sotto voce USA

A New Blog

2007-09-16T15:45:00.000-04:00

I'm back after another long, long absence. I've decided to close this and my other blogs down and consolidate everything that is still relevant to a new blog: "Life, the Universe, and Everything." If you're here, you need to be there.

Synergy

2006-06-29T20:28:00.000-04:00

Happy happy joy joy!!!

One of my all-time favorite animated TV series, Futurama, is coming back. New episodes are in production and will be aired in the near future on Comedy Central.

Now there's a special Futurama video clip to promote the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Change the Direction

2006-06-25T02:04:00.000-04:00

I found this at Bring It On. They said take it and pass it along. Sounds good to me.

Holy Snikees

2006-06-24T03:15:00.000-04:00

Ever wonder what would happen if a freaking gigantic meteor struck the Earth? Wonder no more.

Meltdowns

2006-06-23T21:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the United States was eliminated from World Cup play. This was finally going to be the U.S.'s chance to shine in soccer; they entered the tournament ranked fifth in the world. Some opening game jitters and a 3-0 loss to the Czech Republic. Some soul searching and a rejuvenated Team USA fights Italy to a 1-1 draw. A must-win game, a meltdown, and a 2-1 loss to Ghana (Ghana?) sends them packing.

In the NBA Finals, the Dallas Mavericks had a two games to none lead over the Miami Heat. About halfway through Game Three, the Mavs had a 13 point lead and appeared to be well on their way to wrapping the series up. Miami rallied and Dallas faltered and the Heat squeaked out a Game Three win. Well, before you know it, those rallies and falters continued and Miami ended up winning four straight games to win the series 4-2.

Even though Team USA's and Dallas's meltdowns were on bigger stages, they are nothing compared to the meltdown the Atlanta Braves are going through now. Look at the standings in the National League East and you'll find Atlanta in a very unaccustomed spot -- the cellar. When June began, the Braves were in pretty good shape. They were in second place with a 28-25 record, just 4.5 games behind the Mets. Then the trouble started. On June 6 the Braves beat the Washington Nationals 5-3, and on June 10 they beat the Houston Astros 4-2 -- the only two wins thus far for the entire month! Yikes! The Braves have lost ten straight, 20 of their last 23, and trail even the lowly Nationals and Marlins.

Pitching, usually a Braves forte, has been their downfall. Braves General Manager John Schuerholz has been going crazy moving pitchers back and forth from the bullpen to the minors to the starting rotation, trying to plug holes and stop the hemmoraging. They began the year a man down in the rotation without Mike Hampton, who had major elbow surgery in September of 2005. He won't be back until 2007. Then Horacio Ramirez was hit in the face by a line drive off the bat of Lance Berkman on June 11. He spent some time on the DL and returned yesterday. He pitched well, but failed to win.

The biggest problem has been the bullpen. No lead has been big enough that the bullpen couldn't give it away. They haven't had an effective closer, and no one else in the bullpen has been especially reliable. Chris Reitsma has had the job but hasn't been getting it done, and now he too is on the disabled list. Turns out he's been going out there with numbness in his pitching hand (ulnar neuritis.) He hasn't complained because there was no pain, but he had no feel for the ball. That's not good for a pitcher. With no closer you can count on, the entire bullpen suffers because you build a bullpen around the closer, then work backwards from there. You get some other guys you can count on to work the seventh and eighth innings, setting up the closer. Then you have some other guys to come in earlier or work lopsided games. With no closer, no one knows their role and everyone's work suffers.

This is a time of hard choices. With over three months of the season left, do you just write off this year and start making plans for next year, or do you trade away some good prospects in the hopes of getting a star that will come in and give you a shot in the arm (a la Fred McGriff in 1993.) They probably won't give me a vote, but I'd choose to hang on to what we've got and try to build for next year. I'd rather have one bad year than have this turn back into another bad Atlanta decade or two. I had enough of that in the 70's and 80's.

By the way, as I post this, the Braves are locked in a 3-3 extra-inning nailbiter against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays...and John Smoltz left early with an injury. My, how the mighty have fallen.

Update: The Braves defeated the Devil Rays 4-3 in eleven innings. The latest losing streak ends at 10, but the month of June continues.

Updated Blogroll

2006-06-22T21:01:00.000-04:00

It took a couple of hours of coding and checking links, but I've finally finished updating my blogroll. (Thanks, Carly, for the gentle prodding.) It's a strange assortment of liberal politics, personal diaries, photography and other esoterica, but it's what I like to read. Check them out, and if yours is missing, send me a link either in comments or email.

Star Wars Awards

2006-06-20T21:36:00.000-04:00

The Atom Films Annual Star Wars Fan Film Awards are always one of my favorite events of the year, a salute to the shorts and cartoons that lampoon George Lucas's creation. This is the fifth year of the awards. The final nominees were announced today. Check them out and vote for your favorite. Voting ends on July 5. Winners will be announced on July 20.

I haven't finished watching all of this year's nominees yet, but Cheap Seats, which won last year's award for Best Comedy is my all-time favorite.

Monday Photo Shoot: Still Life

2006-06-19T15:59:00.000-04:00

The topic for Scalzi's Monday Photo Shoot this week is Still Life:

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a snap of something in a "still life" mode. It doesn't have to be a bowl of fruit, mind you (although there's nothing wrong with a bowl of fruit, if that's your thing.) But something that you can get contemplative about would be nice. Also, it doesn't move unless you go and pick it up.

This is the Dyer family cemetery. It is located in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park (the Chickamauga battlefield.) The Dyers were a family that lived on the site at the time of the battle. The cemetery is located on a main trail that circles the perimeter of the park, and I wonder how many of the people who pass it recognize it for what it is. All the headstones are what you see, just standing rocks. Some have writing on them that has been eroded away by time and the elements. Still? Yes. Contemplative? Definitely.

Click picture to see larger version.

Weekend Assignment: The Things We Share With Dad

2006-06-17T18:29:00.000-04:00

John Scalzi has a Fathers' Day weekend assignment at By the Way...

Weekend Assignment #116: Tell about some personality trait or quirk you got from your father -- or, if you're a father, some personality trait or quirk of yours you see in your kids.

Extra credit: Did you ever get dad a tie for Father's Day?

My parents divorced when I was young and I went big chunks of time without seeing my father. I think my grandfather was probably more of father-figure to me during my formative years, so I'd rather talk about a couple of things I picked up from him. They're not really personality traits or quirks, more like personal preferences of his that rubbed off on me.

My grandfather was an old-school FDR-worshiping Democrat who could never understand why people didn't have enough blankety-blank common sense to go to the polls and vote a straight Democratic ticket. While he never said so explicitly, I got the feeling that he might have believed Richard M. Nixon to be the Anti-Christ. He died before the Reagan Revolution started up or that might have been really bad. He taught me that while the Democrats might not always do what's right, they certainly have more empathy for the common man that Republicans do.

My grandfather was also a die-hard baseball fan. Summer Saturday afternoons were our time together to sit down and watch the Game of the Week on NBC. (Was there ever really a time when there was only one baseball game a week on the tube? Yes, there was. And to really blow the youngsters' minds, for a while we only had three channels and had to occasionally go outside and rotate the pole the antenna was mounted on to get them to come in clearly. I think we got our first color TV about the time I started junior high school.) Anyway, there we were every Saturday. The games were usually either the Yankees or the Dodgers (the big TV market teams) playing another team in their league. We always rooted for whoever they were playing; it didn't matter who. Someone once said, "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel." My grandfather believed that and passed along to me his hatred of anything and everything connected to the Evil Empire.

Extra credit: I don't remember every Father's Day gift I ever gave my father or my grandfather, but I don't think I ever gave either of them a tie.

The World's Funniest Joke

2006-06-16T04:55:00.000-04:00

From the London Telegraph -- We can all rest a little easier now. Seems a professor researching the psychology of humor has discovered the author of the world's funniest joke -- Spike Milligan. Five years ago, 300,000 people worldwide took part in LaughLab and voted for the funniest joke. The winner...

Two hunters are out in the woods in New Jersey when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed.

The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps 'My friend is dead! What can I do?' The operator says: 'Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.' There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says 'OK, now what?'

While watching a documentary on The Goon Show, Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire discovered a version of the very same joke...

Michael Bentine: I just came in and found him lying on the carpet there.

Peter Sellers: Oh, is he dead?

Bentine: I think so.

Sellers: Hadn't you better make sure?

Bentine: All right. Just a minute.

Sound of two gun shots.

Bentine: He's dead.

Professor Wiseman commented...

I think what is interesting here is that a joke from the 1950s still works, and how it has transformed over time from a cosy sitting room to hunters in New Jersey.

Civil War Timeline: 1865

2006-06-05T01:51:00.000-04:00

The final installment of the Civil War Timeline. Here are links to the whole thing: 1860-61, 1862, 1863 and 1864.

January 15 - Fort Fisher, North Carolina, falls to Union land and sea forces.

January 16 - Sherman's army begins another destructive march, this time through the Carolinas.

February 4 - Robert E. Lee is named commander-in-chief of the Confederate army.

February 17 - Columbia, South Carolina, is burned. Sherman's troops and retreating Confederates are both blamed for setting the fires.

February 18 - Sherman occupies Charleston.

February 22 - Wilmington, North Carolina, the last remaining open southern port, falls to Union forces.

March 4 - Lincoln is inaugurated for a second term.
Lincoln, from his second inaugural address: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

April 1 - The Battle of Five Forks (Virginia) - In the last major battle of the war, General Sheridan repels a Confederate assault.

April 2 - Lee withdraws from Petersburg, ending the six-month siege. He advises President Jefferson Davis to leave Richmond. A day later, Union troops enter Petersburg and Richmond. Two days after that, Lincoln tours Richmond.

April 9 - Surrounded and facing starvation, Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. At Lincoln's request, the terms are generous. Confederate officers and men are free to go home with their horses, officers are allowed to keep their sidearms.

April 11 - In his last public address, Lincoln urges a spirit of generous conciliation during reconstruction.

April 14 - While watching a play at Ford's Theater, Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by actor John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln dies the following day and is succeeded by Andrew Johnson.

April 25 - John Wilkes Booth is cornered and shot dead near Bowling Green, Virginia.

April 26 - Confederate General Joseph Johnston surrenders to Sherman at the Bennett House near Durham Station, North Carolina, bring major combat of the war to an end. Scattered resistance continues in the South for several weeks, ending in May, when Confederate General Richard Taylor surrenders to General Edward R. S. Canby, and General Kirby Smith surrenders his western forces.

April 25 - John Wilkes Booth is cornered and shot dead near Bowling Green, Virginia.

April 27 - The steamboat Sultana, returning northward on the Mississippi River with liberated Union prisoners of war, blows up with a loss of life equal to that of the Titanic.

May 10 - Jefferson Davis is captured in Georgia. He is incorrectly presumed to be a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination and is jailed awaiting trial. He is later released on bail and never tried. In 1868, President Johnson, as one of his final acts in office, grants amnesty to all Southerners, including Davis, who declines to accept it.

May 12-13 - The Battle of Palmito Ranch (Texas) - This skirmish between 80 Union soldiers and 350 Confederate cavalrymen is a victory for the Union and the last battle of the war.

May 19 - President Andrew Johnson declares that armed insurrection against the Federal government has come to an end.

(Timeline source: Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis, Harper Collins, 2003 and Everyday Life in the Civil War by Michael J. Varhola, Writer's Digest Books, 1999)

Civil War Timeline: 1864

2006-06-05T01:49:00.000-04:00

January 14 - General Sherman begins his march across the south. His strategy is total war, destroying or taking anything that might be used by the enemy to continue fighting.

March 10 - Grant is named commander of the Union armies, replacing General Halleck.

April 17 - Grant suspends prisoner-of-war exchanges with the Confederates to further weaken Confederate forces. His strategy is successful, but leads to the deaths of Union soldiers held in overcrowded southern camps where food supplies are scarce.

May 4 - Grant begins an assault on Virginia with an army of over 100,000 men.

May 5-6 - The Battle of the Wilderness (Virginia) - Lee and Grant meet in two days of inconclusive but bloody fighting. Many of the wounded die in the dense woods in brushfires ignited by gunfire.

May 8-12 - The Battle of Spotsylvania (Virginia) - Another five days of inconclusive fighting reveals Grant's strategy: a war of attrition to wear down Lee's outnumbered, poorly fed, ill-clad troops.

May 12-16 - The Battle of Drewry's Bluff (Virginia) - Grant continues his unrelenting assault on Lee's army.

May 13-15 - Sherman launches a series of attacks against General Johnston, who saves his army with a skillful retreat.

June 1-3 - The Battle of Cold Harbor (Virginia) - Grant, ignoring horrible losses, assaults Lee's impregnable defenses. In the worst twenty minutes of this holocaust, more than 7000 men on both sides are killed. Total Union casualties number 12,000. To date, Grant has suffered 60,000 casualties in the campaign, a number equal to Lee's entire army. Although this is Lee's last clear victory, his army never recovers from Grant's unrelenting attacks.

June 15-18 - Grant begins the long siege of Petersburg, Virginia.

June 27 - Johnston's Confederates turn back Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia.

July 2-13 - A small force under Confederate General Jubal Early raids Maryland and heads toward Washington.

July 14 - General Early is slowed down by Union General Lew Wallace. Early reaches the District of Columbia, then withdraws. Wallace, later the governor of New Mexico and minister to Turkey, gains his greatest fame as the author of the novel Ben Hur.

July 17 - Johnston is replaced by General John B. Hood, who makes a foolhardy attempt to take the offensive against Sherman.

July 22 - Hood's first assault against Sherman outside Atlanta is turned back, as is a second assault six days later.

July 30 - At Petersburg, General Burnside oversees the digging of a tunnel under the Confederate fortifications. A disasterously miscalculated explosion results in 4000 casualties in his own force. Burnside is relieved of all command.

August 5 - Union Admiral David Farragut launches a naval attack on the key southern port of Mobile, Alabama. He orders the fleet to continue the attack after mines in the harbor sink one of his ships, shouting, "Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!" He successfully closes the port and is given the new rank of vice admiral, created especially for him. Ecstatic New Yorkers give him a purse of $50,000.

September 2 - Sherman takes Atlanta after Hood's army withdraws. The capture of Mobile and Atlanta lifts northern morale, providing Lincoln with a much needed boost in the coming election.

September 19 and October 19 - Union forces under General Philip Sheridan twice defeat Jubal Early's Confederates, driving them from the Shenandoah Valley, one of Lee's remaining supply sources.

November 8 - Lincoln has been campaigning against two generals he has sacked, John C. Fremont and George McClellan. Fremont withdraws before the election. Lincoln wins re-election by less than a half-million popular votes, but a sweeping electoral vote.

November 15 - Sherman begins his March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. Before Sherman departs Atlanta, he orders his troops to demolish military facilities and set fire to the rest of the city. Much of the city is destroyed. His forces cut a forty-mile-wide swath through the state, destroying everything in their path. Three days before Christmas, Sherman marches into Savannah. He sends Lincoln a telegram offering Savannah as a Christmas present.
Sherman: "We have devoured the land...To realize what war is, one should follow our tracks."

November 30 - The Battle of Franklin (Tennessee) - Confederate General John Bell Hood launches a foolhardy head-on assault against Union General John Schofield's entrenched force. After fierce fighting, Schofield breaks off and heads toward Nashville, but this is no Confederate victory. Hood suffers 7000 casualties, more than three times the enemy total.

December 15-16 - The Battle of Nashville (Tennessee) - Union forces under General George H. Thomas attack Hood's line at Nashville. Hood's Army of Tennessee is virtually destroyed. The remnants of the army are pursued all the way into Mississippi.

Weekend Assignment: Things You Like Now But Not Then

2006-06-04T20:33:00.000-04:00

Since the weekend is rapidly coming to a close, I'd better get busy on the weekend assignment Scalzi's handed out at By the Way...

Weekend Assignment #114: Name a thing you like today, that your younger self would probably roll his or her eyes at. People, places, things, ideas, philosophies -- all of it is up for consideration.
Extra Credit: Name something you didn't like then that you still don't like now.

The first thing that came to mind was music. In my high school days, I was a heavy-metal fanatic. (That was a long time ago, and doesn't mean quite the same thing that it does now.) In college, my musical tastes did an abrupt shift, and I gravitated to the new wave/alternative/punk music that was then becoming hip. I intensely dislike, loathed, ridiculed other genres of music. Somewhere along the line, I realized that almost every genre has its good and its bad. I find myself listening (and loving) music that I never would have listened to before.

But Scalzi's essay was about music, bluegrass in particular, so I decided to rethink the assignment instead of just copying Scalzi's down and passing it off as my own.

I'll let the band Jars of Clay do this assignment for me...

Call it obsession; call it fanatical
I am not trying to make this a spectacle
But I have this craving that justifies behaving
I really need some of that...

Oooh, good coffee, strong coffee
I need to have some
Oooh, good coffee, strong coffee

Oh cappuccino, double espresso
I need something with a really big kick
You ask me 'bout creamer, you ask me 'bout sugar
I tell you those things make me sick
In my...

Oooh, good coffee, strong coffee
I need to have some
Oooh, good coffee, strong coffee

Oooh, good coffee, strong coffee
I need to have some
Oooh, good coffee, strong coffee

For the extra credit, I'll return to the subject of music. I really, really, really hate almost all popular music. I'm talking about the Top 40 with or without Casey Kasem, that lowest common denominator type of music that is all the rage at any particular moment. If it's being played on the radio often, I hate it. If it's actually pretty decent and I do like a particular song, I'll be sick of it soon after they've played it 700,000 times.

Update: In last weekend's assignment, John solicited advise on good books to read while traveling. I recommended anything by Carl Hiaasen. On Sunday night, CBS's 60 Minutes replayed a profile of Hiaasen that was originally broadcast in April 2005. In the segment, Hiaasen was favorably compared with Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Jimmy Breslin.

Weekend Photo Jigsaw Puzzle Fun

2006-06-03T02:07:00.000-04:00

48 pieces of weekend photo jigsaw puzzle fun: "Cherokee"

Web Coolness

2006-06-03T00:20:00.000-04:00

What a neat photo site. All the pictures are those photo mosaics composed of thousand of tiny little photos. You start with a picture of a man's face. Clicking makes it zoom in. See if you can find an end to it.

Writing Links

2006-06-02T21:05:00.000-04:00

While surfing the web, I occasionally run across sites that are full of information for aspiring writers. Here are a few that I like to refer to from time to time...

Writer's Digest has a useful website, an extension of the magazine, with all sorts of tidbits to help you write better and get published. If you're suffering from a little writer's block, they have a weekly "Writing Prompt" to jog the brain. This week's prompt: "You’re at your favorite department store buying a birthday present for a friend. As the cashier gives you change, you notice a message with specific instructions scribbled on one of the bills. What did the instructions say? Did you carry them out and, if so, how?"

Pat Holt, a book editor and critic at the San Francisco Chronicle (among other book-related postions), presents "Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do.)" She says, "The list also could be called, '10 COMMON PROBLEMS THAT DISMISS YOU AS AN AMATEUR,' because these mistakes are obvious to literary agents and editors, who may start wording their decline letter by page 5."

Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 troublesome words for writers and readers grouped according to the way they are confused and misused. The current top five most confusing words? Affect, arroyo, canyon, its, effect.

There are several blogging agents. The most entertaining is Miss Snark, who "vents her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushes them to sand beneath her T. Rexual heels of stiletto snark."

At the blog "Making Light," there's an old post dating back to February of 2004 that Teresa Hayden has written that dissects rejection letters and aspiring authors' reactions to them -- some insights into the Rejection Collection website.

At his Coping with Sanity blog, Bryon Quertermous has done what I've done here -- just more so. It's a listing of the 25 sites that are must haves for any fiction writer.

If you've got some favorite writing tips sites, let me know what they are.

Civil War Timeline: 1863

2006-06-02T20:52:00.000-04:00

January 1 - The Emancipation Proclamation is formally issued.

January 4 - Grant is ordered by Lincoln to repeal his General Order Number 11, which had expelled Jews from his area of operations. He had issued the order because he incorrectly believed that most of the merchants following his army and charging excessive prices were Jewish.

January 25 - Burnside is replaced as head of the Army of the Potomac by General Joseph Hooker.

January 26 - The secretary of war authorizes the governor of Massachusetts to recruit black troops. The 54th Massachusetts Volunteers is the first black regiment recruited in the Union. Eventually, 185,000 black soldiers will be organized into 166 all-black regiments.

March 3 - Lincoln signs the first Conscription Act. Enrollment is demanded of males between 20 and 45 years of age. Substitutes can be hired or payments of $300 can be used for an exemption.

May 2-4 - The Battle of Chancellorsville (Virginia) - Lee's army defeats Hooker's Army of the Potomac. Losses on both sides exceed 10,000. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson leads a rear-end attack, forcing the Union withdrawal, but is shot by a Confederate soldier. He dies of pnemonia on May 10.

May 14 - The Battle of Jackson (Mississippi) - Union General William Tecumseh Sherman defeats Confederates under General J. E. Johnston.

May 22 - Grant, working with Sherman, begins the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the key to control of the Mississippi River.
- The War Department establishes the Bureau of Colored Troops to supervise recruitment and enlistment of blacks.

June 20 - West Virginia, severed from Virginia, is admitted to the Union. The state constitution calls for gradual emancipation.

June 24 - Lee begins an invasion of Pennsylvania.

June 28 - General George Meade replaces Hooker as head of the Army of the Potomac.

