They're in the Series!

Astros earn first ever World Series berth

Best political pun of the year

Deep down among the comments on a Volokh post, someone named Drew opines about whether the president really wants Roe v. Wade overturned: "I think Bush has bigger fish to fry than Roe."

Beyond these things

One of my clients has a joke-latin slogan they want on their business cards. I tried looking it up in the various Latin-to-English dictionaries on the Web, with no success. But while I was there, I thought about an intractable, supposedly Latin phrase that had been bothering me for a long time: the name of the rock group Procol Harum--you know, "A Whiter Shade of Pale"?

Anyway, their press materials used to say the name was a Latin phrase meaning "beyond these things."

It turns out that that's sort of right: Freedict's Latin-to-English dictionary gives "procul" (note the "u") as "far, at, to, from a distance." Used this way, it's an adverb. "Harum" is "of these things." So "procul harum" is probably better translated as "of these faraway things."

If somebody asks you the question in Really Hard Trivia, though, they're looking for "beyond these things". Or else they're wanting to hear that it was the name of Keith Reid's drug dealer's Persian cat. But that's a different story.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

Mark Evanier, who knows more than a little about television, has a few words to say about President Bush's teleconference with soldiers in Iraq:

This 'media event' was carefully rehearsed and loosely-scripted and someone -- maybe the same someone who erred by suggesting the format in the first place -- compounded the disaster. They allowed the media to see and tape the rehearsals where the troops were told what would be discussed in seeming spontaneity. I would love to hear the explanation of why they allowed this to be seen. It made Bush look like a marionette who walks in and does what his own handlers don't trust him to do without careful preparation. We all know that much of what we see on television that's represented as unplanned is meticulously prearranged. Most producers, however, know enough not to show the world just how prearranged.

How awful was it all? I felt sorry for George W. Bush. That's how awful it all was.

Slippery slope? Probably not.

Evan Wolfson, on Freedom To Marry, does everybody a service by clarifying the status of that supposed three-way marriage in the Netherlands:

On an Illinois radio show I did last week -- available on our website or at this link -- one anti-gay caller characteristically avoided offering a reason why the government should continue excluding same-sex couples from marriage and, as usual, went to the 'slippery slope' diversion of 'polygamy.' As new proof that the sky was falling, the caller said that the Netherlands, which has ended the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, has now also allowed a trio of man and two women to wed. Before yet another right-wing scare tactic gathers traction, please note that this claim -- that the Netherlands registered a multi-partner 'civil union' -- is untrue.

Following the radio interview, we looked into the caller's claim and found an erroneous September 27 report in something called the Brussels Journal -- www.brusselsjournal.com -- misusing the term 'civil union' and talking about something 'registered by a notary.' Once we checked this with a leading Dutch expert who follows legal developments in family law, we learned that the only legally relevant thing that happened was that three people, with the help of a notary, signed a private cohabitation contract -- and did not enter into any kind of legal state-recognized union. Such personal agreements are not registered, and do not have legal implications for third parties. In both these respects, as well with regard to the state's imprimatur, a personal agreement or contract is different from both marriage and registered partnership. (And civil union, as such, is not a legal status in the Netherlands).

Damn. There goes the neighborhood.

I live in Kerrville, the county seat of Kerr County. So I was surprised to see an AP story in the local paper today that Karl Rove officially lives here (the link is to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram because the local paper doesn't carry the story on its web site, even though it's on the front page):

A Kerr County retired nurse is asking the local district attorney to investigate whether it is legal for presidential adviser Karl Rove to vote in Texas while he is living in Washington, D.C.

Rove, it turns out, owns houses in Washington and Florida, but he's registered here, ostensibly living at a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in Kerr County. (This press release says he owns two rental cottages, which might or might not mean the same thing.)

But wait, there's more. The AP also reports that "the Texas Secretary of State has said that Texans who move out of state can still vote in Texas as long as they intend to return to the state." (This is what allowed the first President Bush to vote in Texas while in office; he obviously was living in the White House, but his residence for voting purposes was a suite at a hotel/resort in Houston. And yes, he did move back to Texas.)

But wait, there's more. The AP also reports that Elizabeth Reyes, a lawyer in the Secretary of State's office, was fired after the Washington Post quoted her saying it might be vote fraud to register to vote if you don't live in the place you're registered. Reyes was told she was fired because she'd talked to the media in violation of agency policy. (You partisans can squabble among yourselves about whether that's fishy or not.)

But wait, there's more. The AP also also reports that an entity called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington "filed a complaint about Rove last month, but it was invalid because the complaint must be filed by a registered voter in the same county as the voter in question." The eventual complainant was Frances Lovett of Comfort (right down the road from here), who says CREW didn't contact her; she contacted them.

That's all I have for now; but if I see Rove buying sushi at the H-E-B, I'll be sure to post it.

Calling Ray Harryhausen…

Pythons vs. alligators:

What happens when a 13-foot python with an appetite runs into a 6-foot alligator?Recently, a case of that matchup was discovered in the Florida Everglades. It ended in a tie when the python exploded, leaving both beasts dead.

