Heidi ___

1) Seal has a last name?

2) This morning on the way in to work they handed out a two-pack of Purell hand sanitizing wipes. Since I only have two, I should save them for a special occasion. What are the two most unsanitary events that I’ll face any given week?

End Of An Era

I’d like to announce that this blog will end in September of 2013. It’s been a great run, but sometimes you just have to take a step back and move on with different pursuits.

Remind me to tell you again before September of 2013.

I Refuse To Collect These Statistics

Lets say you have a bathroom with 6 stalls. This is a guy’s bathroom – not everything happens in stalls in a guy’s bathroom. Only important things. Deliberate things. Stalls do not receive random sorting – if I’m going to a stall, I’m going to go to a place where I feel comfortable. You sort of nest. Well, maybe you don’t, but you get the idea.

Anyway, hypothetically, lets say someone took two months of statistics about all stall usage in a particular bathroom. He put a big sign on each of the stalls, indicating an order, 1 through 6, of frequency of use. Everyone saw this number. People’s decisions changed because of it. Which stall do you go to?

I’m thinking you go to the one that was previously used 2nd most frequently. There’s a reason why the first stall was used so often – it must be a nice place. Lots of people will just say, “screw it, this is my stall, this is where the newspaper is most often, this is on the corner, if a ton of other people use it, fine – plus people will use it less once they know that 800 asses a day touch this plastic seat.” People will try to abandon the top half of stalls (when ranked by usage). No one wants to be the outlier on the “more butts” side. Especially the first and second most, but people will stick to the first most because it’s good and because they think others will leave.

Who is going to move into the 2nd most? Me. That’s who. No one says “I want to go to a higher frequency stall”, but lots of people say, “oh man, I had no idea this one would be second most used, I’m going to go to the least used one!” Not me, there will be net loss on #2 (in more way than one, if you know what I mean), and by the time I set up shop, it’ll be greatly reduced in usage.

Speaking of things that are crap, I went in to work before 6 this morning. On the onramp to the highway, a little car with a racing stripe hit its brakes on a curve that clearly required no deceleration. What does that racing stripe represent, exactly?

I got around her quickly enough, at 5:48 AM to be exact, and she was on the phone. Who does one talk to at 5:48 in the morning? I’ve ranted about this before, but there is no way I can find it.

Meb!

Horse chart.

Weekly Update

Many moons ago, probably about 40 now, I decided to stop posting links to other people’s blogs. People got insulted when I didn’t post theirs, but I couldn’t link everything, and people’s feelings got hurt, especially if I didn’t like what they wrote. This all applies to people that I knew in the past but no longer do. In fact, I never knew them, these boring people never existed, Google created them. So, don’t worry, I don’t think your blog circa 2005 was boring.

Anyway, these days, most of the blogs that I visit regularly have these sidebar widgets that inform you of how recently their links were updated. I see these things, and I feel a lot of pressure. I, after all, was the champion internet all-star for about 4 years, post-bigwhoop, pre-Jen. Updated 1 week ago? Has it really been one whole week?

So, what has happened in this last week?

Let’s see… Jen and I went on a two hour walk in the woods, during which time we studied all kinds of respiratory disorders and their associated drugs. We found a bone from a deer or person. I had fire extinguisher training at work! But the fake fire didn’t work so I couldn’t put anything out. I found a piece of scrap metal in the parking lot that fit like a ring, I’m wearing it now, it’s a little scratchy and tetanus-ee, but it fits great. Oh! I spent 2.5 hrs tilling and re-tilling the soil in my new bulb garden. It’s going to be fantastic. Went to church, went to house church, didn’t have bible study because everyone’s husbands are out of town. Had a walk-through of our wedding hall with the caterer, whose car got towed. I kept trying to write that as “town” but that’s a different word, and it doesn’t mean that I need it to mean. I bought my wedding ring online, settling on Tungsten Carbide, because it’s the most best. I sat around while Jen studied for a million straight hours, helping wherever possible, but mostly fretting about it. I decided I wanted to see what would happen to my achilles if I ran 7 straight days, and found roughly what I expected. I woke up at or before 5 AM twice to go to work early. That is never fun.

I think that’s about it. You didn’t miss much. I don’t have time to think up ridiculous things these days. In their stead, I worry about everything that I can’t control, and cease to care about everything that I can. I kind of want to go to bed. Or to sleep, perchance to dream.

World

Last weekend, Richmond got married to the lovely and sweet Susan on the shores of Lake Ontario in Oswego, NY. There are pictures. Here for instance. More to follow.

