Headlines that weren't

Man shocked to learn all-bacon diet not good for him
Cigarettes not full of vitamin C
Completely man-made dog breed to be changed to what 'nature' intended - wolf?
Cleric insists he's pro-Tara (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), not pro-Terror
Warning you are on thin ethical ice: you have to look up what ethics are in the company guide
Barr says less media scrutiny on Iraq, more on political fellatio needed

Negotiations

This just gets me steamed....they cut a deal with al-Sadr.

Spokesmen for the United States refused to call it an agreement, but everyone else including coalition allies in the Iraqi government were doing just that. It was negotiated by several members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and announced by Iraqi national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie.
Under the Najaf deal, U.S. and rebel forces will withdraw from the city, while Iraqi security forces will police the holy city.
The key U.S. demands the disarming of the rebel army and the arrest of Mr. al-Sadr on a murder charge will be left to future negotiations.

I do not see how the effect of this will be anything but to encourage other militias and wannabe dictators from springing up all over the place. The only reason I can see if that they want to reduce open warfare in Iraq before June 30th rolls around. But the long term consequences of caving in to this lunatic will be there for a long, long time afterward.

Advice on daughters

Ted at Crooked Timer has some good advice for left-of-center bloggers:

There will never be a post or story about Bush's daughters that loses votes for George W. Bush. The Bush daughters are good-looking young women who are doing nothing wrong by supporting their father, whom they love. They could hardly be more sympathetic if they fell down a well.

Some domain squatters are already ripping on Kerry's daughter.

The same goes for over-the-top ad hominem attacks, in my book anyway. I predict, however, the campaign will be ugly and petty, and will only get worse as we get closer to November.

Death to hackers

Slate columnist Steven E. Landsburg suggests in a essay that's both funny and factual, that, comparatively, it's wiser to execute computer hackers than murderers. He uses the economic impact - and potential deterrent value - of both types of crimes and the balance comes out saying it's of a more positive economic impact to ice the hacker. He also notes, though

...alternative and less drastic punishment that is highly effective against vermiscripters and not against murderers. If we can effectively deter malicious hackers by cutting off their supply of Twinkies or crippling their EverQuest avatars, then there's no need to fry them. Whether that would work is an empirical question.

Part of the problems is that hacking is similar to vandalism. On a local scale, vandalism can do some damage, but perhaps does not have a massive economic effect. But hacking is automated vandalism, gaining all the efficiencies that we have developed via computer technology, magnifying their effect exponentially. There's no logical flaw in Landsburg's reasoning in making the case for executing hackers, if you want to measure impact in economic effects. Although, taken to another level, it might imply that many white-collar crimes of embezzlement might have much more fatal consequences. This sounds like a good idea to those of us who look at the crooks in CEO chairs getting away with crimes, but it might mean politically motivated prosecutions (Martha Stewart, anyone?) have grim results.

Worst actual sentence of the day

"In actuality, it actually works good for me"

- overheard in a neighbouring cube.

Mighty parodies

The Mighty Reason Man mocks some of the big blogs out there. The parody was so good, I thought he was quoting them at first.

Moore Letter

There was a letter in the PeeDee today on Michael Moore's winning of the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

What a surprise that the arrogant, anti-American, Bush-hating French [The jury consisted of four Americans, one Finn, one person from Hong Kong, one person from the U.K., and one Frenchman. So this statement is roughly 14% correct. Close enough! - Jerry] awarded the arrogant, anti-American, Bush-hating [Bush-hating is anti-American? I'm just asking. - Jerry] Michael Moore the Cannes Film Festival prize for top 'crockumentary.' [Actually he won the top prize for all films, not for best documentary - Jerry] Maybe Mike can write a sequel to his book 'Big, Fat Stupid White Men' [Moore's book is called "Stupid White Men", there's no big or fat in the title. Oh I see, you're trying to say Moore is fat. I'm sure he's not aware of it, plus - what an insightful comment. - Jerry]and entitle it 'Big, Fat Stupid Frenchmen.'
Norm Beznoska

Can I borrow your copy of the film Norm? Like you, I want to view it before deciding what I think of it. Thanks!

The cheese is resting

LeeAnn is too sick to blog, so wish her well. And in the meantime, enjoy her many cheesy archived posts!

Kuff on the Unitarians

Via Atrios, there is an interesting follow-up on the whole Unitarians-are-not-a-religion dust-up in Texas . Charles of 'Off the Kuff' notes that the idiot in question may have been prepping the way for a run for governor by shoring up the fundie base. I always looked at Unitarins the same way I look at Star Trek Fans who dress up and have maps of the Enterprise on their cubes - strange, but not dangerous. As for those who claim it's a Texas problem, Charles says

I know that Texas has exported its share of high-profile losers lately, but let me assure you of one thing: if this place was anywhere near as bad as some have made it out to be lately, I wouldn't be here. OK?

I think government just needs to stay out of the religion biz. And I'm not just saying that because in olden days they would take atheists like me and burn them alive inside giant metal bulls - I kid you not - but because government needs to stay out of the metaphysics business. We don't need a policy defining 'if God can do anything, can He make a rock that is too heavy for Him to lift?'

Paradoxes

Andrew Sullivan says of part of Bush's speech last night

The critical point that the swift victory over Saddam paradoxically made the occupation more difficult - because Saddam's minions were able to escape, melt into the population and fight another day - was made early on.

I'm not so sure this is a paradox. If the regime was as hated more by more Iraqi's - as Bush clearly hoped, pre-war, then perhaps we needn't have worried as much. But since many die-hard Saddam loyalists melted away then came back to haunt us - like last year cheeseburgers on the first grilling of springtime, it's a problem. So is the solution to the "paradox" that we should have won more slowly, or both planned for and warned the public about how tough the resistance would be, including it's propensity to gather varying groups of support, like Sadr. The fact the Bush administration spins most everything as a positive development - or at least, as part of what they already believe - does not worry me so much. Propaganda is part of every war, and part of every administration, to a certain degree. I am beginning to think they may believe some of their own propaganda, or more accurately, are less inclined to give as much consideration to facts that do not support what they already believe.

Cellphone listings

So they're planning to sell our cellphone numbers (free registration required for story) to marketers (or whoever has 99 cents). To quote the LaTimes editorial:

This is thoroughly dumb for consumers. Great for sellers of mass access, who could gain an estimated $3 billion in fees and sold minutes by 2009. Also great for telemarketers, who fear that millions more customers will go totally wireless by canceling listed home phones. But double-list this cell directory idea under S for stupid and U for unnecessary. Praise be to Verizon Wireless, which vows not to dump its 39 million numbers into the database. That leaves 121 million of us.

An insistence that numbers not be sold down the road to marketers should be a new thing for us to demand in contracts. But as a matter of convenience, who has time to wade through all that legalese to determine if we even have the protection. You can opt-out, but I opted out and the calls seem to keep coming. Paying for them over my cell phone is a grisly prospect, so I'm glad that my company is refraining from selling the list for now. It's always annoying to me to get one of these calls from telemarketer's computers, and I don't care how many pictures of weeping workers Salon runs on people with crappy jobs.

No Fireworks

The Nose reports that Cleveland will not have any fireworks this July 4th. So they want to cut back on trash collection downtown, and cut fireworks. But they also think that a new, temporary-construction-job-creating Convention Center is Just What the City Needs (tm). IF they want to define what makes people think of a city as having that status as a great American city, cutting fireworks ain't the path. Even my old hometown of Truro always had fireworks, for July 1st "Canada Day", and we had a paltry 11-12 thousand Canucks. So M_ and I will just walk down the street to enjoy the great display that Lakewood puts on in the park. As for July 1st, I have had little luck finding any Canadian flags in local stores.

