the back story, I'd swear that they're a family.

In an odd way, they're the only family they've got.

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Federal Court OKs Ban on Sale of Sex Toys [via Lex]
I object to the law under nearly every principle except Constitutionality. If Alabamans want to be Alabamans, that's left to Alabamans. As I've said before, the notion that the Constitution protects sexual activity is absurd. There is no privacy amendment.

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? [via Kevin]
New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent says "yes." While I consider the notion of overall media bias to the left to be debatable and worthy of discussion (I fall into the "liberal bias exists" camp), the New York Times is about as "Fair and Balanced" as Fox News, which is to say it isn't at all (though their bias, of course, leans in opposing directions). While Kevin chalks up the bias as more intentional and Okrent says it's more passive, I'm not particularly sure it matters. The point of the matter is that it's there and everything that is read in the NYT ought to be read through that lens (which is not to say it should be disregarded entirely).

Right Stuff, Wrong Staff: John Kerry Visits NASA and Blows a Photo Op
NASA Ordered to Pull Kerry Photos Offline
SpaceRef has been following the non-story of Understandably Goofy John Kerry in the Ultra-Cool Rocket Hatch.

Unhappy Workers Should Take Prozac --Bush Campaigner [via Warliberal]
Speaking on non-issues, this applies as well. The title makes it sound as though it was some sort of policy position or public defense of accusations against the Administration that the new jobs being created aren't as good as the ones that were lost. Rather, it was a private comment made by an assistant on a pay phone that was overheard by a reporter. I make a lot of wry remarks to friends and coworkers and they're indicative of nothing.

The Case for George W. Bush (i.e., what if he's right?) [via Knapp]
Tom Junod makes a unique "vote for the asshole" argument, the asshole being the sitting Commander-in-Cheif. I was going to give this it's own post, but that would mean quoting from it and I kept finding more and more from it I wanted to quote. I disagree with the Bush-is-an-asshole premise so it doesn't sway me one way or the other. But it's an extraordinarily well-written argument that has at least made Knapp think.

Andrew Sullivan on John Kerry's Nomination Speech
Sullivan has apparently decided that Kerry is, contrary to his earlier column about being the conservative candidate, a liberal candidate. Imagine that.

A year or two ago, I had an odd charge appear on my credit card bill. It was only a couple of bucks so I really didn't care except that I wanted to make sure that I wasn't getting charged a monthly fee for something that I didn't want. Hadn't happened with this company before, but better safe than sorry. What followed was the most excruciating half-hour I'd spent on the phone in a long while. I wanted to ask a question, I wanted to get the answer, and I wanted to get on with my day. Instead, I spent 30 minutes listening to one ad after another for a service that I didn't want because of a mistake on my credit card bill. By the time it was done, I wanted to send them an invoice for the time they took from me.

It's always good to learn something about yourself. What I learned that day is that I have little patience for my time being wasted on the phone with sales pitches that I don't want when, unlike with a telephone solicitor, I can't just hang up. I'm a captive audience. Though I didn't work for OmniStar TV for very long, I learned something about myself. I learned what I'm not willing to do for money.

I had always assumed that I was easy-going and capitalistic enough to do just about anything legal. I figured that I wouldn't have a problem working for Big Bad Tobacco, endorsing sexual deviance, or whatever made me a quick and honest buck. It wasn't that I was immoral, I just wasn't, you know, up tight. I am not generally inclined to tell people how to live their lives. I have my ideas of what a proper life consists of, but as long as they're only harming themselves, no harm no foul, right? Well, not so much.

One of the things I take most seriously is financial responsibility. Anna and I almost broke up over a $3,000 debt that she had foolishly accumulated. Another person's $30,000 debt was almost a deal-breaker for me. I am big on money management and people spending their money wisely. OmniStar is a good company with a great product. Though sales was not my primary job, I had no problem selling the product. What I did have a problem with, however, was selling the product to people who couldn't afford it and didn't want. It wasn't sales that got me, it was retention.

Some guy calls in and says that he wants to downgrade from the Caviar Plan to the more sensible Filet Mignon Plan. I can tell that the guy is not particularly educated and I can hear machines running in the background. One guy, I kid you not, was calling while on break working at a fast food joint. He's obviously a guy that doesn't need the Caviar Plan. The only people that need 45 movie channels are those with families (he only had one reciever activated) and/or those that can for whatever reason clearly afford it (he was $200 in the hole and hadn't been current since Clinton was in office). So he's calling in to cancel a plan that he doesn't need. He didn't end up downgrading.

Or I'll take another case of a guy that lost his job and needs to downgrade to the basic Meat & Taters Plan. He might want to cancel altogether, but for now he wants to try to basic channels. He loves movies, but he just can't afford it. It was my job to convincingly read from a script that told him (just like the fast food guy) that he did need this programing package that he could not afford. In my zealousness, I even pointed out that he'd have more time to watch movies since he doesn't have a job. I said it in a half-joking and friendly manner, but he realized I had a point.

Like the fast food guy, I convinced him to hold on to the package that he didn't need for a price he couldn't afford. There's a reason that companies upsell: it works. Like when I called the credit card company some time ago, they didn't call to hear a sales pitch but because they needed to hear me out before I could make the requested changes to the account.

Ethically speaking, I can't make decisions for other people. Nor am I particularly responsible for the decisions that people make. If I hadn't tried to upsell him, someone else would have. The unemployed guy said, "Thanks, Buddy" when we got off the phone. He had nothing to thank me for and I was not his buddy.

After a couple of experiences like that, I became incapable of reselling. I couldn't do it. I deviated from the almighty script. Once you start doing that, you put yourself in a position to be fired. I was let go from my last two employers and I couldn't afford to wait it out and be let go again.

So, just when I was starting to get really good at the job, I quit.

I'd be lying if I said there weren't other reasons. My employment there was temporary from the outset. I even chose the schedule so that I could look for a better job. Unfortunately, the schedule didn't leave me with enough time to do that and I was missing potential leads. Lastly, I would have had to leave anyway because I had a trip planned during a blackout week (no absenses allowed).

But mostly it was reselling an unnecessary (if nice) product to people that called with the intention of financially doing the right thing.

While commenting on dollar stores over at No Girl Friday, I realized that while it's great to save money on some things, on others it's never worth it. Three things come to mind: Cheese, batteries, and toilet paper.

What're your "spoil yourself" items?

Last night, Dundee was waiting for his girlfriend to get back with his car. She had his cell phone, so I loaned him my phone to give her a call. She didn't answer.

RAW: Hey Dundee, your girlfriend called last night. She said the car broke down. I was out and I left the phone here, so I didn't get the message till this morning.
Dundee: Yeah, she told me about that. I told her if she doesn't again I'll beat the shit out of her.
RAW: ...
Dundee: So tell me if she does it again.
RAW: It'll be a cold day in Hell... I gotta go. Talk to you later, man.
Dundee: Seeya, Bud.