Sour Grapes

A few years ago, my character was called into question by a yellow journalist. A couple years after that, it happened again, this time by a random lady. I know how it is. The urge to defend yourself is strong. It eats at you; someone thinks that you are deficient, you want to make amends. You want to feel justified before your accusers, you need vindication! Someone, some arbiter somewhere, has got to stand up and say “this person is right, and you, oh accuser, are wrong.” It is an exceptionally strong compulsion, the defense of one’s character.

In some ways, I can understand the urges behind the actions of a member of my church. Jilted by his wife, he took the fight to the church (which had supported her), setting up a mirror website, spepchurch.com, as opposed to the real one, spepchurch.org. As the story goes, his wife determined that he was emotionally abusive toward her. The church, whose job it is to adjudicate between congregants on such matters, agreed with her – admonishing him and not disallowing a divorce.

You don’t need to spend much time on this guy’s website before you understand why someone would want a divorce from him. I want to divorce him. He, meanwhile, has tried to vindicate himself. He insists up and down, the only “biblical” reasons for divorce are abandonment and adultery. He did neither of these. Interestingly, his definition allows for all varieties of abuse within the marital bound. According to this definition, he could beat her within inches of her life and she’d still be stuck with him. It belays a profoundly simple theological misunderstanding.

This is a person who would like to hold his wife to the letter of the law. The Bible specifies grounds for biblical divorce. In other places, it specifies behaviors suitable for mankind. It furthermore indicates that the Holy Spirit is available to inform redeemed individuals on right and wrong – the letter of the law is no longer that which justifies one before God, but instead the nature of one’s heart.

The poor fellow’s is broken. Instead of working toward cleansing himself of whatever it is that makes him so obnoxious and self-righteous (and, according to his wife, whose opinion matters, abusive), he has mounted a very high horse in an attempt to vindicate himself. This seems like one who has never been wrong. He’s saved by grace, because the construct fits him, but he’s the sort who never really needed it. How dare his wife leave him! She’s NOT ALLOWED! And moreover, she’s a sinner for trying, and the church, in condoning this, is wrong.

Forget the Bible extracts and woeful Jesus-speak in his posts. There’s more to it than knowing the words and concocting an unassailable Biblical position. You also, you know sometimes at least, need to love. There ain’t none of that in making a whitehouse.com type website to sham a church. It’s downright childish – preaching one’s spiritual defense from such a pitiful pulpit is not what the Bible means when it says we should take care of our problems in house so as to not shame Christ’s name among non-Christians.

The church, rightly I think, decided that it should preemptively send a letter to the entire congregation, informing us of this shadow site and pointing people to the correct one. The church informed us of the proceedings and invited us to pray for a peaceful resolution. The church, unsurprisingly, took the high ground.

There are few people who would take this fellows side here. Most modern people have little sympathy for those who are abusive to their spouses. Most nominal Christians have no particular problems with divorce. Most evangelical Christians recognize that in cases of abuse, physical or emotional, it is not sinful to escape that situation. The only people who would fall on his side here are those who are otherwise radicalized or jilted. I expect to see him show his truer colors some day. You can tell a tree by its fruit. Who will vindicate him then?

Up, Up, Go Away

Could the Balloon Boy’s parents’ publicity stunt have worked any better? Even if the kid were in the balloon, it wouldn’t get this much coverage. Had he plunged to his doom, it wouldn’t have gotten this much coverage. Had he barely survived and been hospitalized? Not this much coverage. Had he landed in the woods, brought a cell phone with an intermittent signal, and sent occasional text messages, well, maybe then it would have been as big a deal as staging the whole thing…but probably not for as long, unless he were somehow able to incorporate Meghan McCain’s breasts in his twitter posts.

“Day 7: I’m still in the woods, lost and scared. A friendly beaver has Wi-Fi, but wolves howl all night!”

I know the bar hasn’t been set very high here, but is Meghan McCain the hottest political daughter/wife? What were the odds that she would have been a republican? I actually think they were pretty high – bleeding heart liberal women are a dime a dozen.

Implied, If Nothing Else

I have two containers of Q-tips. One is a little travel kit. It holds 30-ish of them and sits in the forefront of my bathroom supplies. The other is a vast repository of 750 (the 3rd such repository since I moved to Maryland, I’ll be married before I finish this one!), which resides in the bowels of the bathroom sink. Periodically, I refill the smaller one from the larger one.