Tube Tops and Trends

Steven Den Beste declares that blogs are now "over" as a trend, because Bill Gates gave them some praise. I know I was perturbed when I saw the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer running what he calls a blog, and I call an infrequently updated piece of drivel that didn't make the cut for an opinion column on paper. But let's look at history...Glenn Miller didn't kill Jazz by playing his, er, interpretation of it...people didn't stop writing books after the travesty that was Ann Rice...William Shatner didn't single-handedly end acting. The blogs with something to say will prevail. Steve may just need a vacation, he keeps thinking of jumping off cliffs and ripping off women's tube tops.

Health Insurance

The always talented Meryl Yourish is recovering from a Cancer scare. Without health insurance. As she puts it: " Can't afford it right now. The rent comes first, y'know? If something catastrophic hits, I'm screwed." So for all the people who snark about Canada's lousy, slow, socialist health care system, I offer a big helping of go to hell - which I don't believe in, but you get the drift.

Stupid Principal watch

Ohio principal Karen Abbot kicked a student out of school for hitting her in the face with a pie. OK, you might think, it's a dumb overreaction to a crazy stunt. That wouldn't make her a stupid principal. But there is one little detail....the boy was in a school sponsered contest, and was called upon to throw the pie into the willing principal's face. But she apparently had pie-receiver's remorse, and is going to town on this kid, expelled, trying to get the cops to lay charges, etc. Congrats on reaching a whole new level, principal

Sign Merits

First Merit Bank began posting signs in Ohio saying that no concealed weapons are allowed. Ohio has recently passed a concealed carry law. However, apparently a sternly worded-sign isn't enough to deter bank robbers. Luckily, no law abiding citizens were carrying guns there at the time. Obviously our best bet is to make sure citizens don't have guns, and hope the robbers are all kindhearted.

Editing the Editor Editing the cartoons

The Internet is supposed to be a family friendly place. Cough. But yet on the Cleveland.com's weblog for the newspaper editor of the Plain Dealer, some shocking things are said. I'm sure he'd appreciate my editorial insights to his original note where I play the role of Editor, in square brackets.

COMIC RELIEF

Used to be that the funny papers were just that - funny. Well, not exactly.

"Dick Tracy" and "Orphan Annie" weren't exactly knee-slappers, [really? I get the giggles just thinking of flat-topped gangsters and orphans with inhuman eyes - sorry didn't mean to intrude so early - Editor] and every now and again some social commentary crept into the strips. But on the whole, the comic pages of American newspapers were whimsical, lighthearted, diversionary [yes, the only thing that cheers me up when hearing of my countrymen being killed is some whimsy...and no thinking of any kind, buster. Right on! - Editor]

Then along came Gary Trudeau and his "Doonesbury," Greg Howard and his "Sally Forth", Scott Adams and his "Dilbert" [If you dis Dilbert, I can't be responsible for the fatwa that will claim your life due to the fury of all those office workers. We all have to fear them - Editor]. Even Johnny Hart and "B.C." joined the social satirists on the comics pages.[what, no mention of Beetle Bailey? Family circus and it's insidious, neo-pagan cult of the Not-Me spirit? - Editor]

While satire was a thread that ran through those more modern cartoons, it was humor that kept them in the funnies - with one exception, Trudeau.[Trudeau is not funny? I guess based on your thinking that B.C. is funny should stop me from questioning your sense of humour. - Editor]

Many editors saw his work more as political commentary than comic page cartooning. And many displayed his work on the op-ed page, a placement Trudeau opposed.

I was always with Trudeau on that debate. I saw him as part of an evolution under way in an American institution. Because he took on hot issues, he tended to generate controversy from time to time.

It was nettlesome (of all the things an editor has to worry about, it would be nice if the comics were hassle free) but not intolerable.

But after all these years, I'm beginning to lose my patience with Trudeau.[and your patience is certainly what is important in the media - Editor] It seems we've got to consider pulling the strip or editing it five or six times a year.

And because Trudeau is such a prima donna [Just call him gay already - Jane Pauley? C'mon - Editor], editing him is prohibited by contract. Two weeks ago, the concluding panel in that day's strip ended with this punch line: "Son of a bitch [redacted for family friendliness - Editor]."

Such profanity is hardly a horror in this day and age, but this IS a general circulation [though not so much circulation lately eh? Sorry, don't mean to gloat. I'm sure you'll make a comeback in readers. More B.C.! - Editor], family newspaper, and the comics still are heavily visited by kids.

So we said "no" to "son of a bitch [redacted for family friendliness - Editor]." The syndicate, speaking for Trudeau, said "run it as is or kill it." [they said the same thing about Jesus. - Editor] We decided to face the threat head on and exercised our prerogative to edit. Thus far, legal lightning has not struck.[On that note, why not have the Trudeau strips rewritten for Cleveland? You can have BD promote Gateway, and the flats. The way out of the Quiet Crisis (tm), may be cartoon endorsements! - Editor]

The latest controversy comes this Sunday and gives rise to this commentary. One of the "Doonesbury" characters appears carrying a tray with a man's severed head upon it.

The strip was drafted before Nick Berg's horrific beheading and was in no way a reference to that awful event. But Trudeau's syndicate didn't alert papers of the unfortunate coincidence until the comics were already printed.

Our only recourse is an editor's note.[If I had been consulted, I would have said you could have drawn an arrow to the head, with the caption 'Gary Trudeau. We wish.' There, more funny on the funny pages for a change - Editor] For now. We have another option for the future. That would be to say farewell to Mr. Trudeau and his cast of characters.

I'd hate to do that, but I also hate to inflict sometimes wretched taste on unsuspecting readers.[Feagler? - Editor] We inflict enough pain just by covering the ugly realities of today's world [B.C? - Editor].

The funnies ought to be the one refuge from those realities.[Other refuges include city parks, Disneyland, and illiteracy. - Editor] If Trudeau insists on competing with the front page, he may find himself missing from The PD's comics page.[This sentence could be replaced with Gary - shut up and look pretty. - Editor]

Cats and dogs, living together

Excellent article in slate by legal expert Dahlia Lithwick, on the topic of gay marriage.

Another problem with the slippery slope objections to gay marriage is that they present a moving target. No two opponents of gay marriage seem to agree upon where this parade of horribles begins or ends. You can order your comparisons off the Santorum Menu ('bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery'), the Scalia Menu ('bigamy, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity'), or off the James Dobson Menu, in which all of the above evils ensue, plus the demise of heterosexual marriage altogether. Call this argument the horse-and-elephant leavings, smoking on the ground after the parade of horribles has passed by. No one can plausibly explain why the entire institution of marriage is at risk from gay unions. Which raises yet another objection to slippery slope arguments: These are projections into an unknowable future. Asking proponents of gay marriage to prove that these marriages won't be bad for kids or families is asking that they prove a negative. The law cannot know the long-term future social effects of legalizing gay marriage (Stanley Kurtz, who has quite fixed views on gay men and their philandering ways, notwithstanding). We can only determine whether it is fundamentally unfair to bar one whole class of citizens from a privilege constitutionally afforded the rest of us.

In fact the arguments against it seem extremely weak - on the slippery slope side. For example, the granting of voting rights to women did not lead to the granting of voting rights to children, infant, embryos, or sperm and eggs. One class being given a right afforded to others does not logically mean that right must inevitably be given to all classes of people. In fact most of the examples the slipper-slopers bring up tend to be groups of sexual behaviours and practitioners of the same that they do not like. In fact the argument that gay marriage leads to all the others can be taken backwards. Straight marriage will inevitably lead to gay people wanting to get married, and people marrying cats, etc. Thus one could claim the slipperly-slopers are unwittingly saying that marriage between a man and a woman is bound to lead to marriage between a woman and a cat, a man and a toad and whatever other combinations of things are possible. Perhaps the discomfort comes from applying civil laws to a ceremony that in many cultures is very religious - or used to be - and then reconciling those religious traditions with the need for fairness in law. In any event, Lithwick's article is work a look in full.

