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.

It's about damn time!

Andy Dehnart, in reality blurred/the reality TV weblog, that the next season of MTV's venerable pseudo-reality show The Real World may be set in Austin.

The Jetty

Bill Chance's Daily Epiphany is a reliable pleasure. Here he covers familiar ground: I spent a lot of time on the south jetty when I was a kid.

My mom has read extensively about the 1900 storm, which her dad lived through, but I'm sure she hasn't read Isaac's Storm. I'll have to get it for her for Christmas.

Fellowship of the Ring: Customized Cell Tones

From washingtonpost.com:

In a short time, in a public way -- while on Metro, or in line at Starbucks, or inside a movie theater -- ring tones signal who you are. Or who you want people to think you are. It's a special stamp, a personal touch. Are you a Maroon 5 kind of guy? Are you a Shakira kind of gal?

I'm puzzled by this. I'd be hard pressed to think of any piece of music I'd care to hear every time my phone rings. I try to stick to simple tones that sound more or less like a ringing telephone. Unfortunately, I don't really like any of the tones available for my current phone. Doesn't anyone else just want the damned thing to ring? The fanciest I'd want to get is the tone the hotline makes in "Our Man Flint." Now there's a cool ringtone.

Residents of historic district on alert after robberies

The Arizona Republic reports:

Two recent armed robberies in one of central Phoenix's oldest neighborhoods have put its residents on alert.

Willo Historic District residents are being told to walk in groups at night and to be more aware of their surroundings in the aftermath of two muggings that targeted three residents.

Holy crap. I lived in that neighborhood until 5 months ago. I know two of the people quoted in the story.

The house we used to own there is on the market again. Some improvements have been made, notably with the flooring, but essentially the house is pretty much the same as it was when we owned it. Ron and I installed the kitchen/dining area light fixture ourselves, and it was that experience which led me to install the sconces in the hall in our current house by myself.

Marriage needs a lot more explainin' than just saying it's 'man and wife'

John Kelso, in the Austin American-Statesman, gives the first persuasive argument I've seen against same-sex marriage:

I can sort of see where these people are coming from because, well, you know how guys are when they get together and the problems that can lead to, when you don't have a woman around to lay down the law. Two guys get married and instead of yard work, being guys, they just want to go out to the lake and drown some worms. And pretty soon the front yard looks like hell's half acre.

I can state without equivocation, based on my own experience, that he's right. This is why we have a yard guy.

Hey, if two-guy couples tend to hire yard guys and cleaning ladies, does that imply that same-sex marriage leads to higher employment? And if there were such a trend, would lesbian couples offset it or reinforce it?

Gee, I wonder what box How to Lie with Statistics is in. I think I've hit a fit topic for it.

Ashcroft the Optimist

From the text ofJohn Ashcroft's resignation letter, as reported by CNN: "I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

Now there's a sweeping generalization for you. I guess that means they'll be taking down the barriers along the back driveway to the VA hospital here, and letting people meet arriving air passengers at the gate...

On the other hand, it appears that the widely reported rumor that Ashcroft thinks calico cats are a sign of the devil is false. Snopes.com is a wonderful thing.

Now there's one for the law of unintended consequences...

...except I'm kinda sorta semi sure that this isn't an unintended consequence. The Washington Post (registration required) reports that it's the highest achievers who are most likely to leave underperforming schools under the "No Child Left Behind" law:

Eight-year-old Umaid Qureshi does math problems for fun and reads most nights before bed. His mother thinks her son might become a doctor, like her. Or maybe he will follow his father's lead and become a software consultant.


So when Fairfax County sent Shafaq Qureshi a letter in August explaining that Umaid's school -- McNair Elementary in Herndon -- fell short on standardized test scores and that any McNair student could transfer to a better-performing school, she decided there was no reason for him to stay.

Bigger, better, faster, more....

Several months ago when we moved into this house, RoadRunner said something to us about faster cable internet access being right around the corner.

Well, Ron called them up earlier this afternoon, and while they're not advertising or documenting this access in any easy-to-find way, they will sell it to you if you qualify. I dunno what that means, but evidently we did, because we have the new service up, as of about 10 minutes ago. And it's noticeably faster.

This doesn't do me much actual good, because I don't need a lot of speed in my day-to-day work, but Ron spends a lot of time in a web-based database application and he's very happy. So, good.

Life's simple pleasures, yuppie homeowner division

The yard guy, who's supposed to mow every 2 weeks this time of year, decided to take the week off last week. This means that it's been 3 weeks since my lawn was mowed. The shrubbery is also long overdue for trimming.

So he's finally here right now. It's surprising how happy I am about this.

Kinky Friedman for Governor--2006

From the Kinky Friedman Official Site:: "The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark."

Kinky Friedman is running for governor of Texas in 2006.

He won't win, of course: as far as I know, he's never held office before; he's an independent; and he's not an evangelical Christian (as his campaign logo implies, he's not any other kind, either).
I think it's a mistake to write Friedman off as a joke, though; campaign slogans like "How hard could it be?" and "Why the hell not?" are perfectly reasonable questions, considering the records of some previous governors, and I don't just mean the two most recent.

Kerr County Early Voting Statistics

To follow-up on my item yesterday on early voting,here's a report from the Kerrville Daily Times:

According to the voter registrar’s office, 13,028 citizens participated in early voting last week, which ended Friday. That number reflects only the appearance votes and does not include mail-in ballots. These numbers indicate that more than 39 percent of the 33,124 registered voters in Kerr County took advantage of early voting opportunities.

It's interesting that the Democratic party worker quoted in the story says Democrats are hoping that Republicans will split their tickets and vote for Kerry. I've heard little that suggests this is a reasonable possibility.

Texas Early Voting Statistics

Early Voting stats from the Texas Secretary of State show that in the 15 most populous counties in Texas the cumulative percentage of registered voters who have voted early as of last Friday (including absentee voting) is 29.66.

I hope this means a large turnout tomorrow.

Early voting in Kerr County

I've seen a number of news reports and blog entries from around the country to the effect that early voting, where available, has proved to be so popular that lines are several hours long.

It's not quite like that here, although I should point out that most of the reports I've heard are from large metropolitan areas and the population of the county I live in is about 40,000.

Last Monday, Ron and I went out about 4 pm to vote and waited in line for about 20 minutes. Thursday, about 9 am, I took my parents to vote. They vote in the same precinct I do, and there was no line at all.

Harmony in my head, part 2

Today the song running through my head is "Cabin-Essence," from Brian Wilson's Smile. That's a vast improvement over the song I was thinking about when I woke up: "Hair," by the Cowsills.

Yesterday's song was "Museum," a Donovan Leitch song recorded by Herman's Hermits, which tied in with a peculiar dream I had about a strange Herman's Hermits best-of which contained no familiar titles at all.