More on the Oklahoma suicide bomber

Michelle Malkin, whom I admire for her thoroughness if not her politics, has a good round-up on Joel Hinrichs, who blew himself up outside the Oklahoma University football stadium last weekend:

OKLAHOMA BOMBER: DELVING DEEPER

At first I figured Hinrichs was like Charles Whitman, a mentally disturbed misfit with lethal weapons but no real agenda beyond killing others and himself (not like that's not bad enough), but now it's looking like he was a pawn and a dupe of (gasp) radical Islamists.

If that's true, it's sad and horrifying that Hinrichs adopted the terrorist mentality. The cynicism and cowardice of those who engineered his corruption is breathtaking and appalling. Hinrich's story deserves a lot more notice.

Legal community overjoyed

Well, at least somebody thinks Harriet Miers is going to make a good Supreme Court justice. The Dallas Morning News reports:

Word that an esteemed Dallas lawyer and former councilwoman could become the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has stirred Texas pride among her many colleagues and friends.

[....]

"The legal community in Dallas has every right to be overjoyed," said Will Pryor, a mediator in Dallas who worked with Miers at the Dallas Bar Association. "She's a product of our legal community. We are all grinning ear to ear around here. It's a happy and proud moment."

Astros make playoffs again

Yay—my Astros made it to the playoffs again this year. (As usual, by the slimmest of margins.)

Let those of us who've witnessed the boys in playoffs against Philadelphia be grateful that that isn't happening again.

Our new Chief Justice

John Roberts has been confirmed as Chief Justice of the United States today by a margin of 78 votes to 22.

Let me say again that Roberts is clearly well qualified and I expect him to be an excellent justice. I realize that I'm just about alone among liberals, especially gay liberals, in this regard. But I refuse to be a prisoner of ideology.

Vlad the Impaler

My talented, erudite and always-informative partner Ron has been reading a book which has aroused his interest in Vlad the Impaler (generally taken to be the real-life inspiration for the fictional Dracula).

Today he found an entertaining but dubious family tree—apparently it comes from a different novel—which shows that Vlad was married to a Princess Cneajna the Unpronounceable of Transylvania, and that his son Mihnea was known as "the bad." (Considering what Daddy was like, it's a wonder that ordinary badness is even noted.)

There's lots of other colorful information on the wives and children of the family, an ill-fated lot, prone to suicide, early death and various congenital deficiencies.

Vote Against Prop 2

Good news: the generally conservative Houston Chronicle recommends that we Texans vote against Proposition 2, the odious Texas anti-same-sex-marriage constitutional amendment:

This November, Texans will vote on Proposition 2, a proposed constitutional amendment that would silence further reflection on these important issues. The referendum language defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Texas law already outlaws same-sex marriage. Should voters approve this amendment, it would change nothing in the law. It lacks any purpose other than to enshrine bigotry in the Texas Constitution.

But the amendment also bans the state, or any political subdivision, from creating or recognizing any legal status "identical or similar to marriage." Impeding protections for relationships that are even "identical or similar to marriage" is a crude assault on an existing truth. Throughout the state, same-sex couples are thriving, raising children, volunteering in the community and supporting each other financially. Withholding protections for these family units cruelly jeopardizes their ability to take care of themselves and their children.

(Via Charles Kuffner's excellent Off the Kuff.)

Soon to be a minor motion picture

Over the past few days several news items have appeared that sound like movie plots. This SFGate article on Pat Tillman's death brings to mind military cover-up movies like "A Few Good Men" or "Courage Under Fire":

The files [Tillman's] family received from the Army in March are heavily censored, with nearly every page containing blacked-out sections; most names have been deleted.… At least one volume was withheld altogether from the family, and even an Army press release given to the media has deletions.…

A Chronicle review of more than 2,000 pages of testimony, as well as interviews with Pat Tillman's family members and soldiers who served with him, found contradictions, inaccuracies and what appears to be the military's attempt at self-protection.

For example, the documents contain testimony of the first investigating officer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key details in their sworn statements so his finding that certain soldiers committed gross negligence could be softened.

If that's a little too real for you, you might prefer this article from the Observer:

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

After all that, it seems almost a shame to report that the purported "respected accident investigator" who appears to be the main source for the article is well-regarded among the crop-circles-and-UFOs crowd.

Finally, submarine movie fans can rejoice: there really are giant squid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

Andrew Sullivan takes note of an LATimes story:

BUSH VERSUS CONSERVATISM: In general, it's a good idea for the administration not to expand existing entitlements for Katrina victims and to rely on once-only measures. In so far as they are doing that, good for them. Once you create an entitlement, it lives for ever. But this strikes me as bizarre:

Instead of offering $10,000 [rental housing] vouchers, FEMA is paying an average of $16,000 for each trailer in the new parks it is contemplating. Even many Republicans wonder why the government would want to build trailer parks when many evacuees are now living in communities with plenty of vacant, privately owned apartments.

We have a unique chance to fight poverty by dispersing some of New Orleans' underclass across the country in places with empty rental markets. Instead, the Bush administration is creating trailer-ghettoes that cost more. Newt Gingrich is right to be livid. Isn't this a no-brainer?

For once I agree with Gingrich, who is quoted in the story saying "The idea that — in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society — we would put them in [trailer] ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle that I'm aware of."