July 1-3 - The Battle of Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) - Confederate troops looking for shoes run into Union cavalry. Reinforcements are poured in. The Union army takes a strong defensive position and turns back repeated Confederate assaults. The Confederates lose 28,000 men, a third of the army's effective strength; the Union, 23,000. Lee retreats. Meade fails to press him, allows him to escape back into Virginia.

July 4 - Grant's siege of Vicksburg ends in victory. 29,000 Confederates surrender. The Union now has complete control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy in two.

July 13-16 - The New York Draft Riots - Resentment over the Conscription Act turns into deadly rioting in New York City. Federal troops sent from the Gettysburg battlefield eventually quell the rioting. The crowd's anger has two sources: the idea of fighting to free the slaves, and the unfairness of allowing the wealthy to avoid service by paying a substitute.

July 18 - In a charge made famous by the film Glory, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers assault Fort Wagner, guarding the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The 54th loses half of its men in the assault, but their bravery amazes whites and encourages more black regiments.

August 21 - William C. Quantrill raids Lawrence, Kansas, and slaughters more than 150 civilians. Quantrill's raiders include "Bloody Bill" Anderson, Jesse James and Cole Younger. In October, they conduct another raid of terror in Baxter Springs, Kentucky.

Sept. 19-20 - The Battle of Chickamauga (Georgia) - Rosecrans's Union army is routed by Bragg's Confederates. Losses are high: 16,000 Union casualties, 18,000 Confederates. The Union army escapes to Chattanooga.

September-November - Chattanooga - After nearly destroying the Union army at Chickamauga, Bragg's troops occupy the mountains surrounding Chattanooga, putting the city under siege.

October 16 - Grant is given command of Union forces in the west. His first act is to replace Rosecrans in Chattanooga with General George Thomas.

November 19 - Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address to dedicate a military cemetary on the battlefield.

November-December - While Grant is breaking the siege of Chattanooga and increasing his forces there, Bragg depletes his force by sending James Longstreet's corps to drive Ambrose Burnside's army out of eastern Tennessee. Burnside holes up in Knoxville. Longstreet puts the city under siege.

November 23-25 - The Battles of Chattanooga (Tennessee) - Grant, in a series of battles, drives Bragg's Confederate forces away from Chattanooga.

December 3 - Unable to penetrate the Union defenses of Knoxville, Longstreet ends his siege and withdraws.

December 8 - Looking ahead to the end of the war, Lincoln offers a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction that will pardon Confederates who take an oath of loyalty.

Photo Sudoku

2006-05-31T01:11:00.000-04:00

If you're as addicted to Sudoku as I am, you'll like this. Instead of playing with numbers, you can play with photos. If you have a Flickr account, you can play with your own photos by entering your username in the appropriate place at the bottom of the gameboard. You can also play with different kinds of photos by entering different tags or clearing the tag space completely. If you don't have a Flickr account, you can play with the photos provided or go to Flickr and find a user who has some pictures you like.

Racing

2006-05-29T22:28:00.000-04:00

Other than the memorializing and the long weekend, Memorial Day weekend means auto racing. Yesterday was a full day of it. The Indy 500 in the early afternoon, the World 600 later in the day.

Yesterday was one of those rare occasions where the Indy 500 was the more exciting race. There were several lead changes at the end of the race. For a couple of laps it looked like Michael Andretti was going to end his winless streak at the Brickyard. That would have been special -- Michael Andretti holds the record for leading the most laps at the Indy 500 without a race win. Then Andretti's son Marco, an Indy rookie, blew by him. Then Sam Hornish tucked in behind Marco, shot around him as the finish line approached, and nipped him at the line by about a car length.

The World 600 was a little bit of a letdown for me. My favorite driver, Tony Stewart, crashed early, cracked his shoulder blade and was down for the count. Kasey Kahne took the lead with 29 laps to go and won by a fairly large margin. His win ends a 29-year Dodge drought at Lowe's Motor Speedway and is also the first Dodge win anywhere this year.

A couple of racing stories have caught my eye recently...

I'm sick and tired of articles like this one: "Is Danica in Danger of Being Anna-ized?" It's comparing Danica Patrick to Anna Kournikova, the tennis player who was much better at being beautiful and famous than she ever was at tennis. Yes, Danica is still winless in IRL racing, but remember that it took a racing legend like Al Unser Jr. three years to crack the winner's circle. Danica has finished in the top ten in her first two Indy 500s. This year she got into trouble with her pit stops. She got out of sequence and twice she pitted under green only to see caution flags come out a little later. She probably wouldn't have won, but she would have finished better than eighth if her luck had been a little better. If she goes five or six years without a win, let the Kournikova comparisons come then.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor, "Stock Cars Get an Overhaul," introduces us to NASCAR's latest innovation, the "Car of Tomorrow." The goal is to make a safer car and to make the races more competitive. Many of the races have turned into just long parades of cars. Get out of line and you lose your place in the draft and start falling back. Improved aerodynamics have also negated the slingshot effect seen at the end of Sunday's Indy 500. NASCAR would like to see a return to more side-by-side racing. They think the Car of Tomorrow is the answer...

"This is probably the biggest thing we've done in the competition area in 20 years," says NASCAR Chairman Brian France. "We're anxious to get this done and get it done correctly."

In short, the new race car, developed by NASCAR's research-and-development arm, includes a number of safety innovations (the driver's seat moves four inches closer to the center of the car; protective cages are taller and wider) and offers a possible solution to the endless engineering and body types that turn tracks into no-passing zones. By employing a more upright windshield and a thicker, boxlike front bumper designed to create drag, the new car should ensure that no lead is safe.

"Competition is going to get better," says Humpy Wheeler, a longtime racing promoter and president of Speedway Motorsports Inc., a publicly held operator of NASCAR tracks.

"Purists don't like it, but purists only buy 20 percent of your tickets," he says. "I need the other 80 percent, too. And they want to see cars passing each other on the track. This new car will give us that."

(photo: David Crigger/AP)

Ten Things

2006-05-29T21:34:00.000-04:00

I was tagged by Carly for a meme that's making the rounds: 10 Things That Make Me Say, "Life Is Good." I'm a glass half-full sorta guy; it doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy. But here's a few off the top of my head...

1. Let's start with the very obvious -- spending time with family and friends, the people that I can always count on to stick by me through thick and thin. And yes, this includes the online friends that I've known for years, but never met face-to-face.

2. Writing something special. Occasionally, I'll write something, then sorta take a step back and think "Wow. Where did that come from." It doesn't happen very often, but it feels good when it does.

3. Getting positive comments in my blog. It feels really good to know that someone has taken the time to read something I've written and then taken the time to tell me what they think about it.

4. A really good book.

5. A really good movie.

6. Time alone. Especially having the peace and quiet to enjoy and contemplate #4 or #5. Or maybe a long walk to lay the groundwork for #2.

7. The Internet. It's a whole new world, and I'm not sure how I got along without it for so many years.

8. A really good cup of coffee first thing in the morning.

9. Amusement parks. For the kid in me. I especially love the roller coasters.

10. Digital photography. Taking as many pictures as the memory card will hold, editing out the best ones and sharing them online with others.

Well, that's ten. I could probably come up with many, many more, but those are the first ones that came to mind. Now, I'm supposed to pass the meme along by tagging five more people, but I'm not going to do that. I think most of the people I would like to tag have already done this little exercise. If you haven't and would like to play along, consider this an open invitation. Just leave a link to your entry in the comments.

Memorial Day Photos

2006-05-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

As a sort of Memorial Day tribute, here are a few photos taken recently at the Chickamauga National Military Park. The first is of the monument erected by the state of Florida to honor its citizens who took part in the battle.

A monument located on Battleline Road.

This is an interesting monument. It's located in the woods along a trail that runs along the western perimeter of the park. It marks the approximate location of where Lieutenant George Landrum of the 2nd Ohio Regiment was killed and was erected by his family.

Pyramids of cannonballs mark the spot where officers fell. Colonel Edward King died near the Kelly family's cabin.

Jackson and Dickinson

2006-05-29T02:36:00.000-04:00

Most people probably won't care about this, but I thought it was pretty interesting...

Tennessee State Archaeologist Nick Fielder is using ground-penetrating radar on a quiet dead-end street in Nashville in an attempt to discover the final resting place of Charles Dickinson, the man Andrew Jackson, our nation's seventh president, killed in a duel in 1806. Last Tuesday, Fielder found a likely spot: 216 Carden Ave., surgeon Daniel Jurusz's front yard.

"The first day here one of the neighbors came over and said 'You know, you have a body in your front yard,' and then told us the story," Daniel Jurusz said.

The Jackson-Dickinson feud started over a horserace. Jackson's horse Truxton was set to race Ploughboy, owned by Colonel Joseph Ervin, Dickinson's father-in-law. At the last minute, Ervin pulled his horse from the race. There were disagreements over the forfeiture fee. The feud escalated. Thomas Swann, an enemy of Jackson's, fanned the flames. Apparently, the final straw was some unflattering remarks Dickinson made about Jackson's wife. Rachel Jackson had been married previously to Lewis Robards. There was some dispute about whether Rachel was legally divorced from Robards before marrying Jackson, and this was the subject of much gossip and innuendo.

Since dueling was illegal in Tennessee, Jackson and Dickinson traveled across the state line into Kentucky to conduct the formal exchange of gunfire. Dickinson was an expert marksman; Jackson was not. Rather than try to outdraw Dickinson, Jackson decided to let Dickinson take the first shot, then take deliberate aim. Jackson's slight frame probably saved his life. He was six foot tall and never weighed over 145 pounds. Marquis James explains in The Life of Andrew Jackson...

A fleck of dust rose from Jackson's coat and his left hand clutched his chest. For an instant he thought himself dying, but, fighting for self-command, slowly he raised his pistol.
Dickinson recoiled a step horror-stricken. "My God! Have I missed him?"
Overton [Jackson's second] presented his pistol. "Back to the mark, sir!"
Dickinson folded his arms. Jackson's spare frame straightened. He aimed... and fired. Dickinson swayed to the ground... [and later died].
[Jackson, too, was wounded, to the point where his left boot had filled with blood.]
Jackson's surgeon found that Dickinson's aim had been perfectly true, but he had judged the position of Jackson's heart by the set of his coat, and Jackson wore his coats loosely on account of the excessive slenderness of his figure.

Dickinson's shot broke two of Jackson's ribs and lodged too close to his heart for removal. He carried the bullet in him for the remainder of his life. Jackson's shot hit Dickinson in the stomach; he bled to death within 14 hours. Although Jackson's conduct was acceptable according to the "rules of engagement," many of his detractors insisted that it was cold-blooded murder.

Some contend that Dickinson's body was returned to Maryland, the state of his ancestory, by a faithful slave, but others say that he was buried at Ervin's estate on the outskirts of Nashville. The Nashville claim seems to be more reasonable...

The spot has been well documented in Nashville over the years. It appears on an official 1876 Davidson County property map and was referenced in several deeds as the tract changed hands and became a residential lot.

Fletch Coke, a historic preservation leader in Nashville who has tracked evidence of the grave for seven years and urged Fielder to conduct Tuesday's search, doubts the Maryland claim. So does Marsha Mullin, chief curator for The Hermitage, Jackson's Davidson County home that is now a popular historic site.

"Considering it took 30 days then to make a trip like that, he would not have traveled well, I think," Mullin said.

In 1967, the Ervin mansion was demolished and subdivisions sprang up on the land.

Ohio Soldier

2006-05-26T23:48:00.000-04:00

This photo was taken at the Ohio Reservation on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga in February of 2005 during an icestorm. This is one of four statues on a big Ohio monument.

Photo Puzzle

2006-05-26T23:09:00.000-04:00

If you're feeling a little bored this Memorial Day weekend - nothing to do, some time to kill - head over to JigZone.com and try your hand at my photo puzzle. It's just a simple 20-piece puzzle. You can make it as difficult as you wish by clicking on "Change Cut." Have fun.

Weekend Assignment: Travel Books

2006-05-25T20:12:00.000-04:00

The weekend is not here yet, but the Weekend Assignment is already in at By the Way...

Weekend Assignment #113: Someone you know is traveling. Suggest a book or two for them to read on their trip. If at all possible, pick a book from the last couple of years. Also, keep in mind that it's meant to be a recreational book; i.e., they're not really reading to change their life, here, just to have fun.

If you're doing any serious traveling, especially involving airports and airplanes, it's essential to have a book with you to pass the time during lengthy delays and to forestall getting into conversations about aluminum siding with one of your fellow travelers. But the key is to pick something that's not too deep or dark. You're looking for the junk food equivalent of books. But they should be fun and interesting.

I'd go with anything by Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen. His novels are like Elmore Leonard's, but funnier. His latest book, Skinny Dip, was recently released in paperback (another travel essential.) You can't go wrong with any of his books, but my favorites are Tourist Season, Lucky You and Strip Tease. He even manages to make professional bass fishing entertaining in Double Whammy.

Along the same lines, there's another Miami Herald columnist who's written a couple of good novels that are fit for travel: Dave Barry. Big Trouble and Tricky Business are hilarious.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Photo Round Robin: Reflections

2006-05-24T14:28:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I participated in a Photo Round Robin. I hope no one minds if I just jump right in. The theme this time around is "Reflections." I couldn't resist the opportunity to show off one of my favorite photos. Click the photo to see full-sized.

This is a photo of the Regions Bank Building in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. The building reflected in the glass is the historic Read House Hotel.

If you'd like to play along, you can find all the rules and guidelines at the Photo Round Robin blog. Carly and Karen, co-founders of the Photo Round Robin Challenge, always have good up-to-date lists of the latest round of participants.

Barry and the Babe

2006-05-22T11:44:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, Giants leftfielder Barry Bonds hit his 714th career home run, moving him into a second place tie with the immortal Babe Ruth on the all-time list. Bonds is now 41 homers behind the all-time leader, Hank Aaron.

A funny thing happened to Barry Bonds. He played his first seven years in Pittsburgh, never hitting more than 34 home runs in a single season. About the time he signed with San Francisco, he entered his prime and became one of the most feared hitters in baseball. Since moving to the left coast, Bonds has failed to reach 34 homers in a season only twice. In 1995 he hit 33, and last year, an injury-plagued season in which he appeared in only 14 games, he managed only five. But along the way, Bonds transformed from a trim, lithe player into a muscle-bound behemoth. The whispering started. Whenever anyone speculated about which baseball players might be using steroids, Bond's name was always high on the list. The powers that be in baseball couldn't have cared less. No, that's not right -- they were happy about it. Nothing in baseball gets the average fan more excited than the long ball, and suddenly there were these gargantuan players hitting bushels of them. In 1998, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa treated fans to the greatest home run race of all time. Both would surpass Roger Maris's single season record -- McGuire finished with 70 homers, Sosa with 66. Baseball officials were giddy about the increased attendance and the renewed interest in the game. Then, in 2001, Bonds took it one step further and surpassed McGuire's record by clouting 73 homers.

Now, caught up in the BALCO scandal, all of Bonds's career achievements are viewed through a cloud, a steroid taint. A poll on ESPN.com asks, "If Albert Pujols hits 62 home runs this season, who would you consider the single-season record holder?" Your choices are Pujols, Bonds, McGuire and Roger Maris. At the time I cast my vote, Pujols was polling ahead of Bonds 45% - 40%. Similar polls (with similar results) have sprung up everywhere. Some people think that Bonds's records should be marked with an asterisk, a la Roger Maris. The baseball powers that be now seem sheepishly embarrassed that Bonds has reached such lofty heights. No official ceremonies were planned to commemorate the passing of the Babe; the whole escapade has largely been greeted with an air of indifference.

In this country there is a presumption of innocence. Bonds, thus far, has never failed one of baseball's drug tests and hasn't been convicted of any crime. Granted, it has only been in the last year or so, with some serious prodding from Congress, that baseball has implemented anything resembling rigorous testing. Granted as well, the circumstantial evidence against Bonds is pretty overwhelming. Grand jury testimony that has seeped out from the BALCO case makes it almost a sure thing that Bonds was juiced. The few public statements he has made on the subject reek of an "I didn't know and I didn't want to know" mentality - a setup for some plausible deniability. There was some cream, there may have been some pills, it might have been linseed oil, my trainer gave them to me, et cetera ad nauseum.

Assuming Bonds did take steroids, it's impossible to say how much they might have helped him. They didn't sharpen his eyesight or enhance his hand-eye coordination. They didn't help him make contact with the ball, something he did better than almost anyone for quite a long time. What they did do was give him that little bit of extra oomph, that extra little bit of power and bat speed that turned a warning-track-out into a round-tripper. Would he be passing the Babe now without the steroids? No. But how many homers would he have? At ESPN's Page Two, Patrick Hruby puts the total at around 616. That sounds just about right. A fine career total for the one of the greatest players of his generation, but not quite challenging the immortals, the Babe and Hammering Hank.

In addition to the steroid taint, Bonds comes off as a complete jerk. Almost every current and former teammate of Bonds's describes him as a great, fun-loving guy. Maybe he is. But he has yet to find a way to translate his private persona into a public persona that people can relate to. The public Bonds, a moody, whiny jerk, is all the public ever sees of him. Personally, I could cut him a break on this. If I had reporters dogging me 24/7, delving into all aspects of my private life, the public would probably not see me at my best either. Bonds's latest whine-fest is "Bonds on Bonds" on ESPN. Here, in a documentary-type setting, he bitches and moans about how hard it truly is to be Barry Bonds. Yet, one of the very first vignettes on the show was Bonds showing up at Family Court to discuss alimony and custody of his children. He rounded the last corner before the hearing room and there were 20 or 30 reporters waiting to document this private moment for posterity. Maybe it is hard to be Barry Bonds.

Another online poll, this one for AOL asked, "Who is the better slugger?" The choices were Bonds or the Babe. The Babe was outpolling Bonds by about 4-to-1. Well yeah. The Babe is a legend. He revolutionized the game, revitalizing it after the Black Sox scandal, transforming it from a deadball base-to-base game into a game of longball. Oldtimers like Ty Cobb were nonplussed, but the public loved it. Attendance and revenue reached all-time highs. He set records that still stand and others that took a generation or more to be surpassed. But it's difficult at best to compare players of different eras. The Babe played a segregated game with no blacks, Latinos, Japanese, etc. players allowed. The Babe never had to play night games, never had to fly to the opposite coast on extended road trips, never had reporters exposing any of his dirty little secrets for public consumption, never had to face the relief specialists of the modern era, never had to face the higher level of competition inherent in today's more modern game.

This will probably be Bonds's last hurrah. Unless he finds his groove soon, he won't pass Hank Aaron this year. Or next. He's aging rapidly as sluggers are apt to do. His knees are shot. He can't reach and drive the pitches that he could just a couple of years ago. His only real chance is to sign with an American League team and spend the rest of his playing days as a designated hitter. So maybe we should take this time to give Bonds his due. We don't have to show him the love, but we should probably show him a little respect. He's put together a Hall of Fame career. He's won seven MVP titles and should have won a couple more. He's put together some career numbers that, even adjusting for the steroids, are mighty impressive. Love him or hate him, for almost two decades he's been one of the greatest players to play the game.

Civil War Timeline: 1862

2006-05-20T16:23:00.000-04:00

January 11 - Edwin Stanton replaces Simon Cameron as secretary of the War Department.

January 27 - Lincoln issues General War Order Number 1, calling for an immediate Union offensive. McClellan ignores the order.

January 30 - The Union ironclad ship Monitor is launched.

February 6 - General Ulysses S. Grant captures Fort Henry on the Tennessee River.

February 16 - Grant captures Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. His call for "an unconditional and immediate surrender" give his initials new meaning.

February 25 - Nashville, Tennessee, becomes the first Confederate state capital to fall to Union troops.

March 7-8 - The Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern, Arkansas) - A dug-in force of 10,250 Union soldiers repel 16,000 Confederates.

March 9 - The first battle ever between two ironclad ships, the Union Monitor and the Confederate Virginia (formerly the Merrimack) takes place off Hampton Roads, Virginia. The battle is inconclusive, but the Virginia is scuttled to prevent her capture.

April 4 - The Union Army of the Potomac begins the Peninsular Campaign.

April 6-7 - The Battle of Shiloh (or Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee) - Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston attack Grant's army. The Union forces are nearly defeated, but reinforcements arrive and drive off the Confederates. Over 20,000 men on both sides are killed or wounded, more than the total American casualties in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined. General Johnston is one of the casualties, killed by a bullet that cuts his femoral artery.

April 10-11 - Union General Quincy A. Gillmore batters Fort Pulaski, which guards entry to the Savannah River, into submission.

April 16 - Jefferson Davis signs the Confederate Conscription Act, the first military draft in American history.

April 25 - New Orleans, Louisiana, surrenders to Union Flag Officer David Farragut. He pushes north on the Mississippi River, capturing Natchez, Mississippi, on May 12.

May 4-14 - McClellan's army takes Yorktown, Williamburg, and the White House in Virginia. He halts twenty miles from Richmond to await reinforcements.

May 25 - The Battle of Winchester (Virginia) - Stonewall Jackson's 16,000 Confederate troops defeat Union General Nathaniel Banks's 8000 men, forcing them to withdraw toward Harper's Ferry.

May 31-June 1 - The Battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines, Virginia) - Confederate forces attack Union troops and nearly defeat them, but reinforcements arrive at the last minute and prevent the victory from bing complete. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Confederate army, is severely wounded and is replaced by General Robert E. Lee.

June 6 - Memphis, Tennessee, falls to Union forces.