Guess my vibes were off the mark.

He told me the other day that he wasn't going to be in the complex long because he was going to be buying a house soon. Something tells me there's another reason he may not be around long.

Surprise surprise, he made friends with Strang pretty quickly. At least that mean's he's not a racist.

That puts him ahead of Corrupt. That's not a pseudonym, the dude goes by the name "Corrupt." Corrupt is an ex-con hobo who's free trips via Union Pacific were put to a halt when he was caught on his way to Oregon. They dropped him off at the next stop (here) and told him they'd have him arrested if they caught him again. He lives at the shelter down the road and hung out here from time to time to soothe his extroverted tendencies. He's pretty popular because he hands out beer like it's candy. He goes into the local grocery store with a duffel bag or a suitcase (!!!) and shoplifts in a pretty flagrant fashion (suitcase!). "Albertson's has a sale," he says with a wink and a smile.

He also said, not realizing that (black resident) Snowflake (who was sitting outside her apartment across the way), "I fucking hate niggers. I know that ain't right, but it sure as hell ain't wrong."

Free beer wasn't enough to keep him in our good graces since. He hasn't been back since. I'm hoping that has something to do with Albertson's.

The Conservative Party -- Kerry's Democrats
I've figured for the past month or so, Sullivan was going to endorse John Kerry for president sometime in September. While Sullivan doesn't endorse Kerry in his latest column, he sets the stage for it perfectly by defining Kerry as the conservative and Bush as the liberal. He starts off by defining conservatism as "against change" and liberal as "for it," but outside of foreign policy he later defines conservatism as "agreeing with Andrew Sullivan" and liberalism as "disagreeing with Andrew Sullivan."

Kerry Iraq Documentary [via Chris]
A damning 12 minutes of footage of John Kerry's various takes on the wars in Iraq. Getting... headache... miss... Howard... Dean...

Morrison v. DeLay
Morrison Poll Numbers
Greg and Kuff are pretty excited about some new polls that have challenger Morrison down by only ten points. The problem as I see it is that ever after the ethics investigation and so forth, DeLay is still at nearly 50%. I'm not sure it can go down much further than that. Their best chance to take down DeLay is proving enough in court to make him resign or make Republicans want to distance themselves so far from him he'll leap over to punditry or (more likely) lobbying.

Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior [via Judd]
Bush is apparently a raving lunatic because a psychologist that never treated him says so and he's taking medication because someone told them so, an unnamed aide confirmed it, and they actually know the name of Bush's physician. Oooooooh!

The 100 Years (Bias) War [via Lex]
Rhetorica reproduces a report on media bias and adds some interesting thoughts. It's a pretty fair assessment, though Rhetorica's criticisms of it are worth noting.


My brief conversation with a McIntosh apple
My second brief conversation with a McIntosh apple
My third brief conversation with a McIntosh apple
My fourth brief conversation with a McIntosh apple
My fifth brief conversation with a McIntosh apple
I'm not prone to eating apples, but Ida eaten that sucker by now. Nothing's worse than tart-mouth fruit.

Belief in hell boosts economic growth, Fed says

The St Louis Fed drew on work by outside economists who studied 35 countries, including the United States, European nations, Japan, India and Turkey and found that religion shed some useful light.

"In countries where where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seems to be less corruption and a higher standard of living," the St. Louis Fed said in its July quarterly review.

For instance, 71 percent of the U.S. population believe in hell and the country boasts the world's highest per capita income, according to the 2003 United Nations Human Development Report and 1990-1993 World Values Survey.

Ireland, not far behind the United States in terms of income, likewise has a healthy fear of a nether world with 53 percent of the population acknowledging hell's existence.

The basic argument is that a belief in Hell is inversely corrolated with corruption, so the more people believe in Hell, the less corrupt a nation is overall. Since corruption drags an economy, the less corruption the more efficiently an economy operates. These ideas are not particularly new and were in fact advanced by, among others, Adam Smith himself.

An interesting thing to note is that economic success is not corrolated with religiosity itself, but whether that religion believes in Hell. What's even more interesting is that this happens despite an inverse corrolation between education level among individuals and religiosity and that church attendance and economic growth within a society are also inversely related. So it's not a matter of church attendance any societal benefits that come with that (increased community interaction, for instance), but squarely on Hell.

You can read the actual report here.

Tristan in Australia objects to the gratuitous Fourth of July celebration in Victoria:

Really, I wouldn’t’ve given a damn if there were half a dozen American flags and half a dozen Australian flags (actually, I might've found it kinda cute; at worst I would've seen it as an Australian celebration of freedom and democracy and what the US have done for us). In fact, if there had been one very prominant Australian flag and a majority of American flags around it, that would’ve been fine (e.g. in the middle and a size larger). After all, today is a very special day for them and incidentally for the entire world, and I doubt Australia’s current democratic nature has nothing to do with America’s (just look at the Senate, or the organisers of the Eureka Stockade). Flying the Australian flag is simply appropriate respect on Australian soil. I call it manners and etiquette, but I realise a lot of people lack them these days. If nothing else, isn’t Australia a democracy like America? Don’t we deserve to celebrate freedom and democracy here, every day?

The same sort of thing happens in Texas during Cinco de Mayo, though I never thought enough about it to be offended or upset about it.

There are, it would seem, unbelievers:

If you would ask any schoolchild how many states there are in the United States, you will get the same answer: 50. Fifty states in the Union. It is simply an accepted "fact." If you would disagree with this supposed "fact," you would be branded insane or worse.

However, mounting evidence shows that there are in fact only 49 states in the US, and the "state" of Idaho is a baseless myth.

We have been trying to distribute and publish this information for over *two years*, but our scholarship has not been given any respect. We have been censored, vilified, ridiculed and spat upon by the "traditional" geographers and historians, but WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

All we ask is that the existence of the state of Idaho be debated, as every other historical and geographic "fact" can be debated. Time after time, our opponents have refused to debate us on the FACTS. This alone should tell you something about the people who support the "existence" of this "43rd state."

Please read the following evidence VERY CAREFULLY, and you will be astonished at the veracity of our cause.

I suppose my existence would count as "proof." Except that when I was first planning the move and before I publicized it, I briefly considered keeping my location undisclosed by using a fictitious name for the state (Deseret, the name the LDS gave for a proposed state that eventually became parts of OR, CA, NV, AZ, ID, UT, WY, CO, & NM), the name of a state proposed by the . I even created a map of sorts for the fictitious state, including Capital City (Salt Lake City, Utah), renamed universities and political structures, and so on. I figured that would be a bit much for a mostly true-blog so I never used it and have instead just declined to name the city in which I live. But creating a state sure was fun! Yes, I'm a nerd, what of it?