I also object to the obvious poison pill in this aid: the main thing offering subsidized trailer housing in New Orleans does is to provide these poor people a particularly efficient opportunity to lose everything all over again. It would be cynical and churlish of me to infer that FEMA intends to offer less aid for more money. As Napoleon reputedly said, "Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Army Contract Official Critical of Halliburton Pact Is Demoted

The NYTimes reports:

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

Not exactly a surprise, although when you dig down into the article it becomes a lot of he said, she said:

"[The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse] is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs," [her lawyer, Michael Kohn] said Sunday in an interview. He also said the Army had violated a commitment to delay Ms. Greenhouse's dismissal until the completion of an inquiry by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Carol Sanders, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said Sunday that the personnel action against Ms. Greenhouse had been approved by the Department of the Army. And in a memorandum dated June 3, 2005, as the demotion was being arranged, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, said the administrative record "clearly demonstrates that Ms. Greenhouse's removal from the S.E.S. is based on her performance and not in retaliation for any disclosures of alleged improprieties that she may have made."

Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings, Mr. Kohn said. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.

In October 2004, General Strock, citing two consecutive performance reviews that called Ms. Greenhouse an uncooperative manager, informed her that she would be demoted.

A touching concern for patient privacy

Dad's eye doctor just sent a postcard to remind him that it's time to have his eyes examined. The postcard is considerately stamped PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.

It's a girl!

Ron's niece Ashley and her husband Philip are the happy and proud parents of Dylan Casey (not sure about the spelling yet), 6 pounds 14 oz. Dylan's great-grandma Jenny says she's just beautiful and her head is perfectly shaped.

Haven't seen any pictures yet, but she's only about two hours old.

Truth in advertising?

A semi-local bank is promoting online banking. "So what?" I hear you scoff, "What bank doesn't?"

Surely not; but this bank signs off all of its advertising "Banking the way it used to be." Apparently that's one of those statements that's not meant to be taken literally.

You sycophantic stooge!

Random Insult Generatorfrom NK News.

Reparative therapy: Dobson's view

A rather lengthy (and somewhat amusing) article by Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson is rippling through the portion of the blogosphere I read—Matthew Yglesias, on The American Prospect's TAPPED blog, got to it through Bradford Plumer, who in turn credits two others.

The article, dated June 2002 and titled "Can Homosexuality Be Treated and Prevented?" claims no less than to provide "a definitive explanation…regarding the origins of homosexuality." Dobson explains that homosexuality is a disorder that generally isn't chosen; on the other hand, he dismisses the notion that there's a genetic component. If there were, he claims, no one could ever change their orientation, but in reality "there are eight hundred known former gay and lesbian individuals today who have escaped from the homosexual lifestyle and found wholeness in their newfound heterosexuality."

(Golly, a whole eight hundred? Out of how many? Hmm, a little less than 400 million people in the US and Canada…let's be reeeaal conservative and say no more than two percent are gay or lesbian, giving us 8 million. So that's, um, a hundredth of one percent, if my arithmetic is correct. Not the best odds.)

Anyway, if it's not chosen or genetic, that leaves what? Well, Dobson relies on the word of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a clinical psychologist who, Dobson believes, is "the foremost authority on the prevention and treatment of homosexuality today." Dobson quotes from Dr. Nicolosi's book A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality at considerable length. Turns out, it's the old distant father, smothering mother thing:

In 15 years, I have spoken with hundreds of homosexual men. I have never met one who said he had a loving, respectful relationship with his father.

(Not ever? What about the zillions of straight guys who'd say the same thing about their dads? Where do they fit in this?)

Elsewhere, Nicolosi says,

If [a father] wants his son to grow up straight, he has to break the mother-son connection that is proper to infancy but not in the boy's interest after the age of three. In this way, the father has to be a model, demonstrating that it is possible for his son to maintain a loving relationship with this woman, his mom, while maintaining his own independence. In this way, the father is a healthy buffer between mother and son.

Nicolosi errs by conflating masculinity and straightness (lesbians are scarcely mentioned in the material Dobson excerpts). Also, he's awfully, awfully therapy-centric:

Recalling the words of psychologist Robert Stoller, he said, "Masculinity is an achievement." [He] meant that growing up straight isn't something that happens. It requires good parenting. It requires societal support. And it takes time. The crucial years are from one and a half to three years old, but the optimal time is before age twelve. Once mothers and fathers recognize the problems their children face, agree to work together to help resolve them, and seek the guidance and expertise of a psychotherapist who believes change is possible, there is great hope.

That's pretty compressed; maybe Nicolosi doesn't really mean to suggest that your kid's apt to grow up gay unless you really work hard to make him straight, with generous applications of therapy to ensure the desired result.

For a guy who unquestioningly accepts that homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, Dobson is surprisingly sympathetic; I hardly expected him to say that homosexuality isn't chosen: "Homosexuals deeply resent being told that they selected this same-sex inclination in pursuit of sexual excitement or some other motive. It is unfair, and I don't blame them for being irritated by that assumption. "

Nor did I expect Dobson to grasp that gay people often have to deal with common life issues such as "loneliness, rejection, affirmation, intimacy, identity, relationships, parenting, self-hatred, gender confusion, and a search for belonging" in ways that straight people don't (though he's patently wrong to say that those issues are what homosexuality's really all about), and goes on: "This explains why the homosexual experience is so intense—and why there is such anger expressed against those who are perceived as disrespecting gays and lesbians or making their experience more painful. I suppose if we who are straight had walked in the shoes of those in that 'other world,' we would be angry too."

