"Haskett began fearing that the suspicions could cost him his job at a gag shop that sells such kid-friendly items as whoopie cushions."
Web Log Archives, April 30th through May 13th, 2006
Saturday, May 13th, 2006
"...White House drug officials raised the fear that Mexican border towns would become out-of-control party towns for thrill-seeking U.S. youth. (What else is new?) Border city cops spouted nonsense about how the new policy would lead to unmanageably rowdy public chaos, as if potheads and junkies are an energetic bunch, or as if any substance creates more troublesome public inebriation than...alcohol."
...a letter from Today's
NYT: "Good luck to the National Security
Agency if it can decipher my phone records. It will need more success than I had
in understanding information provided by AT&T and Verizon when I spent hours
analyzing my bills..." ;-)
Margaret Smyth, Charlestown, Mass.
Dunno why I always thought that Willie Mays had no sense of humor. Last night, at a Stadium birthday ceremony for his 75th, he said, in reference to Barry's pursuit of the Babe's record (of 714 home runs), "I wish he'd hurry up! I'm tired a comin' to the games!"
"Haskett began fearing that the
suspicions could cost him his job at a gag shop that sells such kid-friendly
items as whoopie cushions."
Friday, May 12th, 2006
<<<<What
does it mean?
"You can hit me and I won't think
much of it, but you can say something and hurt me very much."
Floyd
Patterson
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
Based on the CDC's
'final mortality statistics' for 2002, if you're a man and you turned fifty
this year then, on average, you can expect to live for about another 28 years.
Now...if you're a man and you just turned sixty
this year...would you expect the data to show that you could expect to live for
(only) another 18 years?. Well...it doesn't quite work that way
but, in this case, it's close! It turns out that, in the latter
case, you could expect to live about another 20 years.
But now guess what!?! If you're a man and you
just turned seventy
this year, then you can expect to live almost another 14 years!
Wednesday, May 10th, 2006
Based on the CDC's
'final mortality statistics' for 2002, if you're a woman and you turned fifty
this year then, on average, you can expect to live for about another 33
years.
Now...if you're a woman and you just turned sixty
this year...would you expect the data to show that you could expect to live for
(only) another 23 years?. Well...it doesn't quite work that way
but, in this case, it's close! It turns out that, in the latter
case, you could expect to live about another 24 years.
But now guess what!?! If you're a woman and you
just turned seventy
this year, then you can expect to live almost another 17 years!
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
The Washington Post got hold of an email (by mistake, too-widely circulated) written by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) speechwriter Heather Vaughn, which begins, "The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror (GWOT)." I've reprinted one such (offered) 'Transition Example' of such 'incorporation' below. The whole memo, in the form of a pdf document can be found online.
Monday, May 8th, 2006 Happy Birthday, Pauline
"The straw man fallacy is when you
misrepresent someone else's position so that it can be attacked more easily,
knock down that misrepresented position, then conclude that the original
position has been demolished."
from Infidels.org
"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best. I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.
Sunday, May 7th, 2006
"Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you.
That is the whole of the Torah. Go
and learn it."
Rabbi Hillel, the Elder (70 BCE-10 CE)
Interesting newsbyte about the recent
death of Titanic Survivor, Lillian Asplund.
Saturday, May 6th, 2006
The MSM
speculation as to the reasons for CIA Director Porter Goss's abrupt resignation
yesterday has, so far, caused a lot of yawning. But the Blogosphere is restless
with rumors that Goss resigned because his name has turned up in the investigation
of disgraced San Diego Representative Duke Cunningham. The dirt
is that Goss has been linked by investigators to (and may have even been a client of)
a limousine service which was a front for a Washington, DC prostitution ring
catering exclusively to government officials. Sleazy stuff. Embarrassing to Chimpoleon.
Now, even the MSM, in the person of Maureen
Dowd, has joined in on the rumors!
It's unprecedented for an Administration to announce such a high-level
resignation without 1) offering a public reason (like "the guy wants to
spend more time with his family" or "health considerations") and
2) without there already being a successor named...and standing by.
Yeah, I know...last week the Bloggers were claiming that Karl Rove would be
indicted by now... and two years ago, Cheney was just about to resign.
Friday, May 5th, 2006
The following is excerpted from Edwin Newman's 1974 Best-Seller, 'Strictly Speaking':
"Can a phrase be repealed? I
have in mind Y'know. The prevalence of Y'know is one of the most far-reaching
and depressing developments of our time, disfiguring conversation wherever you
go. I attend meetings at NBC and elsewhere in which people of high rank and
station, with salaries to match, say almost nothing else.
For a while I thought it clever to ask people who were spattering me with
Y'knows why, if I knew, they were telling me. After having lunch alone
with some regularity, I decided to drop the question.
Once it takes its grip, Y'know can be hard to throw off. Some people collapse
into Y'know after giving up trying to say what they mean. Others scatter it
broadside, these, I suspect being embarrassed by a silence of any duration
during which they might be suspected of thinking about what they were going to
say next.
...there is some reason to believe that [Y'know] began among poor blacks who,
because of the various disabilities imposed on them, often did not speak
well and for whom Y'know was a request for assurance they they had been
understood. From that sad beginning it spread, among people who wanted to show
themselves sympathetic to blacks, and among those who saw it as the latest thing
and either could not resist or did not want to be left out.
Those who wanted to show that they were down to earth, and so not above using
Y'know, have been particularly influential. They include makers of television
commercials who begin the sales pitch with Y'know, and so gain the confidence of
the viewer, who realizes at once that the person doing the commercial is down
to earth, regular, not stuck-up, and therefore to be trusted."
Thursday, May 4th, 2006
"Post coitum, omne animal tristis est.", an observation attributed to Galen (129-201)
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 Happy Birthday, Vic!