Anyway, point being, I made up Idaho for all you (except Eel) know.

[via Tristan]

Cate Edwards must be making quite the impression at the Democratic National Convention. I'm getting a ton of hits with her name on it and two people have commented on this post, voting for Cate over the Bush girls.

Michael Williams on the John Kerry picture below:

Lots of people seem to think John Kerry looks silly in a clean suit, but I don't see what the fuss is about. That's what people wear when they're around expensive and fragile equipment. Big deal.

Some commenters say that it's not the clean suit, but John Kerry's grin.

Dude, if I was in a real live rocket hatch, do you have any idea how goofy my grin would be?!?!

Trust me, you have no idea!

I dunno which is worse, Republicans trying to make hay out of it or Democrats that are angry about it.

Dude, a rocket hatch!!!!

The Height Gap [via MoN]
Fascinating account of comparative heights. Europe is growing taller and America is not. Japan has, in fact, almost caught up! It also explains the relevence of the numbers. The author tries to tie height to income variation (read: socialism), but admits late in the column that there's little to back him up. A lot of it comes down to general health, where the US's standing is not so good.

2004 Florida Voting Machine [via Lex]
Well, I suppose that's one way of making sure "every vote counts."

High-Stakes Convention: Poll Shows Support for Kerry Weakens on Issues and Attributes [via Jen]
I'm only linking to this as a follow-up to a previous RAW Links where the numbers were considerably more even. Though the overall race is tied, Bush is presently polling better on the issues (Bush 3, Tied 3, Kerry 0, a month ago it was 0-2-4) and on personal attributes (5-1-0 compared to 3-1-2 a month ago) (note: I conservatively use a 5-point margin-of-error instead of the poll's 3 point MOE). Standard disclaimer: There's a long way to go between now and November and the numbers are pretty versitile.

They weren't wearing black ties and white shirts....
In the comments section of one of my posts on LDS, Chris said that he'd be posting on his experiences with Mormons and he's made good on his word. An interesting couple of coincidences arise. First, an OmniStar coworker that answered some of my questions about LDS was also the son of a Presbyterian minister, though he was disowned after his conversion. His father's quote about how LDS gets converts is also exactly how my coworker was converted in the midst of his parents' divorce. The second coincidence is how similar his story is to the priceless Mormon episode of SouthPark.

Baby Cons in the Mist [via Amanda]
Jonah Goldberg tackles the idolatry revolving around the youth vote, coins a new phrase, and explains his secret plan to win an economic debate using funny armpit noises.

In case you missed it, Amanda Strassner is back

Who's That Pickin' a Banjee
I haven't picked up 1100 Springs latest, but Jack Sparks has and he can't stop listening to it. 1100's previous effort, Straighter Line, is one of the 10 most solid CD's that I've picked up since getting in to Texas Country. I need to look under my change for some money to get their newest, Bandwagon.

Eel is on an OB rotation, which is one of the most demanding rotations a medical resident can have (30 hours on, 18 off, 30 hours on, 18 off...). As such, she called to ask that I pay her phone bill so that she wouldn't be assessed any late fees. I took one of her phone bills from the mail slot and called the telco's 1-800 number to make the payment. I wasn't positive that I'd be able to make the payment since I wasn't the account holder, a family member, or a spouse. I hoped that there was something on the bill that I could recite in order to demonstrate that I was making the payment with the consent of the account holder. The account number was the phone number with three numbers and a letter after it, but the customer service rep never asked for it. I did tell him the exact amount owed before he told me, which may have helped demonstrate that I was at least familiar with the account. But other than that, I could have made a payment without the account holder's knowledge.

It was official policy at OmniStar not to allow anyone whose name wasn't on the account to make changes, payments, or even inquiries. That was the policy, but it was routinely ignored in the name of convenience. If someone were to say that they were the account holder's spouse or child (over 18, if we felt the need to ask) we'd go ahead and make changes. I occasionally dealt with problems that occured due to this, but none of the complaintants even thought to suggest that we shouldn't have made the change based on a non-account holding family member's request. The only surefire protection that an account holder has is setting up a password, but we don't tell the customers of that option unless they ask because it leads them to the assumption that we are not worthy of their trust.

It's a thin line between convenience and privacy. One can easily pretend to be authorized by an account holder even if their motivations are not benign. In one case at OmniStar, an estranged husband called in to order $200 worth of Pay-Per-Views to spite their wife. But nine times out of ten, the spouse is simply at work or otherwise unable to make the call themselves. In the name of expedience we went ahead and did whatever they asked. Someone can call in and find out a lot about a person simply by asking to "go over a bill" and it's a good way for a stalker to get intimate details about their prey.

When calling the telco, I didn't ask for any information and the only thing I did was make a payment, which few would do against the wishes of an account holder. But I can easily imagine a scenario in which someone would pay the bill for someone with whom there was assymetrical romantic interest so that the person would "owe" them. While legally they would have no standing in court, that wouldn't be the point. Most people like to consider themselves good people and not be indebted to others and would want to make good on any incurred debts. This is particularly true when it's not some faceless credit card company but someone that they once loved, may still love, or acknowledge loves them even if it's not reciprocated. Women in particular are more likely to fall into this line of thinking and a lot of men know this and take advantage of it.

I know first-hand of at least one estranged husband who was trying to win back the graces of his wife by making payments for her. She was strapped for cash and it was appreciated (though not asked for), but it came at a high emotional cost. Ultimately, for good or for ill (I believe the former) it worked and they are still married. This isn't the only case that this happened. ACME had to set up a policy not to allow people to start paying for others' accounts when one young lady had an account paid for her and any time she spent over the allowed 60-minutes per day he would hold it over her head. It wasn't an isolated incident as I paid a few months for Ora's account and while I didn't make an issue of it (in fact, the first couple months it was annonymous), I did feel like I was owed something in return. Even benevolent giving of that sort can inadvertantly lead to trouble.

But then again, 19 times out of 20, such payments are going to be benign. Is the 1-in-20 chance that it isn't worth putting everyone else's convenience at a disadvantage?

It's a good question.

The one policy area where my views are uniformly and radically right-wing is without a doubt K-12 education. I don't know of a single politician whose ideas on he subject aren't well to my left. The President's reforms have only been a disappointment in me because of their lack of scope. As such, it's one of the areas in which my views are nigh irreconcilable with the Democratic Party.