June 25-July 2 - The Seven Days' Battles (Virginia) - In a week, Union and Confederate forces fight a series of savage battles -- June 26-27, Mechanicsville; June 27, Gaines Mill; June 29, Savage's Station; June 30, Frayser's Farm; and July 1, Malvern Hill -- that drives the Union army back, ending the Peninsular Campaign. The two sides suffer 36,000 casualties.

July 11 - Annoyed by McClellan's failure in Virginia and his plodding pace, Lincoln relieves him as general-in-chief, replacing him with Major General Henry Halleck. General John Pope is named commander of all the armies north and west of Virginia. McClellan is given command of a single army, the Army of the Potomac.

August 9 - The Battle of Cedar Mountain (Virginia) - Jackson's Confederate forces defeat Union troops.

August 30 - The Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas, Virginia) - Confederate Generals Lee, Jackson and James Longstreet defeat General John Pope's Union army, forcing them all the way back to Washington. Pope is sacked and sent to Minnesota to quell an Indian uprising. McClellan is reinstated.

September 15 - Stonewall Jackson captures Harper's Ferry, Virginia, along with thousands of Union prisoners and a great quantity of supplies. Despite his proximity to Harper's Ferry, McClellan does not move quickly enough to prevent its capture.

September 17 - The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg, Maryland) - Lee takes the offensive, driving into Maryland, but a copy of his orders falls into Union hands, allowing McClellan to anticipate his moves. This is the single bloodiest day of the war with casualties exceeding 10,000 on both sides. Lee retreats back into Virginia, but McClellan fails to pursue.

September 22 - After the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln has the victory he feels he needs to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. It is published in Northern newspapers the following day. The Proclamation doesn't free a single slave, but changes the character and course of the war. It ends any chance of European recognition of the Confederacy, and makes the war considerably less popular in the North. The decline in enlistments forces passage of the Conscription Act in March 1863.

October 8 - The Battle of Perryville (Kentucky) - Union General Don Carlos Buell's army defeats Confederate General Braxton Bragg's forces, ending Bragg's Kentucky invasion. Confederate casualties number 16,000 vs. about 4000 Union casualties, but Lincoln relieves Buell for allowing the Confederate army to escape back into Tennessee.

November 7 - Lincoln relieves McClellan, replacing him with General Ambrose Burnside. McClellan returns to New Jersey and doesn't command again, but runs against Lincoln in 1864.

December 13 - The Battle of Fredericksburg (Virginia) - Union General Ambrose Burnside's forces are defeated in a series of attacks against entrenched Confederate forces. Union casualties are more than double Confederate casualties.

December 31-January 2, 1863 - The Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) - This sporadic, bloody battle fought for control of Tennessee results in more than 20,000 casualties. After three days of fighting, Confederate General Braxton Bragg inexplicably withdraws, leaving Murfreesboro in control of Union forces under General William S. Rosecrans.

Civil War Timeline: 1860 - 1861

2006-05-19T14:29:00.000-04:00

My blogging habit got completely out of hand for a while. I was trying to maintain several blogs, too many even in the best of times when I always had Internet access at my disposal. I have already deleted my sports blog. No one was reading it and almost everything in it was outdated. My next goal is to delete my Civil War / history blog. My goal is to end up with the two sotto voce blogs (one here and its mirror at AOL), my photo blog (which I haven't updated in quite some time), and political writing contributions to the Blue Voice.

Before deleting my Civil War blog, I am going to move almost everything in it here. I'm not going to do it all at once, so don't tune out if the Civil War is not your bag. I started that blog in November of 2004 with a general timeline of the war...

Kenneth C. Davis's book, Don't Know Much About History, is a nifty little U. S. history book, very readable and fairly comprehensive. Chapter 4, Apocalypse Then - to Civil War and Reconstruction, contains a brief timeline of events of the war. His timeline contains a couple of noticeable errors and skims over a whole lot of details, but is a very good way to learn what happened when. I have attempted to minimize the errors and omissions by cross-referencing his timeline with another in Everyday Life in the Civil War by Michael J. Varhola.

Here is a listing of events for 186o and 1861:

November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States.

December 20, 1860 - South Carolina's legislature, perceiving a threat to the state's autonomy from Lincoln's election, votes to secede from the Union.

January 9, 1861 - Mississippi secedes.

January 10 - Florida secedes.

January 11 - Alabama secedes.

January 19 - Georgia secedes.

January 26 - Louisiana secedes.

February 1 - Texas secedes.

February 4 - Delegates from the seven seceded states convene in Montgomery, Alabama and begin to draft a constitution for the Confederate States of America. The new constitution is based on the United States Constitution, but places greater emphasis on the autonomy of each state and protection of slavery.

February 8 - The seceded states form the Confederate States of America.

February 9 - Pending elections, the delegates select Jefferson Davis as provisional president of the Confederacy.

February 18 - Davis is inaugurated president of the Confederacy.

February - United States President James Buchanan refuses to surrender Federal forts in the south to the seceding states. Confederate troops respond by seizing them. At Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Southern troops repulse a supply ship trying to reach Union forces stationed in the fort.

March 4 - Lincoln is inaugurated president of the United States.

March 6 - Jefferson Davis, with the authorization of the C. S. Congress, calls for 100,000 one-year volunteers for the Confederate military.

April - Lincoln informs South Carolina that he intends to send supplies to Fort Sumter. South Carolina demands the immediate surrender of the fort.

April 12 - South Carolina militia under Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard bombard Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The fort commander surrenders. The only fatality occurs during the surrender ceremony when a cannon explodes.

April 15 - Lincoln declares a state of "insurrection," and calls for 75,000 men for three month's service.

April 17 - Virginia secedes.

April 19 - Crowds in Baltimore stone troops marching to reinforce Washington, killing four soldiers and 20 civilians. Lincoln orders a blockade of southern ports. Lincoln asks Robert E. Lee to take field command of Union forces.

April 20 - Lee resigns his U. S. army commission and assumes a commission in the Confederate army.

May 6 - Arkansas secedes. The Confederacy recognizes a state of war with the United States.

May - Forces under General George B. McClellan drive rebel forces out of western Virginia, bringing this antisecessionist section under Union control.

May 13 - British Queen Victoria announces Great Britian's neutrality. The Confederacy is given "belligerent status," meaning British merchants can trade with Confederate states.

May 20 - North Carolina secedes.

May 24 - Union troops move into Alexandria, Virginia. Elmer Ellsworth becomes the first combat casualty of the war, shot while removing a Confederate flag from a hotel roof. Both he and the hotel keeper who shot him, James T. Jackson, become martyrs to their sides.

June 8 - Tennessee votes to secede, the eleventh and final state to do so.

July 2 - Lincoln authorizes suspension of the constitutional right of habeas corpus.

July 21 - The First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) -- Confederate armies under Beauregard and Gen Joseph E. Johnston rout the Union troops. This is where General Thomas J. Jackson becomes known as 'Stonewall.'

August 5 - Congress passes the first income tax law to pay for the war. Enlistment periods are increased from three months to two years.

August 10 - Union forces are defeated at Wilson's Creek, Missouri. General Fremont withdraws surrendering much of the state. To reverse his losses, he declares martial law and announces that the slaves of secessionists are free. Lincoln requests that he withdraw the order. When he refuses, Lincoln removes him from command.

October 21 - The Battle of Ball's Bluff (Virginia), another rout of Union forces.

November 1 - Lincoln forces General Winfield Scott to retire. General George B. McClellan becomes the new general-in-chief.

November 7 - A naval bombardment by warships under Union Captain Samuel F. Dupont drives defenders from Forts Walker and Beauregard in South Carolina, allowing General Thomas W. Sherman to occupy Port Royal, Beaufort and all the Sea Islands of South Carolina.

November 8 - The Trent Affair - The USS San Jacinto stops the British ship Trent in international waters and seizes two Confederate commissioners, J. M. Mason and John Slidell. The two are transported to Boston and imprisoned. Britian reacts strongly, and Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward disavow the action and release the commissioners.

The Fall TV Schedule

2006-05-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

Some great television last night. Lost is winding down toward a two-hour season finale next week with the primary story of Michael leading a group of four into a trap in order to get his son back from The Others. But Sayeed is onto him. And in the final scene last night, the castaways spotted a boat approaching the beach. Invasion ended with a bang that normally would be a great cliffhanger to get you tuned into the next season, but that bang might turn out to be bittersweet. Invasion has been cancelled by ABC; if the show is not picked up by some other network (Anybody? The CW? SciFi? Please!) last night's finale is going to be very unsatisfying. There's still a long way to go to get to a conclusion to the story. Hopefully, if no one picks up the series, ABC might be persuaded to air a two-hour movie that wraps the whole thing up.

By the way, did anyone notice the commercial for the Hanso Corporation toward the end of Lost? This is a part of the Lost Experience, the elaborate alternative-reality game that has been set up to explore the show's backstory during its summer hiatus.

Well, since Invasion is not going to be back on ABC, I decided to take a look around and see what is and isn't going to be on next fall.

ABC is also cancelling Commander in Chief, The Evidence, Hope and Faith, Freddie, In Justice, Less Than Perfect, Miracle Workers, Sons and Daughters and Rodney. Good riddance to most of these. Commander in Chief was a good show, sort of a poor man's West Wing. Less Than Perfect was a pretty harmless little diversion. Sons and Daughters was amusing and quirky, but not really my cup of tea.

CBS has cancelled Courting Alex, Out of Practice, Love Monkey, Threshold, Still Standing and Yes, Dear. Threshold was an alien invasion show similar to Invasion, but was easier to get into and understand. It was more episodic. There are some amusing sitcoms on the list here, but nothing that will be really missed.

NBC is doing away with The E-Ring, Conviction, Four Kings, Heist, Joey, Surface, Teachers, West Wing, and Will and Grace. There's nothing here I'll really miss except West Wing. Surface seemed like an interesting show from the previews, but I never sat down and watched it to see what it was all about. Will and Grace had a big following for a long time, but I never cared for it much.

Fox has cancelled Arrested Development (again), Bernie Mac, Stacked, and That 70's Show. The critics loved Arrested Development; I never understood the appeal. Of these, I'll miss That 70's Show the most, but it's outlasted its premise. It's time to let it go.

The new network on the block is CW. It's a merger of the old UPN and WB networks. Merging two networks into one means a lot of cancellations. Gone are The Bedford Diaries, Charmed, Blue Collar TV, Everwood, Eve, Get This Party Started, Half and Half, Living with Fran, Modern Men, One on One, Pepper Dennis, Related, Survival of the Richest, Twins, and What I Like About You. I've never even heard of most of these shows. Blue Collar TV is fairly amusing, but it's an acquired taste.
It was rumored that CW was going to pick up Invasion, but it's nowhere to be found on the fall schedule.

TV Guide has descriptions of all the new shows. It's really hard to judge how good a show is going to be by reading a brief synopsis, but some sound really interesting. The Nine will be taking over Invasion's post-Lost time slot. "Nine people are caught in a bank robbery gone wrong and endure a 52-hour hostage standoff that will leave more than one person dead. When all is said and done, these people will never be the same. They will share the common bond of what happens inside the bank and will be forever affected and intertwined because of it. Starring: Chi McBride, Tim Daly, Kim Raver, Scott Wolf." Hmmm. Doesn't really sound all that interesting, but I'll watch it a time or two to see what it's like. I'm most interesting in seeing if Jericho, Heroes, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip are worth watching. The latter show is Aaron Sorkin's (West Wing) return to television.

What cancelled television shows will you miss the most? Which new shows are you looking forward to?

Need for Speed: Most Wanted -- Tips, Tricks, Suggestions

2006-05-18T01:15:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, I talked about my addiction to the Need for Speed: Most Wanted video game. It's not a new game so there are a lot of FAQ and cheat pages out there to help you get through it, but I thought I'd put in my two cents, my personal observations for playing the game well. This post is not meant for anyone except a Need for Speed: Most Wanted player; anyone else probably won't get much out of it. It's my hope that at some point a NFS:MW player will stumble upon this and get something out of it that helps him/her win the game.

The two cardinal rules to winning at Need for Speed: Most Wanted are:

1. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER hit anything. This piece of advice applies to any racing game. If you hit things, you slow down. Hitting the wall, hitting oncoming traffic, hitting an obstacle can mean the difference between first and last place in a race. Maybe I shouldn't say "NEVER, NEVER, NEVER because there are rare exceptions to this rule, but it's pretty ironclad. Brushing the wall while cornering is better than hitting it more head on. Getting through the corner clean is better than brushing the wall. Take advantage of the Speedbreaker button to get through the sharper turns.

2. Learn the map. You don't need to know all the streets and what their names are, but you should have a good idea of how to get from one place to another. In NFS:MW, you especially need to know where all the pursuit breakers are and how to use them. At the end of the game, in the final pursuit, you have to know how to get from Ocean Hills, the southernmost part of the city, to the final exit, north of Rosewood, without access to the big map. (More on this later.)

A major suggestion: Turn off the Game Moment Camera. While it may be fun to run into the giant tire and see it fall on the pursuing cops, your car is still moving. It is much better to be able to see where your car is actually going.

When you start your career as a street racer, you are new to the metropolis of Rockport. You are driving a BMW M3, challenging all comers to become the best street racer you can be. You begin with three races that you must win before you can advance. Just don't hit too many obstacles and you shouldn't have any problem. When cops appear in some of these races just treat them like any other racer. Don't let them slow you down too much. Wait for a clear opportunity to pass them. The fourth race is against a punk named Razor who is fifteenth on the Blacklist, a ranking of the best Rockport street racers. Razor's gang has sabotaged your car so you can't win this race. Your car will conk out on you before the finish line. You lose the race and your pinkslip to Razor and get busted. When the game continues you discover that Razor has taken your BMW and advanced to become Number One on the Blacklist. The object of the game is to move up the Blacklist and supplant Razor as the most wanted street racer.

You start the game with $30,000 - $10,000 for each of the three races at the beginning. If you have a Need for Speed: Underground 2 game saved on your memory card, you will receive an extra $10,000 to begin your career. The first step is buy a car. You have three choices: a Lexus IS 300, a Chevy Cobalt, and a Fiat Punto. If you have the Underground 2 bonus money, you can also buy a Volkswagen Golf.

Cars are pretty subjective things. What works for one person might not work for another. I've read game FAQs where they swear by the Cobalt, but I think it's the worst of the starter cars. It rides too high to suit me. I can never get it to handle the way I want. I prefer tight cars that hug the ground. If you've got the bonus money, go for the Golf. If not, buy the Punto. I've defeated most of the Blacklist opponents with both cars. The Punto might give you some problems at the beginning, but a few performance upgrades make a big difference. The Lexus is a great starter car. It'll serve you well until the latter stages of the game. By then, you should have a whole fleet of cars to choose from. Again, this is all subjective. You might love the Cobalt.

There are three races that you must win before you can challenge the first Blacklist opponent, Sonny. I recommend alternating between the races and the shops, spending your race winnings on upgrades to your car. Run the races as many times as you need to in order to get your car fixed up. Concentrate on performance parts.

Types of Races:

Circuit: Usually two to four laps around the same course.
Sprint: A race from point A to point B.
Lap Knockout: A circuit race. On each lap the driver that is in last place is eliminated.
Tollbooth: There are a series of tollbooths on the course. You have to make it to the next tollbooth in the allotted time.
Speedtrap: There are a series of speedtraps on the course. The goal is to register the top total speed through the traps. Save your nitrous until you have a clear path to the trap, then blast through it. You don't have to cross the finish line first, but you lose speed for every second back you finish. The timing of your nitrous is critical. If you hit it early be sure you don't hit anything to slow yourself down before the trap.
Drag: A drag race. Your car will automatically follow the curves of the track. You use your steering to change lanes to avoid obstacles - mainly other vehicles. Timing of your shifts and nitrous is critical. I prefer to use my nitrous in short bursts to get to the next gear quickly.

When you first start putting parts on your cars, go to Performance Tuning and get your cars running the way you like them. The Performance Tuning is much better in NFS: Underground 2, but you can make a few adjustments here that will make a big difference. Steering and handling depends on the car and the driver, but I usually have the steering at +1 and the handling at +2. Experiment with these settings until the car suits you. Turn the brakes up a notch or two. Lowering the ride height and increasing the aerodynamics makes the car hug the road better. I like -4 or -5 and +4 or +5 respectively. Turning the nitrous down makes it burn longer, turning it up makes a more intense burn. I like to turn it up to +3 or +4. For hard photo ticket milestones, I'll turn it all the way up. Turn the Turbo up a few notches.

After you beat a Blacklist racer, you can choose two markers from him/her. There are three wild card markers. Choose two of the three wild cards. You can win the pinkslip to the racer's car, extra impound strikes, extra cash, or get out of jail free markers. You need these more than the unique upgrades offered. Occasionally, you might want to get the Unique Performance Upgrade for that special car you like the most. Before too long, you should have a fleet of cars at your disposal that you've won from the other racers.

I'm not a big fan of buying more cars outright or selling cars. If you really, really, really need the money and must sell, you will only get half of the stock price of the car. To get a little more money, first go to the shop and trade the body parts in for stock parts.

As you advance in the game, keep two or three cars as maxxed out as you can get them with whatever parts are unlocked at the time. Keep a couple of other cars almost maxxed out. You don't need to keep all the parts on all the cars, but you should always have a couple of cars in reserve in case you get into heat or impound strike trouble with your key cars.

The Blacklist racers and their rides:

15. Sonny - Volkswagen Golf
14. Taz - Lexus IS 300
13. Vic - Toyota Supra
12. Izzy - Mazda RX-8
11. Big Lou - Mitsubishi Eclipse
10. Baron - Porsche Cayman
9. Earl - Mitsubishi Lancer EVO
8. Jewels - Ford Mustang
7. Kaze - Mercedes SL 500
6. Ming - Lamborghini Gallardo
5. Webster - Chevy Corvette
4. JV - Dodge Viper
3. Ronnie - Aston Martin DB9
2. Bull - Mercedes SLR McLaren
1. Razor - BMW M3

I'm a big fan of the Volkswagen, the Mazda, the Porsche, and the Lamborghini. Keep these cars maxxed out and you can beat anyone with them. The Lexus, Lancer, Mercedes, and Viper make good secondary cars, useful if you run into heat and impound strike trouble with your primary cars. Get them up to the Pro and Super Pro levels and they make great pursuit cars. Results may vary. You might have better luck with a different set of cars depending on your personal preferences.

One note about the cars: the cars you win from the Blacklist racers will often have parts on them that are still locked. Ming's Gallardo, Webster's Corvette, and JV's Viper already have the ultimate engine and turbo. Those parts are still locked until you beat Ronnie (#3). These cars need very little, just a nitrous upgrade, to make them ultimate everything. Win one of these cars and you're well on your way toward beating the game. I love the Gallardo; it's great for races and pursuits. The Viper is great for pursuits, okay for races. I'm not a fan of the Corvette. I can't get it to handle the way I want it to. Again, results may vary. Also, if you get deep into the game and have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket, save it. After you beat Ronnie, the ultimate turbo and ultimate engine upgrades are a mind-boggling $175,000 per car. But by this point you should have at least one of the upgraded cars (the Gallardo, Corvette or Viper) and should only need to upgrade one or two other cars to finish up the game.

Some people like to have cars for races, cars for pursuits, and backup cars. Often the best racers make the best pursuit cars so I use my top cars for races and pursuits. If the heat gets too high or you get too many impound strikes, park it and drive another car (an advantage to having two or three cars maxed out.) The heat will go down while it's off the road and the impound strikes will go away as you win races and beat pursuits in another car. If the race does not have cops on it, you can race a car with high heat or impound strikes with no ill effects. Just return to the Safe House or advance to the next race promptly so that you don't inadvertantly get into a pursuit.

I've been talking a lot about pursuits so let me explain what that's all about. In addition to winning races, you also have to hit milestones and amass bounty in order to challenge the Blacklist racers. There are several types of milestones, most involve getting into pursuits with the cops.

Milestones:

Photo Ticket: The only non-pursuit milestone. Go through traffic cameras above the required speed.
Trade Paint: Tag a certain number of police cars. Only one tag per unique police car.
Cost of State: A dollar total of the property damage amassed during a pursuit.
Time Limits: Have a pursuit lasting at least a set amount of time, or alternately, end a pursuit before a set amount of time is up.
Roadblock and Spike Strip Challenges: Drive through a set number of roadblocks and/or spike strips.
Infractions: Commit a set number of violations in view of the cops.

Infractions:

Ramming a Police Vehicle - Just tag one.
Hit and Run - Tag a civilian car.
Damage to Property - Hit just about anything along the road.
Driving off Roadway - Self-explanatory. Just drive off the roadway. Cutting a corner in the grass will get you this one.
Speeding, Excessive Speeding, Reckless Driving - Hard to get them. Get on the highway with the cops behind you and speed. Go too fast and you'll skip the speeding and get excessive speeding or you may lose the cops. Reckless Driving is almost impossible to get. You have to go over 200 mph without losing the cops. Easier to get at higher heat levels when the cops are faster.
Resisting Arrest - Awarded when you evade a pursuit and enter cooldown mode.

Bounty: A measure of your street rep with the other Blacklist drivers. Your bounty increases the longer you stay in a pursuit. It increases faster at higher heat levels. You also get a combo cost of state/bounty increase for disabling police cars.

Achieving any milestone adds a bonus to your total career bounty. A certain level of career bounty is needed to take on Blacklist racers. Each racer takes a different amount of races, milestones and bounty. Clear as mud, right?

