Web Log Archive July 24th through August 6th, 2005
Saturday, August 6th, 2005 Happy Birthday, Jim
People who "don't believe in
evolution" are too dumb or too lazy to understand it. No one of
average intelligence---who has once made the effort and taken the time---doubts
that it has occurred and that it continues to occur. The whole 'debate',
in fact, was already boring fifty years ago...like arguing about whether one
plus one equals two (or three).
But let not us latte
liberals be blind to the humor inherent in this 'alternative to evolution':
this "Intelligent
Design" (ID) theory. Though usually dismissed by us stuffies
as "recycled Creationism"...it is not! For
"Creationism" is a quite humorless 'explanation' for how things
came to be the way they are. But ID is, in fact, no explanation at
all! Rather, it's a declaration (by stupid, lazy people) that the world
as we find it is too hard to understand! That's funny!
And it's not even wrong!
Friday, August 5th, 2005 60 years ago tomorrow, Hiroshima was bombed
Go for it, Jen!
"A soul who knows it is loved but does not love back
reveals its sediment: it is turned bottom side up." Fred
wrote it, but 'poor' Jennifer
Aniston knows it!
"I can't imagine being with any other human
being," she said
of her lying ex. "I married him because he was the love of my
life."
What better way to curse Brad in his new alliance? For: "We
are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish."
Francois
Oh Goody Goody Department: "The White House immediately sought to
reassure Judge
Roberts's conservative backers..., but it appeared that not all of them had
been convinced."
Thursday, August 4th, 2005
How charmed my life must be:
A phrase which has burrowed itself into our beloved language is,
"At the end of the day...."
This limp and wilted metaphor is invariably uttered by people (like Condoleezza
Rice) with whom I do not share a worldview; and it has been
my experience that any speaker who has once resorted to it will soon descend to "proactive"
and then, especially if the subject is manufacturing, to "widgets"!
Another phrase which flicks me is "...anything is possible!" It
is (almost) invariably preceded by "Well...", as in, "Well...anything
is possible!" But anything is not possible, just as everything
is not possible!" People say, "Well...anything is possible!"
when what they really mean to say is "whatever!"
On Sunday
night, while eating a peach
over a bowl of shredded wheat, I read what was to be Stephen Vincent's last
piece for the New York Times. At that very moment---half a world away in
Basra, Iraq---others were reading that very piece...and plotting Mr. Vincent's
murder; something they accomplished before the sun set on Tuesday. Now...if you
haven't already read the piece...it may now be worth your three or four minutes
to do so. I was surprised to hear Mr. Vincent described
by his friends as "pro-war" (or, at least, pro the
Iraq war). Although I had read the piece with a certain "duh" (as
in: well...what did anyone expect?!), I chose to view Stephen's
style as 'merely' journalistic and not suggestive (or symptomatic) of
his own naiveté.
Alas! His last piece is of civil corruption in Basra...a mess no less
intractable for its predictability. Mr. Vincent writes derisively of the
unwillingness (if not the inability) of Basra's occupying British soldiers to
halt the transformation of the local police force into the de
facto local Shiite militia.
By accounts, Mr. Vincent and his female translator were abducted, shortly before
his murder, by men in local police uniforms.
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
OK. OK! So Cheney's
still the VP! (Web
Log, July 17th)
But how'd I do on the "how long could those kids have
survived in the trunk" calculation? (Web
Log, June 26th)
Well...my calculation was that the boys died within eleven hours of having been trapped in the trunk. The autopsy report, issued yesterday by the Camden County Coroner's Office, said that deaths occurred between 13 and 33 hours after entrapment, although there is some non-forensic evidence to suggest that the boys were, at least, unconscious after only about seven hours. The most important new detail revealed in the report was that the boys likely entered the trunk through the passenger compartment and not, as had been assumed, from the trunk (whose lid was thought to have suddenly closed on them).
There were two big stories in the news yesterday concerning Chevron (formerly ChevronTexaco). One got broad coverage. The other...you'd have to look for. Both stories illustrate that, while money might not be everything in this world, it's still way ahead of whatever's in second place.
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 Warren G. Harding has been dead 82 years.
