Monday, October 31, 2005
Question
WTF. If Harriet Miers was 'old' at 60, why is Alito 'young' at 55? Several descriptions of him say he's young and could have 20 or 30 years on the bench. The same describers who noted Miers' age and how short a time she might have. Come on. It's almost 2006, time to have cut ageism and sexism reflexes. Incidentally, since women live longer than men, she is actually younger at 60 than he is at 55. But he's Princeton undergrad and Yale law school, married, etc. etc. I guess conventional looks, social life, education, etc. still sway many people, bloggers included - for whom I generally hold high regard.

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Permalink | 5 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:43 AM

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Life and art
Tara Correa-McMullen, the actress who portrayed a gang member named Graciela on Judging Amy, was shot and killed ten days ago in a gang shooting in Los Angeles (via breitbart). She successfully kept her character rebellious and difficult, yet made her likeable, even if the fondness came reluctantly. How twisted and sad that Tara and Graciela met identical fates.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 8:51 AM

Parents' revenge?
The recent D.C. indictments puzzle me. Even the special prosecutor acknowledges that the expectation of a crime didn't pan out (anyway, Plame and Wilson spoke about her job themselves) so I have a problem: If the indicted crime is 'covering up', how can it be criminal to cover something up that isn't a crime? I'm not crazy about the implications if this is basically the ultimate parent's revenge, as in "it's not whether you bit your sister that bothers me, it's that you lied about it"?

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 8:43 AM

Saturday, October 29, 2005
Almost average
According to the description on npr's website, writer Kevin O'Keefe set out to find the "most-average" American two or three years ago. He talked to magicians in Maryland and cattle farmers in Kansas, among others, then ended up in his hometown in Connecticut. His book, The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen, concludes that the following are true for a majority of Americans. Like other bloggers who have included this list on their sites (dustbury and absinthe & cookies among others), I've crossed out and annotated those that are untrue for me.
- Eats peanut butter at least once a week (every other week at most and only if one spoonful counts)
- Prefers smooth peanut butter over chunky (not even a contest for me)
- Can name all Three Stooges
- Lives within a 20-minute drive of a Wal-Mart (only if I drive way over the limit; it's 30-40 minutes away)
- Eats at McDonald's at least once a year (I hate to admit it but it's true)
- Takes a shower for approximately 10.4 minutes a day
- Never sings in the shower (not often but, yes, occasionally)
- Lives in a house, not an apartment or condominium (and I really love mine)
- Has a home valued between $100,000 and $300,000 (amazing)
- Has fired a gun (not since summer camp - does that count?)
- Is between 5 feet and 6 feet tall
- Weighs 135 to 205 pounds (barely)
- Is between the ages of 18 and 53 (maybe, maybe not)
- Believes gambling is an acceptable entertainment option (nope)
- Grew up within 50 miles of current home (75 miles for me)
Now it's your turn.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:13 PM

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Good questions
Non-violent protest can effectively raise awareness and sometimes even affect change. But protest can be intoxicating and supplant fixing the underlying issues/problem as the purpose. And some protesters become violent in their non-violence, if you know what I mean. Anyway, hearing that Schmindy is planning to chain herself to a fence in front of the White House, my head buzzed in that way that usually means something seems offbase, akilter, odd, puzzling, maybe even wrong. And then I happened upon one of Random Jottings' entries yesterday and my questions crystalized. Why do many war protesters rant and rave only against our government? Why don't they chain themselves to Iraqi or UN fences? Why didn't they yell and scream at Hussein about his murdering and torturing? Why don't they interrupt Syrian assemblies and demand a cessation of permitting insurgents across their borders into Iraq? Why don't they demand that peace-loving Muslims speak out? I have lots more questions along this vein but why list them all. Unfortunately I think Schmindy and her gang prefer to disrupt and attack their own government than actually work toward peace. Their goal pretty clearly is to make the U.S. look bad and to arouse hostile emotions, rather than to suggest ways of fixing the problems about which they say they are so angry. Would returning Saddam to power make them happy? My guess is that the only thing that could ameliorate their fury is Bush's resignation. If that's their real gripe, then they should say so. If they're just getting a kick out of all the attention from their protesting, we can ignore them as if they're acting out. If they really feel strongly about world peace and human kindness, they should criticize and attack more than those they see as the hometown bullies and put all their passion, zeal and energy to possibly good and effective use.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:45 AM