You have to get three race wins, three of four milestones and 20,000 total bounty in order to race Sonny (#15). His milestones are a photo ticket, trading paint with two police cars, completing a pursuit after two minutes and completing a pursuit before four minutes have elapsed. The bounty bonuses for completing the milestones add up to 19,000. The bounty achieved during the pursuit(s) will put you over the top. It's quite easy to achieve all three pursuit milestones in one pursuit. Just tag two cops while you're waiting for two minutes to elapse, then evade the pursuit before four minutes.

It gets progressively harder. In order to challenge Earl (#9), you have to win five of his eight races, and achieve four of his seven milestones - three photo tickets and tag twelve cops, dodge six roadblocks, end a pursuit in less than three minutes or get 30,000 bounty in a single pursuit. You must also amass 790,000 career bounty. Bull (#2) takes eight of twelve race wins, five of seven milestones and 7,550,000 career bounty. His milestones include three photo tickets, cost to state of $200,000, a pursuit lasting over nine minutes, dodging twelve roadblocks and dodging eight spike strips. Razor (#1) takes winning nine of eleven races, five of seven milestones and 10,000,000 total bounty. His milestones are three photo tickets, tag 35 police cars, 850,000 bounty in a single pursuit, evade a pursuit in less than two minutes, and a pursuit lasting more than thirteen minutes. Whew!

You can do as little or as much as you like to advance in the game, as long as you do the minimum. I like to do all of the races at least once. I'll run extra races if I need the money. You can also go for 100% game completion and try to do it all.

I like to go for the pursuit milestones out of races with cops. This usually gets pursuits started quicker than just going to the Bounty screen and starting a pursuit at one of the locations. When going for Photo Ticket milestones, trying coming at it from another direction if you have trouble getting it from where they start you out. For example, one of Kaze's Photo Tickets starts you out on the Rockport Freeway. You begin on one side of the stadium. The Photo Ticket camera is on the other side of the stadium. The path they've got you on takes you through the stadium pillars. It's easier to back up a little and go around the other side of the stadium.

The pursuits gradually increase:

Heat level 1 - Marked city cops chase you. These cars are pretty slow and fragile. They're easy to lose and easy to disable. Just ram them a few times or run them into something.
Heat level 2 - Unmarked city cops. Still pretty slow and fragile. The police will begin setting up roadblocks to try to slow you down. When you approach a roadblock, hit your Speedbreaker button and size up the roadblock. Look for gaps between the cars and the walls, aim for sawhorses (the weakest part of the roadblocks) or aim for the rear half of the cars.
Heat level 3 - Marked state cops. Rhinos make their first appearance at this level. These are SUVs that appear out of nowhere, coming straight at you. They're trying to ram you head-on and pin you or slow you down. When you see them coming try to hit your Speedbreaker and dodge them. The police are also getting a little tougher and feistier. Use your Pursuit Breakers to thin them out.
Heat level 4 - Unmarked state cops. You know you're at level 4 when the helicopters make their first appearance. Thin out the ground cops with a Pursuit Breaker or two and wait for the helicopter to run out of gas and leave. Alternately, if you don't have any ground cops on you, you can use long tunnels to lose the copter. Also in level 4, the cops begin laying down spike strips. Watch for roadblocks on your map. When you approach them, hit your Speedbreaker. Don't automatically shoot for the gaps. That's usually where the spike strips are. Aim for the sawhorses and the rear of vehicles. Sometimes the cops get tricky and lay the spike strip in front of the vehicles.
Heat level 5 - Federal cops. Here the cops pull out all the stops. The Feds are driving ultra-fast, extra durable Corvettes that can keep up with any car you've got. The helicopters come out more often and join in the chase, buzzing you to slow you down. The Rhinos are tougher and stick with the pursuit longer. Plus the spike strips and roadblocks. Your only hope is to keep moving and nail those Pursuit Breakers.

At the beginning of the game, the heat level will slowly advance through the first level and stop at the beginning of level two. Later it will stop at level 3. It's only toward the end of the game, after you've beaten JV (#4), that you'll see level 5. Use this knowledge to your advantage. Check out the rankings in the Rap Sheet. Try to get the top spot before the real trouble begins. Get into extra pursuits to make your way up the rankings. Reach the top spot in all the categories and you unlock some extra bonus cars.

During the chase, a pursuit bar will appear on the bottom of the screen. There's a meter to tell you how close you are to being caught or getting away. When it starts turning red, get away. Don't let it get too green before you've reached your milestones. Above the meter are three numbers. The number on the left is the number of police cars you've traded paint with, the number in the center is the number of cops in the chase, the number on the right is the number of police cars you've disabled. Keep an eye on the center number. The police come at you in waves. Waves of five at level 1, waves of ten at level 2, waves of fifteen at level 3, waves of twenty at level 4, and waves of twenty-five at level 5. Not all of the cops are chasing you. Some are setting up roadblocks and some trying to get in front of you and cut you off. When you've got a fresh wave on you, start ducking and weaving. Don't stay on the same road for too long and allow them to converge on you. If you get too many on you, thin them out with the Pursuit Breakers. When you get the pursuit down to one or two cars, the backup meter will come on. You have two minutes until a fresh wave gets there. If you get out of the sight of the cops chasing you and enter cooldown, the backup meter will reset to two minutes when the police reacquire you.

Different pursuit milestones require different tactics. Getting a Cost of State, a Trade Paint or a Time Limit milestone requires getting a car with no heat and getting as much done as you can before the heat gets too high. Bounty increases much faster at high heat levels so you might want to get into a pursuit in a car with a little heat on it when chasing a bounty milestone. Roadblocks don't appear until level 2 and spike strips don't appear until level 4 so take that into consideration when going for these milestones. For a Cost of State milestone, you want to hit everything that you can when you can. When you start out and when you get the waves thinned out, hit oncoming cars, small trees, signs, lightposts, etc., etc., etc. Bounty only goes up by time and disabling police cars so try to avoid hitting the objects in your path in a bounty pursuit. For Trade Paint milestones, when you don't have many cops on you, go back and forth through the roadblocks and try to trade paint with all the cars there. Be careful though. If you get too greedy you might get busted.

Almost all game cheat pages list the bus station glitch. Enter the bus station with a bunch of cops after you. There are two ramps. The one on the left leads to a row of buses. The one on the right leads to a little ledge. Go up either ramp and go to end of the buses or to the end of ledge and sit there. The cops will still be able to see you, but usually won't be able to figure out how to get to you. They'll drive around and knock each other out, then finally give it up and leave. If a cop does figure it out, knock him off or go off and go back around. If you go up one of the ramps and turn at the top toward the other ramp, you'll probably lose any pursuing cops.

Hinkley Field, the baseball park, is another great place to end a pursuit, especially going from the college toward the freeway. Cut through the ballpark, drop the signs at each end on the pursuing cops and hide in the cooldown zone on the other side.

Above all, practice makes perfect with the pursuits. Practice getting into and out of pursuits at higher and higher levels. Try the Challenge Series events for more pursuit practice. Listen to what they're saying on the radio. Watch your map.

So you've finally made it to the end of the game. You've beaten Razor in his final race which ends on the boardwalk in Ocean Hills. What's next? Throughout the game, a chick named Mia has been helping you. Now you find out she's a cop. She beats up Razor and hands you the keys to the BMW. Suddenly cops appear from everywhere. Mia yells, "GO!" and you're off. Oh my God! You're in a LEVEL SIX PURSUIT! Sgt. Cross, the baddest of the bad Federales has called everyone in to take you down. Don't panic. Your ultimate goal is to make it from Ocean Hills, at the southernmost part of the map, to the old bridge, at the very north. It's on the Rosewood Freeway next to Hinkley Field. Until now it's been a cut-out in the road with some mounds of dirt and some road paving equipment. But don't head there right away. Five minutes into the final pursuit, Mia will call you and tell you about the old bridge. The road won't be open until she calls. Duck, weave, dodge, evade around the Ocean Hills area until you've hit almost all of the Pursuit Breakers and thinned the pursuit down to a more manageable level. Wait until two or three minutes have gone by, then start heading toward Rosewood. This requires you learning the routes while working your way through the game. The best route is to take the long tunnel out of Ocean Hills. Take a right immediately after exiting the tunnel. This puts you on a straight line route toward the drive-in. Drop the screen on any cops that follow you in and keep heading north toward the mall. You can try to drop the front of the mall on your pursuers, but don't dawdle and give the cops a chance to block the roads. Take the freeway or the bus station road into Rosewood. Hit the Pursuit Breakers there and keep heading north. As you head down the old bridge, don't hit the walls or any cops around you. Keep your speed up. Hit your nitrous at the jump and you'll be the Most Wanted. The final pursuit may take you several tries. It's you against the world. The slightest mistake at the wrong time will get you busted, and you have a few disadvantages here: you can't call up the world map, the BMW doesn't handle very well, and you can't adjust it or change cars. Not to mention the thirty cops chasing you in a car that doesn't bust through roadblocks well.

Some suggestions for Most Wanted 2:

Let's go back to Hot Pursuit 2 and have a rearview mirror for all driver views. In Underground 2 and Most Wanted you only get a rearview mirror in bumper or hood views.

I'd also like to see a return of the little triangles at the bottom of the screen in HP2 that told you about cars right behind you.

Bring back HP2's leaderboard that showed you who you were racing and what kind of cars they were driving. Give the player the option of showing the leaderboard in time or distance ahead or behind. And for God's sake, put the leaderboard on the same side of the screen as the mini-map so you can see them both in one glance.

Do away with the Look Behind button that shows you the view behind you while the car is still moving forward. Return HP2's Look Around button that pauses your car and rotates a camera around, showing everything around you.

That's about it. Let's go racing!

Delong Reservation

2006-05-16T19:30:00.000-04:00

This is a follow-up to the Monday Photo Shoot. Here's a view looking into Delong Reservation, which marks the spot where the 2nd Minnesota reached the summit of Missionary Ridge. Just on the other side of the monument are two barely visible cannons marking the location of the Confederate battery (Water's Alabama Battery) that was defending the ridge.

Monday Photo Shoot: Bottoms Up

2006-05-15T18:03:00.000-04:00

Over at By the Way, today's photo assignment calls for a change of perspective:

Put your camera on the ground to shoot a picture of something you don't usually see from the bottom up.

This picture is of the 2nd Minnesota Infantry Regiment monument at Delong Reservation atop Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga, Tn. During the Battle of Missionary Ridge, Federal troops stormed up the steep ridge and drove away the Confederate defenders on top. The victory gave the Union control of Chattanooga, which became a staging point for Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. The 2nd Minnesota was among the first regiments to reach the ridge's summit.

Update: For a more normal view of the monument, see entry above.

Windows Live Local: Supermax

2006-05-15T05:52:00.000-04:00

Since I enjoy fooling around with Google Maps so much, I thought I'd try an entry from time to time linking to their cool satellite images. Not anything as elaborate and as well thought out as the Google Sightseeing site, but maybe something every now and then that is timely. Google Maps also has a new competitor called Windows Live Local. Whichever has the better image of what I'm trying to show you is the one I'll give you.

No high resolution shots of the area on Google, so this is Windows Live Local. This is Zacharias Moussaoui's new permanent address, Supermax, a.k.a. ADX Florence or "the Alcatraz of the Rockies." This facility is located on the outskirts of the tiny town of Florence, Colorado, and actually holds a Guinness World Record for Most Secure Prison. Moussaoui will be surrounded by some of America's most notorious inmates, including Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Omar Abdel-Rahmen, Ramzi Yousef, Richard Reid, Matthew Hale, Robert Hanssen, David Lane, and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso. Supermax was also where Timothy McVeigh spent his last days on Earth.

More info on Supermax can be found here.

The Lost Experience

2006-05-13T14:16:00.000-04:00

It seems like I find the really good television shows just a little late and have to spend a bit of time trying to catch up with what's going on. Case in point: "Lost." When it first premiered, I didn't think it would be that interesting and ignored it. Then, intrigued by all the media hype, I tuned in and was hooked. I came in about the time the gang found the hatch and it has turned into "Must See TV" for me. I also HAVE to hang around to see what's going on on "Invasion" too. (I did catch "Invasion" from the very first episode though.)

"Lost" and "Invasion" are two peas in the same pod to me. They both suffer from the same drawback. They are maddenly plotted to draw everything out to the nth degree. "Lost's" second season is rapidly winding down, but the gang has only been on the island a couple of months. I'm not sure how much time has gone by on "Invasion," but it's not nearly as long as real time. But even with this excruciating pace, both shows are amazing examples of great storytelling. And every time I think I've finally figured out where either show is heading, here comes a nasty curveball or slider that makes me rethink the whole thing.

I was very intrigued by an article in today's Washington Post, "With 'Lost Experience,' ABC Moves Beyond the Island." According to the article...

The network has set up a complex system of Web sites for phony organizations, launched an international treasure hunt, commissioned a novel by an unidentified author and taken out ads for bogus issues in real newspapers -- including this one -- in a conspiracy to extend the show's fictional world into the real one.

Hoping to keep "Lost" viewers hooked during the summer rerun doldrums, ABC has created an "alternate-reality game" of a scope heretofore unseen in television marketing. "The Lost Experience" is designed to create a parallel world of fresh content outside the show and plant hints via the Internet that the network hopes will lead viewers right up to the September launch of the show's third season.

The article provides a good starting point for the ARG, the website of the fictional Hanso Foundation. After you've roamed around the site for a while, you can get clues as to what it's all about at the ABC "Lost" blog, "Inside the Experience." Many different websites are springing up to explore the clues and theories of the game. "The Lost Experience" seems to be a good place to be to toss theories around with other players. If you think the game sounds interesting but you've never seen the show - in other words, if you're totally lost (pun intended) - you can get caught up at the show's official site or at its encyclopedia - a Wikipedia-type thingy appropriately called the Lostpedia. The Lostpedia also has a page devoted to the Lost Experience that has many, many more links to help you on your quest, including a few more links that are part of the game.

The whole things sounds pretty fun and interesting, but I'm not going to get involved. It sounds like it's going to involve way much more than a normal person would devote to a TV show. It all sounds a little too hardcore Trekkie to me. I'll let the hardcore fans do all the heavy lifting, but check in from time to time to see how it's all progressing, especially as we get closer to fall and the start of Season Three.

Update: Invasion is being cancelled. It's not on ABC's fall schedule. There are some rumors floating around the Net that it might appear on the new CBS/WB channel CW. I hope so. ABC was disappointed in the ratings but it was their own damned fault. They interrupted the show's flow very early with three or four weeks of special events, then interrupted it again to put Conviction in that post-Lost time slot for several weeks. I think they lost a lot of viewers that never picked the story back up again. Sigh. Commander in Chief has been cancelled as well.

Seeing Pink

2006-05-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, while you're watching your favorite Major League Baseball team at the park or on the telly, you might see something quite unusual...pink. Major League Baseball is honoring mom on Mothers' Day and raising some money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation with a whole lotta pink. Fifty or so players will be swinging pink bats. Some will even have mom's name burned onto the Louisville Slugger label. There will be pink breast cancer awareness ribbons and logos on the players uniforms, the bases, and home plate. There'll be pink wristbands and pink lineup cards. After Sunday's games, the bats and bases will be autographed, collected, and auctioned off for the charity.

It seems that the whole idea originated with Hillerich and Bradsby. One of their subsidiaries, TPS Hockey furnished the NHL with pink hockey sticks back in March. They passed the idea along to H&B's most famous subsidiary, Louisville Slugger. Major League Baseball loved the idea and quickly approved the pink bats for use in Sunday's games; black, brown, reddish-brown and white are the only approved bat colors normally. Louisville Slugger had the lion's share of obstacles to overcome...

The bats posed something of a logistical problem for Louisville Slugger. Each player uses a different model and size, so coloring, branding and shipping them for Sunday's game has been a challenge, company spokesman Dan Burgess said.

The whole thing sounds like a great idea. Only one thing troubles me. Baseball players are a superstitious lot and there will be someone somewhere who'll go 4-for-4 with a bunch of RBIs. They'll want to use those pink bats for the rest of the year. Well, maybe that's not that big of a problem after all.

Iced Tea

2006-04-30T15:14:00.000-04:00

When it's cold outside I usually drink quite a bit more than my fair share of coffee, but after spring gets here my coffee consumption falls off a bit. I used to be a Coke-aholic, but over the years I've become more of a tea drinker. Tea is supposed to be good for you, full of anti-oxidents that slow the aging process. Any health benefits derived from tea though are offset by the large amounts of sugar and tap water I consume with it.

Here, in the south, we understand the way tea is meant to be consumed - iced and sweetened. There's nothing worse than trying to dissolve sugar in cold tea. You've got to add it while you're making it. Here's a basic recipe for making a gallon of sweet tea:

Ingredients: 8-12 tea bags, 1 1/2 cups sugar, water. Amounts of tea and sugar can be adjusted according to taste.

Bring a medium-sized pot of water to a boil. While it is still heating up, add sugar and tea. As soon as it all comes to a good rolling boil, turn off the heat and let it set for about 30 minutes. Pour the mixture (minus the tea bags) into a gallon pitcher and finish filling with water. Refridgerate and/or serve over ice.

If you leave the tea on the stove to cool too long, you might find that it is too bitter. Add a tiny pinch of baking soda to your pitcher of tea and shake well.

For a new taste sensation, add one tea bag of flavored tea to your stovetop mixture. Cinnamon and mint are the best.

I'm not too particular about brands of tea, but I try to avoid Luzianne. I don't know what it is about their brand, but it makes great tea if you drink it right away. If you leave it in the refridgerator for any length of time, it gets kind of funky-tasting. Or it may just be me. I don't know.

Sun tea is the best. Put all your ingredients, the tea, sugar and water, in a gallon-sized CLEAR GLASS jar. Set it outside in a sunny spot for about two hours. Go out and give it a good shaking from time to time to help dissolve the sugar. Fish the tea bags out and refridgerate and/or serve over ice.

Going Racing

2006-04-29T06:44:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been online much lately. Hopefully, I'll be back with you on a more regular basis soon. One thing I've noticed is that when I'm not online I have much more free time that I have to find ways to kill. During my latest hiatus I've wasted a lot of this free time playing video games, specifically one game - Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I do get the bug from time to time. I don't care for many kinds of games. I'm not into shooter games, fighting games or sports games -- too many gamepad combinations to keep track of and I don't have the hand-eye coordination or the reflexes to pull them off. But I do enjoy a good racing game. And sometimes a good flying game -- which are usually just 3D versions of driving games.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a pretty cool little game. It's probably the most fun I've ever had with a video game. Most Wanted is the third NFS game I've had the pleasure to play. I've also played Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground 2. They're all pretty different. Hot Pursuit 2 has two race trees - one with cops, one without. When you win a race, you unlock the races below it on the tree. After you win the thirty races on both trees, you unlock bonus races. The cops are mostly just obstacles to get around in your quest to win races. Underground 2 has a little bit of a story. You arrive at the fictional city of Bayside, get a car and compete in street races. As the game progresses you pull into shops and fix up your car(s) to make it (them) more powerful and flashier. Finally, toward the end of the game, you start running into the top Bayside street racer. He's trying to get his gang to take you out in races because you're threatening his position. The final race is between you and him. All of the races take place at night. Most take place on city streets with varying levels of traffic. Only a few races are on closed tracks. There are also just random racers running around the city that you can challenge to a race. You come up behind one of these guys, challenge them, and you're off - dashing and darting through the city trying to lose them. There's not a cop to be found anywhere in Bayside.

Most Wanted has a real storyline. Really. At the beginning of the game, you pull into the fictional city of Rockport in your BMW M3. You win a few races, then challenge a punk called Razor. His gang sabotages your car, you get busted and go away for a little while. Razor then takes your car and uses it to move to the top of the Blacklist, a ranking of the baddest of the street racers. When you come back, you have to buy a new car and work your way through the Blacklist. Your ultimate goal is to dethrone Razor and become the most wanted street racer. You start with a stock Chevy Cobalt, Volkswagen Golf, Lexus IS 300, or Fiat Punto, then fix it up and win more cars to help you in your quest. It all takes place in the light of day on city streets with traffic and cops.

In Most Wanted, the cops are an integral part of the game. Not only do you have to win races, you also have to beat Pursuit Milestones to advance in the game. Basically, you have to get the cops to chase you, hit your milestones, then evade the pursuit. Pursuit Milestones might include a certain number of police cars you tag or trade paint with, a time limit (evading a pursuit before or after a certain amount of time has passed), or a certain number of roadblocks you have to go through. There are also cost of state and bounty levels to reach in a single pursuit. Cost of state is a dollar total of the amount of property damage you've caused. You collect bounty only through the amount of time spent in a pursuit or by disabling police cars. In the beginning, you have to have a pursuit in which you tag two police cars. You also have to have a pursuit that lasts at least two minutes and one that lasts less than four minutes. It's easy to get all of these milestones in a single pursuit. Before you can challenge Razor at the end of the game, you have to tag 35 cops and have a pursuit last more than thirteen minutes.