Carnival of the Canucks

Flea is hosting the Carnival of the Canucks (that's Canadians, folks). Lot of links full of maple-syrupy goodness.

Idiot watch

Via Jessa at Bookslut, comes news of this example of the moronosphere in action - bringing you Poetry elimination.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.
A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being 'un-American' because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its 'No child left behind' education policy.
The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

Congratulations, Mr. Principal. You're already the stupidest person in America this millennia, and you're competing against the likes of Paris Hilton.

Annotated BuckeyeRoll

So what the heck is all that stuff on the right hand side of the page, under "Blogrolls"? For those who haven't become immersed the world of blogs that sometimes becomes as acronym and catchphrase infested as any gaggle of dateless Dungeons and Dragons players, a "blogroll" is a list of other people's blogs that you either read, endorse, link to, or just wanted to have a giant list of, on your blog. Of course there are some people who should write blogs but do not, as far as I know...like Jack McHugh who wrote:

1730hrs: Brad and Jerry argue over the existence of God. Jerry reveals he's an atheist and Brad reveals he's God.

But I digress.

Some of the blogs on my list are so much more well known than mine that it's a bit like a Lilliputian taking Gulliver around to introduce him to everyone. So I'll stick to local blogs, some of which may not be as well known as the big guys. I'm one of the miniscule guys, obviously.

Let's take a short tour of my Ohio blogroll, in reverse alphabetical order. Why reverse? Because I envy those that start with "a"! After being placed in alphabetical seating in elementary school, I eventually joined the band. This led, many years later, to playing at endless graduation ceremonies where I learned two things. One, that every single speaker they hire is drier than a carving of burnt toast that has been sitting in the desert for a thousand years, only to have a passing tourist spill salt onto it as they attempt to season away the food they bought at the market but cannot identify. Two, that they still make people get their degrees in alphabetical order. So much for progress.

Anyway, the blogs. Looking over the list, I badly need to do a tour where I go visit the blogs and steal borrow some links from THEIR blogrolls, or, troll their comments for interesting people with blogs of their own. First, the Buckeyeroll, which is blogs from Ohio.

Centerville Jazz Band alum Steve writes zipsix.com who is a newly minted law talking guy (as Lionel Hutz might say> mostly blogging about life in general. I like his site design (having no skills in that area myself) although the dark blue letters on a slightly lighter blue background is a a little hard to read at times.

Redbeard joins us as The Whimsical Cynic.We have one thing in common - the sun is our enemy...
He noted:

However, there was one slight problem ... the sun. And the fact that I'm a redhead.

One of my personal favourites is Very Big Blog, a very colourful site with tidbits from new Mac-gadgets, pop-culture, design, and net happenings, run by Jen who is happy to answer your questions. Often funny as you will find if you read it...

Small Business Trends is all business, with the occasional blog review. Anita Campbell and David Patterson run it mostly commenting on news items that could relate to businesses of all sizes.

I just started reading Six-Layer Kate, but I like it so far, except for the lack of permalinks. You have to like someone who wrote this sentence:

O Great Purveyor of Tadpoles, are you truly willing to go through the bother of phone calls and tadpole transport and a face-to-face meeting with a total stranger, all for the paltry sum of 15 cents? More importantly, will you take a check?

Chas Rich is giving us his Sardonic Views on sports, culture and politics. Excellent place to drop by for a dose of reality concerning Cleveland or politics beyond Cleveland as well. he sometimes get beaten up though...

I do hope the attempted headbutts to my jaw when I have to pick her up when she tries to run from us in the store or take something that she knows she shouldn't stops soon. Most of the time I am prepared and evade the shot, but she still lands a few.

Pixellation is one of those journal-type blogs, by Genevieve with a stream of consciousness feel at times.

Dawn Olsen's blog, 'Up Yours',is the musings of Dawn, who happens to be married to Eric Olsen, of Blogcritics fame. Right now it looks to be a bit idle though.

Sydney Smith at Medpundit gives a doctors-eye view of healthcare related issues - and is not afraid to offer some sarcastic commentary. In addition, the blog constantly has neat finds like libraries of heart sounds.

Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Your Boyfriend is technically a lifestyle type blog. But it has more than the usual dose of attitudinal frenzy whilst sampling Cleveland night life. Ah, to be young.

Jum Kukral focuses on marketing and the net, He also wrote a book called 'Blogs to Riches'. John Etorre called him 'virus', but apparently as a compliment!

Jack Richutto writes at gassho, a blog with zen-style snippets on a regular basis. he also covers the local scene on various levels, concerned with communities and innovative thinking. Sample:

In zen meditation, there is a practice of seeing things just as they are, as just this - nothing more, nothing less. It's the practice of not over-estimating things or under-estimating things; seeing things in terms of their actual capabilities and limitations.

When seeing is clear, we suffer from no illusions, and having no illusions is the basis of peace and wisdom.

Foodgoat and Ladygoat post at their eponymous blog. Concentrating largely on food, but with a lot of variety on other topics, including their painting projects. I look forward to each new post here like another course at a fine, yet funky, bistro.

Filtering Craig is another stop when I am trying to get a feel for happenings in Cleveland, in the political sense. He also covers the local rock scene. A nice read despite his reservations about my homeland.

A local writer, Joe Clifford Faust gives an inside view ito his craft. from writing plays to working on his latest project, it's an interesting glimpse into the creative process. Though as with all writers, I sometimes fear for his sanity:

The twin goat brothers who are paragons of greed - everything is for and all about them

Working with Words is John Etorre's blog, and he covers politics, local and national, and always has some deep thinking about writing and writers as well.

Daily Dictum. Some random-style bloggage here, which does include some reactions to politics along with lines like: "Holding Out for a Hero is NOT a disco song.".

A new-ish blog to me is Creative Ink by Wendy Hoke. It's a kind of journal, but with much more completely thought out ideas and better written than the usual fair. As she says:

Creative Ink has really become more about the struggle between family and work. I didn't set out to write a mommy blog, but that is such a large part of my life that it profoundly impacts all that I do. Creative Ink is about journey, experiences, satisfying the soul and how to do all that while taking care of a family AND being true to yourself. It seems nearly impossible. And yet I find the struggle infinitely gratifying.

BugBlog tracks bugs so you don't have to - handy spot to check on the latest woe Microsoft has left our computers open to...


George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily is the first Ohio blogger I read, and the first blogger I met. He's fascinated by the building of networks - the kind with people, not computers - and in my mind is a one-blog Ohio portal. This blog is a must-read every day if you are interested in the possibilities of connections. He also has a HUGE Ohio blogroll. It's great to steal from! Plus he loves coffee as if it were his child. His child that he grinds, boils and drinks.


Michael at Bald Rhetoric is follically, but not snarkily challenged.

Barbara Payne blogs at Angels and Frogs on a very wide variety of topics, including the uses of precious time

What IS good use of precious time?

Spent at least an hour dozing in bed thinking about how to help my latest client express her true voice. This is always a delicate operation. First I must have listened with all my senses to what the client tells me. Then I must search deep in my own knowledge and experience database for just the right connections. Once the right neural pathways click--when it feels right--the right words usually come into focus.

And that's just a small smattering of the Buckeyes out there but I haven't seen them all yet. . Like the man said, there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.