With these two things in mind, it's somewhat heartening to see Kerry surprisingly falling out of the traditional Democratic education policy failings:

Many liberals had hoped that Kerry would attack the testing requirement set forth in Bush's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which has become increasingly unpopular, especially among teachers' unions. But Kerry, who had voted for NCLB, instead challenged two longstanding, and fiercely defended, union prerogatives: seniority-based pay increases and rules virtually guaranteeing veteran teachers tenure. The candidate proposed a "new bargain"--a $30 billion, 10-year plan of federal grants which would allow districts to raise the pay of teachers whose students consistently test above average, while at the same time making it easier for schools to fire bad teachers. "Greater achievement ought to be a goal," Kerry said, "and it should be able to command greater pay, just the way it does in every other sector of professional employment."

As with most issues where my views fall out of the mainstream, I tend to appreciate baby-steps when I see them. This doesn't give Kerry a leg up Bush on education, but Kerry is in a unique position to put changing education out of the Republican Party's agenda and on to America's. President Bush has been a disappointment to me on education (though I do hope that Orrin Judd is right that Bush is taking an incrementalist approach).

If Kerry is elected, he's positioning himself to be a lot better an education president than I would have thought. A recipient, I suppose, of the soft bigotry of low expectations for Democratic politicians when it comes to education.

I've complainted about commented on my surprise at the farmer's tan I've gotten since relocating to Idaho.

Since then, I've purchased suntan lotion to alleviate the problem. I put it on along and with a tank-top went walking up and down nearby Clay Hill for a little over an hour. Unfortunately, I wasn't as thorough with the lotion as I should have been. I got the parts that got hit hardest the last time I went out with a tank-top (top of the shoulders and back of the neck), but didn't get other parts, particularly the area right below the shoulders and neck.

The result?

My tan has gone from a farmer's tan to a tie-died one, easing in and out of tanness depending on how much lotion I put on a particular area.

Weird.

Here's a pretty negative review of the Mormon movie (by an LDS believer):

Whether or not you believe The Book of Mormon is true -- and I should say up front that I do -- many of its stories are prime movie material, full of drama, excitement and inspiration. I suspect one day a good film will emerge that makes use of the book's events and characters.

"The Book of Mormon Movie," now playing at select theaters across the West, is not that film. Produced, written and directed by Gary Rogers, who has no prior film experience, it is obviously the work of someone, well, with no prior film experience. Its screenplay (for which Craig Clyde is co-credited) merely recreates all the events of the first 66 pages of The Book of Mormon without any regard for plotting, storytelling or character development. There is no climax, no clear narrative path. The acting is uniformly bland, as if the actors are merely reciting scripture (which they often are), rather than portraying living, breathing people. The movie is the very definition of "perfunctory," seemingly made just for the sake of making it. It is about as imaginative as if a committee of dull, suit-wearing middle-aged men got together and tried to stage a ballet.

That Rogers made it with the pure goal of bringing a beloved work of scripture to life, I do not question. But the finished product is pedestrian and mishandled. It is a classic case of a filmmaker's love for his material being much stronger than his talent for filming it.

Here's another negative review from a newspaper:

This two-hour installment covers the first 50 pages or so of The Book of Mormon, which, along with the Bible, is the core text of the LDS faith. Church members will find the film to be a faithful adaptation of the story of Nephi and his father, Lehi, Hebrew prophets who lead a journey to a new Promised Land - the Americas - in the sixth century B.C.

It's an echo of the Exodus story, with the movie striving to be the LDS Ten Commandments. But this is strictly amateur hour, mired in wooden acting, hackneyed cinematography and robotic dialogue that makes George Lucas sound like Aaron Sorkin.

"I love you more than any man could love any woman," drones Nephi (Noah Danby) to his bride. Her reply: "I give you all my heart and soul." Blech.

The Other Side of Heaven is another LDS film that the aggregate viewers gave 6.5 stars, though the default review is predominantly negative.

This LDS site is excited that Ocean's Eleven is the biggest movie ever to have two Mormon characters, but then warns people that they shouldn't see it for that reason because their parts are, in the greater scheme of things, pretty small.

I Miss Her
Today
Frank hasn't been blogging as much lately, which is an absolute shame. While his is generally a political blog from a perspective with which I strongly disagree, I can read posts like this all day long. While I don't have a daughter and can't directly relate to that post, it's extremely well written. I can relate to his "Today" post. Not an October 5 comes by that I don't think of Anna.

Bragging Rights
Owning Up To Abortion
Charles Hill has a couple good quotes on the "I Had An Abortion" shirts that Planned Parenthood Briefly Endorsed. It reminded me a bit of a an article that Greg cited in which Barbara Ehrichman used some fuzzy math to get those who've had abortions to be loud and proud. You can see his comments towards the bottom of his multi-topic post.

Adoption
Stuart Buck explains how he and his wife (both white) wound up adopting a black baby and how much of a non-issue it was both for the Bucks and the baby's birth mother..

Quotes of the Day
Alex Knapp has some really good ones.

Pressure of the American Dream [via Judd]
I want to write on this more thoroughly at a later date, but I probably won't get around to it. Robert Samuelson hits the nail on the head on how modern Americans have so much more and yet feel that they have so much less.

Let Us Reason: RLDS
While searching for things pertaining to the Movie of Mormon, I ran across a designation that I hadn't seen before: RLDS. Apparently the Mormons have their own protestants in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The split apparently occured shortly after Joseph Smith's death when most crowned Brigham Young as the church's leader, but some recalled the prophecy that Smith's son (then only 12) should lead. Without the structure of LDS's Utah Vatican, there have apparently been numerous breaks within the LDS over many of the same issues that divide Christians, including homosexuality and the ordination of women. Though the author comes at it with an anti-LDS and anti-RLDS bias, it makes for a solid, objective analysis.

DaveMSC comments on atheism and shares this joke:

You all know about the dyslexic agnostic who suffered from insomnia, right? He stayed up all night wondering if there really was a dog.

Dundee: I'm not from here, I'm just stuck here.
RAW: Where you from originally?
Dundee: California.
RAW: Ahh, cool. I'm from Texas.
Dundee: So what brought you to Gate City? Come here for school?
RAW: Nah, though I'm thinking of going back. What about you?
Dundee: Assault and battery conviction.
RAW: Cool. You should talk to Landis. He's here for the same reason.
Dundee: My Parole Officer told me I had a week to find a new place and suggested this dump, so here I am.
RAW: You know, that explains a lot about this place. They call it Thrifthaven University Apartments, but the parolees I know here outnumber the college students three-to-one. They ought to call it the Thrifthaven Halfway House

Less than a week after Reno left, a new guy is moving in. What's odd is that except for the marriage, the two are strikingly similar. Reno was a biker without actually owning a motorcycle. His look, his demeanor, all biker. He had a customized license plate that said "RENGADE." But the more I got to know him, the more I discovered we could actually relate to one another. Oddly, the self-proclaimed renegade was probably one of the most upright individuals in the complex.