It's all pretty realistic. It looks like a real city. You start the game in the borough of Rosewood, which has a college, a hospital, a baseball field and a bus station to race and be pursued around and through. There's a freeway that encircles the entire borough. Later in the game you unlock the Ocean Hills borough. Here there's a touristy-looking beach town to race through. This section also has a tiny fishing village, a trailer park, a cannery, a prison, and a drive-in movie theater. Finally you open up the downtown Rockport section. It has it's own encirling freeway, a football stadium, an area that sort of looks like Times Square and a little park. Scattered throughout this fictional world are pursuit breakers that you can drive through. They blow up or drop on pursuing cops, allowing you to escape.The pursuits are fairly realistic too. You start out with one or two city cops on your tail. They're easy to lose and easy to disable. As the pursuit progresses, they call for backup. Then they begin blocking off the roads to try to contain you. At later stages, the state cops take over. Their cars are a little tougher to lose and knock out. Finally, the Federal Street Racing Task Force takes over. These are some pretty bad-ass dudes with fast Corvettes and helicopters. They'll pin you in in a heartbeat if you're not careful. There are just a couple or three things that are not very realistic. First, most racing games put you in a car that's basically a souped-up, ultra-fast tank. You can run over just about anything. You might flip the car but you're not going to do any serious damage to it. Racing games wouldn't be much fun if you totalled your car everytime you brushed a wall or ran into something. In Most Wanted, the cars are pretty indestructible. You can crash through a roadblock or some other obstacle with only scratches or broken windows as a result. Second, when you're busted in the game, you have to pay the fines on the violations you've incurred. These are pretty miniscule in comparison to the massive amounts of property damage. In real life, if you do hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage, you're going to have to make a lot more financial restitution than just a couple of thousand dollars in fines. The game is not anywhere near as violent as you might think from my description. It's a cartoon-type violence. No pedestrians out and about to run over, no blood, no serious injuries. If you drive through a gas station and blow up the pumps and drop the roof on top of the cops behind you there's an accounting of how much cost of state and bounty you've amassed for the manuever, but there's no body count. Run head-on into another car at 150 miles per hour and walk away. There's the old problem of video games glorifying this sort of thing without showing the consequences. Somewhere out there in America, there's probably a stupid kid who's pretty good at the game and might decide to try it in real life without thinking through the consequences. Lawsuits and other negative outcomes to follow.

But it IS a lot of fun. Where else are you going to get the opportunity to drive a Lamborghini through city streets at 150 miles per hour or drop a giant doughnut on cops that are chasing you. Soon I'll post a list of tips and tricks to help you win the game and maybe even a few ideas to make Most Wanted 2 even more fun.

Weekend Assignment - Your New Music

2006-04-28T04:30:00.000-04:00

I've been incommunicado for a while now. My goal of getting back online hit a few snags. Hopefully, I'll be back at it on a regular basis again soon. I'm away from home for a couple of days where I have access to the Internet and Scalzi's latest writing assignment at By the Way struck my fancy. So here goes:

What are some of the most recent music albums you have bought? Name up to three.
Extra Credit: Did you buy these albums on CD, or did you get them online through iTunes or another music service?

Hmmm. It's going back a ways since I've actually bought a record album. I hate to sound like an old fogey, but new music really sucks. It all sounds formulaic. It's all hip hop and rap and pop that passes for country and rock bands that all sound the same. You finally hear a good song and buy the CD and the other 13 songs suck. And my musical tastes probably quit evolving back in my college days or shortly thereafter. Anyway, here are three of my more recent purchases:

Jars of Clay - Who We Are Instead - I'm not very religious, but I love this Contemporary Christian band. I've got almost all of their albums, even paid to join their fan club to get an special live album. They've got a clean, crisp sound and their songs are actually about something.

Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - I bought this to replace the album that I used to have. It's a classic from the Seventies, when most of the original band was still around.

Depeche Mode - The Singles - I bought both Singles albums. There is a single album and a double album that together cover their entire career. I've always been a Depeche Mode fan and have had the random album here and there, but these albums have got everything on them - all their biggest hits and a bunch more that should have been.

Extra Credit - I bought all these albums at the same time many months ago at a used CD store. I reached a point a few years back where I just finally stopped buying new CDs. The prices are just too damned high for not much entertainment. I may buy or borrow the occasional song online, but it just doesn't seem very cost effective to buy albums. If the record companies lowered the price a little and actually put out some goodstuff from time to time, I might reconsider.

Weekend Assignment: Very Hidden Talents

2006-03-05T09:37:00.000-05:00

Over at By the Way, the Weekend Assignment is pretty straightforward...

Weekend Assignment #101: Name a talent that you don't have that you wish you did.
Extra Credit: Do you have any completely useless talents.

I wish I could play a musical instrument. It doesn't really matter which one, though I'm partial to the dobro or the mandolin. I just think they sound cool. But any musical instrument will do. Two problems have held me back: 1. I'm left-handed, which has frustrated the couple of people who have attempted to teach me to play a stringed instrument. I really, really, really want to hold them upside-down and play them with the "wrong" hand. 2. I'm fairly uncoordinated. I can type about 40 words per minute if I really concentrate, but that's about the limit of my hand-eye coordination. I just don't think my fingers would cooperate to hammer out a tune with any decent medley or rhythm, even with decades of practice...and I don't really have that kind of patience. I guess that's three things.

I do have some neat talents that are pretty useless. I can do a pretty fair rendition of the William Tell Overture by snapping my fingers and clapping. Wait a minute, you might be thinking, what about that hand-eye coordination thing? Well, that's the only song I can do that sounds anything like what it's supposed to sound like. I'm not really sure how I picked it up, but I've been able to do it since I was a kid.

Also, back in the day when I used to chew bubble gum, I could blow a bubble inside of a bubble. I'm not sure if I can do it anymore. It's been a while. I probably could if I really concentrated.

One more: My elbows hyperextend. Some people would say that I'm double-jointed. So I can do a pretty good job of convincing someone that I've broken my arm.

Random Music Mix

2006-03-04T16:53:00.000-05:00

I don't know that anyone really reads these lists or even cares, but when I see them on other blogs and webpages I feel a special insight into the person that put them together. And I enjoy doing them.

The Master List:

1. "Rush" - Big Audio Dynamite
2. "One" - Metallica
3. "Blackbird" - The Beatles
4. "Lover's Rock" - The Clash
5. "Noah's Dove" - 10,000 Maniacs
6. "Nemesis (The Arch Deviant Mix) - Shriekback
7. "Wicker Baskets" - Jars of Clay
8. "Tied Down and Chained" - BoDeans
9. "You Ain't Going Nowhere" - Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs
10. "Personal Jesus" - Depeche Mode

This is another weird collection of songs that don't really go together, but somehow it works. The transitions aren't as jarring as you might think. In fact, by rearranging these songs a little, this could be a pretty good little playlist. One note: the Flatt & Scruggs is probably not what you're thinking. This is not traditional bluegrass; it has a more contemporary feel. Think countrified Dylanesque. This is from a double album, Dueling Banjos / Live at Kansas State - some live songs, some studio. They even do a version of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now."

The Favorites List:

1. "Shiver and Shake" - The Cure
2. "Maps and Legends" - R.E.M.
3. "Building a Mystery" - Sarah McLachlan
4. "Jesus Online" - Bush
5. "The Back of Love" - Echo and the Bunnymen
6. "Papercut" - Linkin Park
7. "Home by the Sea" - Genesis
8. "Miss Sarajevo" - Passengers
9. "Cut" - The Cure
10. "Rain on the Scarecrow" - John "Cougar" Mellencamp

Since I was listening to him when he was just John Cougar, it doesn't sound right to say John Mellencamp without throwing the Cougar in there. I don't think he likes it, but it's what I'm used to. Don't know if you're familiar with Passengers, but this was a weird little side project that U2 did with Brian Eno. Luciano Pavarotti contributes some vocals to "Miss Sarajevo," a song about a beauty pagent held in a war zone.

I was going to change some of these songs in my MP3 player, but couldn't find the cable I needed to git 'er done. I finally found the cable and will get these songs switched out ASAP.

Even Einstein Agrees...

2006-02-24T20:08:00.000-05:00

The Random Music Mix / Scalzi's Musical Meme

2006-02-22T05:36:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to do this random mix music thing on the weekend, surrounded by other entries, but my personal life is trying to interfere again. Internet access is kind of sporadic for me right now. Hopefully, I'll be cooking with gas again in a couple or three weeks. (Fingers crossed.)

Anyway, here's the master list, a random mix from the collection on my computer:

1. "Ramble On" - Led Zeppelin
2. "Return to Innocence" - Enigma
3. "Why Don't You Get a Job?" - The Offspring
4. "Heaven's Gate" - Ian McCulloch
5. "The World I Know" - Collective Soul
6. "Angel Dance" - Los Lobos
7. "Shepherd Moons" - Enya
8. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" - Bruce Springsteen
9. "Electric Co." - U2
10. "Mad World" - Gary Jules

Whew. Some weird transitions there, especially between songs two and three. Also, the rocking "Electric Co." is surrounded by a couple of slow, moody songs.A few notes: All good songs. Only one big hit - the Collective Soul. An old rocker - the Zeppelin. A slightly newer rocker - the U2. An even newer rocker, but not too new - the Offspring. Ian McCulloch is the former lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen, a favorite band from my college years. The Gary Jules song is a cover of an old Tears for Fears song. Jules's version is from the Donnie Darko soundtrack. The U2 is a track I borrowed from the Internet, a live version from an old BBC broadcast.

Here's the favorites list from my MP3 player:

1. "Gold Rush Brides" - 10,000 Maniacs
2. "Down There" - Fury in the Slaughterhouse
3. "God Will Listen to You" - Nickel Creek
4. "Omaha" - Counting Crows
5. "Treasure" - The Cure
6. "In Your Eyes" - Staind
7. "Shiver and Shake" - The Cure
8. "Maps and Legends" - R.E.M.
9. "Building a Mystery" - Sarah McLachlan
10. "But I'm Different Now..." - The Jam

I'm not very religious, but I love Nickel Creek's version of that song. The harmonies are wonderful. There's a real dud here - Staind screwed up their cover of the Peter Gabriel song. There's a couple of others I like, but am kind of tired of for now; it's been a while since I changed the songs in my player. I'll have to do that before I do this again.

Over at Scalzi's AOL place, he points to Josh Hosler's site where you can find out what song was Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 on any date in history...well, any date where there actually was a Billboard chart.

The song that was Number One on the day I was born (10/17/1960): "Save the Last Dance for Me" by the Drifters. Eh. Not too bad.

It's interesting to look at the list on that date through the years to see how musical tastes have changed. And I see that "Monster Mash" made its first Halloween appearance in 1962.

I can't remember the exact date, but my high school graduation was during the first week in June in 1978. I figured it would be some disco garbage, but it's even worse. "You're the One that I Want" by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John was Number One that week. If there's a jukebox in Hell that song will be on it.

My wedding Number One was "I Just Died in Your Arms" by Cutting Crew. Eh.

My kids' birthday Number Ones are...

"Let's Go Crazy" - Prince
"True Colors" - Cyndi Lauper
"One More Try" - George Michael

Don't really remember the George Michael song, but I think that may be the worst of the birthday songs. Either that one or my grandson's: "All I Have" - Jennifer Lopez and LL Cool J.

Video of the Week

2006-02-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

I could do this but I don't like to show off: Dvinsk Clan - Russian Parkour

The Weekend Random Music Mix

2006-02-11T18:56:00.000-05:00

The Master List

1. "Suspicion" - R.E.M.
2. "Illegal Smile" - John Prine
3. "No One" - The BoDeans
4. "Testosterone" - Bush
5. "Immigrant Song" - Led Zeppelin
6. "Hot Hot Hot!!!" - The Cure
7. "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" - Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs
8. "Me in Honey" - R.E.M.
9. "A Gentle Place" - Clannad
10. "Seven Wonders" - Nickel Creek

The Favorites List

1. "Missing" - Everything but the Girl
2. "Ghost Train" - Counting Crows
3. "Thank You" - Dido
4. "Goodnight Elisabeth" - Counting Crows
5. "San Andreas Fault" - Natalie Merchant
6. "Please Forgive Me" - David Gray
7. "Don't Dream It's Over" - Crowded House
8. "Listen" - Collective Soul
9. "Epiphany" - Staind
10. "Collide" - Jars of Clay

Utterly Useless Websites

2006-02-10T22:12:00.000-05:00

Over at By the Way, Scalzi passes out the weekend homework:

Weekend Assignment #98 - List the most useless website you have ever visited.
Extra Credit - Tell us why you can't stop going there.

Well, is it really useless if you keep going back there? Possibly. The most useless website I've EVER visited was the utterly silly Hamster Dance, but I don't go there...hardly ever. I'm assuming from the question (and the extra credit) that we're talking about totally useless websites that we visit from time to time (and maybe, just can't get enough of.) For me, the winner of totally useless website has to be the incomparable College Humor. Rude, crude, lewd, and occasionally hilarious, this site has something for the social degenerate in all of us, even a little nudity. I especially love the Hotlinks where you never quite know what kind of degenerate, juvenile tripe you're going to. But the Jokes are sometimes pretty funny too, especially the sick one about how a woman is like KFC. (Warning!!)

Update (2/13/06): Okay. I just found this one. It was featured in USA Today's Hotlist, which is supposed to be a list of useful sites, but it's pretty worthless. It's AdamWest.com.

The West Wing

2006-02-08T04:37:00.000-05:00

I was slow to realize what a great television show The West Wing is. I didn't watch it for the first time until several years into its run. Who wants to see a television show about a fairly liberal Democratic president while we're suffering through the Bush presidency in real life? But just an episode or two got me hooked and I'm pretty much caught up now after watching reruns on Bravo several times a day for quite a while. I doubt that there's more than a handful of shows I haven't seen now. I like ABC's Commander in Chief, but it's just a lukewarm substitute for the inner workings of the Bartlet Presidency.

Some memorable West Wing scenes and episodes:

The nightclub scene where Zoe Bartlet is kidnapped. Massive Attack's "Angel" starts as the techno music in the club and becomes the soundtrack, slowly building to its climax as we see Secret Service Agent Molly dead in the alley and Leo running to tell the president.

"What Kind of Day Has It Been," the Season One finale in which President Bartlet's conducts a town hall meeting with college students. The meeting/lecture is a good lesson in politics, but the show ends with shots fired at the president's entourage. Who's hit? Who's coming back for Season Two?

The first episode of Season Two, a two-parter called "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen." In the wake of the assassination attempt, as Josh and the president fight for life, flashbacks reveal how the Bartlet campaign team came together and won the nomination and the election.

"Two Cathedrals," the Season Two cliffhanging episode that's not much of a cliffhanger. President Bartlet deals with the death of his longtime secretary Delores Landingham and reveals to the nation that he has MS. He curses God in the National Cathedral after Mrs. Landingham's funeral, then goes to a press conference to answer questions, especially those concerning his political future. Will he run again? When he puts his hand in his pocket and looks away we know the answer. All the while, flashbacks reveal how a teenaged Jed first met Mrs. Landingham. Dire Strait's "Brothers in Arms" is a moody soundtrack to the final scenes.

C. J.'s pressroom outburst over the treatment of women in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Qumar.

"Posse Comitatus." Bartlet attends a Broadway play and finally greenlights a hit on the Qumari defense minister who has strong terrorist ties. C. J. Cregg's favorite secret service agent, Simon Donovan, is shot and killed when he walks in on an armed robbery at a convenience store. Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" is the touching soundtrack.

"The Long Goodbye." C. J. returns home to Dayton for her 20th class reunion and comes face-to-face with her father's Alzheimer's.

First Lady Abby Bartlet on Sesame Street. C. J. waits in the hall with Big Bird (You had to be there.)

Toby gets personally involved when a homeless Korean War veteran dies while wearing his coat.

The president lectures a conservative talk show host on homosexuality and the Bible.

"Isaac and Ishmail." Various White House staffers, including the president, discuss terrorism with a group of high-school students in a special episode that aired less than a month after 9/11.

Josh explains the humanity of space exploration by recounting the life and death of Blind Willie Johnson. He died of penniless of pnemonia from sleeping on a wet mattress in his burned-out house, but his music (the song "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)," which provides a soundtrack to the episode) left the Solar System on Voyager 1.

The live debate between Matt Santos and Arnie Vinick.

I could go on like this for a while, but I'll stop now.

There was a cast of hundreds, including some memorable guest stars. Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Matlin, Lily Tomlin, John Goodman, Gary Cole, Moira Kelly, Matthew Perry, Edward James Olmos, Glenn Close, Tim Matheson, Timothy Busfield, Ken Howard, Roger Rees, Oliver Platt, Ron Silver, Hal Holbrook, Emily Procter, Mark Harmon, James Brolin, John Larroquette, Felicity Huffman, Penn & Teller, Ed Begley Jr., Mary Kay Place, Matthew Modine, Gabrielle Union, William Fichtner, John Amos, Christian Slater, Teri Polo and many others have all contributed unforgettable characters to the show.

Yes, I'm a fan. A late-comer, but a fan nonetheless. So I was a more than a little upset when I heard that NBC had cancelled the show. The producers had gone into the season undercutting their price per episode to get it on the air, and NBC, with their weakest lineup in years, had shoved the show away in the forgotten nether reaches of Sunday night. I turned the TV on the Sunday night after I heard the news, but no West Wing. No West Wing the next week either. Damn! Had they just cancelled it right out? We wouldn't even get to see the winner of the Santo-Vinick election? I had already lived through ABC cancelling The Night Stalker in the middle of a two-part episode, but this was too much.

I was somewhat relieved to see this article at the TV Guide website, "How Will The West Wing Say Goodbye". The show will continue until the end of the season and answer a lot of unanswered questions. The most important ones are: Who will win the election? How will the show deal with the death of John Spencer? The election episodes will air on April 2 & 9 after a Winter Olympics hiatus. The final episode will air on May 14. We'll see the transition to the next presidency and find out what happens next for all our favorite castmates.

Are you a West Wing fan? Did I leave out your favorite episode or scene? Or favorite guest star? Discuss.

Video of the Week

2006-02-05T14:45:00.000-05:00

This is funny: the trailer for Brokeback to the Future.

Quote of the Week

2006-02-05T01:12:00.000-05:00

From a newstory on towntalk.com, serving the Alexandria-Pineville area of Louisiana...

Debra Jackson said she likes shopping at the Dollar Palace because it is convenient and casual.
"I don't have to get all dressed up like I'm going to Wal-Mart or something," she said.

Regrouping / The Weekend Random 10

2006-02-04T19:26:00.000-05:00

I'm not entirely sure what direction this journal/blog is going to take. The original reason for blogging/journaling was to have an outlet for my views on politics, but I do most of my political musing at the Blue Voice now. I've since branched out to other blogs for other interests. And I've never really been very hip on the whole idea of diary-keeping and the like so I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go in that direction. I'm too privacy-minded to put my personal situations out there for the whole world (or the small subset that might read this) to pore over.

I AM going to try to start writing in this blog a little more often and I'm going to try to keep it light-hearted and fun. I guess we'll figure this out together.

Here's something I'm going to try to do on a pretty regular basis. It's a random ten from my music lists to show you what I'm into. There are two lists. The computer list is my master list of songs on my computer. Right now it stands at around 1400 songs. The MP3 list is what's on my player. It's a somewhat more limited list. My player (a Rio Nitrus) only has room for around 400 songs. These are my favorites from the master list.

The Computer List

1. "Me" - Staind
2. "Virginia Plain" - Roxy Music
3. "Sharkwalk" - Shriekback
4. "The Flag" - Barenaked Ladies
5. "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" - Kate Bush
6. "Set Me Free (Rosa Lee)" - Los Lobos
7. "July" - Baby Bird
8. "Portrait of an Apology (live version)" - Jars of Clay
9. "I Have the Touch" - Peter Gabriel
10. "In a Lifetime" - Clannad

The MP3 List

1. "Ava Adore" - Smashing Pumpkins
2. "Three Libras" - A Perfect Circle
3. "Carnival" - Natalie Merchant
4. "Hey!" - Boingo
5. "Blood of Eden" - Peter Gabriel
6. "Passive" - A Perfect Circle
7. "Who Needs Sleep" - Barenaked Ladies
8. "AIDS and Armageddon" - David Baerwald
9. "Glycerine" - Bush
10. "Never Going Back Again" - Fleetwood Mac

Sorta strange that I've only got two A Perfect Circle songs on the player and they would both show up in the first ten, but damn good songs.

PS. Just in case you were wondering, I also have an AOL journal that mostly mirrors this site, a Civil War blog, a sports blog that focuses mainly on the Atlanta Braves, and a photo blog. Posting in all have been spotty lately, but should pick up now that my computer problems are behind me for now.

Truthiness

2006-01-09T02:55:00.000-05:00

A panel of linguists, the American Dialect Society, has looked over the possible candidates and decided that "truthiness" is the word that best describes the old year of 2005. They define truthiness as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true. True as opposed to factual. One of the linguists, Michael Adams of North Carolina State explains:

"The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts. Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going to make much progress."

The linguists also decided that "podcast" was the most useful new word, and "whale tail" (which wasn't used, but figured prominently in Sunday's West Wing) edged "muffin top" (gross!) in a runoff for most creative word.

Chalabi Heads Iraqi Oil Ministry

2006-01-05T17:14:00.000-05:00

from the Riverbend blog--

"You know how they used to check our handbags when we first walked into the ministry? Now WE check our handbags after we leave the ministry - you know - to see if Chalabi stole anything."

New Year's Day by U2

2005-12-31T03:01:00.000-05:00

All is quiet on New Year's Day
A world in white is underway
I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's Day
On New Year's Day

I will be with you again
I will be with you again

Under a blood-red sky
A cloud has gathered in black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspaper says, says...
Say it's true, it's true
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one

I will be with you again
I will be with you again

Oh...maybe the time is right
Oh...maybe tonight

I will be with you again
I will be with you again

And so we're told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's Day
On New Year's Day

(composed by U2)

Silliness

2005-06-29T02:37:00.000-04:00

My favorite part of The Onion is usually their "What Do You Think?" column in which "ordinary people" respond to the question of the week. This week the question is "The Senate continues to debate John Bolton's nomination for UN ambassador, with Bush threatening to appoint him in spite of their concerns. What do you think?"