Yesterday, my Evoluent
Mouse arrived and, from early indications...it rules!
Conceptually, the device is simple: it merely causes the mouse user to
keep his hand in a 'handshake'
posture...rather than 'palm-down'. Now...who woulda
thought that this would make a difference in the development (or exacerbation)
of CTS? But it seems
to!
Practically, the device is not so simple. It offers three
mouse-type buttons (lined up with the first three fingers), a scroll wheel and
an extra 'thumb button' on the top left side (of a right-handed Evoluent
Mouse). All buttons are software programmable (in the Windows Control Panel) and
you can have them perform non-mouse-like functions such as 'refresh' and
'back' and 'copy'.
Pretty cool! It'll be a week or so before I can offer a more (call it)
'comprehensive' review. My paw still tingles and is numb some...but I can
already tell that things are not getting worse!
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006
Am I the only person who thinks
yesterday's immigrant march/protest/rally/boycott
made for a bunch of boring (if not obligatory) news stories? I mean...I'm not
even sure where I come down on this issue of undocumented immigration. I
think it's a complicated issue and any 'answer' that one might bring
to this debate will have plenty to do with whatever assumptions
('core beliefs')
that one happens to nurture regarding this world and one's 'proper place' within
it.
[But I WILL allow as to how a visit to Home Depot is, any more, a heartbreaking
experience...as one is confronted by throngs of so-called 'day
laborers' in the parking lot and on adjacent
sidewalks. My point is that, whatever one's views, here in
Northern California, the immigration issue
is daily becoming harder to ignore.]
Now...ah dunno what's wrong with me and it serves me right, of course, 'cuz I
had the tube on last night and happened to catch an exchange between Larry King
and Lou Dobbs. Lou
Dobbs (if you don't know...and even if you do)
is the CNN host who, for the last year, has talked about almost nothing except
the issue of illegal immigration! And veteran host, Larry King...it must
be said, is no John Stuart Mill.
In the midst of one of Lou's tiresome tirades, Larry (very gingerly)
asked him (Dobbs) if he didn't consider it a bit
un-Christian
to not
welcome these
poor people who regularly cross our borders in search of work (?).
Larry nearly withdrew
that question before he had finished asking it! In fact, he all-the-way-to 'apologized'
if Lou took
the question as a 'cheap shot'. Huh? And Dobbs did,
indeed, act as if Larry had farted in his face as he (Lou) grumbled, stumbled
and mumbled over an answer that went something to the effect that He (the mighty Lou Dobbs)
must separate his 'feelings as a good Christian'
from his anointed (if self-appointed) role as a 'reporter' (and 'analyst'). He
actually alluded to (in support of a perceived imperative that we
must not feel too sorry for these disenfranchised people) the 'separation of church and
state'!
IOW: "Who the hell
cares
what Jesus would do!?! This is not
about
Jesus, fuckin' Larry!"
My impression was that
he (Lou) did not anticipate (and, so, was not prepared to answer) an
obvious question (of
the sort often posed by a simpleton).
"Laura refused to shake his hand, Chimpy sat like a stunned mullet..." FuzzFlash.
Monday May 1st, 2006
"Then three gods did emerge from the primal wasteland:
Apsu (identified with the sweet waters of the
rivers), his wife Tiamat (the salty sea), and
Mummu, the Womb of chaos. Yet these gods were, so
to speak, an early inferior model which needed improvement. The names "Apsu"
and "Tiamat" can be translated
"abyss", "void" or "bottomless gulf". They share
the shapeless inertia of the original formlessness and had not yet achieved a
clear identity.
Consequently, a succession of other gods emerged from them in a process known as
emanation, which would become very important in the history of our own God. The
new gods emerged, one from the other, in pairs, each of which had acquired a
greater definition than the last as the divine evolution progressed. First came Lahmu
and Lahamn (their names mean "silt":
water and earth are still mixed together). Next came Ansher
and Kishar, identified respectively with the
horizons of sky and sea. Then Anu (the heavens) and
Ea (the earth) arrived and seemed to complete the
process. The divine world had sky, rivers and earth, distinct and separate and disintegration
could only be held at bay by means of a painful and incessant struggle. The
younger, dynamic gods rose up against their parents, but even though Ea
was able to overpower Apsu and Mummu,
he could make no headway against Tiamat, who
produced a whole brood of misshapen monsters to fight on her behalf. Fortunately
Ea had a wonderful child of his own: Marduk,
the Sun God, the most perfect specimen of the divine line. At a meeting of the
Great Assembly of gods, Marduk promises to fight Tiamat
on condition that he became their ruler. Yet he only managed to slay Tiamat
with great difficulty and after a long, dangerous battle. In this myth,
creativity is a struggle, achieved laboriously against overwhelming
odds."
From "A History of God",
by Karen Armstrong, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
Thirty-three years ago today, Richard Nixon 'accepted the
resignation' of Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman and Domestic Policy Advisor John
Ehrlichman. He also announced the dismissal of Counsel John Dean. This 'bought'
the President another sixteen months in the White House. The cover-ups
surrounding the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee
Headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC---initially called a 'third-rate
burglary' by then-Press Secretary Ron Ziegler ('Ron
Zieg-liar')---ultimately led, of course, to the resignation of Nixon
himself. One of the unanswered questions of American history is why Nixon felt
that he had to to anything extraordinary (or illegal) in order to
gain re-election in 1972...an
election in which he lost only one state (Massachusetts) and the District of
Columbia to challenger George Mc Govern.
By yesterday morning the
Bloggers had it that Karl Rove ('Bush's Brain')
will be indicted this coming Friday for perjury. Of course, the Bloggers
have been wrong before but the talk is that Rove's recent staff 'reassignment'
was in preparation for his having to answer criminal charges.