The bulk pack has a few cartoons showing the intended use of Q-tips: putting on mascara, wiping a baby’s nose (or something, that one was unclear), detailing your car, scrubbing your bathroom…but nothing about jamming it in your ear. Well, shoot, that’s what you’re supposed to do with those things! Everyone knows it! Everyone does it, at their own peril. Why not acknowledge it? If they didn’t want us to stick it into our ears, they would have made them bigger than our elbows.

Are their any other products where their wider use is so actively discouraged? If we actually stopped sticking Q-tips in our ears, sales would drop precipitously. Like if people stopped smoking hemp socks…What else? Same line of thought – I’m making a hydroponics lab. I’m actually going to be growing seedlings for my garden in it. What percentage of hydroponics labs aren’t used for growing pot? Probably not many. I’m sure their are other examples.

No Time Like The Present

The only time that I have available to write here is when I’m intentionally trying to be late for something.

But let’s be honest. It’s not like I don’t have 15 minutes a day to write here. I do. I have 15 minutes. I probably have an full half hour, heck, maybe even a full hour if you add it all up. The problem is, I function much better if I stare at the wall for an hour a day. Sure, it comes in three minute chunks. Ok, 30 second chunks. I can’t sit still for 3 straight minutes. Being hyperactive is advantageous, it keeps you slim. I burn a lot of calories a day fidgeting. It’s like smoking, only with physical activity instead of cancer. I walk up and down the stairs at least 30 times a day.

I’m tired. I could be more tired. In fact, I’m the second most tired person in my pre-family household of two. I guess in that sense, I’m the least tired person in my life, taking “my life” to encompass two people. You’re not allowed to be tired when you’re the least tired one, especially when you’re hyperactive and people expect you to be tireless.

I’m not even going to be able to be late for this thing. I try to be late and it doesn’t even work. I’m so disciplined to the clock that even when Outlook isn’t popping up reminders of those things that I should be doing but am not for weeks at a time, I still get reminders, internal to my brain. I know exactly what time I need to leave to not be late, and some inhuman pull is yanking me toward that departure entirely against my will. I just want to sit here and stare at the wall. For 3 whole minutes, or at least 30 seconds.

I don’t think I’ve been writing enough. I think writing keeps you sane (do you think?). I think writing helps you process your thoughts instead of leaving them to pool up in vast stagnant pools. You poke at a stagnant pond and you don’t even get the thoughts that you dumped in there, all you get is stink. Rotten water, just stink, nothing useful in those ponds. The problem is that when you have thoughts, rarely though they are, you are too busy to do anything with them. Sometimes you can’t spare 15 minutes, or even two minutes to scribble down your thoughts for later transcription. The sorts of thoughts that you have when you’re frantic only make sense when you’re frantic.

I need to leave in 5 minutes to be on time and I still need to change and go to the bathroom. Dear reader, I am almost late. I might be late. Please, help me be late. I swear it’s possible. Especially if I proof read. Pit one perfectionist neurosis against another.

When In Rome

Dear World,
Please explain to me why being a great film maker exempts you from going to jail for raping a 13 year old.
Thanks.

Good Night, Earth

Last night, in an attempt to run ourselves ragged by doing something every single night of the week from here until the wedding, Jen and I roped Justin and the Frys into going with us to Jen’s old church for a concert. Act One was Matthew (and Zachary)’s band, Magnet South – we were there mostly to support them…since no one else does. There couldn’t have been more than 30 people there, which was a shame, because “Good Night, States”, the main act, was pretty stinkin’ good. They were also exceptionally weird, both from a stage persona standpoint, and from a psychedelic space cadet dream music standpoint. Whatever the case, I like them. I’d see them again. You should too.

In case you live near here, they’ll be in Brooklyn in a few weeks.

Two Things

First off, go here. It’s funny.

And without any justification, here’s one from Cousin Drew, who was once dumped from a serious relationship on his birthday…
“If you did that to a chick, you couldn’t find a date in three states….She’s put a billboard about it out by your house.” Funny guy, he’ll be the jolliest of the jolly at the wedding.

Please Christmas Don’t Be Late

One of the perks of having a wedding toward the end of December is that you get to piggy-back it with Christmas. We’re not fighting it. In fact, I’m currently vetting Christmas music. We hope to have around 10-15 Christmas songs intermixed in our playlist. I drive to and from work with the likes of Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

Try listening to Christmas music in September. It’s like hearing a baby cry, you start to lactate, or seeing a doggie treat, you start to drool. I listen to Christmas music and start to get antsy about whether or not my mom and dad are going to get me the G.I. Joe General.