Mindy Biancardi answers thusly, "Man, if the Democrats are going to block every terrible idea Bush has, nothing's ever going to get done in Washington."

The Blue Voice

2005-06-18T00:22:00.000-04:00

If you've been coming by here, I thank you, but I'm not sure how much blogging I'm going to be doing here for the foreseeable future. Probably not very much. I'm going to keep this blog open and might post the odd tidbit here from time to time, but for the foreseeable future I'm going to be doing most of my political ramblings at the Blue Voice.

A bunch of us like-minded liberal bloggers met in the small world of AOL Journals and decided to pool our resources to try to make a go of it in the larger blogosphere. And voila! The Blue Voice. Drop by and see us, kick off your shoes and make yourself at home, and above all, let us know what you think.

Schmoozing with the Prez

2005-06-11T05:24:00.000-04:00

Last week, Neil Cavuto put to rest any rumors that Fox News might be fair and balanced with an interview with President Bush that redefined "softball."

As Washington Post reporter Dan Froomkin put it in his "White House Briefing" column...

Thanks to Fox News's exclusive interview with President Bush yesterday, the leader of the free world is now on the record when it comes to John Kerry's Yale grades, Laura Bush's presidential aspirations and -- yes -- the Michael Jackson trial's effect on public policy discourse.

Who wants to talk about that messy war in Iraq, or the Downing Street Memo? Not Neil Cavuto, Fox News executive, anchor, commentator and Bush campaign contributor...

Later, (Fox News anchor John) Gibson had this to say: "Now, Neil, nobody can talk to the president very long without bringing up the war."

Cavuto: "Right..."

And yet, somehow the topic never came up. Not a single question, even though according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, Americans consider the war in Iraq Bush's number two priority, right after the economy and jobs.

To his credit, Cavuto did ask about the number one priority. He put his question this way "Do you think you get a bum rap in the media on the economy?"

Andrew Sullivan comments that Cavuto is "the man who makes Larry King look like an interrogator at Bagram."

Why Do They Hate Our Freedoms?

2005-06-11T00:52:00.000-04:00

Interesting goings-on going on today in Washington as a Patriot Act hearing got a little out of hand. According to ABC News...

The Republican chairman walked off with the gavel, leaving Democrats shouting into turned-off microphones at a raucous hearing Friday on the Patriot Act.

The House Judiciary Committee hearing, with the two sides accusing each other of being irresponsible and undemocratic, came as President Bush was urging Congress to renew those sections of the post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism law set to expire in September.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the panel, abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans. Sensenbrenner declared that much of the testimony, which veered into debate over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was irrelevant...

Democrats asked for the hearing, the 11th the committee has held on the act since April, saying past hearings had been too slanted toward witnesses who supported the law. The four witnesses were from groups, including Amnesty International USA and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, that have questioned the constitutionality of some aspects of the act, which allows law enforcement greater authority to investigate suspected terrorists.

Nadler said Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of the Patriot Act, was "rather rude, cutting everybody off in mid-sentence with an attitude of total hostility."

Tempers flared when Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., accused Amnesty International of endangering the lives of Americans in uniform by referring to the prison at Guantanamo Bay as a "gulag." Sensenbrenner didn't allow the Amnesty representative, Chip Pitts, to respond until Nadler raised a "point of decency."

Sensenbrenner's spokesman, Jeff Lungren, said the hearing had lasted two hours and "the chairman was very accommodating, giving members extra time."

Dem Bloggers has two videos from the hearing, but they are having server problems and it takes a while to download the videos.

Sensenbrenner is one of those Republicans that hates us for our freedoms. In addition to co-authoring the Patriot Act, he is the creator of the Real ID act, which moves us one step closer to having a national identity card. The measure, which ostensibly was designed to combat illegal immigration, requires an electronically readable, government approved identity card. The Department of Homeland Security has the power to set standards and decide if your state's drivers license meets those requirements. You will have to have a federally approved ID card to travel on a plane, open a bank account or use most government services, including collecting Social Security payments. The bill also puts more responsibility on you to prove that you are who you say you are, and more responsibility on the states to verify all of your documentation, but is an unfunded mandate that does not provide any funds to the states to meet these responsibilities. If you thought the lines were long at the DMV before, just wait until this bill goes into effect.

Rather than put this turkey of a bill to a straight up or down vote, which Republicans claim to be all gung-ho about, they tacked it onto the last Iraq War spending bill, ensuring its passage.
Meanwhile, more and more states and communities are rebelling against the Patriot Act. Colorado is the latest. They just passed a bipartisan resolution calling on Congress to bring the Patriot Act into compliance with the Constitution. They join 382 communities and six other states that have issued such resolutions. The other states are Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Idaho and Vermont, all great bastions of liberalism. No, wait a minute, I think most of these are red states, aren't they?

Sixteen provisions of the Patriot Act will expire in September unless Congress acts to reauthorize them.

Update: The Dembloggers videos are loading and playing much better now. The first video shows Sensenbrenner's closing remarks and includes him refusing to yield and gaveling the meeting to a close after Rep. Jerry Nadler called for a point of order, a violation of House parliamentary rules. The second video shows some of the debate that occurred after the meeting was gaveled to a close. C-Span has video of the full hearing (two hours) on its website. It's labeled "House Hearing on Patriot Act Reauthorization (06/10/2005)."

"The New CNN"

2005-06-08T14:46:00.000-04:00

The news from USA Today is that CNN is revamping its lineup. The changes seem to be for the better. Time will tell...

CNN announced a slate of programming and anchor changes Monday intended to refocus the No. 2 cable news network on hard news and analysis, and away from opinion and talk...

"There are many tactical things we could do to try to beat Fox, but we're trying to be ourselves: Roll up our sleeves and report the news, don't talk about it," (new CNN chief Jon) Klein says.
News analyst Andrew Tyndall says that in making the changes, CNN chose to "counterprogram against Fox rather than compete."

...Among the changes: Your World Today, CNN International's one-hour midday broadcast anchored by Zain Verjee and Jim Clancy, will now air on CNN domestic weekdays at noon ET/9 a.m. PT, marking the first time any cable news outlet has devoted a regular daytime block — albeit a low-rated one — solely to international news. Today kicked off Monday with reports from Sudan and Syria.

After 10 years at CNN, Bill Hemmer, the co-anchor of American Morning who turned down CNN's offer to become White House correspondent and whose contract is up this year, announced he's leaving June 17.

Veteran CNN anchor Miles O'Brien, best known for his space shuttle coverage, joins Soledad O'Brien June 20 on Morning, making it an all-O'Brien newscast. "I think it's easier to remember one name in the morning," Klein joked.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer gets a weekday 3 to 6 p.m. ET news block called The Situation Room, which replaces Inside Politics, Crossfire and Wolf Blitzer Reports. The program debuts mid-summer, with Morning's Jack Cafferty and other CNN correspondents joining the program.

Klein says that Blitzer, a longtime CNN anchor and onetime White House correspondent, will focus on "the biggest and most interesting stories of the day, drawing on all our resources."
Klein, a former CBS News executive, also announced that veteran network news executives David Doss and Victor Neufeld have joined CNN. Dodd will supervise Anderson Cooper 360, Neufeld Paula Zahn Tonight.

Tyndall says that in veering toward news and away from opinion, CNN deserves credit for positioning itself as a network where news can be reported and analyzed, not just argued. "Everyone talks in talking points these days," he said. "It's not just on cable news. It's radio. It's everywhere. The entire political world is no longer talking ideas, but talking points."

Wow! Hard news and analysis! What a concept. Hopefully, the hard news doesn't include the "pervert of the day."

Quack

2005-06-08T01:45:00.000-04:00

If it looks like a lame duck and walks like a lame duck and sounds like a lame duck, it's probably a lame duck. Here's the latest from ABC News...

June 7, 2005 — The corrosive effects of the war in Iraq and a growing disconnect on political priorities have pushed George W. Bush's performance ratings — notably on terrorism — to among the worst of his career, casting a pall over his second term and potentially over his party's prospects ahead.

For the first time, most Americans, 55 percent, say Bush has done more to divide than to unite the country. A career-high 52 percent disapprove of his job performance overall, and, in another first, a bare majority rates him unfavorably on a personal level. Most differ with him on issues ranging from the economy and Social Security to stem-cell research and nuclear power.

Iraq is a major thorn. With discontent over U.S. casualties at a new peak, a record 58 percent say the war there was not worth fighting. Nearly two-thirds think the United States has gotten bogged down in Iraq, up 11 points since March. Forty-five percent go so far as to foresee the equivalent of another Vietnam.

Fifty-two percent, the first majority to say so, think the Iraq war has failed to improve the long-term security of the United States, its fundamental rationale. As an extension — and perhaps most hazardously in political terms — approval of Bush's handling of terrorism, the base of his support, has lost 11 points since January to match its low, 50 percent in June 2004 when it was pressured both by the presidential campaign and the kidnapping and slaying of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.

All these underscore a broad sense of lost promise for the president: In January, 55 percent of Americans expected Bush to do a better job in his second term than in his first. Today, vastly fewer, 30 percent, say in fact he's doing so. And even though they remain staunchly supportive, the letdown in expectations is biggest in Bush's own back yard, among Republicans.

The complete poll can be found here. (pdf)

Iraq: Denial and Deception

2005-06-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

"With this resolution, Congress has now authorized the use of force. I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary. Yet, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is necessary, by whatever means that requires. Either the Iraqi regime will give up its weapons of mass destruction, or, for the sake of peace, the United States will lead a global coalition to disarm that regime. If any doubt our nation's resolve, our determination, they would be unwise to test it. "

-- President George W. Bush, October 16, 2002

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action...

"The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

"The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

"The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work."

-- The Downing Street Memo, July 23, 2002

"The origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a 'massive intelligence failure,' in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'

As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions:
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to 'fix' the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

--Senator John Conyers's letter to President Bush

Click here to add your name to Senator Conyers's letter.

Required Reading

2005-06-05T17:38:00.000-04:00

I was going to quote to you some of Mark Morford's latest column for the San Francisco Chronicle, "Bush, the Spoiled Man-Child," but it's all good. See for yourself.

Interesting Tidbit of the Day

2005-06-05T11:30:00.000-04:00

According to an Information Security Oversight Office report (via the Reason Hit and Run blog), the Executive Branch of the federal government spent over $7 billion (yes, with a 'b') to keep government information away from you. This does not include the CIA budget, which is classified.

1995 = $2.7 Billion
1996 = $2.6 Billion
1997 = $3.4 Billion
1998 = $3.6 Billion
1999 = $3.8 Billion
2000 = $4.3 Billion
2001 = $4.7 Billion
2002 = $5.7 Billion
2003 = $6.5 Billion
2004 = $7.2 Billion

Wal-Mart Meets Reality (TV)

2005-06-05T09:22:00.000-04:00

Wal-Mart has been having a lot of trouble with their image lately. A lot of critics have been sniping at them for various things, and it's affecting business and keeping the company on the defensive. They're constantly trying new things to burnish their image, including aggressive campaign ads, a website to counter the anti-Wal-Mart websites, a big media conference, whatever their PR people can think up.

Wal-Mart's latest move is a new reality show called "The Scholar" that pits 10 high-school senoirs against one another to win the grand prize, a full college scholarship valued at $250,000. Wal-Mart is a major sponsor of the show, Wal-Mart will be integrated into the "plots" of the show, and Wal-Mart is underwriting the cost of the scholarships awarded to the runners-up.

I kind of fall into the gray middle ground on the subject of Wal-Mart. I mostly side with the critics. I deplore a lot of their business practices. I wish they would pay their "associates" more and give them better benefits. I hate how they've drifted away from their "Buy American" campaign and get more and more of their goods from overseas. I hate how their quest for lower and lower prices puts the squeeze on their suppliers, driving many into outsourcing. I wish they would spend a little less time and energy burnishing their image, and a little more time and energy actually improving their business practices. But, I confess, I am an occasional Wal-Mart shopper. It's the place to go to get a gallon jar of pickles for a couple of bucks or to get some toilet paper at one o'clock in the morning.

Wal-Mart has the best prices around, but if you shop there you have to consider the hidden costs that come with the good deal. A while back, Rep. George Miller was trying to keep Wal-Mart out of his state, California, and compiled an interesting report called "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart." (pdf) One section leapt out at me:

"The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year - about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers:

$36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families.
$42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family.
$125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of households with a child and 50 are married with two children.
$100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children.
$108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.$9,750 a year for the additional costs for low-income energy assistance."

If Wal-Mart really wants to improve their image with me, they should do something about this. They should stop passing their business costs on to the taxpayers. The above stats don't even include the tremendous financial burden they are putting on state governments by having so many employees on Medicaid rolls. Low prices are good, but Wal-Mart is proving that there is such a thing as too low. If it's a question of money, I'll gladly pay five or ten cents more for my pickles and toilet paper.

Harmful

2005-06-02T20:29:00.000-04:00

What do the following books have in common?

Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, John Maynard Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, Karl Marx's and Freidrich Engels's The Communist Manifesto, Mao Zedong's Quotations from Chairman Mao, John Dewey's Democracy and Education, B. F Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, and Sigmund Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis.

The right-wing wingnuts at Human Events Online assembled a panel of distinguished right-wing wingnuts to come up with the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centurys." The list above is just some of the books they came up with. They either made the top 10 or were listed as honorable mentions. I guess there is nothing more harmful than ideas or thinking.

So what books does Human Events Online recommend? Well, the Human Events Book Service offers several interesting books for sale, including Robert A. Levy's Shakedown: How Trial Lawyers Are Abusing the Judicial Process to Enrich Themselves at Our Expense, Ben Shapiro's Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, Michael Savage's Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder, and, of course, Byron York's Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.

On their homepage, Human Events Online has their "Readers' Top Five," the Human Events Book Service's bestselling books:

1. The Grammar Bible by Michael Strumpf and Auriel Douglas - "In one handy reference: answers to all your toughest questions about good grammar."

They might want to be careful about selling this one. If you learn grammar, you may learn to write. Next thing you know, you might start thinking for yourself.

4. Safely Prosperous or Really Rich? by Howard Ruff - "Whether you want to be 'really rich' or just 'safely prosperous' -- here's how to achieve your own Financial Heaven."

But why settle for just safely prosperous when you can be Really Rich? And why settle for Really Rich when you can be Bloody Stinking Rich? The other spots on their Top 5 are all anti-Muslim diatribes.

2. Infiltration by Paul Sperry - "How radical Muslims masquerading as 'moderates' are infiltrating our government, our military, our prisons, our schools -- and even the Department of Homeland Security."

3. The Life and Religion of Mohammed by J. L. Menezes - "Mohammed: the ugly truth about the founder of the world's most violent religion."

5. The Sword of the Prophet by Serge Trifkovic - "What Muslims, multiculturalists, and the media hope you never find out about Islam."

Hmmm...Is it possible, maybe, that they might have gotten their lists mixed up?

The Pervert of the Day

2005-06-02T05:02:00.000-04:00

"I would like to see us return to a little more international coverage on the domestic feed and a little more environmental coverage, and maybe a little less pervert of the day. I mean, there's a lot of perversion around, I know that, but is it really news? I mean, some of it is. I guess you've got to cover Michael Jackson, but not three stories about perversion at the lead of every half-hour."

-- CNN founder Ted Turner, speaking on the occasion of the cable news network's 25th anniversary yesterday

Good Ol' Southern Politics

2005-05-27T21:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a pretty big day in the state of Tennessee...or so I thought.

I would have thought that a day that began with the FBI briefing the governor at 6 a.m., and saw a few state legislators standing handcuffed in front of a federal judge, some legislators' offices raided, and a midday press conference from the governor was big news. Apparently not. A quick glance at the websites of the national news media organizations shows a collective yawn for the story. The New York Times and the Washington Post had brief stories. Most of the other news organizations have the story in one form or another, but it's not a top story. You have to dig past the stories of holiday travel woes (imagine that - there's going to be travel woes on a holiday weekend - who'da thunk it?), the runaway bride being charged, and the latest on Michael Jackson and the guy on the crane.

Anyway, here's what happened. The FBI has had a sting operation called Tennessee Waltz going on for a couple of years. They set up a dummy company called E-Cycle Management Inc. and starting shopping around for Tennessee lawmakers that might be willing to do a little business for them. E-Cycle was billed as a computer recycling firm that would buy old computers, refurbish them and resell them. The ostensible goal of the sting was to get the lawmakers to pass a law allowing the state to sell the company their old computers. The bill, which has been winding its way around the legislature for most of the year, had seven sponsors. Some of these lawmakers supported the bill because it makes sense to recycle old computers instead of throwing them in a landfill. Others supported the bill because they got their palms greased a little (allegedly).

Yesterday, the FBI sprang into action with indictments and search warrants. Three Democratic state senators and one Republican state representative were charged with conspiracy, extortion and bribery. Most of the names will probably be unfamiliar to you - Ward Crutchfield, Kathryn Bowers, and Chris Dixon. The other lawmaker is more well-known not for who he is, but because he's a member of the famous Memphis, Tennessee Ford family. John Ford is the brother of former longtime U.S. Congressman Harold Ford Sr. and the uncle of current U.S. Congressman Harold Ford Jr. Harold Jr. recently announced that he will be running for the U.S. senate seat that Bill Frist is planning to vacate in 2006.

John Ford is the black sheep of the Ford family. He's been in trouble with the law since 1980, when he was stopped by a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer for topping 100 mph. Since then, he's had several brushes with the law. Once, he was accused of pointing a gun at a fellow motorist during a little road rage incident. After denying that he owned a gun, a search warrant turned one up. Once he was was accused of threatening some utility workers who were blocking his driveway with a shotgun. There was also a little scandal involving Ford and his two families, one with his wife, another with his girlfriend. There have also been several brushes with the Tennessee Senate Ethics Committee (such as it is) with some of his shady business and political deals. In the indictments handed down yesterday, Ford was charged with accepting the most money in the sting, $55,000, and was also charged with three counts of attempting to threaten or intimidate witnesses. He allegedly threatened to kill anyone who was an FBI agent or who set him up.

A former state senator, Roscoe Dixon, and two others, Charles Love and Barry Myers, were also nabbed in the sting. Dixon allegedly took some money while he was still a Tennessee legislator. Love, a lobbyist and a member of the Hamilton County School Board, and Myers, a Memphis community activist, allegedly served as bagmen and go-betweens who shopped the company around to willing lawmakers. The FBI says that the investigation is still on-going and there may be more arrests.

Well, maybe it's not as newsworthy as the traffic woes or the guy on the crane (is he still up there?), but it was still a mighty exciting day around my neck of the woods. If you're interested, the Nashville newspaper the Tennessean probably has the best coverage of the events that doesn't require site registration or subscription.

Bush Catapults the Propaganda

2005-05-26T21:27:00.000-04:00

"As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

-- President George W. Bush at a Bamboozlepalooza Tour event in Greece, New York, May 24, 2005

Blogger Fingers His Own Killer

2005-05-26T13:47:00.000-04:00

A lot has been written about the power of the blog, but this is a new one. File this one under "strange, but true" -- a blogger has used his blog to solve his own murder and the murder of his sister.

On May 12, Simon Ng posted a brief entry in his weblog. Part of the entry reads...
"Anyway today has been weird, at 3 some guy ringed the bell. I went down and recognized it was my sister's former boyfriend. He told me he wants to get his fishing poles back. I told him to wait downstair while I get them for him. While I was searching them, he is already in the house. He is still here right now, smoking, walking all around the house with his shoes on which btw I just washed the floor 2 days ago! Hopefully he will leave soon..."

When police investigated the murders of Ng and his sister, the former boyfriend, Jin Lin, was quickly identified as a possible suspect. He denied being there, but his alibi crumbled when he was confronted with the blog entry.

The New York Daily News has all of the details.

The Filibuster and the Compromise

2005-05-24T19:11:00.000-04:00

I don't know why it's taken me so long to write something about the filibuster. There's really nothing more fascinating than the arcane inner workings of the Senate. The filibuster, literally "blowhole," is the adult equivalent of holding your breath until you turn blue, but, rather than ignore you, everyone else is obliged to wait and see if you do really take a breath or if you pass out and fall flat on your face. No one even knew there was such a thing until James Cagney popularized the filbuster in a stirring scene in Casablanca. Since then, the rules have been changed somewhat. Now you don't actually have to hold your breath. You just have to threaten to do it if someone brings up a subject you don't want to talk about. It's now evolved into the adult version of sticking your fingers in your ears and going, "LALALALALALALALA. I can't hear you!"

Of course, the current controversy all started because the Repubs had a good year last year. Dear Leader was elected by a mandate of one state. He called this "political capital," but instead of paying down his personal deficit, decided to spend some more. In a move that made sore winners everywhere proud, he nominated a few religious wingnuts and a corporate stooge or two to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. In the spirit of opposing judicial activism, he nominated the right kind of judicial activists. James Dobson and the other moderate voices in the Republican Party applauded this bold initiative. Of course, it helped that the people of the United States, in their "infinite wisdom," also elected a few more Repub wingnuts to the Senate and the House to ease us through this difficult transition. The Dems reasonably responded that they've confirmed most of Dear Leader's nominations, but the Repubs, sore winners all, responded, "We want them all confirmed, damn it!" The Dems responded with the only options left at their disposal, the filibuster and shooting spitwads at Senator Frist.