Daily Proverb

"What does LOL mean? Every time he wrote that I laughed out loud"
- Miss Peggy
via M_

I prefer smoke-signals

Zeyad tells of the tradition in Iraq of shooting guns in the air

In rural Iraqi areas tribesmen and farmers use certain firing methods as signals, for example a call for help, to announce a newborn, a marriage, or the death of a significant person. Each signal has its own unique style, like 3 bullets fired in quick succession followed by 2 with a short pause in between. I remember once when we were teenagers and were partying at a friend's ranch north of Baghdad. A friend of ours wanted to impress us and he fired a few shots in the air from his pistol, and while others were filing up to take a try, shooting started suddenly from all around us, shortly afterwards some farmers passed by and offered our friend their condolences for his father's death, asking him how he met his unfortunate end! We didn't know anything about signals and all that stuff, so we were immensely surprised and the friend freaked out thinking his father had an accident or something. Of course our friend had coincidentally fired the death of a family member signal.

There's a lot more at his blog on this, it's a glimpse into a culture from the inside for a change. If Iraq's soccer team manages to medal in the Games this summer, I don't to be around when the bullets start coming back down again!

Civilization, we hardly knew you

I hope my marriage survives the day, it's one of those quaint, hetero-style ones, you know. Some call us "breeders" though this is technically not correct. I'm sure you all felt the quaking of the very bedrock of our culture, observed by Fafblog :

Western Civilization. Born 3500 B.C. in early Mesopotamian city-states, Western Civilization developed numerous complex systems of political governance, conquered most of the inhabited world, and invented the hot air balloon, the nuclear bomb, and the ice cream cone. Died May 17, 2004, of a gay agenda in a Massachusetts court house

On the other hand, as we head to a post-civilization era, we have some things to look forward to as we survey the scorched cities and straggling survivors busily envying the dead...

- dune buggies
- leather-armor, popular with the Ren Faire Crowd, will be the clothing of the day
- the return of the cross-bow as we run out of bullets (per "Escape from New York", set in the dark future of 1988)
- all our learning will apparently be transferred to Orlando Jones, who will be hollogrammed then forgotten for a very long time (per "Time Machine", the new version)
- most people will end up marrying their dogs, per Rick Santorum (just google Santorum, and you'll know who I mean)
- the future may be like a desert, ala Road Warrior, yet also covered with water, per Waterworld. Just be prepared for more flash-flooding, I guess.

In addition, a superflu will wipe out most of the world, leading to:
1. all the good people will gather in Colorado, to be led by Rob Lowe, who will have become inexplicably deaf and mute
2. all the evil folk with gather in Las Vegas, to be led by Penn and Teller.
It's up to you to decide which will be more fun.

Mac and Cheese budget

Bowling Green State U, in Ohio, is having some financial woes, and some PR problems too:

The foundation board voted Friday to buy a 5.74-acre parcel that includes a four-bedroom house with a pool for $750,000, and an adjacent 13.36-acre undeveloped lot for $350,000. School President Stanley Ribeau is expected to move into the house next year.
Advertisement

The purchases came a week after the school announced it would raise tuition and fees 9 percent for next year and cut $4 million out of the personnel budget by eliminating vacant positions.

Perhaps the students can almost taste the irony - it taste like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and not the deluxe kind, either. But they'll get to enjoy the president's house at least...I remember back at my school we would often be invited over for candlelit suppers, cake, wafers, and troubadours.

INDC Journal got the interview Diane Sawyer wanted

They got an exclusive interview from Glenn Reynolds, blogger of Instapundit (like there's anyone who doesn't know who he is). Read it all.

Canada catches firebombers

Remember that school in Montreal that got firebombed? Tough time to be a Jew that fair city, I thought. But at last the cops caught the brain-dead scum (free registration required to read full story) who were behind it

Five Montreal residents were arrested early Friday morning in connection with the firebombing at a Montreal Jewish school last month.
Four males between the ages of 18 and 20 and one woman in her 30s were arrested at 6:15 a.m. Montreal police would not specify where they were arrested or release any names.

Be interesting to see exactly who these folks were.

Darfur - Never Again?

Tacitus writes about the current horrorshow going on in Darfur:

The pattern is all too common: Arab raiders, the feared and savage janjaweed, encircle a village. They are specters of a bygone age, armed with rifles, swords and knives, mounted on their camels and horses as they pass through a settlement. Occasionally they are supported by uniformed soldiers of the Khartoum regime. Occasionally they are supported by that regime's helicopter gunships. They burn, they rape, they take the occasional slave, but mostly they destroy and expel: the hapless blacks, their fellow Muslims, are told to go west. To 'their' country, Chad, where their Fur kinsmen live. (Yes, 'Darfur' is an Arabic concatenation of 'dar al-Fur,' land of the Fur.) Calling it mere expulsion, though, is to fail to convey the enormity of what happens. Precious few make it to Chad. The victims are forced to trek across the pitiless arid waste of the Sahel without animals, without carts, without possessions. They perish, as the janjaweed know they will, of thirst and exposure. Mothers watch their children stagger and wither. Fathers watch their families go mad with deprivation. Thus thousands die. Those few that remain, by chance or by a questionable mercy, are condemned to suffer the same fate in their own homes: Khartoum forbids cultivation, and the janjaweed, themselves pastoralists with no need or regard for agriculture, burn what crops exist and kill those who dare to plant. The basic pillars of human existence are knocked out from beneath the Fur, and the lucky ones, it seems, are the ones who survive the harrowing desert trek to reach their ethnic kinsmen in Chad.

Is this going to be like Rwanda? I hope not. The above article is well worth reading in full.

Can-Am Pam-An

Mike mocks Pamela Anderson-Lee on the occasion of her taking a citizenship test. Pam is from Canada and only recently took the test...Mike makes up some question she might have been asked instead. Up in Canada we learn a fair amount about the US growing up. We don't memorize lists of the presidents, but we do get some actual information. I've never too sure if anyone down here pays much attention to Canada though, so here are ten questions for Americans about Canada. If you use Google on them, then may you have to listen to Alanis early teeny-bopper music in a room filled with burnt Canadian bacon for all eternity.

1. Who is the current Prime Minister?

2. Who were the three previous ones?

3. How many provinces and territories are there?

4. Name them.

5. What was the last war Canada and the US fought against each other?

6. True or false. Canada joined in World War II along with the US, after Pearl Harbor.

7. Where in the top ten trading partners of the US does Canada land?

8. Does the Canadian government, in theory, have to take orders from England?

9. True or false - hockey pucks are frozen before each game.

10. Only two provinces have more than 3% of residents who speak French at home. Which ones?

Substantive

The look of Substance of Style, by Virginia Postrel sparks interest. With a bright red cover with a huge curving S on the front, and bright green trim inside, it even seems to work well when open, with white then green then red. Should the look of the book matter? This is part of the question of the book, do the surfaces, and look and feel things matter, even if they have no meaning per se. From nickel bathroom fixtures, to dreadlocks losing their once political meaning, Postrel browses through aesthetic values are reshaping our world.

It's certainly enough to make you marvel at the short-sightedness of the attempts to control design of houses in planned communities. Every attempt made to limit choice in "superficial" purchasing in houses or clothes is shown to hamper individuality and commerce. Postrel clearly shows the oppressive nature lurking behind criticisms of fashionistas, and it's hard not to be a bit uncomfortable knowing some of the comments she deflates are thoughts I have had.

What's most eye-popping isn't the bright green on the dust jacket, but almost fractal way aesthetic products and services are multiplying at every economic stratum. Despite being about the surfaces of things, this delves deeply into an under explored area of modern life that cannot be ignored, and Postrel argues. should not be as hampered as in the past. That may include putting up with ugly houses, but the promise of increasing choice and large, not mass, consumer groups may be a driving force in the economy.

Berg motive?