Oddly, I’ll be skipping Christmas and all things related to Christmas this year. Instead, I’ll be on my honeymoon, in stormy Ocean City, MD, where the waves will crash and the wind will howl. Lots of hype for Christmas this year. But then no Christmas.

Resistance is Futile

OK, you win.

But For What

A study on spanking among poor people showed that it is somewhat detrimental to the long term development of the child. Why study the effect among the poor, you may ask?

“Previous research had also found that parents who spank are more likely to be younger, less educated, single, and/or depressed and stressed”

and

“The new study focused on children from low-income families because prior research suggested that spanking is more common among them”

So…find a population that spanks a lot. Why do they spank a lot? Because THEY are depressed (and maybe stupid). Wait a second, you mean that kids who are spanked because their parents take out their angst on them are messed up? People who are physically violent to make them feel better have kids who are aggressive? Earth-shattering

I’d be interested to see the statistics for the children of people who spank only for specific reasons. “This hurts me as much as it hurts you,” was my mother’s quote (hypothetically). If your analogous quote is “this hurts you but makes me feel better,” then no survey is needed to tell you you’re a bad parent.

Tea Party

Explain to me why my panties should be in a bunch about government spending.

Sure, I pay them taxes, but they pay lot of people’s salaries! If we cut government spending, who would fund all this stuff? Or would we only be cutting spending on projects for the common good, while leaving projects devoted to the destruction of third world regimes unscathed?

Addendum:
Ya think?

Unless there are a lot of bodies in the wall at Yale.

Weekend

I’m going to make this as short as possible. This weekend, Jen and I drove 7 hours both ways to north of Buffalo. We missed the wedding (on purpose), and spent 20 hours total there, all for the sake of going to the post-wedding family BBQ. On the way up we visited the Hess family.

***

Two year old Johnie has one joke.
“Knock knock,” he says.
“Who’s there?”
“Billy!” he enthusiastically replies.
“Billy who?” you ask, to which you will receive a blank stare. Billy was at the door. That’s it. He doesn’t have a last name, and it’s strange to even ask.

***

Jen, myself and the babysitter got stuck with kid duty in the AM after Ron and Jess had to run out for activities. We had to get 4 year old Tommy dressed, though he would prefer to run around in underwear all day. I asked him what he wanted to wear. He insisted on his Star Wars halloween costume, telling me that he would just put it on to show me, then get real clothes. He reneged on his deal once he was in it, declaring that he wanted to go to the park in it.
“If I let you wear this to the park,” I asked, “what will you say when people ask you who the silly boy is that is wearing that costume and carrying a light saber?”

“I will tell them,” Tommy replied, complete with dramatic pause and theatrical pose, “‘I am Hans Solo!’”

***

Jake and Tommy spent a lot of time playing Mario 3 for the original Nintendo system while we were visiting. At one point, Tommy got a warp to a different level, which was apparently not common. As Jake yelled happily in the background, Tom, who is still learning to pronounce words, tore into our room exclaiming “I got a wop! I got a wop!”

The boys paused the game for the night, but came back to it the next morning. Still excited, Jake informed me again that Tommy had found a warp. Tommy chimed in, “I got a wop, Uncle Eric, I got a wop!!”

“Tommy, his name is Mario,” I quipped, over his head.

“Please don’t teach the boys antiquated racial slurs,” Jen chided.

***

My brother called as we were somewhere near the PA/NY border. He and I chatted for a few minutes, before I gave the phone to Jen so that they could talk about bridal party clothes as Steve is planning the guy’s attire. They spoke for a few minutes. When they were finishing, Jen asked Steve if he had anything left to say to me.

“Uhh, not really. Uhhh…tell him to go eat sh*t or something.”

***

As we were driving through rural New York on a back road, Jen was reading her textbook.

“Look,” I said as we drove through a town which was having a craft fair celebrating the labor day weekend, “they’re having a thing.”

I have problems with finding the right word sometimes. “Oh, a thing?” she replied, amused.

“Yes. That’s what we call them in New York,” I authoritatively informed her. “A town thing. We have one in Goshen too. I had a booth there. I sold Stuff. I had a booth selling stuff at the town thing.”

“Where all specific nouns are illegal,” she retorted.

***

Finally, we got to the family picnic. Jen’s elderly grandparents, both showing their age, were only planning on staying for an hour or two before heading back to the nursing home. Jen, who only sees them every three or so years, went over to talk to them.

“I better go too,” I announced to the family members that I was chatting with, “it might be my last chance.”