Monday, October 24, 2005
Puzzled
62 million people voted for GWB, like it or not, so why shouldn't his nominee be heard before being drawn and quartered? I'm puzzled at the yelling and screaming about Harriet Miers even from many of his supporters. It's not as if all the other Supreme Court justices are such giant intellectuals displaying cleverness, wit, wisdom and general all-around brilliance. Well, maybe one or two of them but not most and not most of the time. Were group-aligned Bush supporters sure their agenda was the one he would serve once elected and that's why they're crushed that he didn't nominate someone supporting their plan? Get real. Congress wouldn't approve obvious proseltyzers. Besides, I kind of like the Miers nomination because it suggests what I've always suspected which is that Bush follows his own agenda. He often gives an impression of cowtowing to interest groups but then follows his own plans. I don't always agree with him but he's the guy who gets to make these choices right now. By nominating her, he sticks it to lots of people who deserve it. Did people prefer the supposedly brilliant and right-thinking (uh, that's "correct" thinking, for those who agree with him) Mr Clinton making most of his choices for what they would get him (votes, friends, money, etc.)? It's refreshing to have decisions made for reasons I don't necessarily understand since I'm not in the room nor privvy to the discussions or reasoning nor the one who earned the right (read: votes) to make the decisions.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 1:26 PM

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Kamau Kambon
Realizing that racism exists on every side, it was no less appalling to read Jon Sanders' report in the Carolina Journal Online about North Carolina State University affiliate professor Kamau Kambon's remarks during a panel discussion of hurricane Katrina media coverage. Just as Bill Bennett's recent ridiculous remarks were widely publicized and ridiculed, so should Dr Kambon's be, and so should he be excoriated and taken to as loud and angry task as Bennett was. Presumably realizing that his audience was national since the panel was being broadcast on C-SPAN, Kambon said that white people are "monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem. . . . [W]e need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us." He added that "White people want to kill us. I want you to understand that. They want to kill you. . . . They want to kill you because that is part of their plan." (Kambon's remarks are under "Black Media Forum on Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media" at C-SPAN online www.cspan.com.)

It's difficult to do anything other than stare in disbelief at the screen. It's appalling that hate and anger persist as ideological tools. Someone needs to speak loud enough, compellingly enough, be heard enough, convincingly, that hatred solves nothing. Cuz, let's say whites kill blacks and blacks kill whites; how does it help to knock everyone off? Meanwhile, there are plenty of things to sink one's energy into. How about cures for cancer, Parkinsons and tb? How about educating everyone well and creating worthwhile work for everyone? I would continue but the choir already knows and the hate mongers apparently skip along on their (un)merry way. Killing Kambon and Bennett won't help - they're just messengers.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:23 AM

Friday, October 21, 2005
:)

with Gary Varvel's permission.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 1:29 PM

FYI
The bad news is that newspapers and television only tell part of most stories. The good news is that blogs and websites fill in many (sometimes unknown) holes. There may be additional holes needing further filling, too, but they remain unfilled for now. Today's interesting example of how there is so much more than we usually hear about, concerns I.Lewis ('Scooter') Libby, one of the figures at the center of the exceedingly weird Plame / Miller / Rove / Cheney / Libby maelstrom. There's more to Libby than has been written about or mentioned on tv. Thanks to Random Jottings, for the following:
"After our forces had withdraw from Vietnam, the South Vietnamese held their own for several years against the North Vietnamese forces attempting to conquer them. Then in 1975, . . . Congress . . . cut off the military aid the Vietnamese were depending on. . . . There were still a handful of Americans in South Vietnam, and one of the last to leave was Scooter Libby. And his final mind-boggling deed, was, utterly without any authorization or help or permission, to organize a fleet of rusty ships, and take 20,000 Vietnamese to the Philippines! They were mostly military personnel and their families; people who would have been doomed to execution, or to the hell of the "re-education camps."
(The entire story is in the book Rise Of The Vulcans.)

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:08 AM

Thursday, October 20, 2005
Good read
I hate to do this since it 's kind of a cop out - but I basically want to post Peggy Noonan's article from today's Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal here. It's perceptive and amusing, not earth-shaking, but instructive and thoughtful.

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:17 AM

Tuesday, October 18, 2005
How do you sleep?
It's all over the place today, back pages, front pages, blogs, tv, etc. People are saying they're sometimes willing to risk SIDS in order to get some sleep. The NY Times Science Section article is entitled "A Quiet Revolt Against the Rules on SIDS" which tips off its gist pretty well, and among others, Althouse writes about it too. A few years ago I thought it was goofy that new mothers had become so slavishly careful about never-ever-ever-ever-ever letting babies sleep on their stomachs, even cranky or tired babies. In my best "we knew better" tone of old wives' mind, I muttered about all the generations of children who slept on their tummies not to mention adults who like to tuck onto a pillow. Maybe it depends on the sleeplessness of the baby and the tiredness of the mommy. I hope tummy sleeping baby's parents have really good monitors. On the other hand, quiet and quick death is a pretty devastating risk to take.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:53 PM