Dundee's license plate says Kowboy. Though after talking to him for half an hour or so, I get some good vibes from the guy despite some unsavory details (which I'll mention next post). Very blue-collar like Reno. Trying to get his life back on track and willing to work two jobs to make it happen (Reno works one job, but it's 75 hours a week or so). Of course, I'm probably biased because he validated what might be a good job lead.

He validated, Reno first suggested it.

Dundee tells me that he won't be staying long, Reno stayed less than two months. Dundee is going to buy a house up in Northgate, Reno already has.

I'm on the Washington Post's website!

Errr... sort of.

Not really.

But sort of!

- 1996, Cafeteria Before School Starts -
Random Cool Schoolmate: Hey Alex, mind if I sit down?
RAW: Yeah, man, that's cool, have a seat.
RCS: So what are you up to this weekend?
RAW: Nothing, really. Trying to find something to do.
RCS: I'm throwing a party this weekend, I was wondering if-
[Chip & Oz enter]
Oz: Hey Alex, sorry I'm late. Traffic sucked. [bitch moan moan bitch moan moan]
Chip: Hey Alex, I wanted to show you my latest issue of Superdestructoman! It has the old granny lady from the third issue going "It's old lady Smithers!" [laugh] [snort]
RCS: Hey, I gotta go. I'll check ya later, man.
RAW: [burying head in hands] Seeya.

- 2004, Earlier Tonight -
Yale: Hey Lex! How's it going?
RAW: Not bad, not bad.
Yale: You good to watch the last 15 minutes of 8mm? I also got some beer if you want to chill.
RAW: Yeah, sounds cool.
Meatloaf: Hey Alex! Check it out! Your a computer geek like me, so only you will truly appreciate this. I was running low on bandwidth when I was rendering some 3D stuff when the computer started dragging real slow. So I went into the registry and [blah blah blah blah]
Yale: Hey, uh, I gotta go...
RAW: [looks for place to bury head] Seeya.

Kevin and Greg point to and criticize a Chron LA Times article that's skeptical of blogging.

For my part, while I didn't find Jones's take to be particularly novel or insightful, I'd be hard-pressed to characterize it as being wrong. The only part that I take issue with is that he feels that the blogs feel that they will replace traditional media. I may have my head buried in the sand (I read the big-league blogs less and less these days), but most of blogdom's self-evaluation has been more along the lines that blogs compliment traditional newssources rather than compete with them. The relationship is as much symbiotic as competitive, though admittedly it does get antagonistic at times, but the proported aims of most blogs I've seen is to make traditional media better, not to replace it.

Greg takes issue with one aspect of Jones's column that I half-agree with:

But his fear is that we will get bought out, presumably by some Rupert Murdoch-type who seeks to manipulate the rest of you nonbloggers. I'm not sure he even remotely gets the concept. A blog can be set up for free. ANYONE can do it. If one wishes to make a more standalone-style blog, it can be done on the cheap (mine coulda been done for $10 a month on my webhost). That sort of open access is a major inhibitor to clogging up the entry fee for these things.

While the entry fees for starting a blog are nil, I think there is some merit to the argument that blogs that follow a particular party-line and/or those that will have a sponsor will rise to the top the quickest. By "party-line" I don't necessarily mean Republican or Democrat, but rather a point of view felt by enough people to garner a significant audience. Right Wing News is the most egregious example I know of that is all about getting hits, stroking the ego of its author, and more recently lining his pocketbook. While I don't doubt that Hawkins agrees with what he's saying, I have no doubt whatsoever that he tailors what he has to say by how well it will be recieved by its intended GOP audience. Another example that comes to mind is the chest-thumping libertarian uberhawks who spent more time trying to impress each other (and generate links and hits) than advancing any sort of actual argument. I felt so at the time and when they all seemed to magically turn against Bush for being too cowardly to just decimate Palestine and invade Saudi Arabia to partition it according to their oh-so-helpful maps at the same time, I felt my view was validated. There is a certain amount of crying to peer approval (and links) that turned me off of a great deal of blogs.

That's not the sponsorship angle that Greg's talking about, but as more and more bloggers start looking for ways to make money for it, I'd say that it's inevitable. Not to mention how helpful getting a benefactor can be for one's exposure, as Wonkette's associate with Gawker has demonstrated quite clearly.

There are, as Kevin points out, a whole ton of great blogs out there. Thoughtful, insightful, and independent blogs. I find it both interesting and disturbing how most of the top-tier blogs that I still enjoy don't seem to be in the top tier anymore, replaced by people with little unique or interesting to say. Amygdala comes to mind from the left and PatioPundit from the right. I think as time progresses. As blogdom spreads wider and wider and as like-minded people tend to go to like-minded sites, the lightest and least original material tends to get most exposure. As the media turns a greater eye towards media, I suspect they won't look too far below the surface and the most visible blogs will be, just as Jones speculates, all sizzle and no steak.

The SSA site has a list of the most popular baby names. It has some really cool indexing features where you can look at the most popular names of any given year or you can see where your name falls on the list. It's somewhat heartening to know that the most popular names aren't Dakota and Laetwynn, but rather time-tested names like Jacob and Joshua (though honestly, hasn't the name "Josh" run its course for a while?). I'm consciously skipping over #2. I was actually a bit surprised to discover that my first name is actually less common than my middle one, which is somewhat contrary to the impression that I've gotten over the years. My first name is apparently becoming less and less popular with each passing year while my middle name is holding pretty steady.

Not surprisingly, parents are a bit more creative with the girls names. Emily is a perfectly fine name, but can we stop naming girls "Son of Maud" just cause there was that mermaid in that movie that went by that name? I wonder if the fascination with that movie has anything to do with Hannah being #4. Probably not, but it's a weird coincidence. Little Chloe Zito should have more than a couple classmates named Chloe and Olivia Kuffner will likely not be the only Olivia, but as Pappa Kuffner says (and I'm sure Mama and Papa Zito would), they like the way it wounds (as do I, admittedly). And both names have historical backing and neither named after mermaids in 80's flicks. In addition to girls named Son of Maud, there are 6,000 girls named "Son of Coinneach." It's pretty messed up when more girls are named Jasmine and Destiny than Nicole and Katherine.

On the upshot, I shouldn't run out of pseudonyms for female characters any time soon.

