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.