Sunday, October 16, 2005
Sheep and Wool Festival 2005
Did you go to the Sheep and Wool Festival this year? I love going because of the tons of wonderful people, yarn, sheep, rabbits, alpacas, llamas, cheese, sheepdogs, fun stuff to buy, etc., etc. This year had the added delight that my daughter, s-i-l and g.daughter came along. We missed the angora rabbit fur-directly-to-spinning-wheel demonstration and the parading llamas and alpacas but there were terrific exhibits and discoveries like the sheep/cheese/wool farm from Lauer Road in Poughkeepsie; they have tours and I can't wait to visit. It did seem a bit less crammed full of stuff than it used to be - no machine knitting demos, for one thing - and I think there were fewer exhibitors. Also, I don't spin or weave (yet) and many displays are geared to spinners and weavers. I like going, very much, and I'll be there in 2006 with bells on. P.S. I bought a big orange basket from Amazing Threads, which was the perfect size to deposit the adorable g.daughter right into but I resisted.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 7:03 PM

Gift appreciation
Saturday afternoon some of us got talking about what we're knitting and crocheting for birthday and holiday gifts this year. We were surprised to find that we all felt that few recipients are ever "grateful enough" although some, happily, are wonderfully effusive, displaying and using what we make for them. We mostly agreed that the fault doesn't lie with the recipients (well, rarely, anyway) but that our expectations are usually way too high because of the work and time we put into it. In a perfect world we'd like people to fall on their knees, clasp us in their arms and shout thanks through tears of joy. But it might be more realistic to give the most complex projects to the recipients who seem to understand and appreciate as we'd wish, and for the others, take advantage of the new fabulous lush yarns and give them scarves, pillows, shawls, etc., i.e. things that are nice but are relatively quick and easy to make without a lot of work or stress. Bad idea or good solution - what do you think?

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:48 AM

Saturday, October 15, 2005
The sky
The sun'll come out tomorrow today. The weatherman was wrong but in the right direction. Hallelujah!!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 1:03 PM

Happy day
Happy happy birthday to Devra! I hope she enjoys the day and the year and the decades to come!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:41 AM

Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Ark blueprints
If you have blueprints for a small ark that can be put together in a living room or on a porch - it's too soggy to do on the lawn - please forward immediately. In 33 32 days I'm going to need it so I have to get started right away. Ideally, it should have room for lots of yarn, an alpaca or two and many books cuz it looks like we'll be afloat for a while. Thanks in advance!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 4:56 PM

Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Religious and rational?
It's getting ridiculous. As if the natural distasters haven't been devastating enough, the media has felt it necessary to inflate and exaggerate dreadful events with baseless huge figures and rumored reports of bizarre behavior. In New Orleans, some of the whipped up alarm was truly irresponsible and vile, presumably in pursuit of higher ratings. And now along comes Pat Robertson saying the spate of tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and mudslides shows that we're on the brink of the Second Coming. Hal Lindsey of World Net Daily also sees it as apocalyptic, complete with hellfire and brimstone. And Franklin Graham, son of the less irrational Billy, keeps intoning that it's all divine punishment for sinful living. But here's my problem: if God zapped Kuala Lampur and Biloxi to punish those who party, gamble and drink, then (a) why those places and not Las Vegas or Monoco or any number of others? and (b) exactly which fleshly sins did Pakistanis and Guatemalans indulge in, for which they have received 'just punishment'? Gee, isn't there a rational religious leader somewhere to speak out, soon and loud? Then again, a friend of mine thinks that's an oxymoron.

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Permalink | 2 comment(s) | posted by jau at 2:00 AM

Monday, October 10, 2005
2 blogging queries
One- is it just me or do other blogger bloggers have trouble publishing? I can save to the template and save posts but "republish" hardly ever works. The only sometime solution/workaround I've found is to change a post just a little and then "publish post". Seems clumsy.

Two - any new ideas about setting up a category system? I read the de.li.ci.ous stuff but I'm not crazy about the layout of the results. I prefer not to go to typepad or wordpress because I like learning web stuff due to blogger's letting me muck around with the template. (Example: I've almost licked displaying jmbm in Firefox, thanks to friends and research, not because I called on the right whatsamajiggy, know what I mean?)

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 5:40 PM

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Eve of destruction?
Hey, look at the bright side! We can stop working so hard to kill each other by war, street fighting, pollution and disease. That old stand-by sweetie-pie, Mother Nature, has taken it upon herself to show that she can outdo anything we can dream up. In just the few recent months, tsunamis swept over hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia, hurricanes swamped coastal America killing "only" a thousand, an earthquake buried tens of thousands in Pakistan, and a landslide buried a Guatemala town. So relax, we don't have to worry about wiping each other out - it's being taken care of by someone bigger and stronger.