Holy Freudian cliche, Batman!

Via Obsidian Wings, who in turn got it from Pandagon, Men overcompensate when masculinity threatened:

Threaten a man's masculinity and he will assume more macho attitudes, according to a study by a Cornell University researcher.

I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq War more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle,' said Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell. Willer is presenting his findings Aug. 15 at the American Sociological Association's 100th annual meeting in Philadelphia.

I'm not bitter.

Well, I got the word on one of my estimates. The job was to recreate a report consisting almost entirely of financial reports and sales graphs. Despite the fact that I've worked for this client for several years, they have proven almost impervious to any kind of education I've provided about the process, techniques, and cost of graphic design work. In practice this means they have some unrealistic expectations.

Bottom line: I quoted them $1700; they had a quote from somebody else for $150. That is not a typo.

I wrote their general manager this evening as follows:

Dear [name],

I value your business, but I'm afraid I can't consider re-quoting the ops report.

It looks to me as if whoever created that 19 pages of financial/statistical tables and graphs gave you an extreme low-ball quote. There's no way I can get anywhere near matching it.

I hope that, regardless of the 90+ percent difference between the figure you're looking for and the figure I quoted, we'll be able to work together on future projects.

If I've lost this guy on price, it's business well lost. At his price I'd be better off working at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.

My life, in a nutshell

Today is the first time in many weeks that I've managed to get up at a reasonable hour to devote a full day to work.

Yesterday I spent most of the day doing estimates for a couple of semi-large jobs. Fun. Today, assuming at least one of them gets approved, I'll start work. I feel better when I'm really working, and the resulting checks, though possibly a long way off, are pleasant to contemplate.

Ron's off to Maryland for a presentation today; he'll be back tomorrow. Dad is in good spirits, though as always very tired and short of breath. I'm taking him out tomorrow to run a couple of errands and then we'll have lunch somewhere.

Friday we're leaving for a week at Ron's sister's beach house (yay!). Somewhere along the way I need to assemble a week's worth of junk-food reading and develop a playlist in iTunes. I also need to call the cat-sitter, buy litter, and start reassuring the kitties.

Life is good.

Uncommon indecency

I'm no fan of Michelle Malkin, but she's dead-on right in her outrage at the antics of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Catherine Knoll, who appeared at the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq and used the event as a platform to declare her anti-war views.

Now that's just low. I don't care what you think about the war--intruding on a family's grief for political gain is beyond the pale.

I don't care what they say: sometimes a flint-knapper is only a flint-knapper

From BBC News: Ancient phallus unearthed in cave

John G. Roberts

What with all the hoo-haw of the past few weeks on who the President would appoint to the Supreme Court, my immediate off-the-cuff reaction is that Judge Roberts is an excellent choice.

Okay, so he's a conservative. That doesn't make him a bad person, and it's hardly reasonable to expect Bush to nominate anyone who's not a conservative.

Roberts' credentials appear to be as solid as anyone could hope for: his judicial career has been brief but he's appeared before the Supreme Court as an advocate almost 40 times and he appears to have earned the respect of the court's members.

If he's opposed by partisan hacks, who cares?

Oh, for gosh sake...

Res ipsa loquitur, from The Smoking Gun.

7/7

Of course the terror attacks in London are unprovoked and barbarous. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

Nancy S. Detty; October 23, 1918–May 30, 2005

My mother, Nancy B. Syphrett Detty, passed away on Memorial Day at the age of 86. Her health and mobility had been generally good—she was often described as spry—until she began suffering chest pains in April. This led to valve replacement surgery, after which she remained weak; she never fully recovered.

On May 23, her heart abruptly stopped, and while EMTs were able to resuscitate her almost immediately, she apparently aspirated some stomach contents when she passed out and contracted pneumonia. From that point on, she was on a breathing machine and never woke up. After a week during which her initial improvement was worn away and her condition began to deteriorate slowly, then more quickly, my father and I gradually accepted that it was time to let her go. This was in accord with her wishes as expressed to both of us and affirmed in her advance directives to physicians.

This has been a severe blow to my father, the more so for being unexpected, and compounded by his generally poor health. He was only able to make very short visits to Mom in the hospital once a day; then his strength would fade and I’d have to take him home and put him to bed. He’s much better now, but very lonely. I see him almost daily now. We talk about news or politics or sports; we’ve grown closer. Sometimes we watch baseball or golf on TV; sometimes we run errands connected with Mom’s estate. Today we selected a headstone. The finality of having the date of your mother’s death engraved in stone is a terrible thing.

I’m better, too, but I still have trouble sleeping. Sometimes I lie awake and try to remember her as she was when I was a young child; sometimes I just lie awake.

I wrote about my mom at some length last year, in this post.

Best wishes, Ashley & Philip

Ron's niece Ashley got married tonight, to a very nice guy named Philip.