"I can deal with my enemies. It's my goddamn friends that have me walking the floor at night!" Warren G., as quoted by William Allen White
Harding died at the (now Sheraton) Palace
Hotel in San Francisco. He was not quite 58. To the public, his death
was as sudden as it was unexpected. But there is good
reason to believe that he had long suffered from coronary artery
disease (his "normal" systolic pressure was 180) and that he (rather expectedly) succumbed to an infarction.
[His was not known to be a healthy lifestyle.]
Harding's personal physician, Charles Sawyer (who himself died scarcely a
year after his famous patient), listed the cause of death as crab
meat poisoning. Harding's wife (who herself died only a few weeks after Dr.
Sawyer) refused permission for her husband's autopsy. (California did not,
in 1923, have a law that required one.) These
circumstances, and others, surrounding Harding's death (coupled with his corruptibility
in office) made fertile soil for what would today be called 'tabloid
journalism'. By 1931, conspiracy
theories from suicide to homicide did abound!
Monday, August 1st, 2005
Sunday, July 31st, 2005
These last four or five weeks I have been (fwoabw)
'studying' the family of codes called HTML, XHTML and
CSS. When I started in this business, I wasn't paying much attention
to the Web publishing aspects of it. In fact, I felt that to do so would only distract me from the
matter at hand:
posting my recordings. So I've been using a 'cheater program', called Front
Page. Now...those whom I've encountered who actually know how to
construct Web pages...when they learn what I've been up to (this Front Page
business, I mean) suddenly treat me like I've got shit on my shoes. [Thanks, Lin. I needed that! ;-)] But
screw 'em!
Anyway. I've found that once you learn how to set up pages 'the old way', then a
cheater program can save lots of tedium. Front Page lets you edit the
underlying code and, so, one can graduate, as it were, from creating
low-rent displays to serious (and unique) ones.
I've recently purchased a domain in the name of my (to remain anonymous) alter
ego. Soon, I'll begin hosting it and no one (not even I) will know who I am! I'll be able
to say how I really feel! For now, let me share with you something I've learned only recently. It's something,
of course, that
the big dogs have all known for years but, as Betty
Broderick likes to say "I can't do anything about that!"
We learned in grammar school (where I picked my nose in the coat closet ) that there are three primary colors (red, green and blue) from which all others can be constructed. This is a remarkable fact (no?) and in Web color construction, this fact is put to use in a remarkably simple way! Each of the primary colors can be blended with the other two (each at its own selected intensity) to create virtually any color distinguishable by the human eye!
The format is color="#RRGGBB", where the RR, GG and BB
respectively call out the intensities of red,
green and blue in the
mix. The hexadecimal system
is used and goes from 00 to FF,
corresponding to decimal 0 to 255. So each
color can be mixed in one of 256 possible intensities. This creates a palette of
256 x 256 x 256=16,772,216 colors (or "16 million" as it is usually
abbreviated)!
So, for
example, just plain 'red'="FF0000", just
plain 'green'="#00FF00" and just plain 'blue'="#0000FF".
'White'="#FFFFFF" (all
colors) and 'black'="#000000" (no colors). You
want
yellow? That's equal parts
red and green, so it's "#FFFF00"!
Way cool, huh? Here's "#DDDDDD".
Right! You can't see anything because it's "#DDDDDD"...equal parts (at medium-high intensity)
red,
green
and
blue blended together...and that
happens to be the background color of this page!
Saturday, July 30th, 2005
Some things online are just plain sad. The Canadian
Coalition Against the Death Penalty now has a page
for Scott Peterson whereon, in a muttering, sputtering, stuttering syntax, he
thanks his supporters (both of them). The page contains links to related sites
like Savescottslife, Scottisinnocent
and Justice4scott (from which one may
'purchase bracelets'). A reward of $400,000 is offered "for information
leading to those who took my family (AKA the 'real killers')". Dunno
why, but it strikes me as particularly sad (telling, even), that
Scott's attorney's firm ("Gerogos (sic) & Geragos")
is misspelled! It's as if whoever put the page together couldn't bear to look
at it!
Color me corny, but at this stage
of my life it doesn't feel good to be "piling on" anyone. I've
seen enough...and been surprised enough...to believe that any one of us,
given the 'right' confluence
of challenging circumstances and alluring
prospects, could do something that could not be undone (ctrl-z)
and thereby turn
ourselves into a feast for the mob...someone everyone loves to
hate!