I had intended to communicate that I might not get another opportunity since they were leaving soon. The smattering of stifled giggles from the family belayed the fact that they understood me to be claiming they’d be dead soon. Which is beside the point.

Blogs are So 2005

On the way in to work this morning I got to thinking…You know in the movie “A Day After Tomorrow” when the world plunges into an immediate ice age? They state, at one point, that the mammoths were frozen with food in their stomachs, insinuating that these apparently tropical creatures were stunned by the up coming ice age, just like everyone other than Dennis Quaid was in modern times.

Yeah, but, what was that parka wearing wholly mammoth doing hanging around for the start of the ice age? He must have been hot with all that whollyness. I’d be pumped when the ice age finally came. Score! I told you guys it was gonna get cold!

In school last week, Jen got one of those tests where it tells you to do 20 ridiculous and complicated things, including “read all the directions”, but then you get to the bottom and it tells you “don’t do any of the directions.” The directions are like “Fold your paper into a stair-step pattern and roll your pencil down it” and “Turn the paper over and solve Schrodinger’s Equation in three dimension” and “Take your pen/pencil and jab out your eye. DO IT! DON’T ASK QUESTIONS, READ THE EFFING DIRECTIONS!! JAB, JAB!”

This is pharmacy school, not middle school. Seriously, it makes me want to swear. I’m doing it in my head right now. Every time I think about it I get pissed off. What are they 14? If someone had the nerve to give me one of those effing tests I’d do it to the effing letter. I’d be standing on my chair shouting at the top of my lungs about how I’m the greatest test taker ever, as I am the first to have reached question number 11. Eat it!

And really, when are directions important? Rarely. And who writes directions such that 17 of them are useless? Who does? Who? That person is a moron. That person writes dumb questions. That person should be forced to scribble their name backwards 50 times. That person is the problem, not you. Dumb effing test. Seriously, it’s a waste of time to read all of the directions before starting, people get paid good money to make comprehensible directions for Ikea that don’t even have words. I dare you to give me a scenario where this is a valuable life lesson. I dare you. Come on, I’m waiting.

Deep breaths.

And another thing…
Cell phones with ear phones to play music.

How miserably boring must one’s mind be to not be able to walk a quarter mile without having some external stimulus reminding you that if you want to be my lover, you gotta get with my friends?

Meanwhile, this date in history, the largest solar storm on record. Aurora Borealis in Cuba! Crazy. If something like that happened today, the national power grid would fail and we’d start blowing each other up and losing language capacities in a week. Sort of like Afghanistan always.

Since there’s a good chance something similar to that will happen in the next 50 years (though we’re headed toward a long term solar minimum and global cooling trend in the short term), it is item #1 in my most plausible disasters list. Item #2 is a cascade of space junk rendering our geosynchronous orbits unusable. If there was a way for me to bet on one or both of those things happening in the next 50 years, I’d be all over it.

As it stands, it’s probably a good reason to be a ridiculous Republico-Christian-Gun Nut. Didn’t Paul have the right to an assault rifle?

Danny 1

Yes, I have been following Tropical Storm Danny. Or Subtropical Storm Danny, whatever it’s going by these days. Danny is a disorganized hybrid type storm at the moment, not particularly tropical in structure, but sitting and (sort of) spinning over warm water in the heart of hurricane season.

It is notoriously difficult to predict this storm, as its circulation is so broad that even figuring out where the center of circulation is ends up being a challenge. I’m going to stick to the party line on this one. It should be at strong tropical storm or weak hurricane strength as it passes within a few dozen miles of Cape Cod this weekend. It will maintain that intensity, albeit becoming even more extratropical, as it makes landfall in Nova Scotia by Sunday. I dunno, how does that sound? Good enough.

Addendum
I take it all back, Danny looks miserable. It’s just a bunch of clouds right now, with some scattered wind.

Algonquin

I didn’t get many good pictures from my brother and I’s 4 day canoe trip in Ontario a few weeks ago. Those that I did get are here.

Addendum
I’m in my church’s camera club. We took pictures in the prayer garden.

Go West William

Hurricane Bill’s forecast tracks have been shifting west, 100 miles a day, for the past three days now. It’s looking like a landfalling hurricane at this point – current guidance is for a swipe on the Canadian Maritimes as a cat 2 hurricane, though a major hurricane hit on New England (or even our neck of the woods) is within the ensemble guidance.

Despite the winds at a mere 110 mph, this is already a major hurricane, I don’t care what they say. It’s central pressure is 963 mb, definitely cat3 in strength.

My guess: a swipe on Cape Cod Sunday as a category 3 hurricane. But we’ll see.