The wedding took place right down the road, but I wasn't able to go because of events I had no control over. (I don't feel like elaborating just yet.)

Ron says the wedding was just beautiful, and it should have been—aside from the obvious fact that Ashley and Philip deserve no less, it was certainly in a beautiful place. I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures.

I know it's a happy day and all that...

...but what on earth was Camilla wearing on her head? Wheat? Quills?

News: One more thing to be wary of...

Kids, Infants Fall Victim to Identity Theft [ABC News]

W.C. Fields Forever

Slate.com, speculating pointlessly on the identity of the next pope, mentions a Belgian cardinal whose name evokes W.C. Fields rather than J.H. Christ: Godfried Danneels.

Feel like they're fixing to die

Of course it's horrible to anticipate anybody's death, and thus remarkable that immediately after the agony of waiting for Terri Schiavo to die we're doing the same thing with the Pope. Prince Rainier of Monaco, so I've read, is failing too.

I can't actually remember the last time somebody's impending death was news, never mind three in swift succession.

Headlines

CNN.com:Crash-prone aircraft enters final test phase

Gee, you'd think the final test phase would be the one that determined it was crash-prone.

In other news, sources say that another Red Lake Chippewa kid has been arrested in connection with last week's school shootings in Minnesota, and that there may be a wider plot, whatever that means.

Earlier reports have connected the shooter with neo-Nazi web sites. Is there something I don't know about neo-Nazism that makes it attractive to Native Americans?

Rejected Fiona Apple album available just about everywhere

Over the last few years, Wilco, Aimee Mann, and Patty Griffin have all had completed albums rejected by one or another of the major record labels.

Presumably they're not the only ones, but they were the artists who leapt to mind just now when I heard that the same thing had happened to Fiona Apple.

With this kind of report it's almost obligatory to condemn whatever's kept the album from release—corporate stupidity, wrangling between the label and Apple's business managers, whatever. Consider that done.

I haven't heard the tracks yet, but if you're interested, information (and a link to the unreleased tracks) can be found in this story at SFGate.com: Who Will Free Fiona Apple? (via Tim Cain's Crouching Weblog, Hidden Baldwin)

Now promise me that if you do download the tracks, you'll pay for the album if it comes out. Artists have to eat, you know.

Man Sells Device That Blocks Fox News

From
Yahoo! News, via The Raw Story.

Pretty silly. Now, if it's technically possible to create, for instance, a Michael Jackson blocker, I might be persuaded to buy that.

Officer downloads driver's nude photos off phone

Comment, as I keep saying, would be superfluous; but this, from the Houston Chronicle (reg required, of course), is the craziest damn story I've seen in a long time:

It began as the fairly routine arrest of a drunken-driving suspect on a Houston street.

It quickly evolved into a maze of questions as investigators checked out reports that a Houston police officer had found nude photos of the driver stored in her cellular phone, downloaded them and later showed them around the courthouse.

Patrolman Christopher Green has been reassigned to desk duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation. His partner, George Miller, also has been reassigned while the department looks into reports that he called the DWI suspect's home to ask her out.

Let's see, I guess you bite the little top off the cross first, right?

When I saw this sort of thing at Hastings I thought it was merely an isolated outbreak of bad taste.

Little did I know that there's a bunch of them out there.

Which, depressingly, implies that somebody wants this kind of kitsch. Sheez.

More on Schiavo

A fascinating discussion of the Schiavo case, with links to more, on Obsidian Wings:

As I noted earlier, in this case Michael Schiavo is his wife's guardian, and might have decided what she would have wanted. However, he chose instead to ask the court to consider the evidence about what she would have wanted, and to make its own evaluation. It found that she would not have wanted to be kept alive. That is: this is not a case in which anyone is proceeding in the absence of evidence about what she would have wanted, nor is it a case in which Michael Schiavo is acting only on his sense of what his wife would have wanted, without allowing a hearing for anyone else's view.

Assuming this is true, this totally changes my opinion of Michael Schiavo. However, it only amplifies my feeling that Congress has done wrong in the name of doing good, and that ideology has trumped common sense and is now trying to stack the deck.

Congress steps in a big steaming pile of Schiavo

Congress has chosen—actually, rushed headlong—to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. Fascinating. So much for states' rights and due process. Not to mention the sanctity of marriage.

Does this mean I should just not bother with DNR orders and medical powers of attorney and stuff like that?

And the password is....

From an e-mail about a conference call Ron's been invited to participate in: "Note that the passwords are extremely case-sensitive."

I guess that means that to get in on this call you don't just have to hold the shift key down, you have to do it with the utmost sincerity.

Lame Fox News column—or is that redundant?

You'd think Fox News columnist John Gibson actually doesn't oppose same-sex marriage, considering the weak case he makes against it on foxnews.com:

Gays can't have kids — other than going to the abandoned kids store and getting one or two, or borrowing sperm from someone with more sperm than brains — so by definition they're out of the marriage game.

In theory, so would couples who get married in their eighties. Chances are good that no kids come out of that holy union. But it is at least theoretically possible. Not so with gays.

"The abandoned kids store?" Is that anything like the Goodwill?