For a lighter way to look at it, and allowing for changes over the last forty years, the 1965 PD Sloan song that Barry McGuire recorded seems alarmingly germane (and which, by the way, is often listed as a really bad Dylanesque ripoff - shows what they know). I particularly like the part about piety-cloaked hatred.
"Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say, An' can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?
There'll be no one to save, with the world in a grave. Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy.
An' you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend, Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction....
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'. Think of all the hate there is in Red China,
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama. Ah, you may leave here for four days in space,
But when you return it's the same ol' place, The poundin' of the drums, the pride an' disgrace. You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace. Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace,
An' you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend, You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction,
No, no, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction."

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:53 PM

Thursday, October 6, 2005
Cameras, more
In today's NYTimes, "Two Cameras that Double as Albums" considers two new about-to-be-released cameras: Kodak's Easy-Share One and SONY's DSC-N1. They're both WiFi'able and can serve as mobile photo albums, hence the title of the article. The Kodak has some fabulous features and visibly truer colors in bright lights, but the reviewer ultimately prefers the SONY because of superb clarity in low light, recovery speed, megapixels, etc.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:38 AM

Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Digital cameras
Taking a respite from politics and things societal, today I am seeking recommendations for a new digital camera. I currently have an adequate camera which takes okay shots outdoors but is fairly dismal indoors (grainy, bad color, etc.). I want one that takes bright color shots, nicely contrasted black and whites, well-lit night and indoor shots, is quick on 'shutter' and recovery speeds, has good optical zoom, allows some manual fiddling if/when I want to, doesn't require pre-sets to take pictures, and doesn't cost more than a million dollars. Suggestions?

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 1:04 PM

Monday, October 3, 2005
I want one!!!
It's a teapot. It's a coffee maker. It's a clock radio. It's a teapot, a coffee maker AND a clock radio! See this and other splendid products at teasmade.com. (Thanks, Andrea, for pointing them out.)

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:12 AM

ttcgitw
Taking a first, long, hard, amused look.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:48 AM

Sunday, October 2, 2005
Bill Bennett
Although I am merely another among zillions noting how stupid and tasteless he is, nevertheless I must weigh in on Bill Bennett's idiotic statement to the effect that preventing black babies from being born would reduce the crime rate. This twisted logic rests on at least three utter fallacies: one, that removing some people who might eventually cause a problem would eliminate a problem; two, underlying the first, that only blacks commit crime; and three, underlying the other two, that statistics are anything beyond broadly descriptive. With his reasoning, preventing white babies would reduce serial murders, child pornography, and corporate crime, and preventing all babies would mean quicker departures at airports, quieter dinners out and, in a few years, shorter lines at Disney World. This is simply ridiculous, immoral, illegal, inhumane, insulting and, most of all, a goofy and worthless way to think about or deal with anything. (A rude but irresistable thought: If Bennett had been aborted, there would have been one less psuedo-morality book written by a pontificating hypocrite, not to mention fewer stupid things said on the radio this week.)

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 8:16 PM

Saturday, October 1, 2005
Logic
Often, listening to the news or reading the newspaper, I find myself thinking that the logic I follow is oddly, puzzlingly, different from others'. I sometimes consider simply stoppping trying to follow the news stories on the theory that I'm mentally sub-par. Today's example is the Judith Miller incident. She said she'd been told Something Very Important by someone insisting on anonymity. When told by a court to reveal her source so the veracity of the "SVI" could be reviewed, she refused, taking imprisonment as an acceptable price to pay for the cost of defending journalistic integrity. Okay so far. But it turned out that (a) the "SVI" had been quite publicly revealed both by the spouse of the person and by several other people (which my logic says would obviate the need to keep quiet) and (b) the source had specifically told her she was free to reveal who he was (which my logic says would dissipate the whole thing). So why did she insist on keeping quiet and spending several months in jail? Is she doing a story on white color jail? was she seeking publicity for an upcoming book? did she want to cast bad light on someone? did she want to be in protective custody for an entirely different reason like being chased by Far East gangsters running illegal tea bags (just kidding)? or — what?? Or is it simply an indication that I am actually, albeit regrettably, stupid?
Update: Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post is as puzzled as I am but posits the idea that this was a way to transform herself "into a much-celebrated hero of press freedom". It's beyond me why being a hero is worth spending months in a jail cell. So reprieve my questions at the end of the previous paragraph.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:29 AM