I may or may not have mentioned it before, but the area in which I live is pretty heavily populated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church. As such, I've felt the urge to find out more about the Church that so motivates the people around me. As it turns out, they made a movie of the Book of Mormon. Well, it's the first of a series of nine or so, but I'm trying to figure out a way to get to see the movie without inviting unwanted guests to my doorstep to tell me all about the dictates or Moroni and Joseph Smith, so ordering it non-commercial outlets is a no-go. While trying to find out more about the movie, I stumbled across an article and was somewhat amused by this tidbit:

"This is a very unique motion picture," stated Gary Rogers, the film's producer, writer and director. "Virtually every member of the Church I've talked to has told me they have waited all their lives to see a movie about the Book of Mormon! It really is a filmmaker's dream. However, the biggest challenge will be to produce a film that satisfies the audience. Most of the nearly 12 million members of the Church have already "seen" the movie many times in their minds! The prospect of meeting the expectations of millions of people is a very frightening but exciting challenge," say's Rogers.

It brings to mind all the comic book fans that do nothing but pan a comic book movie because "everyone knows that the first Heroman movie has to star Villainman and be done precisely the way that I've been outlining in all of the Heroman movie plotting I've done in leiu of having a life!"

The plot to every political movie ever made:

But that's beside the point as far as the movies are concerned. Modern audiences seem to find it unbelievable that a good man could reach a high office in the conventional manner. Instead we get retreads of a formula that goes at least as far back as Gabriel Over the White House (1933), in which a puppet president survives an accident, sees the light, and starts to stand up for the little guy and fight the powers that be. So there's a disillusioned senator who thinks he's about to die, sees the light, and starts to stand up for the little guy and fight the powers that be (Bullworth, 1998); a slick crook who cons his way into Congress, sees the light, and starts to stand up for the little guy and fight the powers that be (The Distinguished Gentleman, 1992); a lowly alderman who runs for president as a sacrificial lamb, sees the light, and starts to stand up for the little guy and fight the powers that be (Head of State, 2003); and even a lookalike who secretly takes the president's place, sees the light, and starts to stand up for the little guy and fight the powers that be (Dave, 1993).

I'm trying to think of one political movie that hasn't followed this formula to one degree or another. The first that comes to mind is The American President, but even then Shepherd wins in part based on a sympathy vote due to the death of his wife. The rest of the plot follows the formula (he's "standing up for the little guy" by caving in to the environmental and gun control lobbies). The second is My Fellow Americans, which probably has the most realistic portrayal of two antagonistic presidents who spend a great deal of the movie realizing their own vanity and shortcomings. Were it not for the entire plot and especially the ending, it would have made for the best political movie ever!

From page 90 of the 9-11 Commission's Report:

After the Watergate era, Congress established oversight committees to ensure that the CIA did not undertake covert action contrary to basic American law. Case officers in the CIA’s Clandestine Service interpreted legislation, such as the Hughes-Ryan Amendment requiring that the president approve and report to Congress any covert action, as sending a message to them that covert action often leads to trouble and can severely damage one’s career. Controversies surrounding Central American covert action programs in the mid-1980s led to the indictment of several senior officers of the Clandestine Service. During the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort against al Qaeda, between policymakers who wanted the CIA to undertake more aggressive covert action and wary CIA leaders who counseled prudence and making sure that the legal basis and presidential authorization for their actions were undeniably clear.

That tension isn't nearly as exciting as the horrified president who realizes that the big, bad CIA just killed someone on his behalf, as seen at least once in just about any action movie I've ever seen involving the CIA.

Sssshhhh, no one tell all the hack writers around the world about this. It might deprive them of much needed plot-devices!

From Page 76 of the 9-11 Commission's report:

First, the plan did not obtain the necessary human resources. Despite designating “national and economic security” as its top priority in 1998, the FBI did not shift human resources accordingly. Although the FBI’s counterterrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, FBI counterterrorism spending remained fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001. In 2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism.

I'm hardly a pacifist in the drug war, insofar as I don't favor the legalization of anything beyond marijuana, but that's certainly eye-opening.

From Page 40 of the 9/11 Commission's Report:

The Vice President stated that he called the President to discuss the rules of engagement for the CAP. He recalled feeling that it did no good to establish the CAP unless the pilots had instructions on whether they were authorized to shoot if the plane would not divert. He said the President signed off on that concept. The President said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been an interceptor pilot. The President emphasized to us that he had authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft.

I find it really odd - though indicative of nothing in particular - that the commission would include the "interceptor pilot" comment.

They haven't mentioned John Kerry yet and I don't expect them to, but I feel the odd sense that it would say something like, "John Kerry, in addition to mentioning that he served with distinction in Vietnam, said [blah blah blah]..."

A week or so ago, Yale loaned me 8mm and in the last 15 minutes or so, it went haywire and I couldn't see the climax of the movie.

Well, I got him back. I loaned him the first season of 24 and the last DVD wouldn't play on his DVD player.

He's goin' absolutely nuts.

The DVD is scratchless, so I'm not sure what the problem is, but I don't care.

Revenge is mine.

I've been making some changes to the blog lately, so here's a primer:

Transfer - Mike and I have been working towards moving the blog to his web space. It's been a long road, but we're 99% the way there. The last trick is going to be to get my current host to turn over the keys to my domains and get them repointed. I'll give you guys a heads up when I'm going to do that (cause there doubtlessly will be some technical difficulties). This doesn't come a moment too soon as the communication between Nucleus and my blog continues to disintegrate. I still can't upload pictures using the interface and now the search function is fubar. In the meantime, don't use my domain (raw360.com) to email me! During the transfer some email may get lost. Those of you know that my bigfoot address please use that. Those of you that don't, my account there is rawhitlock with the bigfoot domain (dot-com).

Cast List - I've updated the Cast List. Since the list of names is getting very long I decided to differentiate between those that are mentioned regularly and those that are more obscure. It also how has the lists up top that you can click on to find the appropriate person. I'm going to add to the profiles of the regulars to provide a little more background and am working on a way that you can bring up all the posts that mention any given person. That's probably going to take a while - even longer, unfortunately, because Nucleus 3.0 performs searches based on accuracy instead of chronology and I was counting on the latter for this feature. It's a great upgrade for most purposes except, unfortunately, this one.

Categories - I've been moving around posts between categories and renaming them over the past week or so.

Entertainment to Culture - Entertainment used to cover all music, movies, and TV that wasn't related to Texas Music (which has its own category). I thought about having two categories, but since a lot of what I write about entertainment gets back to culture, and I haven't had a category for culture, I decided to keep these together.

I Pagliacci to Dramatica - I hate the name Dramatica cause it sounds somewhat pretentious or something, but it's all I could come up with. The nature of the blog has changed so that Pagliacci doesn't quite fit anymore. Besides, no one knew what it meant anyway.

Created Sex and Consequences - Most of the posts here used to be in Land of the Free, though since a lot of it deals with cultural aspects of it in addition to the mere legal/civil rights aspect of it, I decided to give this its own category. The Women and Men category still exists, but it's more about relationships in general.