Addendum
The 11 PM advisory brought Bill to 125 mph (and 952 mb). That’s more like it. You can see on the satellite the hurricane’s intensity better than the official advisories most times.

East Coast Hype

The GFS weather model is hyping a east coast hurricane for ~10 days out. That is longer than those models are accurate, but the point remains – there’s plenty of energy out there for a tropical system, and it seems like some of that energy is headed west. I’ll keep an eye on it, we’ll know a lot more by Monday.

Ice and Airports

Jen met me at the airport with two flavor ices in a freezer bag. That very well may be the first time that anyone has ever eaten flavor ice in the baggage claim area of BWI. Is it possible that I am the first person to have eaten flavor ice at any airport? Discuss.

Lots and Lots of Water

I have a running diary sort of thing, as I did last year, only not as much. Next time I have an hour or two to waste at transcribing it, I’ll do so.

In brief:
1) I cannot believe how much water is there. Water is everywhere. Water water everywhere, and you can drink it but you’ll get a bacterial infection, and if you pump it it still tastes like muck.

2) Paddling a canoe for more than an hour in a row is hard work, but portaging is much harder.

3) We drove into Canada at the end of interstate 81, after driving through hours of almost nothing in New York. We thought we were on the end of the world. But that was just the beginning of Canada. We followed Lake Ontario for a hour or so, then hooked a right and went north for 80 miles of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING before arriving at the park. Another few hundred miles and we would still have been in Ontario. And Ontario is the most populous province. Canada is full of NOTHING.

4) I’m in Belleville, Ontario now. I just needed to ask the receptionist at the hotel desk how to adjust the air in the room. It turns out I’m an idiot. It is mercilessly hounding me.

5) The water was a balmy 65. Not sure why it was so warm, but I swam in it twice daily.

6) I’m sore in several spots, though injured no where important.

7) I slept pretty well, very well last night.

8 ) The animals in Algonquin sound just like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. The loons, moose, and wolves may have been recorded for the movie. The squirrels make the same sounds as the velociraptors. I kid you not.

9) We ate very well, much better than last time.

10) For whatever it’s worth, we paddle exactly 1 km per 10 minute shift, for 6 km an hour. We also converted to metric. The total trip was something like 60 km.

11) I only got a handful of pictures. It was very pleasant, not very awe-inspiring, and you really couldn’t capture just how much water there was on film. Or digital film for that matter.

12) No waterfalls either.

Lakes and Streams

Tomorrow Steve and I head north. Stop one is for a Yankees/Red Sox game with the old man at the new stadium. On Saturday, we head to mighty Maynooth, Ontario to stay at a hostel. Then, on to Algonquin Provincial Park for 4 days and three nights in the interior. Day one is Canoe Lake to Misty Lake, day two from Misty to Big Trout, three from Big Trout to the North Arm of the Opeongo, then finally canoeing out to a pick up point at Opeonga on Wednesday. We’ll stay in Belleville, Ontario (on the lake), then Steve will drop me off in Albany for a flight back to BWI on Thursday evening. Some years it’s altitude and mountains, others bears and cold, this year it’s looking like water. Lots and lots of water. Here’s to keeping the canoe from capsizing.

Population Density

Some days it seems like not too many people read this website. But apparently NOBODYvisited this guy’s.

Now, riddle me this – if the FBI were able to automatically parse blogs for various inflammatory phrases, flagging ones that meet certain criteria, then manually screening the flagged ones, would that somehow constitute an overextension of authority? Most would agree that a Minority Report type scheme is unfair, but blogs are public domain. What about site behind passwords, if they could crack that? I can tell you they’re already doing it for terrorist activities.

Would it be different if a concerned co-worker narc’ed on this guy a few months ago? What would they charge him with? How do we screen crazy people? Is it ethical to screen crazy people?

I’ve always been of the “if you’re not doing something wrong, who cares what they (whoever they is) know,” but that’s bit me in the ass before, and I know at least the Bess/Steve block would disagree.

1958

Think the Arctic ice is low these days? It’s nothing new.

Job’s Comforters

I used to write here all the time. Today, I had an awkward story that I wanted to get off my chest. I sent Jen a text about it, but she was at work. The story still remained, and I couldn’t move past it until I told someone. So I wrote it here.

It’s pretty obvious, when I think about it. I don’t write here as much because I just tell Jen all my dumb stories. I don’t have a need to publish it for the outside world, because I now have a closed-circuit outlet that works just as well.