Meryl reports that one of the main reasons for Nick Berg's muder by those cowardly pieces of filth is pretty easy to get a handle on: "Allison Kaplan Sommers found a report that says Nick Berg had an Israeli stamp on his passport and was arrested by Iraqis, accused of being an Israeli spy." Because he was a Jew.

Blogrolling

Figures that just when I want to go start adding some blogs to my blogroll, blogrolling.com is down. I think I'm going to move the whole thing to manual entry, so the only thing stopping my page from loading is if my host goes down.

More thoughts from the great unwashed

Also in today's Cleveland PeeDee, the print responses to a question of the day. In this case, it was asking if a judge was right in ordering Sean Talty, who has several children and owes child support on several of them, should make reasonable efforts not to have more children. Most of the readers seem to think it was a good call on the part of the judge. In fact, if asked, they could probably give us a whole list of folks they think should not be allowed to reproduce. One writer noted

'I agree with the judge, and I also think that the judge should order Mr. Talty to attend parenting and sex anonymous classes.' - Lakewood

I wonder where they have a 'sex anonymous' class? Can I take it nights? This kind of thinking behind stopping people from, er, making more people led to such great innovations as the mass sterilizations of those defined as mentally infirm in the early part of the 20th century here in the US. As tempting as it may be to prevent further generations of those you don't like, perhaps they should ask what the hell business is it of theirs?

Quiet, you

A letter writer is unhappy with the Cleveland PeeDee's coverage of the sale of local bank, Charter One, to an out-of-Ohio bank.

The May 6 article by Teresa Dixon Murray ('Charter One to slash jobs after merger') is a perfect example of why Cleveland's image suffers nationally: In order for a story to be news, it must be presented in a negative light. Consider the difference in tone if the adverb 'only' were placed in front of 'hundreds of jobs.' Would The Plain Dealer be happier if the acquisition of Charter One were by a large local bank, so the resulting job losses would be in the thousands?

I think we should have a party to celebrate! We're ONLY losing hundreds of jobs. In fact every time there's a murder, we should have a block party to celebrate the fact we didn't all get killed. Logically, every horrible thing that happens just shows us how great things are. I guess the write is mostly upset the newspaper doesn't cover mergers which will get rid of local jobs like they are bake sales. I don't know how much more good news like this Cleveland can take.

Revenge

Instead of calls for revenge or anger, in response to the brutal murder in Iraq of Nick Berg, we should simply hunt down the guilty and eliminate them if we cannot capture them. Those who think by such cowardly and craven acts they can dissuade the US from staying in Iraq are sorely mistaken. This is not only because we need to stay to make certain the country is stable, but because it's the correct thing to do to stay and make sure the situation can hold. I hope the administration agrees, and is not swept along by election year politics into pulling out now. In times like these it would be nice to think we could call on some clear-eyed fictional characters, like O-Ren from 'Kill Bill':

I'm going to say this in English so
you know how serious I am. As your
leader, I encourage you to -- from
time to time and always in a
respectful manner, and with the
complete knowledge that my decision
is final -- to question my logic.
If you're unconvinced a particular
plan of action I've decided is the
wisest, tell me so. But allow me to
convince you. And I will promise
you, right here and now, no subject
will be taboo...Except the subject
that was just under discussion.

The price you pay for bringing up
either my Chinese or my American
heritage as a negative is, I
collect your fuckin head.

Just like this fucker here. Now if
any of you sonsabitches got
anything else to say, now's the
fuckin time.

I'm not saying we need more Yakuza assassins working for us, but it's a nice theme.

Losing One's head over Henry VIII

LeeAnn talked about Henry VIII and her co-worker filed a complaint against her. No, really. And LeeAnn wasn't even married to the (female) co-worker, suggesting she better bear her some heirs, while meaningfully holding an axe, either. Which brings to mind the question, "are some people too stupid to live"? I don't mean those with genetic disorders or brain damage, I'm talking about people who are intentionally, willfully, dumb. I had a manager like that once named Tim. My favourite line of his was "If that's what I told you then I must have not understood what you were understanding about what I didn't understand." They're part of the reason I think abortion should be legal well into the forties - it takes that long on occasion to decide if we really need someone around. Some have found ways to test these tendencies:

Jazz Trombonist Jimmy Knepper drove through a toll both, and the fare was 60 cents. He handed the attendant a dollar bill and a dime. The attendant said "What's this?". "An intelligence test", said Jimmy. Minus one point if you have to tell them this anecdote twice.

"Once all the Germans were warlike, and mean,
but that couldn't happen again
We taught them a lesson, in 1918
and they've hardly bothered us since then" - Tom Lehrer
If they don't get it, subtract one point. If they don't know what is meant by 1918, subtract three points.

Tell them you had an uncle interested in pedagogy, and see how they react. Minus 1 point per 10 seconds of anger or other inappropriate thought.

35

One of my favourite writers on the net, John Scalzi, writes about being 35. He does say

I was going to write some massive retrospective of my life to date here, being that 35 is the Biblical midpoint of life, but I've tried starting it three times now, and even I can't swallow the crap I was writing, which means I certainly can't inflict it on you.

Still he manages to say a few things, so it's worth a read.

I remember when I turned 15 it seemed somehow significant, and I thought I should spend more time meditating on the many things wrong with the world and how I was going to fix them. However playing trombone and wargames seemed to eat up a lot of my teenage years so those are still on my to-do list. I used to annoy most everyone by coming "out of the closet" as an atheist that year. And for reasons best left forgotten, I would sometimes wear a Greek fisherman's cap. In retrospect, not a good plan

I think when I turned thirty, my friend Mary Smith told me it was no big deal, and I've come to agree. Thirty-five came and went without much fanfare, just a dinner at Dave and Busters. But with the years flying by I've tired to get some kind of plan going before I croak, so have joined a gym - 20 lbs so far - and attempted with very poor results to get that novel going. But in the flickering daylight that comprises a human span, at the moment I have the best wife and a not-to-psychotic cat, so I've decided not to worry about plans. Unless it's a plan as to how best to illustrate the conflict between idealism and materialism in fiction. Or maybe a story with some space monkeys!

Curiosity

Our....friends...the Saudis have called for increased oil production, which would reduce oil and thus fuel prices, in a policy reversal. This story has some more details

Crude oil prices briefly plunged after the announcement. Contracts of U.S. light, sweet crude for June delivery fell by $1.65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before recovering to $38.93 a barrel, down $1. June contracts of Brent crude tumbled by $1.67 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange in London but rebounded somewhat, and were 70 cents lower at $36.30 in late trading.
The change in Saudi oil policy came only weeks after Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said in a new book that Saudi Arabia had made a deal with the White House to increase oil production to drive down U.S. gasoline prices and help President Bush win re-election. Saudi and U.S. officials denied the report. Analyst Jan Stuart of FIMAT USA, a New York brokerage, said the Saudi decision was 'very curious.'

I suppose it's to win favour with the present administration in the US as well, as Woodward said in his book. It may be too late for this to have an affect on the economy before the election though. The Saudis, no fans of democracy they, probably see it as a simple quid pro quo for continued favourable treatment from the US, as opposed to increased scrutiny and suspicion of the country from which came most of the hijackers, likely most of the money, and the leader of the organization that attacked the US on September 11th.

Wente on Iraq

as usual, Margaret Wente cuts to the chase - this time, on Iraq and the prisoner abuse scandal (free registration required to read full article):

The irony is that one of the war's aims is a clear success. The Iraqis really are better off now. In the north, the Kurds are happy as clams. There are no floods of refugees (as alarmists predicted) because the two conditions that create refugees -- starvation and genocide -- are absent. Most Iraqis are better off, and they know it. They think the future will be better than the present, and they're probably right. Whatever regime they wind up with a year or five years from now will, in all likelihood, be better than Saddam.