Created U of H and renamed University to Academia - I have enough posts on UH to warrant its own category and this way it can act as both giving updates to my alma mater and an equivalent to The High School Years where I have stories from high school. I thought about The College Years but I don't have enough there, most of it can go in Dramatica, and it doesn't solve the narrow UH-related posts. I've been using University on K-12 education, too, so I renamed it accordingly.

Re-established Living and renamed it to Living Quarters - With Thrifthaven being the focus of so many posts lately, I wanted to put it somewhere other than the general Apropos El Dia category. It also provides a home for my posts on apartment-living, real estate, and housing matters. It's the housing equivalent to my Office Space work category, a combination of personal experiences and thoughts of the sector.

Created Around the World - I need a place to park posts that involved countries other than the USA. War and Rumors of War covered this for a while, as did This Modern World, but some posts don't fit in to either camp.

Blogrolodexical - It's still MIA until I get everything moved to the new server. To those of you that have added me to your blogroll recently (Dustbury, for instance), I'll add it at a later date. There are also some blogs I want on the blogroll that I will be adding once it's all settled. I'm not adding it now because it's all going to be changing soon anyway. I'm also going to be reorganizing it when I get a chance.

Suggestions? - When I get things moved over I'm going to start thinking about changes to the template. Nothing major, but if there's anything you want me to think about changing (fonts, colors or lack thereof, etc.) please let me know now.

Poker With Dick Cheney [via Lex]
Andrew Northrup has been under fire for being too shrill. I stopped reading him myself a while ago because, being conservative, I simply didn't feel welcome there. Well I hope I didn't miss many posts as hilarious as this one.

Liberal Documentarians Are the Reel Majority [via Susanna]
The Washington Post explores documentaries and comes to the shocking conclusion that most of them are geared to the left. Theories as to why this is the case are put forth and are a neat demonstration about how clueless liberals are about what is liberal and who are conservatives.

The Kids Are All Right [via LegalXXX]
An interesting look on youth culture. I appreciate the author's irreverence and his ability to look at the books he was reviewing critically, but not dismissively. I may have more to say about this one at a later date.

Where Should I Belong?
Biting the Bullet
Unexpected Benefit of Party Affiliation
Alex Knapp's odd road to joining the Republican Party in order to change it.

At the Movies: In"Terminal"ble
Jim over at WorldMagBlog has a rather... interesting... interpretation of the political underleanings of The Terminal. These days, I'm actually pretty sympathetic to anti-consumerist arguments, but that interpretation flew right over my head.

Wha?
Amanda Strassner's blog is temporarily down. I was going to ask where it went, but Kevin saved me the trouble. Amanda responds in the comments section.

Be forewarned, this is not a politically correct post.

I had a dream last night that I enrolled at the University of Montana. I don't know much about UMT except that it has a stellar I-AA football program and a lot of people in Gate City are UMT alums (It's said that when Montana plays the local university, the crowd is split 50-50). So I decided to learn a little more about the university and much to my surprise, they have an African-American Studies program.

Such programs are not unusual and think that they're worthwhile projects over all, but at the University of Montana? One of the most striking things about Idaho isn't so much that it's lilly white (about 90% of the population), but that there are so few blacks here. There are a fair number of Native Americans and Hispanics, but very, very few blacks (I'd say I've seen maybe 15 or so since I got here). So I looked up Montana's racial demographics and African-Americans comprise of a paltry 0.3% of the population with less than 3,000 in a state that has a population of over 900,000, putting it behind Native Americans and Asian-Americans (as well as Hispanics, I'd imagine, but they aren't given their own category).

I can just imagine the first day of class. "Okay, class. We brought in William here so that we can show you what a real live African American looks like...."

More seriously, though, they have a wide array of cultural programs including those for Asians, Native Americans, and others. I find it a bit weird that it's not an African Studies, but rather African American (the Asian Studies is just Asian, not Asian-American). Given our vast ignorance of the continent, I'd imagine that an African Studies course would be a lot more useful.

I am officially calling a ceasefire with Roger "Happy Pills" Ebert.

His running approval rating has finally fallen below 80% and is on a downward trend. Not only that, but he has two great one-star reviews with the priceless Roger Ebert snark that I've come to love.

On Catwoman:

Although the movie's faults are many, the crucial one is that we never get any sense of what it feels like to turn into a catwoman. The strength of "Spider-Man 2" is in the ambivalence that Peter Parker has about being part nerdy student, part superhero. In "Catwoman," where are the scenes where a woman comes to grip with the fact that her entire nature and even her species seems to have changed?

Berry plays Patience Phillips, a designer for an ad agency, who dies and is reborn after Midnight, a cat with ties to ancient Egypt, breathes new life into her. She becomes Catwoman, but what is a catwoman? She can leap like a cat, strut around on top of her furniture, survive great falls and hiss. Berry looks great doing these things, and spends a lot of time on all fours, inspiring our almost unseemly gratitude for her cleavage.

[...]

Stone's character is laughably one-dimensional, but then that's a good fit for this movie, in which none of the characters suggest any human dimensions and seem to be posing more than relating. Take Georges, for example, whose obnoxious mannerisms are so grotesque he's like the "Saturday Night Live" version of Vincent Price.

Among many silly scenes, the silliest has to be the Ferris wheel sequence, which isn't even as thrilling as the one in "The Notebook." Wouldn't you just know that after the wheel stalls, the operator would recklessly strip the gears, and the little boy riding alone would be in a chair where the guard rail falls off, and then the seat comes loose, and then the wheel tries to shake him loose and no doubt would try to electrocute him if it could.

To be sure, Ebert is one of those comic book geeks that is probably overly critical of comic book movies as a whole, but I'm going to take his word on this one. While I generally make an effort to see all Batman-related films and TV shows, this ain't the Bat's Cat and apparently isn't any good in it's own right. Shocker.

On A Cinderella Story:

So I am writing you in the hope of saving your friends, your sister Jasmine, and your mother Toni from going to see a truly dismal new movie. It is called "A Cinderella Story," and they may think they'll like it because it stars Hilary Duff.

I liked her in "Cheaper by the Dozen," and said she was "beautiful and skilled" in "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," but wrote: "As a role model, Lizzie functions essentially as a spokeswoman for the teen retail fashion industry, and the most-quoted line in the movie is likely to be when the catty Kate accuses her of being an 'outfit repeater.' Since many of the kids in the audience will not be millionaires and do indeed wear the same outfit more than once, this is a little cruel, but there you go."

That's probably something your mother might agree with.

In "A Cinderella Story," Hilary plays Sam, a Valley Girl whose happy adolescence ends when her dad is killed in an earthquake. That puts her in the clutches of an evil stepmother (Jennifer Coolidge, who you may remember fondly as Stifler's mom in the "American Pie" movies, although since they were rated R, of course you haven't seen them). Sam also naturally has two evil stepsisters. Half the girls in school have a crush on Austin (Chad Michael Murray), a handsome football star, but Sam never guesses that Austin is secretly kind of poetic -- and is, in fact, her best chat room buddy. She agrees to meet him at the big Halloween dance, wearing a mask to preserve her anonymity; as a disguise, the mask makes her look uncannily like Hilary Duff wearing a mask.