Jury’s Out

I had jury duty today. By that, I mean that I sat in a room with 50 strangers in complete silence for 2.5 hrs before being told that we weren’t needed. Thanks for wasting my life. Only, I’m not sure who to thank, really, as I support the concept. Jury duty is something that retired people should do on a semi-professional basis. Now I know why people work so hard to dodge it.

Anyway, throughout that time, I sat next to a young, reasonably attractive girl. We didn’t interact, because one doesn’t talk to his neighbor in jury duty, but shared an eye roll or two. As we left, we were parked near to each other. Whatever, all well and good, I wasn’t interested for obvious reasons.

As I didn’t want to sit in my baking hot car, I pulled out immediately while my phone booted up. Jen had requested a text to two, and I was happy to oblige, just not in 120 degree heat. After two or three minutes, I pulled over on the side of the road, fired off a text, then merged forcefully back into traffic.

Directly behind the girl from the room. She immediately recognized me, as she tilted her mirror to get a clear view. Nuts, I thought, she thinks I’m tailing her. After all, I had seen her car when we were leaving, I had pulled over for no good reason, then merged in directly behind her once she went past. In reality, it was a complete coincidence, but, in my mind’s eye at least, she was freaked out.

I was behind her for a second light, as she glowered straight at me in her mirror before making a phone call. I even considered taking a different route to work at this point, despite the fact that the one I was on was the obvious way to do it. Unfortunately, driving sort of mandated that I stay where I was – there was a cop nearby on the road so I couldn’t blast past her, and I wasn’t about to go slow. Finally we split, to her assumed relief.

It’s been irking me ever since, however. I swear this isn’t the first time I’ve suspected something like this. Wonderful.

Less Warm, More Ice Age

While the site itself is pretty plain, here is a good global climate change treatment. I tend to agree with the sentiment that, though the science is junk, we should behave as though we desire to address the purported human induced climate change.

Number Between 1 And 10

I’m thinking of a movie. It involves this guy from California, 15ish years old, who moves to Ohio and doesn’t quite fit in. A local girl, desired by the local boys, develops a soft spot for him, and then there’s this big race down a 7,000 ft mountain in downtown Cleveland. The End. I forget what they raced with, but I think it was bikes or skateboards or roller blades. Possibly roller skates, go carts, power wheels or street luges.

What is this movie called?

It’s not Flight of the Navigator, but I’m thinking of that movie too.

The Gates of Harvard

Last night I heard a bemused Brit discussing the Gates arrest on the BBC. Since it is now officially newsworthy…

In case you aren’t familiar, a prominent black professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr, came home from vacation and had a hard time getting into his house. His neighbor, who apparently didn’t recognize him, called the police on him as he tried to force his way in. The police showed up and [something] happened, leading to the prof claiming that this was all caused by the fact that he’s a black man in America. President Obama chimed in in Gates’ defense, insulting police in the process. Gates found himself a ready made bully-pulpit (and right after vacation too! not even during the school year), and the officer, along with organizations of officers, have fired back at Obama.

First off, Obama has to shut his yap, for his own sake. This is politically toxic. If he backpedals on his support for Gates, the black community will skewer him. If he persists in his support of Gates, the police, and civil servant community at large, will turn against him. The prez is in a lose lose. Just don’t talk about it. Let it go away.

Second, the officer is not at fault for responding to a call from a concerned neighbor. The fact that the neighbor didn’t recognize Gates is both that neighbor’s and Gates’ fault. How do you not recognize your neighbor? What kind of thief tries to bust in through the front door during the day?

The only person innocent in the initial situation is the officer – of course he came, he HAD to come. He didn’t profile anyone in responding to a call, if anything, Gates’ neighbor profiled him.

I don’t know what happened next. I know what the police report says, and, frankly, it’s believable to me. You have an agitated man, annoyed that he just had to bust into his own house, all the sudden confronted by the police. Police historically give minorities a hard time. He responds with an all too familiar “you’re just harassing me because I’m black” exclamation (fair or unfair) and then fails to cooperate with the officer. The officer, meanwhile, can’t just leave…”fine, I believe you, sheesh, I’m leaving, I’m leaving!” He needs to see that ID or whatever.

Now, I don’t understand why they needed to arrest the guy, but clearly he can’t just leave.

I’m not sure what the solution is at this point, but here’s what should have happened.