The Repubs, all reading from the same script, are the voice of reasonableness and All-American values. What, they say, could be fairer than a straight up or down vote. (There's a good drinking game. Take a sip of some really hard liquor everytime you hear a Repub say "straight up or down vote." Then call the paramedics and tell them you're suffering from alcohol poisoning.) And, of course, the Repubs have always felt this way about the "straight up or down vote." All the way back through the misty mists of time. All the way back to the last presidency. A "straight up or down vote" was not exactly all the rage when President Bill "Blow Hole" Clinton was the one doing the nominating. But all the Repubs had political epiphanies, sort of a "Road to Damascus" experience around 2001 or so. And the Dems, the former "straight up or down vote" party became the "LALALALALALA" party. The Repubs threatened to invoke what they were calling the "nuclear option" (until they found out that the term wasn't polling all that well - sort of like "privatization.") The Dems threatened to grind the work of the Senate to a halt (as if anyone could tell.) The people, suffering from a little buyers' remorse, and not really recognizing a good blowhole when they see one, have nonetheless decided that maybe it's not really a good idea to give Dear Leader everything he asks for.

So now we have a compromise, sort of a Crittenden Compromise for our time, proving that Jim Hightower was right when he observed that "there's nothing in the middle of the road except yellow stripes and dead armadillos." The wingnuts on the right aren't happy. They're suddenly Al Pacino in Driving Mrs. Daisy: "We coulda been contenders. We coulda had it all." The Dems aren't happy either. They promise not to filibuster the wingnut, the corporate stooge, and the doofus. In return, the filibuster is saved for use in "special circumstances," such as when Dear Leader nominates Rush Limbaugh to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court or James Dobson to be the poet laureate or John Bolton to be the ambassador to the United Nations.

Personally, I believe compromises are for wimps. (Don't believe me? Look at the gang of miscreants who came up with this one.) I was really hoping this brouhaha, literally "big blowhole," would play itself out. I was hoping the Repubs would do away with the filibuster and the Dems would close down the Senate for a few reasons. First, like the bull and bear markets and the rise and fall of the New York Yankees, what goes around, comes around, especially in politics. Sooner or later (and probably a lot sooner than most right-wingers think), the people, in their "infinite wisdom," will vote this group of nimrods out and replace them with a whole new group of dimwits. Second, as I said before, if they shut down the Senate would anyone notice? Third, would anyone care? It's not like people would stop getting their checks or be unable to tour the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth National Memorial Park. And if the Bankruptcy Bill, Social Security "Reform," Medicare and Medicaid cuts, and the Energy Bill (otherwise known as the Oil Company Handout Reorganization Act) is the best they can do, I say, "Close that sucker down." Nebraska's done fine with a unicameral legislature for quite a while. Of course, they don't have Tom DeLay or Denny Hastert.

But cooler (and wimpier) heads have prevailed. A "straight up or down vote" on the corporate stooge will happen soon. Life goes on, the wheels of justice grind slowly, all good things come to those who wait, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The work of the Senate (such as it is) continues...until the next blowhole comes along.

They Can't Be Serious

2005-05-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

(Via Dave Barry's Blog) Leave it to the British press to come up with a headline like this one.

The Bush administration spokesman did not help the situation...
“He has been briefed. He wants to get to the bottom of it.”

Winning Hearts and Minds

2005-05-22T01:35:00.000-04:00

From Friday's New York Times...

"Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

"The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

"Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

"In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both."

Update: More on the story in Sunday's New York Times...

"Despite autopsy findings of homicide and statements by soldiers that two prisoners died after being struck by guards at an American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, Army investigators initially recommended closing the case without bringing any criminal charges, documents and interviews show...

"The investigators' move to close the case was among a series of apparent missteps in an Army inquiry that ultimately took almost two years to complete and has so far resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers. Early on, the documents show, crucial witnesses were not interviewed, documents disappeared, and at least a few pieces of evidence were mishandled.

"While senior military intelligence officers at Bagram quickly heard reports of abuse by several interrogators, documents show they also failed to file reports that are mandatory when any intelligence personnel are suspected of misconduct, including mistreatment of detainees. Those reports would have alerted military intelligence officials in the United States to a problem in the unit, military officials said.

"Those interrogators and others from Bagram were later sent to Iraq and were assigned to Abu Ghraib prison. A high-level military inquiry last year found that the captain who led interrogation operations at Bagram, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, applied many of the same harsh methods in Iraq that she had overseen in Afghanistan."

Note: If needed, you can use the BugMeNot logon, yoink/forty to access the stories.

This Date in History

2005-05-17T07:34:00.000-04:00

On this date in 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, declaring that segregated educational facilities "are inherently unequal."

Damned activist judges!

Lemony Frist's Series of Unfortunate Events

2005-05-14T20:39:00.000-04:00

It's always a little fun to laugh at other people's misfortunes, isn't it?
Senator Bill Frist got more than he bargained for when he went out for a little shopping spree to buy some new shoes on Friday the 13th. He inadvertantly picked a shoe store in the same mall as the offices of Americans United to Protect Social Security. Staffers recognized the senator and leapt into action, quickly putting together a little impromptu protest rally. To Frist's credit, he did come out and address the group. Then he paid over $500 for two pairs of shoes and left - only to find a ticket on his SUV which was illegally parked.

The Smoking Gun

2005-05-14T18:01:00.000-04:00

"Shiver and say the words
Of every lie you’ve heard"
-- Echo and the Bunnymen, "Bring on the Dancing Horses"

Other than a few hardcore Kool-Aid drinkers, is there anyone left who honestly believes that we had to have this war in Iraq? There's been plenty of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence, and even some hard evidence for those that cared to look, that President Bush planned this little Iraqi misadventure far in advance and that diplomacy was never much of an option. Now we have the smoking gun from across the pond in the form of the Downing Street Memo. Where's the outrage? Why aren't there calls for impeachment? Why aren't we burning this group of malefactors in effigy?

Now I know that our so-called liberal media has already done such a superb job of relating the facts, but let's rehash. A recently leaked memo, minutes of a meeting with Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, was recently published in the Times of London and reveals some pretty stark and startling assessments. The memo is dated 23 July 2002, long before U.N. Resolution 1441 (Nov. 2002) and the beginning of the war (March 2003).

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send thePrime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT
(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

I was going to emphasize some salient points, but it was getting to the point where close to the whole memo was being emphasized. But there it is. "Military action was now seen as inevitable" before any diplomatic efforts, before any weapons inspectors, long before President Bush addressed the nation and told us that military action was far from inevitable. "Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" was already pretty evidence. Several commissions have already concluded that it's all the fault of the intelligence community for giving them intelligence and facts that they could fix; the fixers aren't to blame.

As far as the media coverage of the memo, Joe Conason asks a couple of questions in Salon that deserve answers. "Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?"

If this smoking gun bothers you as much as it does me, I'd advise going to the Downing Street Memo website, clicking the link that says "Take Action," and pursuing some of the actions they recommend.

Now He Tells Us

2005-05-14T05:55:00.000-04:00

"This requires patience...This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."

-- Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

2005-05-12T17:53:00.000-04:00

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are...a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nov. 8, 1954, via Sirotablog

With Friends Like That...

2005-05-12T16:07:00.000-04:00

"Secretary Bolton’s actions were not always exemplary. On several occasions, he made incorrect assumptions about the behavior and motivations of subordinates. At other times, he failed to use proper managerial channels or unnecessarily personalized internal disputes. The picture is one of an aggressive policymaker who pressed his missions at every opportunity and argued vociferously for his point of view. In the process, his blunt style alienated some colleagues. But there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct."

-- Sen. Richard (Dick) Lugar (R-IN)

He hasn't broken any laws, so I guess that makes him the man for the job.

And then there was Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH):

"John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be...He is an ideologue and fosters an atmosphere of intimidation. He does not tolerate disagreement, does not tolerate dissent...John Bolton would have been fired - fired - had he worked for a major corporation."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a straight party-line vote, voted 10-8 to send Bolton's nomination to the full Senate "without recommendation."

Darth Tater

2005-05-11T03:28:00.000-04:00

And the award for Funniest Star Wars Movie Merchandise Tie-In goes to Hasbro...

Luke...I am your father!

http://www.hasbro.com/starwars/pl/page.news/id.1130/dn/default.cfm

How About Some New Parties?

2005-05-06T02:25:00.000-04:00

I've often lamented that the Repubs and Dems have the political process locked up here in the U.S. and third parties don't ever get anywhere here. For instance, why don't we have an Official Monster Raving Loony Party like they do in the U.K....or at least a Lemon Party like Canada?

This Date in History

2005-05-04T17:40:00.000-04:00

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio."

May 4, 1970

World on Fire

2005-05-03T04:38:00.000-04:00

According to Sarah McLachlan's new video for the song "World on Fire," instead of spending the normal $150,000 or more, they made the video for $15. It probably cost a little more than that, but check out where most of the money went. (Quicktime required)

Hearts are worn in these dark ages
You're not alone in this story's pages
Night has fallen amongst the living and the dying
And I try to hold it in, yeah I try to hold it in

[Chorus]
The world's on fire
It's more than I can handle
I'll tap into the water
I try to bring my ship
I try to bring more
More than I can handle
Bring it to the table
Bring what I am able

I watch the heavens and I find a calling
Something I can do to change this moment
Stay close to me while the sky is falling
Don't wanna be left alone, don't wanna be alone

[Chorus]

Hearts break, hearts mend
Love still hurts
Visions clash, planes crash
Still there's talk of Saving souls, still the cold
Is closing in on us

We part the veil on our killer sun
Stray from the straight line on this short run
The more we take, the less we become
A fortune of one that means less for some

[Chorus X2]

Blog Links

2005-04-30T12:15:00.000-04:00

(This post has been adapted from an AOL Weekend Assignment.) In my never-ending quest to bring you the best and the brightest from the web, here's a list of blogs that I've really been getting interested in lately. All are worth checking out...

AlterNet's blog, Peek: The Blog of Blogs, does a great job of scanning the liberal blogosphere and coming up with the unusual story that the mainstream media missed or the unusual angle on the big story. They look at it all to bring you the best of the best. It's a great place for liberal political and news junkies to start the day.

The American Progress Action Fund's blog, Think Progress, is also a great resource for the liberal news/political junkie. They post a lot of entries per day, but they're simple, bite-sized, easy to digest chunks of information that cut right through the right-wing smokescreen.

Today in Iraq is a blog that gathers up all of the latest information about Bush's War. It has links to news stories, editorials, analysis, etc. The entries usually run a little long, but there are few of them since they all pull together a lot of information. A very useful site for the kind of stuff you won't see on Fox News or CNN.

As Monty Python would say, "And now for something completely different..." For the wacky, the offbeat, the unusual, the hilarious, and the gross, you can't go wrong with Dave Barry's Blog. The Miami Herald (and nationally syndicated) columnist, author, and lead guitarist and vocalist of the Rock Bottom Remainders, puts together this blog that's a great pick-me-up after reading the depressing news from the other blogs. My favorite entries here are the plot summaries of the idiotic TV show, "24." Here's the latest.

And finally, I should have made a whole separate entry on this, but...I once heard the term "fritterware" to describe software that's designed to just fritter away your time while accomplishing almost nothing. Google has designed the ultimate fritterware by putting those satellite images on Google Maps. I couldn't begin to tell you how many hours I've wasted on this...
Here's my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I can see my house from here.
This is the National Military Cemetary in Chattanooga. The small oval in the lower right contains the graves of Andrews Raiders of Great Train Robbery fame.
Here's the four downtown Chattanooga bridges. From left to right, they are the Olgiati Bridge (U.S. 27), the Market Street Bridge, the Walnut Street Bridge and the Veterans' Bridge. In the lower left corner is BellSouth Park, home of the Chattanooga Lookouts, the AA farm club of the Cincinnati Reds.
Here's a neat Atlanta satellite image. This is Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves. Above Turner Field, you can see the outline of the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium marked out in a parking lot.
Here's Six Flags over Georgia on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Here's the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.
Here's the censored White House and other government buildings.
The Washington Monument.
More censored government buildings, including the U. S. Capitol Building.

Well, you get the idea. Once you figure out what you're looking at, the Google Satellite Maps are pretty cool. You can start close to home, follow roads out by clicking and dragging on the maps, zoom in and zoom out, check out where you've been before, check out places you'd like to go and basically just waste hours playing around here.

Which brings us to the fifth blog on this list. If you don't have time to spend hours playing around with Google Maps, go to Google Sightseeing for the best of the best. Everyday, they bring you several entries of places to go and things to see from your computer screen. One of the neatest posts they've done is a "planes in flight megapost."

Also, check out Whatever, where John Scalzi's been "taunting the tauntable since 1998," World O' Crap, Overspun and the Whiskey Bar, where more taunting of the tauntable takes place, Daily Kos, American Street, Political Animal and Oliver Willis for more than you ever wanted to know about politics, Media Matters, TVNewser, the Daily Howler, and Eric Alterman's Altercation for news about what a wonderful job our news media are doing, and check out Boing Boing just for the weird crap they come up with everyday. Finally, three old AOL pals have drifted over into Blogspot with excellent blogs that are worth reading - they are what's the hubbub...?, Wonky Muse, and A Stop at Willoughby.

What are your favorite blogs?

Who Said This?

2005-04-26T16:05:00.000-04:00

Try to guess who said this, then check the comments to see if you're right...

"However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'"

What the...?

2005-04-21T04:48:00.000-04:00

To paraphrase Mark Twain (see next post): Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a Fox News commentator. But I repeat myself.

This Date in History

2005-04-21T04:17:00.000-04:00

On April 21, 1910, Samuel Clemons, "Mark Twain," died at age 74 in his New England home. Doctors said that he died of angina pectoris. Those who knew him said that he died of a broken heart, that "all heart went out of him and his work when his daughter Jean died."

My favorite Mark Twain quote is the one to your right in the "About" section of the sidebar. In memory of one of America's best humorists (if not THE best), here are a few of my favorite Twain quotes:

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Back to the Future

2005-04-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

After their devastating "defeat" in the last election, Democrats have done a lot of soul searching about the future of the party. Should they move more toward the center or try to attract the millions of Americans who voted for "none of the above" in the election? More progressive or more mainstream? More populist or more corporate? Should they work on "framing" the Republicans or re-examine the fundamentals? Here's an idea. Perhaps the Democrats should return to being the party of the people. As it turns out, the best blueprint for the future comes from the past.

Here's a nice, neat, clear, concise platform for the Democratic Party...

"The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.

"The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

"The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.

"The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.

"The right of every family to a decent home.

"The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

"The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.

"The right to a good education."

The architect of this grand vision? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from his 1944 State of the Union address. He called this "a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed."

Taypayers for a Day

2005-04-16T12:54:00.000-04:00

United for a Fair Economy has an interesting report on the CEOs of the Wall Street firms that are pushing for Social Security privatization, "Taxpayers for a Day." As I'm sure you know, Social Security payroll taxes are capped at the first $87,900 of income. (In 2005, the cap was raised to $90,000.) These 26 CEOs, whose average salaries were $17.7 million in pay and bonuses in 2004, paid into Social Security for only four days. Seven of the 26 reached the earnings cap while you were still watching bowl games on New Year's Day. Certainly, they have the most to gain and the least to lose in a Social Security privatization scheme.

Other findings and figurings:

While 94 percent of workers effectively pay 12.4 percent of their annual income, including employer’s contribution, these CEOs pay an average effective rate of 0.16 percent of their annual income toward Social Security taxes (Social Security payments divided by total compensation).

An average “Joe” or “Juanita” taxpayer pays an “effective” Social Security rate of 12.4 percent. This is more than 200 times the effective rate paid by the average CEO in this group, which is 0.16 percent. We call this the “Joe-to-CEO” index.

Seven of the CEOs are “taxpayers for a day.” Their salaries were so high, they exceeded the $87,900 earnings cap in eight hours or less. These include the CEOs of Bear Stearns, Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo/Strong Financial.

The lowest paid CEO among the industry group, Carl H. Lindner, earned $1,524,200 as chief of American Financial Group. He paid for Social Security taxes for 18 days.

The Joke of the Week

2005-04-15T08:02:00.000-04:00

The funniest, laugh-out-loud line of the week is from The Onion's What Do You Think?

The question is "In recent weeks, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has come under increasing fire from a number of important media and political figures. What do you think?"

"Colleen Bowers, Systems Analyst" answers: "I heard Tom DeLay's blood was in the water and the sharks were circling him, but unfortunately, it turned out to be a metaphor."

Condition Red

2005-04-14T21:08:00.000-04:00

About a week and a half ago, I wrote up a little entry on the Millennium Assessment Report - about how us misguided humans were burning up our poor planet. Now, Mark Morford has tackled the subject in his own inimitiable way:

The Earth is going down. Way, way down. To the mat, hard and painful and with a sad moaning broken-boned crunch.

We are chewing her up, spitting her out, stomping and gobbling and burning and gouging and drilling and sucking her dry and we are carelessly replicating ourselves so goddamn fast we can't even stop much less even try to slow the hell down, and all we want is more and faster and with less consequence and pretty soon the Earth is gonna go, well, there you are, I'm finished, sorry, and boom zing groan, done.

Don't take my world for it. Just read the headlines, the latest major, soul-stabbing report.

It's one of those stories that sort of punches you in the karmic gut, about how they just completed this unprecedented, four-year, $24 million, U.N.-backed study involving 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who all pored over thousands of satellite images and countless scientific reports and reams of stats, and they all distilled their findings down to one deadly, heartbreaking summary.

And here it is: We, humankind, people, sentient carbon-based biped creatures, only us and no one else but us because it sure as hell ain't the goddamn lions or caribou or meerkats or rhododendrons, we humans have, in our shockingly short time on this wobbly sphere, used up a staggering 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmland, rivers and lakes.
That's right, 60 percent. Gone. Burned up. Used up. Much of it irreversibly. These are the basic ecosystem services that, simply put, sustain life on Earth. The glass ain't even half full, people. It's about three-fifths empty and draining fast and we are doing our damnedest to expedite the process because, well, this is just who we are.

We reproduce. We consume. We use it up and dry it all up and move on to find more and it reminds me of that line from Agent Smith in the first "Matrix" movie where he stares menacingly at Morpheus and speaks about how every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, "but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague," and then Morpheus gets all huffy and righteous and goes on to inspire Neo to prove how we are also full of beauty and fire and life and he makes it all better by saving humankind so we can go buy the mediocre soundtrack.

But it doesn't stop there. The study also reveals that our fair and gluttonous species has altered the planet more violently and rapidly in the past 50 years than in any comparable time in human history. Yay accelerated technology. Yay multinational conglomerates. Yay lack of corporate ethics and rabid unchecked capitalist consumer gluttony. Whee.

And you read this horrific story about how we are mauling the planet at an unprecedented rate and you ask yourself the obvious question: Our government is doing what about this again? Oh right: nothing. Not one thing. They are, in fact, making it all far, far worse. Worst environmental president in American history, you remind yourself. Whee.

Just Wondering?

2005-04-09T19:32:00.000-04:00

I was just wondering...can we finally, at last, once and for all, stop calling them conservatives? And while we're at it, can we stop all the "popular president" nonsense as well?

"Holiday" by Green Day

2005-04-09T19:26:00.000-04:00

Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame (Hey!)
A shame - The ones who died without a name

Hear the dogs howling out of key
To a hymn called "Faith and Misery" (Hey!)
And bleed. The company lost the war today.

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies.
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday.

Hear the drum pounding out of time.
Another protestor has crossed the line (Hey!)
To find the money's on the other side.

Can I get another Amen? (Amen!)
There's a flag wrapped around a score of men (Hey!).
A gag, A plastic bag on a monument.

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies.
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday.

"The representative from California has the floor"

Sieg Heil to the president gasman.
Bombs away is your punishment.
Pulverize the Eiffel towers
Who criticize your government.
Bang bang goes the broken glass and
Kill all the fags that don't agree.
Trials by fire, setting fire
Is not a way that's meant for me.
Just cause! - just cause, because we're outlaws yeah!

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies.
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives.
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies.
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives.
This is our lives on holiday.

Bush in the Vatican City

2005-04-09T19:19:00.000-04:00

Wow! That title might make a good porno title, huh?

Well, they sent the Pope off in grand style. It wasn't on the order of the old Southern custom of sitting up with the dead, but was pretty special in its own way.

I was trolling around the blogosphere yesterday, and ran into this story at the DailyKos about President Bush getting booed at the Pope's funeral. I hadn't seen anything on Fox or CNN about this, so I was kinda curious. Like jmc who posted the story, I ran the Der Spiegel article through Google's translator to get the general gist of it. This is some of what I got for a translation...

Glaeubige whistle Bush out
It was a historical moment: As a first president of the USA George W. Bush participated in burying a Pope - despite its controversy with the Pontifex over the Iraq war. Gellende of whistles were to be heard, when on a large picture canvas a close-up became to transfer Bushs.

So now I'm really curious, and I'm sitting here wondering who I know that speaks German that can give me a quick translation. Well, there's a couple of my cousins who spent quite a bit of time in Germany courtesy of the good old U.S. Army, but who knows how to get in touch with them. Then I thought of Bruce Miller at Old Hickory's Weblog. He seems pretty proficient in German and a couple of other languages - he's alway's translating articles on his website. Maybe he'll help a fella out? A quick email exchange later, and I got this fine translation back (I'm assuming it's fine. I don't read German. That's why I needed the translation.)...