The war was good for the Iraqis. It's turned out to be very, very bad for the United States, and probably for the rest of us, too.

I suspect Americans will be so fed up with Iraq that they'll have no stomach for foreign entanglements for a long time to come, no matter how just the cause. What's the chance of intervention when the next Rwanda comes along? Even less than last time.

There's a reason the US had the moral high ground, and however isolated this even may or may not have been, it's eroded a lot of potential good will. It will take that much more effort to build it back up again. Meanwhile, the buck will continued to be passed. People calling for Rumsfeld's resignation are not being realistic - he will never resign, unless some unforeseen event occurs that would make it impossible for him not to do so. Calling for it as a way of signaling disapproval of the whole administration is a bit disingenuous - calling the Iraq war a successful disaster might be more accurate.

Lynn versus top ten lists

It's tempting to write a top ten list. Letterman has built-in an interest in people to read them. It's also a bit of lazy shorthand in writing, not to mention in music criticism. Lynn smacks down David Huritz's 'Ten Dirtiest Secrets' in regards to Classical Music. I always find the best approaches to the critique in arts are well informed by those who remove the scales from their eyes, as it were, and Lynn always seems to bring a fresh perspective.

Cutting comment of the day

Comes from Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

Maybe I'm jaded, but I think that real journalism involves leaving the basement, getting scoops, talking to highly placed and sometimes anonymous people. Blogging generally involves taking thrice-recycled items, applying ironic juxtaposition, and waiting for a small/large group people to agree/disagree with you.

The most brutal and true writing sometimes comes in summing things up.

Jose Melendez-Perez

The Flea talks bout Immigration Office Jose Melendez-Perez, who did something other than just follow protocol and rules, not to mention not bowing to political pressures, and kept a bad guy out of the US. More of this, please.

Meet Chekov

Via the always entertaining Bookslut, is the funniest thing I've read all month. It's the story of an improv group putting on a show of having Anton Chekov sign books, despite the unfortunate disability of having been dead for a hundred years. He had a lot of people fooled:

The young man in the jean jacket above insisted that Chekov only sign his autograph, rather than making it out to anyone in particular. He proudly announced, 'When you die, this is going to be worth lots of money!'

There's always a chance!

Everything but the kitchen sink

Just when you think you've seen all the usual kitchen sinks in tasteful light at the big design stores, Ladygoat finds a cooler one. It looks like it would be good for toy boats!

Not the Friday Five

Reading the Cheesemistress, I see that the Friday Five is offline. I used it one time, it was a a good way to yap about something decidedly not serious. Some of blogging is always contains a bit too much navel-gazery...but aside from fans of the more well known, I'm not sure too many really care to read those types of posts. But how about a Fictive Friday Five?

1. You are Ilsa . Rick of Lazlo?

2. You are Enkidu, living happily in the wild. Along comes that lady...ignore or not?

3. You are Offred. Look for escape...or stay with the Commander?

4. You are Snake. Hand the tape over to the President, and hope for enticing some goodwill...or not so much?

5. You are Holmes. Train the London police in your methods, or continue to solve crimes piecemeal, more or less alone?

Obsessions

I have no idea why some people are obsessed with Hillary Clinton. If I had to pick one person on this earth more boring than her husband, she'd be the one. By uninteresting, I don't mean I necessarily disagree with all the policies they pursued. I just thought seeing Clinton elected was like kissing your sister, all anti-rural Arkansas jokey overtones of that cliche aside. When I read insanoids uttering things like this

Well, as we all know, Hillary means to regain the White House, at any cost. I believe she will make her play this year, in 2004. John Kerry is imploding as we speak. He is unelectable. Kerry has too much baggage, too many skeletons in his closet.

Democrat strategists are already quietly discussing a "Torricelli option" to pull Kerry from the race, just as they pulled Robert Torricelli from the New Jersey Senate race in 2002, replacing him at the last minute with Frank Lautenberg.

I'm almost stupefied by how inane, unrealistic and silly such an analysis is...I guess because Hillary shows up high on people's most admired women polls, there are people who will forever have her haunting their dreams. I don't know if she is the kind of personality suited to win a nomination for the Dems in 08 or later. If I had to make a wet thumb in the wind guess - due my lack of Clinton inside info given only to their inner circle and sometimes women in berets - I'd guess she has no plan to run for president even in 2008. But I guess I should stop whining and let the people have their fun speculating about Hillary flying in - in a black helicopter, I would assume - to the current campaign.

Truths, hard truths, and statistics

An excellent example, via Demagogue, of media myopia regarding the genocide in Rwanda

television news was barely covering the event. In fact, they really only began covering it in July at the time when the genocide was nearly over and 2 million Hutus began to flee the country ahead of the approaching RPF. The hellish refugee camps in Goma, Zaire that housed the killers received far more coverage than did the Hutu's own genocidal killing spree.

Livingston and Eachus provide charts to demonstrate the disparity in coverage but I am unfortunately unable to reproduce here. Nevertheless, I have calculated and translated them into numbers for the sake of comparison

TV Coverage of Rwanda from CNN, ABC, CBS & NBC (in Minutes)

April: 91
May: 108
June: 79
July: 278

TV Reports with Datelines from Rwanda vs. Zaire

April: 35 from Rwanda
May: 40 from Rwanda
June: 30 from Rwanda
July: 195 from Zaire

Wish I had a quick way to compare it to Nipplegate coverage. Just when I begin thinking we need to worry more about politicians, I am forced to consider I'm not seeing the big picture.

Linkdom

Kacie is a new blogger at peppermint tea, and mentioned how cool the online OED is. The old copy I have is the one that you have to read with a magnifying glass, which though it does give me the look of being a wise old scholar, is not so great on the eyes.

After a long absence from blogging, Rachel Lucas has returned. I started reading Rachel as one of the first blogs I looked at, liking her pro-gun stances. Do I agree with all her politics? Nope. In fact, there's almost no one on earth that I am in such synchronicity with, but why not listen to everyone's thoughts, when readable and thoughtful. You will note I have no links to Rall, Drudge, etc.

Visiting Iran

An Oberlin college president visited Iran

She said the Iranian college students she met had questions about many of the same issues that engage Oberlin's students - the environment, personal autonomy and the war in Iraq.
And Dye said many Iranians posed the same question to delegation members: Why do Americans hate us?
'I heard over and over, 'We're not terrorists,' ' she said. 'It really makes you think that for 25 years, Americans and Iranians have learned very little about each other.'
Since the estrangement that began with Iran's 1979 revolution, Dye said, many Americans have viewed it as a frightening country - ostensibly populated by chanting mobs.
Her experience was markedly different. She said she encountered friendly people genuinely interested in Americans and bewildered by perceived U.S. hostility.
Dye said she also was struck by 'a diversity of opinion about their government and about the relationship between Iran and the rest of the world. People were quite open.'
While in Iran, Dye did have to adhere to the same kind of modest dress required of Iranian women.
She opted for a long black raincoat and used a silk scarf to cover her head before settling on the traditional hijab.
The American higher education delegation.

No mention of the beatings she would risk if she had not been so dressed, and had to actually live in Iran instead of just visiting. As far as American's hating Iran, I wonder what planet this idea is coming from? I don't recall many Americans gathering in baseball stadiums to chant "Death to Iran".

The Brooding Persian lists some other problems in Iran that need more attention - namely torture and injustice:

Or take Ahmad Batebi. He had been sentenced to death which was later commuted to 15 years; tortured, and in solitary confinement. Why? He was moved by the sense of decency and personal outrage over injuries sustained by a friend to hold up a bloody T-shirt. When the bounds of affection and personal loyalty become a crime punishable by death, would it then be a shock to have a society in which, Coldness, Cruelty, and Mammon, become the dominant deities?