Lame. Funny, but lame.

California goes for fairness

Advocate.com quotes San Francisco County superior court judge Richard Kramer's historic decision that California cannot restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples: "The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional."

Fantastic. I hope it holds up on appeal. I hope Californians don't amend their constitution and make the ruling moot.

Busy weekend

We had company this weekend; in-laws and future second-degree in-laws. (Are the in-laws of my in-laws my in-laws?)

We had a good time, although having five house guests is kind of exhausting. So is location scouting for weddings. Remind me, when we get married, to go the justice-of-the-peace, quiet ceremony route.

Budget got the problem with Amex resolved, Ron says.

Your name is your destiny

You know those stickers people put on their cars--or, more likely, minivans or SUVs--that give the name of a high school and below it the first name of their kid? (Like "Hutto Hippos/CRAIG".) Well, today I noticed a Tivy Antler named Faylon.

I sure hope Faylon's doing well in school. But I don't s'pose he is.

One more cat entry

Before I forget, today is my cat Toby's birthday. (His third, to be exact.)

We're celebrating with special cat food and a new fake bird thingy for the kitty-fishing pole.

I hate to blog about the cats, but...

...all three of them are sitting on my desk. Awwwwwww....

I believe that's some kind of record.

Pastry chef considers new run for Arizona governorship

The governorship of my former home state of Arizona doesn't go up for grabs until next year, but potential candidates are already preparing to toss their assorted hats into the ring. Or not.

Anyway, Republican U.S. Rep J.D. Hayworth has announced that he will remain in Congress rather than run for governor in 2006, and the Arizona Republic's report includes a tidbit buried way down in the story:

Former Republican Gov. Fife Symington, 59, is considering another run for governor in 2006. Symington, who served as governor from 1991 to 1997, resigned from office immediately after being convicted by a federal jury of bank and wire fraud on Sept. 3, 1997. His conviction was overturned on appeal in June 1999, and President Clinton pardoned him in January 2001. Symington runs a consulting firm and has been working as a pastry chef at a Phoenix restaurant. He will make a decision by June.

Gosh, you'd think the guy would give up eventually. The conviction was overturned because a problem with the jury was mishandled, not because of any flaws in the case, and, to quote the Phoenix New Times, "The same Ninth Circuit panel that tossed out the case because of [a juror's] removal also stated that it found sufficient evidence to support Symington's conviction on at least three counts." Clinton's last-minute pardon, here as elsewhere, is a black spot on his presidency.

As for Hayworth, he's probably doing himself more good by remaining in Congress, especially considering Napolitano's considerable (19 point) lead over him in early polls. It's arguable that winning the governorship wouldn't exactly be a step up for him, and not winning it would be, at best, pointless. And I wouldn't be surprised if Hayworth thinks he can do the state more good in Congress than as governor.

Back up to speed

I finally figured out what's been slowing my computer down so drastically since I installed the most recent security update for the Mac last week: a trial version of a WYSIWYG font menu utility. Killing it ended my troubles, for the most part--though there's still a slight problem with FontAgent Pro which I'll drop Insider Software a note about in a day or two, if reinstalling the app and/or repairing preferences doesn't resolve it.

[Later note: it didn't. Drat.]

I feel better. No way could I live without font management--and in my experience FAP's way easier to use and less aggravating than any competing app I've tried.

Fun with charge cards.

Ron called me this afternoon from the airport in Phoenix, in obvious distress. Budget had declined both of his American Express cards--had I somehow not paid them?

I assured him I had and gave him dates and check numbers; somewhat mollified, he hung up to call American Express.

Twenty minutes later he called me back. Turns out that somehow Amex and Budget have gotten all crosswise and Budget isn't taking American Express.

The Budget counter people were completely unaware of this; apparently Ron was the first person to walk up to them with a valid American Express card since it happened. Needless to say, no one at Budget or Amex that Ron talked to could shed any light on who'd done this or whether it's even intentional.

Dan Goodman's gonna like this story

From Reuters, via CNN.com:

Music can be a mouth-watering experience for one Swiss musician who 'tastes' combinations of notes as distinct flavors, according to a report in the science journal Nature.

Goodman's been exploring synesthesia (as I spell it in my quaint American way) in his blog and elsewhere. This story's of interest to me, too, because I've occasionally experienced synesthesia, especially as a child, and my mother has too. I mentioned a synesthetic experience to her when I was about 9 and she responded that she'd once heard a note or chord on the piano that she thought sounded purple.

Another damn same-sex marriage post

On National Review Online, David Frum goes into panic mode:

Same-sex marriage is a revolution in the definition of marriage for everyone - a revolution not just in law, but in consciousnessness.

And one effect of this revolution - and for many proponents, one of the revolution's aims - is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband's duties to his wife - while equally binding and equally supreme - are not the same as a wife's duties to her husband.

Hey, I saw you palm that card! Exactly what, about same-sex marriage, could make unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives have special duties to one another?

As for the idea that the duties husbands have to their wives are not the same as the duties wives have to their husbands--if there's one thing I've learned in ten-plus years of happy nonmarriage to Ron, it's that no two couples support and care for each other in quite the same way, and over time their roles in their relationship can and must change as circumstances do.