Believers boo at Bush
It was an historic moment: George W. Bush became the first President of the USA to attend the funeral of a Pope - despite his dispute with the Pontifex over the Iraq War. Shrill hoots could be heard when a closeup of Bush was shown on a large screen.

US President Bush brought a high-level delegation with him to Rome, which included his father George Bush, his predecessor Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleeze Rice. At St. Peter's Square in rome, Bush had a seat in the second row of the special guests. The seats were assigned in alphabetical order according to the French spelling for the names of states. Next to Bush sat the French President Jacques Chirac. A separate delegation of the US Congress included around 40 members. The crowd in front of St. Peter's Square reacted to the large close-up with Bush's face with boos and hoots.

The US President combined his Rome trip with a visit to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In it, he expressed anew his regret over the death of the secret servcie officer Nicola Calipari, as a spokesman for the White House announced. Calipari was killed a month ago from a shot by an American soldier, as he accompanied the released Italian hostage Giulani Sgrena to the Baghdad airport. The incident caused massive ill-will between Italy and the USA.
Bush also met together with American cardinals in Rome, who will participate in the selection of a new Pope beginning April 18. After the requiem, the US President began the trip home to Texas.

Bruce was even kind enough to explain some of the difficulties in translation and to offer some observations. Apparently the Google translator has trouble with "divided verbs," whatever those are.

Bruce took the time to talk about the Sgrena incident and the effect on Italian politics...

This article is a good example of how the European press offers perspectives that we don't hear enough in the US, but we should. The Sgrena incident (mentioned in the article) barely made it onto the American news radar long enough for rightwingers to denounce her as a lying commie. But the *conservative* Italian government - really conservative, the foreign minister heads the "postfascist" party descended from Mussolini's Fascist Party - was plenty pissed about the thing. US soldiers carelessly gun down their top security officer in Iraq and then put out a transparently phony press release about what happened. There were regional elections in Italy this past Sunday, and Berlusconi's party got clobbered. Of the three older EU members that most prominently backed Bush's war in Iraq, Aznar in Spain got turned out of office, Berlusconi's party isn't doing so well and this Sgrena incident showed how little regard this administration has for even its allies, and Tony Blair is down in the polls for the May elections.

Then he made this observation about a paragraph I probably wouldn't have paid much attention to...

The last paragraph was actually the most intriguing to me. What the [Cheney] is Bush doing meeting with the American cardinals? Lobbying for his favorite candidate for Pope? This is after his little stunt last year complaining to the Pope that some bishops weren't being supportive enough to the Republican Party. It reminded me of this cartoon; Bush is doing so many off-the-track things that he's making it tough for cartoonists to satirize him.

Up until John Kennedy got elected, Protestant fundamentalists here were worried that a Catholic President would allow the Church to poke its nose inappropriately into American politics. Now it's looking like the Protestant fundamentalist President is inviting them to. This should also be a lesson for the American Church leaders. Kissing up to the Bush and the Republicans may have its short-run benefits for their issues. But the Republicans expect payback for their help, too. I can't imagine that the thought was lost on the cardinals when Bush met with them.

I just think a meeting like that with an American President days before they will go into conclave to pick a new Pope was really inappropriate. Bush shouldn't have done it, and the cardinals shouldn't have agreed to it.

I got curious about the whole incident because 1) I hadn't seen anything about the incident in the American news mediaand we all know how thorough they are, right? and 2) the right-wing wingnuts are going around calling the Pope a real standup guy and claiming him as one of their own, like he and Bush were always in total agreement. Never mind the bitter denunciations they made of the Pope when he opposed Bush's Iraqi Adventure. Hindrocket and the other wingnuts at Power Line even launched into a tirade against the New York Times because they accidentally posted an unfinished story that had a note that they needed a positive quote from a supporter. Others were pitching a fit about the "liberal media" because CBS broke away from their Pope coverage to televise the NCAA Basketball Tournament that they paid millions for the rights for. Jeez, you couldn't get enough Pope coverage on the other 57 channels that were running the story?

Anyway, I sincerely thank you, Bruce, for taking the time out of your day to satisfy my curiosity about the article and for offering your insights.

An Eclectic Collection of Web Links

2005-04-08T16:49:00.000-04:00

I was going to post this a couple of days ago, but I've been busy working on some computer problems. One of the big drawbacks of having one computer that everyone in the house uses is that you'll get it working great - just the way you like it, then someone will mess with a setting or something and screw everything up. Well, that's what's been happening. Someone (no one has come forward to confess yet) messed something up and I've been having problems getting online. AOL and Firefox suddenly don't get along. They lock each other up or something and suddenly neither program can use my cable connection. I still haven't fixed the problem (I think that might involve reinstalling Firefox), but I think I've at least learned what triggers it and how to work around it.

Anyway, here's some stuff that I've run across lately. Hope you check some of these out.

If they gave Academy Awards for short online animations. Delivery would get this year's best picture Oscar. This is amazing, incredible, wonderful, fantastic, etc., etc. Whatever you do, no matter how long it takes you to load it, do not miss this.

If you like new music and the thought of getting free MP3s of new music gets you all hot and bothered, Columbia University is conducting a Music Lab that might be what you're looking for. You'll get free music and help in their scientific research. Boing Boing has what it's all about.

Easter has come and gone, but the Easter Egg Archive is always in vogue. No, not the Easter Bunny Eggs. These are the hidden features and tidbits hidden in your favorite software, DVDs, and CDs. The Archive also includes hidden Easter Eggs in television shows, books, and art (they have a fairly liberal definition of an Easter Egg). Easter Eggs are intentional. There's a sister sight, Slip-Ups, that covers the unintentional.

New Yorkers don't have the best reputation out here in the fly-over states. I guess this comes from all the Yankee games they show on TV. Hey, they don't call Yankee Stadium "the Bronx Zoo" for nothing. Anyway, New York Press has assembled the worst of the worst, their list of the "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers." Some are obvious, some...not so much.

I like to end these little lists with something kind of offbeat. "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" is close, but, as the announcer says in League of their Own, "Oh Mama, I have seen enough to know I've seen too much." Presenting for your amusement and edification...the blog of the Ultimate Warrior. Yes, that Ultimate Warrior - the professional wrestler. He should be updating pretty soon. His last entry is dated March 22 and deals with the Terri Schiavo tragedy. The blog is called Mind - part of the overall Warrior experience.

Our MBA President

2005-04-08T15:51:00.000-04:00

An interesting trivial tidbit about President Bush: he earned a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. He's the first president in history to have an MBA. One of his old professors, Yoshi Tsurumi, reminisces about Bush the student in the Harvard Crimson...

Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.

In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education.

So Bush was a trendsetter - a man ahead of his time. Of course, those modern business practices have influenced the policies of the Bush administration...

To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

But the grownups are in charge now. Surely this will all turn out to the good. After all, they're just implementing Adam Smith's laissez-faire theories. Right?

American economics study has increasingly become a pseudoscience of mathematical formula manipulation that is devoid of humanity. This economics has conquered America’s business education and become fused with the robber baron culture of greed supremacy. American MBAs are taught to treat ordinary employees as disposable costs and to swallow uncritically the gospel that corporations exist only to reward abstract stockholders. MBAs are taught the pretend-science of manipulating accounting, finance, employees, customers, and stock prices. Financial games and hostile takeovers of competitors are taught to accomplish corporations’ sole objective—to make money and manipulate stock prices. Such a mistaken view of corporations has caused the dismal decline of American auto manufacturers while Toyota and Honda widen their market shares and profits in America, pursuing their goals of expanding employment and technological innovations.

To justify the robber baron culture, America’s business educators and economists falsely cite their demigod of laissez-faire market economics, Adam Smith. Little do they know that Adam Smith in fact scathingly castigated Bush’s type of government: business collusion and unfair taxes, Wal-Mart’s exploitations of labor and communities, and robber barons’ hubris. Nowhere in his 900-page book, The Wealth of Nations, does Smith even imply that those who knowingly harm others and society in their pursuit of personal greed also benefit their society. He rejects the notion that a corporation exists to make money without ethical constraints.

Watching American TV in Iraq

2005-04-06T00:50:00.000-04:00

At Baghdad Burning there's an interesting entry about the new onslaught of American media in Iraq...

Two years ago, the major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding us with smart bombs and high-tech missiles. Now there’s a different sort of war- or perhaps it’s just another phase of the same war. Now we’re being assailed with American media. It’s everywhere all at once.

It started with Voice of America and the other voices on the radio, telling them to lay down their arms and stay in their homes. Then there was Al-Hurra ("the purported channel of freedom") with their Arabic newscasts ("which is like watching Fox in Arabic"), and Al-Iraquiya ("Couldn't the PSYOPS people come up with anything more subtle?").

Then came the MBC channels which show American television shows...

We were introduced to MBC’s Al-Arabia- a news channel which was meant to be the Saudi antidote to Al-Jazeera. Simultaneously, we were accessing MBC’s Channel 2, which is a channel that shows only English movies and programs. The programs varied from talk shows like Oprah, to sitcoms like Friends, Third Rock from the Sun and Seinfeld...

The first time I saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didn’t occur to me that something was wrong. I can’t remember what the discussion was, but I remember being vaguely interested and somewhat mystified at why we were getting 60 Minutes. I soon found out that it wasn’t just 60 Minutes at night: It was Good Morning, America in the morning, 20/20 in the evening, 60 Minutes, 48-Hours, Inside Edition, The Early Show… it was a constant barrage of American media. The chipper voice in Arabic tells us, “So you can watch what *they* watch!” *They* apparently being millions of Americans...

I’ve been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so… clean. It’s like hospital food. It’s all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions- 2 minutes on women’s rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once...

We sat there watching like we were a part of another world, in another galaxy. I’ve always sensed from the various websites that American mainstream news is far-removed from reality- I just didn’t know how far. Everything is so tame and simplified. Everyone is so sincere.

Furthermore, I don’t understand the worlds fascination with reality shows. Survivor, The Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The Contender… it’s endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up lives of others?

I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent of $150)…

I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode.

Gloom and Doom

2005-04-05T22:00:00.000-04:00

The recently released Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, conducted by 1300 researchers from 95 nations over four years, "reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably." And the situation is just going to get worse. Fifteen of the twenty-four examined ecosystems are being damaged. Two ecosystem services - fisheries and fresh water - are degraded below levels to sustain current demands. The report warns that:

· Because of human demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel, more land has been claimed for agriculture in the last 60 years than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined.

· An estimated 24% of the Earth's land surface is now cultivated.

· Water withdrawals from lakes and rivers has doubled in the last 40 years. Humans now use between 40% and 50% of all available freshwater running off the land.

· At least a quarter of all fish stocks are overharvested. In some areas, the catch is now less than a hundredth of that before industrial fishing.

· Since 1980, about 35% of mangroves have been lost, 20% of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed and another 20% badly degraded.

· Deforestation and other changes could increase the risks of malaria and cholera, and open the way for new and so far unknown disease to emerge.

The report is unique in that it defines ecosystems by the services or benefits that humans derive from them. Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute says, "This report is essentially an audit of nature's economy, and the audit shows we've driven most of the accounts into the red." Professor Sir John Lawton, former chief executive of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, says, "There will undoubtedly be gainsayers, as there are with the IPCC (the International Panel on Climate Change); but I put them in the same box as the flat-Earthers and the people who believe smoking doesn't cause cancer."

This ecological degradation is likely to be a serious impediment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by world leaders in 2000. "Any progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental protection is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem 'services' on which humanity relies continue to be degraded," the report states. The United Nations warned Monday that the Millenium Development Goals are already at risk - that poverty and urbanization, if left unchecked, could result in three billion of the world's inhabitants living in slums by the year 2050.

More information can be found at the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment website, the BBC, and the Guardian. The BBC has a special series, unrelated to the Millennium Ecosystems Accessment, called Planet under Pressure.

Say What???

2005-04-04T12:56:00.000-04:00

From Friday's Akron Beacon Journal:

Analysis points to election 'corruption'
Group says chance of exit polls being so wrong in '04 vote is one-in-959,000
By Stephen Dyer
Beacon Journal staff writer

There's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, according to a statistical analysis released Thursday.

Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count by 2.5 percent.

The explanation for the discrepancy that was offered by the exit polling firm -- that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polling -- is an "implausible theory,'' according to the report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it's made up of about two dozen statisticians.

Twelve -- including a Case Western Reserve University mathematics instructor -- signed the report.

Instead, the data support the idea that "corruption of the vote count occurred more freely in districts that were overwhelmingly Bush strongholds.''

The report dismisses chance and inaccurate exit polling as the reasons for their discrepancy with the results.

They found that the one hypothesis that can't be ruled out is inaccurate election results.

"The hypothesis that the voters' intent was not accurately recorded or counted... needs further investigation,'' it said.

The conclusion drew a yawn from Ohio election officials, who repeated that the discrepancy issue was settled when the polling firms Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International disavowed its polls because Kerry voters were more likely to answer exit polls -- the theory Thursday's report deemed "implausible.''

Ohio has been at the center of a voter disenfranchisement debate since the election.

"What are you going to do except laugh at it?'' said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who's responsible for administering Ohio's elections and is a Republican candidate for governor. "We're not particularly interested in (the report's findings). We wish them luck, but hope they find something more interesting to do.''

The statistical analysis, though, shows that the discrepancy between polls and results was especially high in precincts that voted for Bush -- as high as a 10 percent difference.

The report says if the official explanation -- that Bush voters were more shy about filling out exit polls in precincts with more Kerry voters -- is true, then the precincts with large Bush votes should be more accurate, not less accurate as the data indicate.

The report also called into question new voting machine technologies.

"All voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party, (which) certainly warrants further inquiry,'' the report concludes.

However, LoParo remained unimpressed.

"These (Bush) voters have been much maligned by outside political forces who didn't like the way they voted,'' he said. "The weather's turning nice. There are more interesting things to do than beat a dead horse.''

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_summary.pdf

The "News" Media

2005-04-03T17:41:00.000-04:00

Buzzflash has an interesting interview with Bonnie M. Anderson. She's the author of Newsflash: Journalism, Infotainment and the Bottom-Line Business of Broadcast News, and a twenty-seven-year veteran of the print and broadcast news business. If, like me, you wonder just why and how the news media has gotten so awful, you should check this out. (Be sure to check out Part 2 also.)

Combined with Laurie Garrett's resignation memo to her Newsday colleagues on Poynter (it's two entries about halfway down the page, dated 2/28/2005 - sorry, can't link directly to specific entries), Anderson's book and interview paint a bleak picture of a business that puts the bottom line ahead of everything else, especially the public's right to know. As Garrett puts it...

All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions. Long gone are the days of fast-talking, whiskey-swilling Murray Kempton peers eloquently filling columns with daily dish on government scandals, mobsters and police corruption. The sort of in-your-face challenge that the Fourth Estate once posed for politicians has been replaced by mud-slinging, lies and, where it ought not be, timidity. When I started out in journalism the newsrooms were still full of old guys with blue collar backgrounds who got genuinely indignant when the Governor lied or somebody turned off the heat on a poor person's apartment in mid-January. They cussed and yelled their ways through the day, took an occasional sly snort from a bottle in the bottom drawer of their desk and bit into news stories like packs of wild dogs, never letting go until they'd found and told the truth. If they hadn't been reporters most of those guys would have been cops or firefighters. It was just that way.

Now the blue collar has been fully replaced by white ones in America's newsrooms, everybody has college degrees. The "His Girl Friday" romance of the newshound is gone. All too many journalists seem to mistake scandal mongering for tenacious investigation, and far too many aspire to make themselves the story. When I think back to the old fellows who were retiring when I first arrived at Newsday – guys (almost all of them were guys) who had cop brothers and fathers working union jobs – I suspect most of them would be disgusted by what passes today for journalism. Theirs was not a perfect world --- too white, too male, seen through a haze of cigarette smoke and Scotch – but it was an honest one rooted in mid-20th Century American working class values.

Honesty and tenacity (and for that matter, the working class) seem to have taken backseats to the sort of "snappy news", sensationalism, scandal-for-the-sake of scandal crap that sells. This is not a uniquely Tribune or even newspaper industry problem: this is true from the Atlanta mixing rooms of CNN to Sulzberger's offices in Times Square. Profits: that's what it's all about now. But you just can't realize annual profit returns of more than 30 percent by methodically laying out the truth in a dignified, accessible manner. And it's damned tough to find that truth every day with a mere skeleton crew of reporters and editors...

I have found America a place of great and confused fearfulness, in which cynically placed bits of misinformation (e.g. Cheney's, "If John Kerry had been President during the Cold War we would have had thermonuclear war.") fall on ears that absorb all, without filtration or fact-checking. Leading journalists have tried to defend their mission, pointing to the paucity of accurate, edited coverage found in blogs, internet sites, Fox-TV and talk radio. They argue that good old-fashioned newspaper editing is the key to providing America with credible information, forming the basis for wise voting and enlightened governance. But their claims have been undermined by Jayson Blair's blatant fabrications, Judy Miller's bogus weapons of mass destruction coverage, the media's inaccurate and inappropriate convictions of Wen Ho Lee, Richard Jewell and Steven Hatfill, CBS' failure to smell a con job regarding Bush's Texas Air Guard career and, sadly, so on. What does it mean when even journalists consider comedian John [sic] -- "This is a fake news show, People!" -- Stewart one of the most reliable sources of "news"?

In the Buzzflash interview, Anderson, when asked about her father who was executed in Cuba as an American spy, lays out what it's all about...

When I was five years old, my Dad was tortured--had the blood removed from his body prior to being put up against a wall--they wanted to use his blood for transfusions for some of the revolutionaries. I didn’t understand the impact of that, but I knew something was very, very wrong. As I grew up, I realized that, had there been a free press in Cuba at the time, there’s no way Fidel Castro and his regime could have gotten away with murdering, not just my Dad, but 20,000 others, and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people because of their belief in democracy. I realized the importance of a free press.

With my book, I’m trying to remind people in this country that it can happen anywhere. We should value a free press. Support the media. Support investigations, whether they are uncovering something that is for or against the government you may like. It doesn’t matter. The point is that we need to nourish the free press. We need to nourish exchange of information and support the people who are doing it. We need to demand higher standards. We need to remember that news is not just a business. I’m not saying you can’t make money from it, but there is a higher calling here.

No other business has protection from the Bill of Rights--no other business. The media does. But along with those special protections comes a responsibility. The responsibility is to inform the public as best we can. And as U.S. citizens, it’s our responsibility to protect our First Amendment, and protect the rights we have, and not give them up because there is the threat of terrorism. Don’t give up your rights to privacy and your rights to a free press and your rights to speak freely. If we do that, we’re going to be marching down a very dangerous road. And unless you’ve been somewhere and unless you’ve lived someplace where you have lost all freedom of speech, where you have no ability to speak or publish freely, it’s hard to understand. I just don’t want people to learn the hard way, as I did.

Daylight Savings Time

2005-04-03T03:25:00.000-04:00

Well, it snuck up on me. I glanced at my computer's clock and saw that it was about 1:50, then looked a few minutes later and it was suddenly about 3:10. Yes, it's that time of year again when we move the clocks ahead an hour (Spring forward, Fall back). If you're wondering how we got stuck with such a screwy method of timekeeping, here's some info.

sotto voce USA

A New Blog

Synergy

Change the Direction

Holy Snikees

Meltdowns

Updated Blogroll

Star Wars Awards

Monday Photo Shoot: Still Life

Weekend Assignment: The Things We Share With Dad

The World's Funniest Joke

Civil War Timeline: 1865

Civil War Timeline: 1864

Weekend Assignment: Things You Like Now But Not Then

Weekend Photo Jigsaw Puzzle Fun

Web Coolness

Writing Links

Civil War Timeline: 1863

Photo Sudoku

Racing

Ten Things

Memorial Day Photos

Jackson and Dickinson

Ohio Soldier

Photo Puzzle

Weekend Assignment: Travel Books

Photo Round Robin: Reflections

Barry and the Babe

Civil War Timeline: 1862

Civil War Timeline: 1860 - 1861

The Fall TV Schedule

Need for Speed: Most Wanted -- Tips, Tricks, Suggestions

Delong Reservation

Monday Photo Shoot: Bottoms Up

Windows Live Local: Supermax

The Lost Experience

Seeing Pink

Iced Tea

Going Racing

Weekend Assignment - Your New Music

Weekend Assignment: Very Hidden Talents

Random Music Mix

Even Einstein Agrees...

The Random Music Mix / Scalzi's Musical Meme

Video of the Week

The Weekend Random Music Mix

Utterly Useless Websites

The West Wing

Video of the Week

Quote of the Week

Regrouping / The Weekend Random 10

Truthiness

Chalabi Heads Iraqi Oil Ministry

New Year's Day by U2

Silliness

The Blue Voice

Schmoozing with the Prez

Why Do They Hate Our Freedoms?

"The New CNN"

Quack

Iraq: Denial and Deception

More Required Reading

Required Reading

Interesting Tidbit of the Day

Wal-Mart Meets Reality (TV)

Harmful

The Pervert of the Day

Good Ol' Southern Politics

Bush Catapults the Propaganda

Blogger Fingers His Own Killer

The Filibuster and the Compromise

They Can't Be Serious

Winning Hearts and Minds

This Date in History

Lemony Frist's Series of Unfortunate Events

The Smoking Gun

Now He Tells Us

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

With Friends Like That...

Darth Tater