Good question.

Canadian trade

Jefferey Simpson points out the importance of US-Canadian trade to Canada. Most Americans are probably not aware that Canada is the US's largest trading partner. It's Canada's biggest market, and the only one it has a trade surplus with. But US interest in Canada is not so high, not only politically:

A KPMG study found Canada the most cost-competitive nation in the G8. The country has the only balanced budget in the G8, strong economic growth, a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, an educated population. Yet overall foreign direct investment has fallen for three years. The U.S. share of it has slipped from 91 per cent to 76, to 53, in that period.

Simpson argues Canadians should avoid scoring cheap political points at home, against individual US administrations. My thought is if you're going to criticize them, criticize something specific - calling the president a moron is not deeply thought out political commentary. Canada tends to not get noticed in the US too much...one band trip I took to Massachusetts (which is actually not far from Canada) had several misconceptions. One person thought that somehow, Nova Scotia was closer to Sweden than to Maine, and another thought igloos were not uncommon in my old home province. But I guess I should blame shoddy geography classes on these types of errors. As Trudeau said, being next to the US is a bit like being in bed with an elephant - every little move it makes can make you nervous. Seeing as it's such a profitable relationship, Canadians should make an effort not to garner too much bad attention.

Charter Minus One

Cleveland bank Charter One has been bought by a company from Connecticut. Cleveland firms have been getting bought and sold a lot recently, which of course means the jobs for those companies inevitably leave the region. Our civic leader's solution? "Let's build a new convention center!".

High Gas prices

People in the US have been complaining about high gas prices, which are likely to rise this summer with oil prices at 14 year highs. But back in my old home province, it's hitting $3.56 a gallon. About 45% of the cost is in taxes. So perhaps we are getting it fairly cheap around here.

Irony defined

There was once someone I worked with - but not at the same company I work at now who defined irony for me though not intentionally. For Irony was indeed he: decrying with curses and fury people who leave long voice mails for him to listen to....he was vehement in his hatred, and spoke about what fools the clients leaving him such lengthy diatribes must be.

Then the next day, I heard him leave a three-four minute message - not work related, I might add - featuring such useful phrases as "bup de dup de duh - what's the name of that place. Hmmmm. Uuuuh."

MetaBlogging

In a blog post about blogging, Dean Esmay outlines how beginners (such as me) should get going:

you have to work at it. You have to write regularly. You have to have something to say.

I actually started this blog so I wouldn't annoy my friends quite so much with yammering about the latest thing in the world that was annoying me, and also because I found I was getting more and more news and commentary from blogs. Still working on the "something to say" part

Nice kitty

So some fool has let loose a lion in Central Ohio.

Gahanna Woods residents and others in the state nature preserve area near Taylor Station and Taylor roads are being asked to call 911 if they see what reportedly is a lion that could weigh up to 400 pounds.

As opposed to what you would do with a 400 pound lion? With people keeping private zoos - usually quite badly - this is not so surprising. The new top of the food chain in Ohio won't have to suffer through winter for quite some time, either.

Roldo on schools

Roldo Bartimole has some thoughts on the recent media scrutiny on the head of the Cleveland School system. Teachers are being laid off due to budget woes, but she has been going to fancy dinners and upgrading airline tickets to first class. She said it's not a problem because in those cases the money came from private institutions, not from the scholastic budget. Roldo doesn't think this is so great

So, when you think of the 600 or so teachers and 300 others ready to be laid off, when you think of the school children who won't have proper text books, and when you think of the kids who won't have sports and extra curricular activities, think Cleveland Foundation, Gund Foundation and Cleveland Tomorrow. Why? Because the schools should have asked for a levy last year. Why didn't they? Because the people who run the town, i.e., the people of the institutions mentioned above, intent upon getting Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to buy them a new Convention Center.

This seems to cast a very unfavourable light upon Bennet, and not for the reason the TV stations are on her - that she's overspending - but that she's bought.

The Hellmouth

On the old series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" it was said they the "other" Hellmouth was in Cleveland. Well like a vampire, once again, they are trying to revive the formerly dead idea of a Convention center in Cleveland. Due to public disdain, the plan died last year. But the county can't wait to spend taxpayer money on a project

Many community leaders argue that a new or updated convention center would fetch millions of dollars in added taxes and economic spinoff. The city's outmoded facility is 80 years old.
One of the authority's first acts will be to review a study of convention center issues by Cleveland State University's Levin College of Urban Affairs. That study is nearly complete.
Commissioners also voted Tuesday to divert $50,000 from the county's bed tax receipts to establish the convention center authority.

Forgive me, they've already spent 50K on this white elephant. As I pointed out last year there are a few bad reasons for building this thing (the article has a link to Bill Callahan's thoughts, though Blogspot is spotty right this second). Mostly I look at the Rock Hall, the new Baseball stadium, football stadium, and the promise that THEY would be the "economic engine" to get the city going. We seem to be still rather stalled. All this will do is spend taxpayer money, with the outside chance it would also increase taxes. The benefit would be to local politicians who get to put their names on a plaque, and their backers, who get some construction work. But basically we're building this thing when many other cities are doing the same thing, with dubious benefits, save perhaps a slight increase in the hiring of low-paid hotel staff for some minimal increases in visitors?

Those wacky communists

Over at Case, a private university, A former student is unhappy he is no longer welcome

Kristopher Waller, 22, of Bay Village, said his freedom to speak against the war in Iraq was curtailed by the university because he called an ROTC student a 'murderer.' Waller, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, received bachelor's degrees in history and religion from Case in January.

'I was outspoken while a member of the student body, but now that I am no longer paying tuition, they banned me from the campus,' Waller said before the protest. 'This whole country is turning into a police state with the Patriot Act and Homeland Security designed to shut down protesters.'

I wasn't aware the Patriot Act or the Department of Homeland Security had any regulations regarding ex-students at private universities. And, as Buffy Summers once noted, don't non-students usually populate the non-campus? Far be it from me to deny this guy his right to call anyone he wants a murderer, but I doubt I'd appreciate any random lunatic insulting me while I pay to go to school. This kind of asinine complaint just reduces how much attention gets paid to real problems, like the desire of the (public) US administration to hold it's own citizens without meaningful counsel or charges indefinitely.

Secondly, a communist studying religion? Isn't it the opiate of the masses?

Update: 5/5/2004 3:37 PM Chas reminds us of another reason Case may be quicker to ban:

Case's decision/overreaction might also have a little something to do with that little gunman-shooting-up-Weatherhead-incident last year on the campus. You tend to want to minimize risk of violence and confrontations, especially with disgruntled ex-students.

I had forgotten about that shooting, in one of the most uniquely designed buildings in Cleveland.

Thank goodness for ethicists

In a Newshouse story in the PeeDee, David Wood asks

Is it OK to torture or abuse enemy prisoners to get information that might save American lives?
Clearly not, military officers and ethicists say

Thanks for clearing that up. I can hardly get out of bed these days without consulting an ethicist to decide whether I should:

1. Feed my cat


2. Torture my cat


3. Put a bag over my cat's head, and take photos of M_ pointing at his tail in mockery

Seriously, the reporter needed to have an ethicist called in to decide if the behavior in question was right or wrong? What is it that they teach in journalism school? Maybe that's the problem.

Phone pranks

What struck me about this story about ex-hacker Kevin Mitnick was how useless phone companies are to law enforcement. A detective was trying to track down bomb threats to the local high school.

But when the detective served a search warrant on SBC Ameritech for the source of the calls, the phone company came up dry.