1) Gates and his neighbor should have known each other.
2) Gates should have cooperated with the police, not because of black and white but because he did nothing wrong and it’s the damn police.
3) The officer should have been calmer. If it was clear Gates had no intention of fleeing or cooperating, he should have called for backup and hung out until someone else got there. And make it a black officer, please, please.
4) Gates should have taken his ire out on the neighbor. “Hi, I’m Dr Henry Louis Gates. I’m a professor at Harvard. I’m your neighbor. Please don’t assume I’m robbing the house just because I’m black.”
5) Obama should have said something less caustic. “It was an unfortunate situation – I don’t know specifically what prompted the officer to arrest Prof Gates, but it’s clear that they two men had been able to communicate more reasonably, nothing would have happened.”

Can we all just take it out on the neighbor?

Addendum

I agree with this lady.

Eclipse

Satellite image of solar eclipse

I am getting lazy.

Re-Org

At work we re-organize everything every few weeks. Inspired, I have re-organized my picture site. Also, the last of the NW trip pictures are here.

Time, Flowing Like a River, Over a Waterfall

This morning I woke up at my normal 5:43 AM with my alarm. Having been awoken from what seemed like hours of restless, frustrating dreams, I determined that I would sleep more – a disturbing trend which has occurred a handful of times in the last several months. I set my alarm for 6:12, rolled over, and fell asleep.

Mere minutes later, I rolled back over to see that it was now 6:26! I popped straight up, skipped the computer and headed to the shower. Ten minutes later, I picked up the cell phone – it is Jen’s first day at her rotation with the VA – and went to send a text. 6:09 AM.

On alarm clocks, they make this big fat button called “Snooze”. They do this because people don’t think really well when they are violently roused from sleep. I set the CLOCK to 6:12 – fast forwarding local time by 29 minutes. My alarm would have gone off at the same time the next day, 23:31 later. 6:26 was really just 14 minutes after I had changed time – aka 5:57 EST.

I’ve been in a strange nether-world all morning thus far, as my internal chronometer has bifurcated into two different threads. Improperly initialized, I stand little chance of recovering completely until I go back to bed tonight.

In other news, my pictures page (under “New Pictures”) has my most recent entries. The goal is to catch up before the big Algonquin PP trip.

Rights

Remind me again of how it is a fundamental human right to possess firearms or extinguish the lives of babies? And explain to me how one group wants guns, which are effective at killing people and/or threatening to kill people, but wants to avoid the killing of babies while the other group doesn’t like guns but is cool with the baby thing…

I think the Republicans and Democrats sat down in a smoky room back in the 1950s and drew straws for hot button issues, so that each could claim moral high-ground. I wonder why more people don’t find these positions mutually exclusive. It’s beyond me.

Furthermore, this is interesting.

NW More

Excepting Jen and I’s little back porch photo shoot and the rose garden, the rest of the NW trip pics are up. I think I need to sell one of them to Hallmark.

Flame

Most non-Christian or mainline folk probably don’t know how many churches reach out to young folk these days, but thanks to someone for making this and thanks to Jason for passing it along. And thanks to Jen K for reminding me to watch it.

Check the Data

A few things:
1) We idolize the wrong people, or at least over-extend our idols. Steve McNair, for instance, was roping women along on the side of his marriage. One of them, disillusioned by the collapse of her dream world, shot him (and herself). McNair’s poor wife apparently knew none if this, which is sad. That said, this is the devil’s bargain that one signs when she marries a professional athlete. Meanwhile, the rest of the sports world is pointing to this one indiscretion as a momentary mistake for a great man. He was charitable, which is wonderful, but if I were a betting man, I’d be betting that this wasn’t the only woman. To expect these people, who are adored by millions and who have hundreds of times more money than the rest of us to be constrained by our social norms is unrealistic. Pick your sports idols from sports, but pick your moral idols from the laity. We have less of an opportunity to fail, publicly at least.

2) The same goes for Michael Jackson, also dead. As society hyperventilates his praises, try to remember how weird we all thought the man was. I know that he was acquitted on all charges, so I won’t bring up any of that, but once more, he was not worthy of adulation as a person. As a musician, sure, as a social reformer, yeah in his way, as a moral compass, probably not. Look to your firemen, your servicemen, your pastors, your social workers for that. They have failings too, but at least you won’t see those failings and adopt them for yourself.

3) Yes, global temperatures are cooling. Yes, temperatures have plummeted this year. Yes, global temperatures are driven by solar activity (duh). And no, that doesn’t mean we should ignore human climate drivers. I still want to burn less fossil fuels. I still want to conserve more resources, both land and natural. I still want the human population to decline. It would be cool if scientists could be a little more transparent when it comes to the data, but for the time being, hysteria is accomplishing things that I support…so I don’t really mind.