Frum's entitled to his ideal of marriage, and if his wife shares that ideal, so much the better, but I truly don't think I'm trying to legislate his type of marriage out of existence and I'd appreciate it if he and others like him would return the favor.

A note in passing...

The NYTimes (registration required) reports that Harry Simeone, best known for his choral arrangement of "Little Drummer Boy," has died.

I had always supposed "Harry Simeone" was a transparently obvious pseudonym and now I learn, too late, he was a real person.

A bomber is a bomber is a bomber, right?

Wonkette on a Media Matters report that Fox News insists on substituting the term "homicide bomber" for "suicide bomber" in wire stories:

Media watchdogs are all foamed up over Fox News making changes to AP stories and story subjects' quotes. Oh c'mon, everyone's got a house style -- just because Fox changes 'suicide bomber' to 'homicide bomber,' no matter what Hillary Clinton or anyone else might have actually said, doesn't mean they're influencing the news or anything.

This isn't exactly news--Fox has been using the term for some time now and it's only to be expected that Fox edits wire reports to suit their own style. Changing quotes is clearly wrong, though.

Of course, Fox deserves the term "homicide bomber," which is obscure, redundant, and misleading--not to mention that Fox's hasty adoption of the term after Ari Fleischer and other White House officials started using it a few years ago makes them look like administration stooges. Which they probably also deserve.

Fox HD blocking fast forwards?

PVRblog reports here that some users of Comcast's HD DVRs have been unable to fast-forward through commercials on "American Idol" or "24" on Fox's HD channel.

This might be just a glitch that can be resolved by resetting the DVR, but it's weird that there aren't comparable reports of problems with HD feeds from other networks.

(Via Reality Blurred)

Belated "Wife Swap" post

Ron and I like to watch ABC's "Wife Swap," in which participants trade places with counterparts from what are generally radically different backgrounds. Usually the show is exploitive but harmless: we see super-permissive parents get switched into excessively strict, structured households, that kind of thing.

Last week's episode was less benign than usual, placing lesbian mom Kristine in the home of strait-laced, conservative Christian mom Kris, and vice versa.

Kristine appeared to get on reasonably well with Kris's husband Brian, but the same couldn't be said of Kris's relationship with Kristine's partner Nicki. In an early segment of the program, Kris disparaged Kristine and Nicki's partnership, impugned their motivation for wanting to be legally married, and asked Nicki why she couldn't just pretend not to be lesbian. Really. No kidding.

Things went further downhill during the couples' meeting at the end of the show. Kris said that she feared Kristine would molest her daughter--I wonder if she'd have suggested that a straight woman might molest her teenaged sons?--and that Kristine and Nicki were depraved. This reduced Kristine to tears, as you might expect. (I can respect a polite expression of religious objections, but Kris's inflammatory, outrageous statements only deserve an indignant "How DARE you?!" )

But while I'm angry at the exploitation of both couples, I can't understand why anyone ever participates in these shows. Really, I'm totally baffled. Can anyone possibly expect any good to come from reality TV, especially if there's no compensation for the participants?

Oh, my dear god in heaven.

So to speak: FaithConverter 1.8

Does Not Compute

Aha, I should have been more suspicious; the purported home computer I linked to yesterday is a fake. Snopes.com is everybody's friend.

Forward, into the Past!

What "fifty years from now" looked like fifty years ago, via Anton Sherwood.

I'm impressed by the wildly optimistic statement in the caption, "With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use."

Wonkette Defends Dick Cheney

Wonkette is amusingly snide on Dick Cheney's malfunctioning wardrobe: "We don't know why everyone is making such a big deal about Cheney's attire at the holocaust memorial. He is an old man with a bad heart. Wearing whatever's comfortable is one of the benefits of still being alive. There are many: early bird buffets, discount theater tickets, and, of course, invading the country of your choice, as long you show your AARP card." Ooh, ooh, I'm eligible for AARP now.

Oklahoma considers cockfights with tiny gloves

Comment would be superfluous; from a Reuters story on the Houston Chronicle web site: "An Oklahoma senator hopes to revive cockfighting in the state by putting tiny boxing gloves on the roosters instead of razors."

It's not easy, being green

Andrew Sullivan wonders why conservatives aren't very green:

I've never understood why conservatives in principle oppose tougher fuel standards or conservation measures. Conserving energy is conservative, no? And increasing energy independence is a useful foreign policy tool, no? Where's the catch?

Two thoughts leap to mind: First, conservation keeps money out of the hands of various large businesses. Can't have that happen. Second, ideology is getting in the way. God forbid conservatives should intentionally associate themselves with positions commonly held by non-conservatives.

Religious figure calls for peace in holiday sermon--is this news?

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

The chief Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdulrahman Al-Sudais, gives an annual sermon decrying extremism and terror. Money quote:
'Islam is the religion of moderation. There is no room for extremism in Islam,' he said. He called on Muslims to 'protect non-Muslims in the Kingdom and not to attack them in the country or anywhere. Islam is a religion of peace that abhors attack on innocents.' Militants were using misguided interpretations of Islam to justify violence, he added. 'Because Muslims have strayed from moderation, we are now suffering from this dangerous phenomenon of branding people infidels and inciting Muslims to rise against their leaders to cause instability,' Al-Sudais said. 'The reason for this is a delinquent and void interpretation of Islam based on ignorance ... faith does not mean killing Muslims or non-Muslims who live among us, it does not mean shedding blood, terrorizing or sending body parts flying.'
Is there some reason this didn't get more play? It strikes me as important.