The dead-end led Keck to suspect that the caller was employing some hi-tech means to cover his tracks. "I didn't know if he was spoofing Caller I.D., using calling cards, a computer phone, doing it from overseas, I didn't know," says Keck. The detective began searching the Internet for technical guidance, which led him to Kevin Mitnick, who'd earlier demonstrated a technique for spoofing Caller ID on the specialty cable network TechTV.

Mitnick says he was happy to help. "It's a big deal over there in that little community, because apparently he was really wreaking havoc," says Mitnick, a security consultant and author of the book the Art of Deception.

Based on Keck's information, Mitnick quickly ruled out Caller ID spoofing, but volunteered to give the detective a crash course in telephony, telling him exactly what kind of information to request from the phone company.

Armed with Mitnick's advice, Keck went back to SBC and demanded a "terminating number search" for any calls made to the high school's lines on the dates of the bomb threats. This time, SBC tracked the calls as far as cell phone carrier Sprint PCS, and identified the specific trunks on which the calls entered the local phone network -- information that Keck now knew how to interpret. The detective served a search warrant on Sprint, and on April 19th he had the suspect's name and cell phone number.

So the phone "pranker" was not using any high tech methods at all. The phone company just didn't give the police useful information. So either the police have to learn everything about the phone company, or the phone company has to be able to do more than regurgitate useless data.

The Rise and Fall of Late Night Jerry

This is one of those posts that's not my usual, it's meandering and newsless. Please skip if pale Canadians musings on very little are not what you are looking for in a post.

Like most kids, I always wanted to stay up later. Whether it was to watch a James Bond movie that was going to continue after my bedtime, or just to hang out during the later hours and see all the amazing things that happened after 10 - so I thought. Then in teenagerdom, I started staying up late to catch the David Letterman show. It aired in my Atlantic Time zone town at 1:30 AM, meaning I would not be in bed til 2:30 AM if I wanted to stay up and watch it. It seemed like it was worth it at the time, getting to stay up and trying to laugh as quietly as possible. I think I may have watched him too much, as I note an inscription in my high school year book denotes "Good Luck - and shut up about Letterman." Nobody else in my family were night hawks, just me, so it was probably a huge annoyance. Not to mention I ended up sleeping through about forty percent of math classes in high school - which if my math skills are correct, is nearly 1/4th.

In college the reins were off. No longer did I have to worry I would wake anyone, I could stay up as late as humanly possible. To even sign up for classes, we were told you had to go get in the queue at 4 in the morning. Amused, we watched Letterman and sauntered by the gym to see if anyone had lined up yet, and the line wrapped around the huge building to the football field already. So we all waited and chatted waiting for classes we would attempt to not sleep through in the next four years. Then of course there's hiding from security so you can stay in the music building all night and, um "work". Such was the plan anyway, but it often degenerated into drinking coffee and talking, and pretty much anything but working.

It was during these years I tried a little experiment. I would stay awake as long as I could. After about four days of this sleepwalking-light trance, friends began to notice I was acting...odder than usual. I would say some strange words, laugh, and walk away. Well, more than usual. I managed to stay completely awake for around seven straight days. I ad heard the cliche of "walking in a fog" before, but I didn't know that it meant I felt and could almost see a grey fog envelop my every step as I moved from place to place on campus. Since you're missing out on REM sleep, you daydream at a moment's notice. I didn't have any hallucinations, but was so miserable after a week I ended the experiment with the usually 15 hours sleep in which such endeavours typically result.

I still enjoyed staying up late after college, although the aspect of having a job meant that now I had a few bucks, and the only place to spend them late at night was on food. What about bars? I've never been one for feeling out of control, Please ignore the previous paragraph and my half-assed experiment in order for this previous sentence to not seem like a contradiction. And so I drink alcohol, but only sparingly, like Emily Dickinson fighting off certain slants of light in winter afternoons with a glass of wine. But with the food, such as it was, available late at night was of course bad for me. Years later it's led to me now banning any eating after 8, and going to the YMCA each morning at 6 AM to de-Junk, as it were.

Not to mention the night is not full of secrets like I thought when I was much shorter, but instead is relatively empty and too solitary for constant exposure. Late night sojourns with friends are the exception, as that is "prosocial" as my long lost pal Mary Smith once told me...late at night. Thanks Mary, and good night.

The News in Iraq, such as it is

Zeyad give a, um, slightly sarcastic read on Al-Jazeera and their coverage of the war in Iraq. I hesitate to call it their news coverage. It makes me think...you all are no doubt aware of just how bad the local TV stations news departments are (in the US)? Imagine if that's all the news you had. And that instead of just being stupid, they had malevolent aims.

Just hand over your money

If you're confronted on the street by armed robbers, most police advise cooperation and giving up your wallet. In a recent case here in Ohio, three men approached Rodney Roberts with what appeared to be a real gun to rob him. It was, in fact a, toy. The neighbourhood is flush with drug deals, and evidently they thought he might have cash. But he was not a drug dealer - he has no criminal record of that at all in his past, but he did have a gun with which to protect himself. A real one. The result is that one of the three would-be muggers was shot dead, and now the shooter and both robbers are in jail awaiting various charges.

Some of the young men were up and coming football stars, and columnist Mansfield Frazier argues that it's a sad tragedy for all involved. Obviously. But some of his points seem rather dubious:

Young people are notorious for making stupid decisions, just look at TV shows and movies like "Jackass," where young adults engage in all kinds of dumb and dangerous behaviors in front of a camera. However, all of the participants get up and walk (or sometimes limp) away after the filming of shows like "Jackass."

But this was not the case when 16-year-old Lorenzo Hunter allegedly attempted to rob 20-year-old Rodney Roberts near East 124th and Craven Avenue around 2 a.m. on April 16th with a plastic gun.

First of all, the three were not trying to recreate a Jackass episode, and did not have a camera, in any report I've read. So I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, except to perhaps equate a desire to rob someone with making videos of stupid stunts in which only the participants are in any danger.

The most glaring fact of this case is the danger of guns in our communities. If Roberts had not been armed this incident would not have elevated to the tragic outcome that four families are now faced with. The trio of youth might have robbed him, but no one would have died. And I would venture to guess that if Roberts has not already come the conclusion that it would have been better to hand over what money he had rather than take a life, this will one day soon dawn on him.

How much money did he have in his pocket? How much (or little) did he kill for? He might have been justified under the law, but morally it was wrong ... as wrong as the behavior of the young football players.

Sorry, but they were trying to rob him, at what seemed to be gunpoint. So the solution is that Mr. Roberts should be going out unarmed, allow himself to be robbed, and hope the many kind thieves out there will not shoot or injure him? Or maybe he wanted to make sure none of his family would be attending his funeral if a trigger happy mugger decided to shoot him. I don't think you should be able to lump this case into a "guns are the problem" pile. If they had decided not to rob anyone, nothing would have happened either.

This graf also jumped out at me:

Both of the 18-year-old's probably will be charged with Hunter's murder by the time this article is published since the law states that accomplices are as guilty as the person that pulls the trigger is. Even if a law enforcement officer had killed Hunter the two others would still be charged in his death.

Say what? So far you've thrown in MTV, and now law enforcement, neither of whom whispered "go rob someone" in these guy's ears. But who they are is not really relevant to what precisely transpired, so hopefully the courts will get all the facts, and if Mr. Roberts thought he was defending his life, he should not face jail time. I'm sure having shot any human to death is something that would haunt any person, and in many ways be punishment enough. I suppose you could say that it might serve as a lesson to other young people, although I don't remember anyone I knew growing up needing a "lesson" not to rob people on the streets. I do know you shouldn't bring a toy gun to a real gunfight, or commit crimes and think that things cannot end in a horrible, pointless tragedy for everyone involved.