I was at odds with which portion of the review to quote, since the whole angle that he takes is absolutely great.

Update: Harrumph. Maybe my ceasefire was premature.

Guess who just moved in to Stoner's old apartment?

I'll answer the question with another question: Guess who got out of prison on bond.

Yep, Strang is back. Either the rumors of his $50,000 bail were off-base or he's definitely got enough money squirreled away not to need to be asking for cigarettes in the middle of the night. He's got some caseworker or bondsman looking after him. Since Stoner moved in to his old place, I guess it made sense for him to move in to Stoner's.

I'm a bit surprised that the apartment complex let him back in. The owner is an upright Mormon who theoretically wouldn't want to be associated with such things. I'd figured up till now that he was oblivious. On top of that, the apartments here come furnished and when they cleaned out his apartment they discovered that he'd sold all of the complex's furniture, including the full-size fridge. I guess they figured that they didn't want to make any trouble and as soon as his court date comes, he'll probably be going away for quite a while and it won't be an issue.

But, for whatever reason, they've let him back in. He's got an unfurnished apartment this time, though. I'd definitely rather the guy not live two places down. I'm fully prepared for some more late night visits, though. Apparently Saul, Landis, and Yale had similar visits. Landis was holding a baseball bat and Yale a knife, figuring that only trouble would be knocking at 4 in the morning. It appears that Meatloaf (who lives in between Strang and I) and I are the only two non-fans of Strang in the complex, so naturally he gets moved next to us.

Bigger breasts offered as perk to soldiers [via Warliberal]
The title more or less says it all and there's little I can say about it that Warliberal didn't.

Luke 7:36-50 - “Jake & His Guilt”
AltCountry: Interview with Murry Hammond from the Old 97's [via Fat Guy]
A sermon written by a pastor in Wisconsin involving an Old 97s show prompts a response from Murray Hammond, the band's bassist. An interview follows involving, among other things, Christianity and artistic inspiration.

New Channel Challenges MTV [via Longhorn Mafia]
A "fair and balanced" MTV. Drew makes a comparison to Air America, which I think is right on target. There are some areas of entertainment that are more tilted for one side of the political spectrum or the other. I'd have to say that MTV falls into one of those areas.

Study: U.S. Generic Drugs Cost Less Than Canadian Drugs [via Judds]
A study by the Food and Drug Administration says that while first-run drugs are cheaper in Canada, five of the seven most common generic drugs are cheaper in the US apples to apples and only one of the seven brand names in Canada are cheaper than the US generic. Of course, this is a study by the FDA that astonishingly advances the FDA's own interest, but it's interesting nonetheless.


Blockbuster vows to go after Netflix [via Pete]
I don't have accounts at any movie rental places up here. I've been mulling over a Netflix subscription. Now that Blockbuster is getting into the online business, though, I'm still mulling over a Netflix subscription.

Sneak Peek: The Manchureian Candidate
Yeah, it's been on the Internet for a little while now, but I just got around to watching it. I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie. Absolutely loved the original.

New Orleans apparently has deep-fried cheeseburgers.

In fact -- as I had apparently forgotten in the months surrounding my Ochsner visits -- a little danger can be titillating. The deep-fried stuffed burger at Jabba Jaws certainly was.

I ordered the least intimidating burger on the list: The Big Jabba Jack, the one stuffed with sautéed mushrooms and pepper jack cheese. Since only the patty is deep-fried, it looked perfectly normal at first, just a burger between buns. Then I noticed that the meat had a blond, battered shell. Then I took a bite. The burger was juicy as an orange, with cheese spread throughout the patty's interior, as if it were binding the ground meat together.
I'm hungry.

Man, I'm hungry.

[via Lex]

Many moons ago, Jay noticed an abnormal growth in one of his knees. Uninsured, there wasn't much he could do about it except watch it grow while he and his folks figured out what they were going to do. And grow it did.

When he finally was able to see a doctor about it, two doctors called it the largest benign cyst they'd ever seen. It was seventeen centimeters tall.

A couple days after he left the inland northwest to go back to Houston, he had major surgery on that knee.

Barely able to walk, he went to a They Might Be Giants show last night.

You gotta admire a man that knows his priorities.

Next door to me lives Meatloaf

Next door to Meatloaf is Reno.

Next door to Reno is Stoner.

Next door to Stoner is nobody.

Except that only one of them is going to be living next to me next week. Stoner has called dibs on Strang's apartment and Reno and his wife just bought a house.

[sob]

Did I do something wrong?

Is it my breath?

Why oh why must they all leave me alone.

Wait, Meatloaf lives here, too.

It must be his fault!

Andrew Sullivan takes the New York Times to task for using it in their assessment of Illinois senate candidate Obama Barack:

All this fumbling has left Mr. Obama, the smooth-talking, Harvard-educated law professor from Chicago, looking like the only candidate in a race that may make him the only African-American in the Senate. Voters who don't know him yet surely will after the Democratic National Convention, where he will be keynote speaker. But it would be too bad if Mr. Obama cakewalked into Washington. Not just for Mr. Obama, who would take office with an asterisk ("*ran against incompetents"). Illinois voters deserve to see a capable opponent force him to answer tough questions and defend his positions. In other words, they deserve a nonludicrous race.

The most odd thing to me about the passage is not its "racism," but rather that it's the first time I've heard it used as a verb. Sullivan goes on to quote someone defining what exactly the two definitions of "cakewalk" are:

1. Something easily accomplished: Winning the race was a cakewalk for her. 2. A 19th-century public entertainment among African Americans in which walkers performing the most accomplished or amusing steps won cakes as prizes.

The Mirriam Webster online dictionary lists it's most conventional usage last:

1 : a black American entertainment having a cake as prize for the most accomplished steps and figures in walking
2 : a stage dance developed from walking steps and figures typically involving a high prance with backward tilt
3 a : a one-sided contest b : an easy task

I must confess ignorance on this one. I've apparently used the term once, ironically when posting involving racist Georgia politician Lester Maddox. It'd never occured to me that the term might have racist origins. I'm not sure what difference it makes when the term doesn't actually use the name of a race to denote something negative (such as "to jew" or "to gyp" something, or "Indian giver"), I've not heart complaints over the words usage by supposed targets of the racist comment (blacks), and if I was unaware of its origins (and I consider myself a reasonably educated individual) I can't help but wonder if the words origins are even relevent anymore.

In addition to a link to let someone