Damn right it's important. And it should sure as heck get more play, especially when lightweights like James Dobson get a whole weekend's worth of play out of SpongeBob SquarePants.

But should we be surprised that the media don't give it much play? On some level, we should naturally expect that the chief imam of the Grand Mosque is a good and reasonable man, and that he'll make this sort of pronouncement from time to time, just as we expect that prominent figures in other religions will make comparable statements on comparable occasions.

The door into summer

Hilzoy, in the moderate blog Obsidian Wings, on cat behavior:

My cat Nils is not very smart. (Although he wishes me to add that he is a mighty hunter and slayer of mice. Among the phrases he recognizes is: Nils! viscera!) In the past few days he has developed a new and charming addition to his repertoire of not-very-smartnesses. Namely:


My house has two doors: the front door, which leads onto a porch, and the side door, which leads onto steps. I use the side door most of the time, and so does Nils, which is why it's the side door before which he can often be found, staring intently at the handle, trying to move it by sheer force of will. But when it's snowy or rainy, I let him out the front door, so that he will have some shelter while he comes to the conclusion that it would, after all, be better to stay inside.


Until a few days ago, this was easy: Nils would be by the side door, I would open the front door and say 'Nils!', and he would run out. But for the past few days he has refused to go out the front door. It's not that he doesn't want to go out: he will stay beside the side door, staring at it and meowing. But when I open the front door, he will just look at it in a sort of hostile way and then return to wailing to be let out the side door. And the only sense I can make of this is: he won't go out the front door because if he does, then it will be cold and rainy, whereas if he goes out the side door, it will be sunny and warm.

I don't agree with Hilzoy's conclusion that Nils is dumb; in fact, the consensus among my three cats is that this is perfectly sensible and that it's people's damn fault that we can't control the weather anyway.

There's a very similar passage, by the way, in Heinlein's entertaining (though now, sadly, rather dated) "The Door into Summer."

Pentagon nixed use of homosexual aphrodisiac

A Reuters story in HoustonChronicle.com: "The U.S. military rejected a 1994 proposal to develop an 'aphrodisiac' to spur homosexual activity among enemy troops but is hard at work on other less-than-lethal weapons, defense officials said Sunday."

That's the attention-getter. Needless to say, the full story's more prosaic. Key quote: "Lt. Col. Barry Venable of the Army, a Defense Department spokesman, said: 'This suggestion arose essentially from a brainstorming session, and it was rejected out of hand.'"

So the real story is that the Pentagon floated a whole bunch of cockamamie ideas for nonlethal weapons (the one about a halitosis-inducing chemical is a real winner, too).

Interesting that no one seems at all concerned about the use of chemical weapons, nor is there any suggestion that human testing of such weapons might pose ethical problems.

That's quite a chunk of change...

An AP report on CNN.com: Trucker missing; so is cargo of 3.6 million nickels: "MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A truck driver has disappeared with the 3.6 million nickels he was hauling to the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans, police said Friday."

Anyone for poker?

Dan Goodman depicts a respondent to an inquiry on the net getting hung up in what he thinks a question means:

-"In the Old West days, where in London near Cambridge University would a student find bars and salons [sic] with poker games?"-

The inquirer was politely given good information. Told where Cambridge University is, and how far in travel time from London it probably was in the 19th century. That whist would be far more likely as a gambling game than poker. That England wasn't part of the Old West.

I think the respondent is missing the point a bit—I took the question to mean something like "Where in the general area of Cambridge University might a student who preferred poker to other gambling games have found such a game, around the time of Victoria's reign?" I'll grant that the reference to the Old West is weirdly out-of-context, but I didn't take it to mean that the inquirer thinks London was in the Old West, either. (Maybe the student was at some time, though.)

Eavesdropping report

Ron and I are confirmed restaurant eavesdroppers. So last night we were out with my mom (Dad's back is bothering him) and we overheard a couple behind us talking to their college-age children about the state of the world.

I swear I'm not making this up: the father was holding forth about how the whole rest of the world had gone metric and that even the English had abandoned feet and pounds; and this in turn relates to world government and the European Union and the erosion of national sovereignty and how the aim of the evil foreigners is for the US to abandon the dollar.

Then the mother chimed in that 99% of college professors are liberals and it's best just to not listen to them, kids. Also that since in this country liberals are actually allowed to vote, sooner or later there will be a liberal president and that's going to be the beginning of the end.

Then, thank goodness, their conversation turned to more mundane things, and we finished our dinner. I did notice that the kids had their own views and weren't taking their parents entirely seriously, which I thought was a good thing.

I've heard of platform agnosticism, but...

A nice lady on TV was saying it's best to prepare grilled cheese sandwiches in a nonstick pan.

Listening from the next room, Ron misheard her. "What's a gnostic pan?" he asked.