Friday, July 29th, 2005
"The original seven words were, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those are the ones that will curve your spine, grow hair on your hands and maybe even bring, God help us, peace without honor..." From George Carlin's 1973 monologue...the Mischief Night broadcast of which (by Pacifica Radio) led to an FCC reprimand which was ultimately upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1978!
Today, there seems to be no broadcast restriction on the use of the word "piss", which I eschew...not for any reason other than that it has an angry aurality, as in "pissed off". "Pee", OTOH, has a warm and friendly sound. :-)
Another word that didn't used to be 'proper' in most company, but has never attracted the censure of the FCC is "fart". The word is now routinely spoken on cable, even by such mainstreamers as CNN's Carol Lin, in her inquiring minds need to know on-air discussions of a certain Super Bowl XXXVIII half-time Bud Light commercial...yes, on the same broadcast that featured a 32 millisecond exposure of one of Janet Jackson's boobs! Deep!
Of course, I think it's healthy that society seems to be
moving in the direction of 'letting it all hang out'...but "Fart
Science" at the University of California at Davis?
"I'm not
makin' this stuff up, folks! "
Thursday, July 28, 2005
"The best place to hide a tree is in a forest." Roy Ramm, Scotland Yard
"...one sign I had stayed too long...was the recurring thought that if I were hit by a bus I would regret how I had spent my last months on earth."
Fred said, "The thought of suicide is a strong consolation; one can get through many a bad
night with it."
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez said, "I'm sorry he's
dead, but he was egotistical and abrasive!" [And
those were his good qualities!]
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 OMG, it's seven-twenty-seven
It's a bit early yet (or not) but this is shaping up to be the best season for peaches that I can remember! I suppose we could disagree as to whether it's fresh peaches or fresh pears that reward us with the most agreeable (and effortless) bowel movements. I insistently use the word 'fresh' to adjectivize these fruits because I do not observe the aforementioned salutary effect from the consumption of canned peaches or pears. Actually, the best fruit I have ever eaten (for its peristaltic action) is the large yellow-green pear native to Portugal. [I have visited Portugal only twice and each time only for a few days.] I don't believe it has ever been practical (or profitable) to ship large quantities of these wonderful specimens to the left coast of America. So it's peaches!
"...always buy something red
if you're blue---"
Peggy
Dowd (as quoted by her daughter, Mo)
Tuesday, July 26th, 2005 Mick Jagger is 62
From mighty oaks do tiny acorns grow. Here's an article that purports to explain why cats are cranky [and yes, it assumes that the reader accepts the premise...that cats are cranky.]
I don't remember a better season for tomatoes.
From seedlings in May 
click to enlarge
to what I picked 
yesterday. 
click to enlarge
My previous record
for a first ripe tomato was August 1st (that was in 2002). It's usually closer
to August 13th.
Monday, July 25th, 2005
I don't remember a better season for strawberries.
Goodness is highest when prices are lowest. One hundred eighty...out-of-phase.
Already now, late July, the peak and the trough are past us.
I don't remember a better season for corn. At
Safeway, one can no longer afford not to buy it! I see Ann
nearly every day. Second in command. Hard working. Sure to produce! Lover of overtime!
Thirties. Looks that wear well. Not a great sense of
humor, but not unable to laugh. :-)
Yesterday she confided (as she spilled another box onto a four-foot square table
(from which it seems to fly away at 6 for 96¢) that she doesn't like
corn ...and that she even wishes it had never been invented!
What! Why? "Ask anyone who's ever had to work with it! It's
messy!"
"Does the corn know
how you feel about it?" was the (read: my) natural follow-up.
"Does the corn know?"
she half-repeated, nodding forward.
Dealing with demented old people is part of Ann's
job and one reason, she knows, why it pays so much.
"Yes", I said. "I'll bet, by now, you've been
overheard. They're all ears!"
Sunday, July 24th, 2005
But but but..."Where can someone over 40 who doesn't smoke or drink or go to bars meet someone?" Dale Firebaugh, Roanoke, Virginia
I may be wrong sometimes, but I'm the last to admit it! OK. So that shifty-eyed bastard didn't resign last week! I mean, if I was real smart, would I be typing this?
"It is better that the innocent should suffer than that the guilty escape!" Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632)